Anthony Volpe getting his chance to live his dream for his boyhood team? That’s cool enough. But the story behind the Volpe family’s deep-seated Yankees fandom is even more special.
Volpe, who socked a grand slam to power the Bronx Bombers to an 11-4 win over the Dodgers in Game 4 of the World Series on Tuesday, laid out an incredible story of four generations of Yankees affinity.
For Volpe’s paternal grandfather -- also named Anthony -- the Yankees were more than just another team, and rooting for them proved more than a mere pastime. The elder Anthony Volpe’s father (the great-grandfather of the second-year Yanks shortstop) served overseas in World War II, and he returned as a stranger to his young son.
“His mom basically told him, like, ‘This is your dad,’” Volpe recalled during Tuesday’s postgame press conference. “He didn't know him, didn't recognize him, didn't anything.”
Forging a bond was tough. But one can always count on baseball to bring people together, and for father and son, it was no exception.
“The way he says it, the way he got to know ... his father was he sat on his lap every single night and they listened to the Yankees together,” Volpe said. “So for him, it’s more than sports.”
It surely would have been hard for either of the two, crowding around the radio to hear strains of the ballgame night after night, to imagine their kin playing for the Yankees many years later -- let alone delivering a huge hit in the World Series to keep the season alive.
But after Volpe’s grand slam on Tuesday, that’s just reality. And surely somewhere, a father and son were tuned in, making a memory of their own.