Rotating the Jerseys

It’s that time of year. Need to rotate the jerseys. I’m a big collector, you see, of all sports shirts. I’ve been on record repeatedly expressing my enthusiasm for jerseys. Baseball, hockey, basketball and football. I relax in them and wear them when appropriate as much as possible.

The Yankees are the most well represented team in my collection, and Derek Jeter is the most well represented player. My favorite is my Yankees hockey jersey. It’s my signature piece; I wear it in my author picture.

I’m a lucky man in that I own so many jerseys, and as such, I’ve devised rules for wearing them. Simple stuff; wear the appropriate shirt on the appropriate day. Rangers on a game night. Same with the Giants. Again with the Knicks. But because I am lucky to own so many jerseys, I need to rotate irrelevant shirts to the back of the closet. Baseball’s over for me this year, jersey-wise.

So it hurts when I have to put my Yankees jerseys away. It’s been earlier than I’m accustomed to these past couple years. I used to wear the Pinstripes into October. Had nice hoodies and everything to go under them. Now I won’t see them until spring.

Well, that’s a lie. I started sneaking Yankees jerseys back into the rotation after the New Year a couple years ago. Last year, the Yankees hockey jersey got broken out over the Christmas Holidays. So I cheat a bit.

But the point is the Yankees jerseys get put away. The Rotation demands it. As I have made the rules, so must I abide by them, and all that.

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For extra salt in the wound, this now means there are days when wearing a jersey is inappropriate. Nobody is playing that night. You get dead spots on weeknights, when the Knicks, Rangers, and Giants are all idle. Then I have to wear… gasp… regular clothes! Oh, the humanity!

Well, that’s a lie too. Thankfully I have plenty of non-sports jerseys in the collection. Those are the days for Spider-Man, Green Lantern, and Darth Vader.

But what it actually means is that I want to wear a Yankees jersey and won’t let myself. When it’s baseball season, I can wear a jersey pretty much every day if I feel like it. I have enough of a variety to get through a week until laundry day.

And yeah, it probably comes off as weird to non-jersey enthusiasts that they mean so much to me. You can think like that if you want. But I’ll make you a deal; you don’t judge me for my thing, I won’t judge you for yours, whatever that is. We all have a thing.

At any rate, it’s time to retire the Yankee jerseys for a while. With The Captain’s Farewell, there is a heavier sense of chagrin than usual. It drives home how this year really does mark the end of an era.

So I take a deep breath. This is how it felt when Mantle said goodbye. Or Ruth. Or Maris. Or Gehrig. Or DiMaggio. Or Munson. Or Jackson. Or Mattingly.

There will come another. There always does for the Yankees. This player will be for my son. So I smile as I rotate my Yankee jerseys to the back of the closet.

I look forward to rotating them back.

Play ball!