Editor's Notebook: On Turning 100 and Your First Yankees Game

Here's the thing about grandmothers: they're so much cooler than you are.

Mine, for instance, swims 20 laps a day in her pool, bakes pizza and pasta and cookies from scratch, is the most social person I've ever met, has a full head of thick hair and a perpetual gleam in her eye. Oh yeah, and she's 100 years old.

"And six months," she says. Apparently when you hit 100, you start counting monthly increments again.

"Josie," as I call her, is a big Yankees fan. But you wouldn't necessarily know it. She's been around 100 years now and, before Tuesday, had never been to a Yankees game, or a baseball game at all for that matter.

Chalk it up, perhaps, to the fact that her husband, my grandfather, was an avid Red Sox fan while her son, my dad, is as die-hard a Yankees fan as you'll find. Maybe she didn't want to get caught in the middle.

On the last day of August, though, as pristine a day as late summer can offer, Gram attended her first Major League Baseball game. And it just so happened to be at the new Yankee Stadium.

Here's how cool Gram is: by the sixth inning, she had already caught a foul ball, been on the jumbotron twice, eaten peanuts and expertly tossed the shells all over the floor around her, slammed a beer, brought in and consumed her homemade chicken cutlet sandwiches and made friends with just about everyone in the seats around us.

To put things in perspective, I've been going to baseball games since I was born. I've wanted nothing more, over the last 28 years, than to catch a foul ball. It's never happened. Gram did it in her first try; in fact, she not only caught one but almost got hit by it on the way to take her seat for the first time. Talk about a keeper.

Aside from the obvious bragging rights associated with being a direct descendant of one of the world's coolest centenarians, here's why I decided to write about this.

First of all, Wilton can sometimes (often?) seem small. It's certainly part of its charm. But, like anywhere I suppose, you can get lost in your life here and occasionally forget how close at hand the rest of the world is.

Tuesday night, for example, I was feeling a bit cloistered. Then I left Wilton at 4 p.m., by 4:45 I was on a train leaving Darien, and an hour later I was at Yankee Stadium. Some Yankee purists might lament that anyone and everyone from adjoining states can now easily get to a game in an hour or so. But not me. Metro North's express service to and from the stadium is just about the best thing going, next to Gram's homemade meatballs. You should try both.

Secondly, the Yankees deserve commendation. I called their PR department the day of the game. Within fifteen minutes, I was talking to the scoreboard operator about what messages I wanted displayed for Gram. Now, granted, this is largely due to Gram's unabiding coolness. But the fact that the "Evil Empire" as they're often called would go so far out of their way to make someone's experience at a game that memorable? Even a Sox fan would have to admit that's pretty great.

And here's the other thing. Over the past year or so, I've had the privilege of sharing in some of my grandmother's biggest milestones. I was at her 100th birthday bash, when family from around the country and hundreds of her Floridian friends packed her condominium clubhouse and marveled at her youthfulness. I was with her at her first Yankees game; heck, she even got me on the jumbotron by proxy.

After not seeing her much in the last few years because we were a country's length away from each other, I'm getting to know my grandmother now better than I ever have and I'll tell you this: centenarians have an awful lot of wisdom and stories to share. They are inspiring.

So, I offer this piece as a tribute to Gram and as a reminder, because she'd tell you the same- reach out to the world around you and do what you've always wanted to do.

Because who knows? That first step into the stream of life could earn you the foul ball you've always wanted.