Yankee Fan Learns to Forgive and Even Pal Around with Dodgers’ Fans as He Watches Game 5 Loss

I took my son Beau to the game-five stinker at Yankee Stadium. Depressing as it was for the Yankees to lose the World Series to the Dodgers the way they did, Beau and I experienced the joy of winning through exultant Dodgers’ fans.

The moment Alex Verdugo swung through a low changeup from Walker Buehler, the Yankees ran off the field, into the dugout, through the tunnel and to their locker room. Accompanied by Sinatra’s ill-timed anthem “New York, New York”, Yankee fans quickly and quietly filed out of the big ballpark in the Bronx.

No one wants to watch their opponents celebrating on their home field. Except for masochists like Beau and me.

We stood at our seats for an hour after the game ended at 11:50 pm EST to watch Dodgers’ players, families, coaching staff, back-office and ownership celebrate on the field. A sea of Dodger-Blue fans, wearing 42 jerseys for Jackie Robinson, 32 for Sandy Koufax and 17 for Shohei Ohtani, surrounded us, serenading their heroes with “I Love L.A.”, screaming “Let’s Go Dodgers”, throwing heart-shaped hand gestures and chanting “Freddie”, “Mookie”, “Kiki” and “Shoehi”.

I reminded Dodger Nation that Sandy Koufax is from Brooklyn and their treasonous Dodgers had abandoned the cultured streets of the borough for the boring palm trees of Los Angeles. “It still doesn’t make sense,” I chided them. “Wait till they betray L.A. and move to Osaka”.

Beau and I envied their unbridled happiness. We soaked it in, chronicling the painful-yet-joyous moment on-camera as the best, good losers we could be.

I remember feeling only despair at the old Yankee Stadium when the Yankees lost in 1981 to the Dodgers in six and 2003 when Florida Marlins’ ace Josh Beckett shut them out 2-0 in game six.

Other than when they met in many cross-city Subway Series, the Yankees and their fans never hated the Dodgers or Giants—even after the two National League teams abandoned New York City for California in 1957 and 1958. But we still hate team owners Walter O’Malley and Horace Stoneham for moving the Dodgers from Ebbets Field in Brooklyn to Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles and the Giants from the Polo Grounds in upper Manhattan to Candlestick Park in San Francisco.

A lifelong Yankee fan, it kills me to admit this: It felt good to feel good for the Dodgers and their fans after game five. Particularly for the two young sisters and their mother sitting next to us. The mother’s married to the Dodgers’ orthopedic surgeon and the sisters are his daughters. They wore matching Dodgers’ team jackets and caps and couldn’t have been better winners. We congratulated them, took pictures of one another and exchanged contact information.

With so much hate in the world, losing never felt so good.

Ken Frydman is CEO of Source Communications, a strategic communications firm in Manhattan.