What happens when a Dodger and Yankee fan starts living for real – Orange County Register

So there’s Anasazi Ochoa in Los Angeles, a 27-year-old USC student.

And Greg Durante in New York; is a 35-year-old occupational therapist who works at a hospital in Brooklyn.

They find themselves on opposite ends of a monumental event that completely changes their moods and which is also completely (possibly) beyond their control.

They don’t know each other, but they’ve been contacting me via voice notes and texts over the past few days because I wanted to find out what happens when fans stop being polite and start acting real… while their teams are there World Cup matchS

She is a Dodgers fan. He is a Yankees fan. Both sports are incredibly good, although Ochoa is in a better mood for now; her 2-0 team returns to New York for Game 3 of the World Series on Monday.

FRIDAY, MATCH 1

12:22, New York

“A lot of emotions are really high,” says Durante a little less than eight hours before the first lift. “I feel my heart beating in my chest all morning. He keeps going back and forth between being charged enough to run through a wall and just having a complete panic attack.

9:27, California

Ochoa walks along Exposition Boulevard in Los Angeles, thinking about a photo she saw of Yankees shortstop Aaron Judge taking batting practice in his uniform: “What’s with this? …scare tactics? If that’s the case, I had to laugh… I feel good about tonight. You know we’ll strike first, we’ll strike hard, we’ll set the tone. This will be a good match, but these guys don’t seem very, very dangerous.

Hey, real quick. A little more background on these two before the first pitch: Durante grew up in a family of Yankees fans, in a house with a dedicated “Yankee Room” filled with memorabilia. “I remember,” he told me earlier this week, “how happy I was throughout the 1990s when they won those championships (three of four from 1996 to 2000)… so just winning them makes me happy, makes me happy.” I feel like a child again. He will be in the fourth game; I didn’t even think about spending $1,000 on a ticket. I had to do it.

Ochoa grew up as a Dodger fan… in San Diego. He can thank his parents, longtime Dodger fans, for that. They, too, inherited their fandom, especially from her mother’s side, as Anasazi’s grandfather, Roberto, a Mexican immigrant, was swept away in Fernandomania in the early 1980s.

“Fernando Valenzuela’s influence is a huge part of my identity as a Dodger fan,” she said of the Dodgers’ great pitching: who died last week. “Even though I wasn’t there when he played, as a Mexican-American Dodger fan, that story was passed down.”

He runs it until Friday.

Throughout the afternoon in New York, Durante receives texts like this one from his cousin: “Happy World Series Day. Let’s go (beep) into action, Yankees!”

Meanwhile, back in California, Ochoa shares, “I know I said I’m not a superstitious person, but I just thought of something: One thing I won’t do is star in Randy Newman’s ‘I Love LA.’ only in my car after the victory… it is only reserved for our victories.”

Not a superstitious person – no, not at all – Ochoa said she is, however she does feel somewhat responsible for the Dodgers’ loss in Game 2 of the National League Championship Series: “My fiancé Eric (a Padres fan) had a Brooklyn Jackie Robinson jersey, because as a black man he felt important to honor a player who broke the color barrier. He always justified that he represented Brooklyn, not Los Angeles. When the Dodgers won the NLDS (against the Padres) he gave it to me, he didn’t want anything blue in his closet anymore… I wore it for the first time (without washing) in Game 2 vs the Mets. It blew us away and I couldn’t help but wonder if the disgruntled SD fan was in a bad mood.”

7:40 p.m. Friday, New York

“Thirty minutes left and it’s game time, baby!” Durante speaks from a bustling Staten Island bar. I imagine him rubbing his hands together. “I’m starting to get excited, really excited.”

4:41 p.m. Friday, California

Ochoa plans to watch Game 1 on his phone in the Chula Vista High School football press box next to his dad, Alejandro, because he is the Spartans’ announcer. Oddly enough, life doesn’t end at the World Series. The Lakers and Trojans games were also on Friday, as were games for Chula Vista, whose school colors, Ochoa noted, “are also blue and white.”

At 8:43 p.m. his time, Durante texts, “GET THE JUDGE.”

Three minutes later he writes again: “Let the record show this was a joke, I don’t want to be arrested for conspiracy to murder after this article is printed. But seriously, these inconsistent referees are terrible and ruining the game.

