Baseball is my lifeblood. I’ve been in love with being on a ballfield since the first day of Little League when I was 8 years old. That has never changed, and even now, at nearly 52, I feel the overwhelming pull to make my way back onto the field every year. I played hardball until I was 40, took a couple of years off after realizing my body couldn’t hold up doing that anymore, then transitioned myself into competitive softball that still beckons me to step foot into my second base position every year.
Even today, I still consider myself a superb fielder, and I’ve had a lot of great coaches in my many years on the field that have helped make me into that, but the reality is, I learned how to play the field from Jamey Barone, my mom. How many other moms did you know that went out in the backyard with a bat and hit grounders, pop-ups, and line drives to their kid for hours at a clip? Somewhere in the back of my head, I remember her telling me she played when she was little, and she threw, caught, and hit as she had just hung up her spikes. She must have because she knew her stuff- how to ready myself in the field, how to judge when I need to get down lower on that second hop, and pretty much every other nuance of fielding. She knew enough that she coached several of my teams in Little League, and no offense to the many random dads that coached me over the years, but they were the minors, and she was the majors.
If I am wrong and made it up in my head that she played when she was young, then she most certainly learned about the game from watching the New York Yankees. We were only able to go to a game a year, and I am not even sure we did that every year, but she had the Yankee game on at home every day, and if we were out and couldn’t be in front of the TV, then they were on in the car or on her little portable radio. Her love of the Yankees became my love of the Yankees.
As a dad, especially one who has coached his daughter’s softball teams and is still coaching his son’s baseball teams, I now understand that a parent can dream of one day seeing their own kid out there on a big-league field almost as much as a kid can themselves. My mom had told me many times how she would love to see me out on the field at Yankee Stadium, but, as in most cases, my dreams of turning a double play in the Bronx would never be fulfilled, so she endured, relegated to a long stretch of rough Yankee seasons.
Fast forward to the night of October 2, 1996. I’m 23, and it was the bottom of the 9th, and unfortunately, lung cancer was about to close out the game… so we all gathered around my mom as she lay in bed after having just awoken from a temporary coma. As her last night with us was coming to an end, we each took 10 minutes alone with her to share memories, share regrets, hugs, and whatever else we could grab onto that would have to last the rest of our lives. When it was my turn, I was a wreck… as most would be. This was my mom. We talked about various things in our lives, and the people she was looking forward to seeing again soon. I don’t know why, perhaps I just wanted to make her smile, but after having told her I love her for the final time, the last thing I told her was to keep watching because I promise she’ll see me get up to bat at Yankee Stadium someday. I regretted saying it immediately as I didn’t want the last thing I said to her to be a lie, and mom, being as supportive as ever, simply whispered: “I know you will”. As I was about to walk out of the room, out of nowhere, she also said, “And I’m going to make sure the Yankees win the World Series this year. I chuckled at that as I left. Every Yankee knows what happened in October ’96.
I was awoken by a phone call at 5:30 am the next morning, and life has never been the same.
A few months later, I decided I was going to somehow make my promise come true. I started to call the stadium offices to try to make it happen, but it went nowhere. I wrote to George Steinbrenner’s office, sending them a multitude of letters. I only got form letters back, along with, oddly, a (second baseman) Chuck Knoblauch card…every single time, even well after he was off the team.
The last business I owned raised over $25 million for various charities, and I had one of the higher-ups in Goodwill offer to try to make it happen for me, but they never could. Then, over the course of a few years, I tracked all the auctions I had heard about where people won batting practice packages at Yankee Stadium back to a particular college and, after calling them, I spoke with the lovely Etta Sue whom I convinced to give me the contact of the organization who obtains these batting practice sessions from the Yankees and sells the to organizations so they could auction them off. I called and was able to reach the owner. I then convinced him to let me outright buy a batting session directly from them by offering to pay the average final auction price. Crazy amount but worth it. The next summer I would be there, turning the lie to truth, but fate laughed at me. That next season was when the Yankees started allowing Major League Soccer to have games there, causing them to give up the batting session slots. I was crushed (and it took 3 years to get my money back). After that, I tried idea after idea and contact after contact, but while everything else on my bucket list got checked off, the most important item remained just out of reach.
Then, Kristin Ryan and Joe Vanacore, 2 absolutely wonderful people, both of whom knew of my quest, told me on the same day that the Yankees were hosting their first-ever “On Field Fan Experience”. No way! This was my chance! The day would be comprised of a private tour of Monument Park, Lunch in the Delta Sky Suite with Bucky Dent, pitching from the Yankee bullpen mound, hitting in the visiting club’s indoor batting cage, shagging fly balls in the outfield, and..wait for it..BATTING PRACTICE AT HOME PLATE! This was it…this was my Everest. I went to sign up online and was heartbroken when I saw the price. It wasn’t anything out of this world; it wasn’t even as much as I paid that company 10 years earlier for one of their sessions, but it was exactly the amount I had just spent fixing my car, and I couldn’t justify the cost. My soul was crushed. I figured at 51 years old, after this long a search, this was likely my last chance, and I blew it. I failed my mom…again.
Here comes the power of networking. I was at my Tuesday morning beSure networking group in Wayne and telling the person next to me the entire ordeal. After the meeting, I went back to my office, and an hour later, Dave Faccone showed up. Dave owns the beSure networking group and its 9 chapters. Over the last several years, Dave has become like a brother to me. He walks into my office, sits down, and tells me he heard me tell the story earlier at the meeting. The next thing he said blew me away, and I remember it very well. Dave said, “Phil, it will break my heart if I have the ability to help you keep your promise to your mom and then not do it, so here, “he pulled out his credit card, “go book the Yankees. I hugged Dave, then cried like a baby for several minutes. After I booked it and Dave left, I called my dad, and I cried again.
That night, my wife and I talked and decided, since it was half price for someone my son’s age, we would buy his birthday present a few months early. I couldn’t even sleep that night, and it was about 2 weeks later, my son, PJ, and I were walking up through the press entrance with our mats and gloves in hand.
My mom’s funeral card stayed in my pocket for every part of the day. She was truly there with me. Emotions came on strong throughout our time there with the 3 biggest being when PJ and I first played catch together in the outfield, then when I looked up at the enormous Yankee Jumbotron screen (out in centerfield) and saw that it displayed: Phillip Barone, #11, 2B and by far the biggest was when I was walking from the Yankee dugout with my helmet on and my bat in hand, knowing what it meant for me to actually be there at that moment. Not only was this the culmination of 30 years of every angle I could try to make this happen, but I was also finally able to make right the last thing I ever said to my mom, and I did it all with my son, right next to me.
We did it, Mom.