Collegiate Times

Today, I am as proud as any Yankee fan on the planet.

I teach in the English Department here at Virginia Tech, and I was about 250 yards from the shootings when they happened. One of those killed was a student of mine, Ross Alameddine, a sophomore in one of my writing classes.

Ross was smart, funny, and memorable. With dark hair and black-rimmed glasses, he looked a bit like Harry Potter, and he was a wizard -- with computers. He earned his summer money by fixing computers in people's homes (house calls!), and he was a beta tester for computer games. Ross always leaned forward in his seat (teachers love that) and was quick to raise his hand. He often looked for ways to make fun of himself -- anything to make people smile. As we later learned about so many of those killed that day, Ross was special in at least a dozen ways.

For the Yankees to be on campus today honoring Ross and the other shooting victims is special for me, for I am one of those millions of original New Yorkers who have been Yankee fans all their lives, and the Yankees have been part of my family forever.

My mother, father, brother George, and I traveled to Yankee Stadium at least eight times a season when I was a kid, back in the 1950s. We were at Yankee Stadium, for example, on Memorial Day, 1956, when Mickey Mantle, steroid-free, came within three feet of hitting a fair ball out of the Stadium -- closer than anyone else, before or since. George and I to this day, I believe, can mimic the batting stances of every Yankee from the 1956 line-up.

For years, my father kept little notebooks in which, every day, he recorded what Mickey did at the plate. Later, he did the same thing for Don Mattingly. On the afternoon of the day he died in 1992, my father delivered Meals-on-Wheels to some elderly folks and then watched a Yankee exhibition game -- a pretty good last day, by my family's standards.

My mother, however, is a Yankee fan of a higher order. Mom once slid off the sofa trying to help Yankee leftfielder Irv Noren stretch a single into a double. Out of sheer nervousness while watching Don Larson's perfect World Series game in 1956, she ironed (according to family legend) every curtain in the house. Today, at the age of 92 and now living in Blacksburg, she listens to every Yankee game on satellite radio. In winter, Mom lives for the start of spring training.

 In our family, as in so many others, the Yankees have always been a combination of common ground and demilitarized zone.

No matter what tensions might arise -- over an unwelcome report card, say, or an unmown lawn -- we could always cool the atmosphere at our dinner table by asking, "How many hits did Yogi have today?" or "Should they trade Winfield?" or "Why can't Steinbrenner just leave them alone?"

        But I will never speak ill of George Steinbrenner again. Last season, one month after the shootings at Tech, the Yankees owner gave the university $1 million for the victims' fund. No other team responded like that -- only my Yankees. Derek Jeter handed over the check.

Today the Yankees will play some baseball at Virginia Tech. My mother and I won't go to the game; it would be a bit too much for her, and I think students should get the few seats available.

Nevertheless, mom and I are mighty puffed-up Yankee fans today, and the game will be proof, one more time, that baseball -- any sport, really -- can still be common ground, and a playing field a place of comfort in times of trouble.

Here at Tech, when I meet my students on the first day of class, I tell them I'm a Yankee fan.

This always provokes a medley of cheers and boos. In his brief description of himself on that first day, after learning of my Yankees affiliation, my student Ross wrote, "I'm from Saugus, Mass., about 20 minutes from Boston. It's OK, I'm not a Red Sox fanboy. But I do want us to win more often."

I like that funny "fanboy" and that loyal "us."

All of which means that today, as my Yankees honor Virginia Tech, I plan to spend a few hours remembering a Red Sox fan.