March 29 – Friday – Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band – Live/1975-85 – Pt. 5

I had two addictions from the late 1970s through the early 1980s. I believe I developed my obsession with baseball and the New York Yankees during the 1977 World Series. I wore my Yankee cap almost everywhere, and within the next couple of years I became I big Bruce fan. I believe it must have been 1981 when I was never without my cap that I had at that time adorned with one big Bruce Springsteen button on either side of my head. I think it was during the M’s, with the Meatloaf and Lee Michaels workouts that I also mentioned that I loved to listen to the radio, and when the game was not televised, I would take the radio to the park or lay in bed and just listen to the game letting Phil Rizzuto play with my imagination. Phil was nicknamed The Scooter, but I don’t believe he’s the same Scooter as the one Bruce sings about in “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out.” My Yankee addiction didn’t last much past 1982. As George Steinbrenner dismantled my team, trading Reggie Jackson, Bucky Dent and even Graig Nettles, I lost interest. I tried to stick with baseball and tried to become a New York Mets fan. They had gotten catcher Gary Carter from the Montreal Expos in 1985, so that was a draw. But it wasn’t enough. So my fascination with baseball ended with the 1986 World Series. Oh, you know the one, the ball between the legs one. I watched it in a cocktail bar in the Bally’s Grand Hotel in Las Vegas, where I was on a business trip. Poor guys from Boston stormed out of the bar in a huff, but I couldn’t feel too sorry for them.

In any case, this is the end of my Bruce Springsteen collection, but remember that he will be back after the project is done, or maybe before, as he has made it twice to the Ram alternative list, bumping Delaney and Bonnie to the number two spot and Layla to number three.

When the change was made uptown And the Big Man joined the band