And we'll root, root, root for the home team

I was born and spent most of my early childhood in New York City, back when the city had three baseball teams (as well as three pro football teams, but no one paid any attention to them). The city was divided into specific geographic areas. Mine was where you loved the Yankees, tolerated the Giants and hated the Dodgers. My family, especially my dad, took that seriously.

I don't know how he did it -- I was way too young to ask at the time and he died before I could find out later -- but my dad got to know a number of the Yankees personally. The Yankee lineup during this time consisted, for the most part, of Johnny Mize at first, Billy Martin at second, Phil Rizutto at short, Bobby Brown at third, Gene Woodling in left, Joe DiMaggio in center and either Tommy Henrich or Hank Bauer in right. A rookie named Yogi Berra was the new Yankees' catcher and the starting rotation consisted of Allie Reynolds, Vic Raschi and Eddie Lopat.

My dad was in the construction business and I remember parties at our Lower East Side apartment that were attended mostly by New York Yankee players and gangsters I later saw portrayed as much younger thugs on the television program "The Untouchables." One of the wildest of those parties was one thrown in honor of my little brother's christening. My mom and dad worried about either my safety or my ability to get some sleep (possibly both) in that environment and convinced our neighbors down the hall to let me spend the night there. Those neighbors were the Dunphys. That name might not mean anything today, but back then Don Dunphy was considered "the voice of boxing," the man who did the radio and later the television punch-by-punch announcing for the matches emanating from Madison Square Garden as well as the heavyweight championship fights wherever they occurred. This was also back in the day when the milkman delivered his product right to your front door. Anyway, on this particular evening I was racing down the hall to the Dunphy's apartment and slipped on a piece of glass from a broken milk bottle and fell into the bulk of the shattered bottle. I was bleeding profusely, and Don Dunphy, on his way to the job at MSG, opened the door of his apartment, saw me and wrapped his tuxedo jacket (he always wore a tuxedo to announce the fights) to fashion a tourniquet before the ambulance came to take me to the hospital. For many years after we left the city, I received a holiday card annually from Don Dunphy that included the words "You still owe me a tuxedo."

Back then there were eight American League teams and eight in the National League and the winner of each played in the World Series. There was no wild cards or playoff games. In the American League, the pennant race consisted of the Yankees against the Ted Williams-led Boston Red Sox. The two teams would be neck- and-neck until around Labor Day when the Yanks would sweep a series from the Sox and then win going away. I felt like Yankee Stadium was my second home. My dad worked in Rockefeller Center and commuted by subway. Just about every night I would wait at the end of the block where we lived for my dad to come home from work and on most of those nights when the Yanks were at home we would head for the Bronx after he changed out of his dress suit. This was back when the left and right field walls at Yankee Stadium were only three-feet high and the monuments were in the field of play.

And once each season we would make a road trip to a series in Boston, always staying at the same hotel as the Yankees. This hotel had a restaurant with a bar at one end, a circular bar with seats all around the perimeter. Once my dad and I were having dinner in the hotel restaurant and we spotted Martin, Rizzuto and Bauer at the bar. About 15 minutes after we sat down, Yankee manager Casey Stengel walked in along with Frank Crossetti and other coaches. He saw the players at the bar and firmly told them that sitting in a bar in public on the road that early in the evening violated team rules. The players seemed to oblige Stengel. However, when the manager turned to go to his dinner table, the players simply moved around to the far side of the bar, figuring Stengel couldn't seem them there, since this pillar in the middle of the bar obscured the view of the far side. What they players didn't realize, however, was that the bar was slowly revolving. As the trio came back into Stengel's line of sight, the Yankee manager jumped from his table, stormed over to the bar and unleashed a torrent of words plenty loud enough for me, my dad and everyone else in the restaurant to hear, even if we didn't understand them. (Stengel often spoke in an indecipherable language all his own that the New York media dubbed "Stengalese"). The players just looked at him dumbfounded and when the outburst ended, sheepishly left the bar.

We later moved to the San Francisco area, a couple of years before the Giants made a similar move. The local team then was the minor league San Francisco Seals of the Pacific Coast League. The highlight of my dad's week was the televised "Game of the Week" (featuring play-by-play by Dizzy Dean). The GOTW featured the Yankees more often than not. Those telecasts would turn my dad into a nervous wreck. He would pace back and forth in front of the television, alternately praising a Yankee play and cursing a Stengel strategy move. Too often, however, the games would run long. It would be the bottom of the ninth, the score tied, runners on first and second, my dead hanging on every pitch and the local station would interrupt the telecast to begin the San Francisco Seals pre-game show. At that moment my dad would make Stengel in the bar seem like a piker. "What's going on?" he would scream. "Interrupting the New York Yankees for some bush league's pre-game show???" He would then vow retaliation like firebombing the station and, in some cases, the entire city.

I moved to Dallas in 1968 to take a position with the wire service United Press International and when the Washington Senators relocated here as the Texas Rangers two years later, I was assigned to cover most of their home games. UPI's Southwest Division sports editor at the time worked from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m., so any sporting event that occurred after 3 (which, of course, was most of them) was covered by another staffer, most of them by the great Mike Rabun. For some reason, however, I got the bulk of the Ranger games. One year the Rangers opened their season at home against the Yankees. Not only that, the Rangers had a new manager, former Yankee Billy Martin. For that reason, UPI's national sports desk in New York wanted to make sure I obtained a number of quotes from Martin after the game. So after I filed my story and the box score, I trotted from the press box to the Rangers clubhouse, walked up to Billy Martin and introduced myself: "I'm Pete Oppel of UPI." Martin stared at me. "Oppel ... Oppel," he said. "You're dad isn't Bill Oppel, is it?" I said that it was, but that my dad had died eight years earlier. He grabbed a clubhouse phone and called what I later learned was the Yankees broadcast booth and said "Hey, guys. I've got Bill Oppel's son down here." That night I wound up in a room at the Inn of Six Flags, which used to be located across the Turnpike from Arlington Stadium, playing poker with Billy Martin, Phil Rizzuto, Yogi Berra and Don Drysdale, simply because I was my dad's son.

For the past week I have been dreading a matchup of my beloved Yankees against the Texas Rangers in the ALCS. I actually got caught up in the Rangers this year -- in the Josh Hamilton saga, his run for the MVP trophy, the acquisition of Cliff Lee, the sale of the club to Nolan Ryan et al. Who was I going to root for? I didn't know. I emotionally could not make a choice.

Tonight my son decided he wanted to cook out on the grill in the back yard and then watch the opening game of the series. My grill rack was rusty so I went to a neighborhood store to get a replacement. The store had all kinds of Rangers and Yankees baseball paraphernalia and without even thinking I decided to buy three shirts, one for me, one my son and one for my granddaughter. Her's sports Michael Young's number, my son has Ian Kinsler's last name and number on the back. And mine? Mine is also fire engine red, with the name Lee and the number 33 on the back.

Stay cool, dad.