Meeting Another Yankees Fan

A good contrast between now and then is on Day 8 when Roger comes across another person—in deep Wyoming—wearing a New York Yankees hat like himself. Roger is pleasantly astounded. He has a right to be. It was a big deal back then. That’s before the days of mass marketing, before the time of sports teams transcending their traditional, regional drawing areas. Even something as ubiquitous today as a Yankees cap (you see the classic interlocking ‘NY’ logo in every corner of the country, even the world today), was rare. It prompts an immediate kinship between Roger and the driver. They talk Yankees.  Would that happen today? Hah. If you start a conversation about the Yankees out of the blue with a total stranger, say at an airport, just because of the hat, you’ll at least get a strange stare with the question behind it, “What does this guy want?”  It would lead to suspicion.  Not in 1971.  Seeing another person wearing your sports cap was cause for bonding, especially if that team was America’s baseball team, the damn Yankees.