He then sends a three-second voice note at 9:47 p.m.: “STAAANNNTINN!!!”

Giancarlo Stanton, a Product of Sherman Oaks Notre Damehe had just hit a 412-foot two-run home run to give the Yankees a 2-1 lead. Durante also writes: “I changed where I was standing after Los Angeles scored its first run. Then HR to Stanton. I’m not moving.

“The story of the entire season,” a glum Ochoa says on the 7:36 p.m. newscast in California, where the Dodgers are still entering eighth place. “The runners are at the base and we can’t take them home. But I still believe. It ain’t over until it’s over.”

You know what happens next.

20:39, California

“Oh my God, Mirjam! Damn grand slam! Freddie Freeman! Oh my God!” Ochoa babbles, screams, cries – then she is defeated Freeman’s grand slam in the 10th inning gave the Dodgers a 6-3 victory.

“…oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God! It’s true, it’s true, it’s true!

SATURDAY, MATCH 2

I won’t lose Durante, although I would understand if I did. After Freeman’s heartbreaking heroism, I don’t hear from him until 9:27 the next morning in New York: “What a nightmare. Worst case scenario… I went to bed angry. I woke up angry. You want to punch something (but you’re smart enough to realize how stupid that would be).

“I’m VERY pessimistic about the rest of the series. We have to win today.”

At 10:23 he adds succinctly, “I’m dead inside.”

I wonder for the millionth time: Why do we do this to ourselves?

Ochoa texts at 8:06 a.m. right after waking up: “I still can’t believe this happened…I was shaking.”

I tell myself: Ah, that’s why.

Durante gets up from the mat. He drinks coffee and goes for a long walk. He calls his dad to commiserate with him, then goes and plays volleyball to “get some sun and vent his frustrations” or otherwise “distract himself from the overwhelming fear and use all his inner strength towards optimism and hope.”

Before the game starts, he lets me know, “The T-shirt from last night didn’t work, so tonight we’ll wear a different Yankees jersey, a different watch, different shoes, and a hopeful attitude.”

Ochoa spends the day getting things done and spending time with her fiancé, Eric Fleming, before grabbing a surf and turf burrito from a spot near her parents’ house before kickoff a little after 5 p.m. “Keeping it West Coast” – he writes about it half an hour before the first whistle. “NYC has wine bars, SoCal has taco shops!”

The Dodgers hit four runs in the first three innings, building what they feel like with the Dodgers’ starting pitcher Trade Yoshinobu Yamamotolike a comfortable 4-1 lead.

Durante: “It’s like someone stabbing me in the heart.”

In the fifth round, Ochoa says, “If you can’t hear it in my voice, I’m just in a state of bliss. It’s pretty cool to be a Dodger fan now.”

The game gets closer as the Yankees score once and load the bases in the ninth. But the Dodgers come out “aaaaah and twist the knife,” Durante writes at The Commissioner, a popular bar in Brooklyn where he watched the second game.

“You know what?” Ochoa speaks Polish victory 4-2. “It’s exciting, but also peaceful. We’re ready, I think we’re definitely ready for New York. We are ready for New York.”

Her reaction is muted, however, because she is the Dodgers’ star Shohei Ohtani’s left shoulder was injured in the eighth round he dropped to second place: “All I can think about is Ohtani’s healing and that’s all.”

The ups and downs and ups and downs of sports fandom. Proving and disproving Einstein’s theory as if he invented it for Dodgers and Yankees fans: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Winner and loser.

To the unindoctrinated, it may seem silly what we allow sports to do to us. But what does sport give? Down we, this is magic.

Durante’s best explanation: “It’s an animal and primal reaction, completely instinctive and bordering on uncontrollable. This is a situation that is completely out of my control, but the emotions I feel are at odds with it.

“I really think it’s out of love,” he added. “I love this band.”

Wrote Ochoa: “I watch baseball because of my family roots. The Dodgers are the team that brings us together amidst life’s busy schedules and journeys.

“Baseball gives me hope, joy and reminds me to never give up,” she added. “Despite countless heartbreaks over the last few years, the last words of the late, great Vin Scully, spoken over the radio, always rang in my head: ‘But you know what, there will be a new day and finally a new year, and when the coming winter gives way to spring, oh , rest assured it will be time for Dodger baseball once again. “

Originally published: October 27, 2024 at 12:56 pm