He didn’t care that it was a no-hitter. He just wanted the Yankees to win.
More than five hours after we arrived at Yankee Stadium, my 9-year-old son, Wes, had waited in line for an hour in a rainstorm, collected his coveted (replica) 1998 Yankees World Series ring, talked me into buying him a T-shirt, visited the Gluten Free Grill twice, mourned the season-ending injury to Jasson Domínguez, cheered Aaron Judge so loudly that his voice was getting hoarse and brushed off every single mention I made that Corbin Burnes, the starter for the Milwaukee Brewers, was throwing an incredible game.
While the rain delayed Sunday’s game between Milwaukee and the Yankees only 15 minutes, the soggy conditions persisted through the early innings and Burnes, the winner of the National League Cy Young Award in 2021, had the Yankees baffled.
After two innings, I texted a Brewers fan to say I was worried the Yankees would be no-hit. He replied that Milwaukee didn’t have the offense for it to matter.
After 10 innings we both looked prophetic, as it was a 0-0 tie and the Yankees had not managed a single hit off Burnes or the relievers Devin Williams and Abner Uribe.
But Wes, wearing his glove and sitting in the 200 level for the first time, didn’t care about the historical significance of the moment. When I tried to explain the rarity of what we were seeing — that in the hundreds and hundreds of games I’d attended, as a reporter and as a fan, that I’d never seen a no-hitter in person — he shrugged and said he just wanted the Yankees to win.
After nearly 20 years of watching the game professionally, worrying a lot about deadlines and what the game’s result would mean for either team, it was an incredible reminder of what it means to be a fan above all else.