>Rivera has always been a class act....always.
>
>Even though I'm a Yankee hater, we've seen some class acts come out of NY....Rivera, Torre are 2 that immediately come to mind.

I am not a Yankee lover either even though I was named for Mickey Mantle. My dad was unaccountably a Yankees fan in Red Sox country. He said when he was a kid there were people in town who would not speak to him all winter, in the years when the Yankees were acing out the Red Sox, just because he was a Yankees fan. This was small town Maine in the depression and it was not a gentle place.

He never said why he was a Yankees fan. I suspect it was because he grew up dirt poor and wanted to cheer for a winner. That was a tradition he continued for the rest of his life. He liked cheering for the best team.

http://obituaries.pressherald.com/obituaries/mainetoday-pressherald/obituary.aspx?n=virgil-elroy-beane&pid=157453995#fbLoggedOut

The obit was written by my sister Rachel, who lived next door to him and tended to him in his last years. I told her I didn't like the reference to his birth father, who was a father in name only. He couldn't be bothered by the child he brought into the world. A-hole. "Unwed fathers, they can't be bothered, they run like water from a mountain stream" -- John Prine.