Why we live as Yankee fans

Ed Rosen 

A note from Austria's Only Baseball Fan...

VIENNA -- While I sit here in the middle of the night waiting to see if the rain stops in Baltimore, I think it’s time that I finally post something that’s been on my mind all season.

I haven’t posted as much here as in past years, and my passion for the game has distinctly lost an important component.

Back in the early 1970s, when I was in my teens attending university in New York, I met a guy named Ed Rosen, a New York native.  Ed and I both made our livings in the world of classical music.  He was the one and only person I knew with whom I could go to the opera one night and Yankee Stadium the next.

We stayed in touch all these years.  With the advent of Internet communication and MLB.TV, Ed and I often had a running chat during Yankee games which he watched on YES from his Manhattan apartment, and I on my computer here in the 6^th District of Vienna.  We had the same likes and dislikes.

And frustrations!  I can’t begin to count the number of times I typed “Get him off the mound – NOW!” to which Ed would reply with his most-used phrase: “Fire Girardi!”  His next most-used phrase was “I hate Michael Kay!”

He used to tell me when he was going out and DVR-ing the game and usually asked me to not write anything about it till he watched it.  Many times I would write him, “DO NOT WATCH!  Just take my word for it: you don’t want to see this!”

Because of our work, we were in touch year-round and would often exchange speculations about the upcoming season: dreams of trades, front office firings, swallowing the millions of the last years of a failing long-term contract, and praying for improvement for our favorite players when they inevitably fell into slumps.  And we damned well agreed that Bret Gardner is the de facto Captain of the Yankees, and should formally receive the title.

I was in a serious accident in mid-November last year which curtailed my e-mail access for a couple of weeks.  The last time I heard from Ed, he announced he was moving a few blocks to a smaller apartment on a higher floor with a view of Lincoln Center.

In late December I got an e-mail informing me that Ed became suddenly ill right after Thanksgiving and died a quiet, peaceful death a few days before Christmas.

So Yankee watching is no longer a shared experience for me, even if it was separated by six time zones and an ocean.  I shall never forget Ed, a close buddy for over 40 years: his good-natured sense of humor, his nostalgia, and his undying passion equally divided between music and the Yankees (he was the kind of diehard fan who never watched another team).

When Ed died, I lost not only one of my best friends but some of my love for the game.

In my personal Monument Park: Ed Rosen – 1940-2016