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Read all about it in Seely’s just-published The Juju Rules* *Or How to Win Ballgames from Your Couch: A Memoir of a Fan Obsessed (Houghton Mifflin, New York City; 269 pages; $25/hardcover). The likely most famous baseball superstition is The Curse of the Bambino, wrought upon the Boston Red Sox for decades after the team sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees in 1919. Other, less conspicuous, practices are Seely’s alone, and are outlined with much laughter in this tome. Like any recovering addict (although he has no intention of giving up his hardball drug of choice), fully admitting to the obsession is part of Seely’s way of coping.
“If somebody would say, ‘Write a book about something you know’—well, it’s not like living with the apes in Africa or working in technology—I would say, ‘Well, I know about being a Yankee fan.’ Which is pretty sad, when you think about it. It’s not exactly a high bar {two-beat pause}—you could be a Mets fan.”
The Juju Rules presents an engaging look at Seely’s small-town upbringing in Waverly, between Binghamton and Elmira, as well as an ode to America’s pastime. Seely’s father, Hart Jr., plays an important role in his son’s love for the Bronx Bombers, and not because dad liked the team; quite the opposite. But the younger Seely also realizes that his father’s hatred for the team fuels his love. After all, isn’t rejecting what your father stood for—especially when you’re young—the American way?
While he loves his Yanks, Seely, a longtime writer at The Post-Standard, also eschews costly trips to New York City to watch his beloved team, has never sought out a player’s autograph and has no desire to meet his heroes or visit the “new” Yankee Stadium. He’d rather riddle through whatever ritual saw the Yanks through their last homestand, kept them winning during a particularly tough postseason, or has earned them more World Series titles than any other Major League team.
“I’ve got 27 world championships,” he boasted. “It’s great.”
He furthered his obsession during visits to Syracuse to, ostensibly, be with his then-girlfriend, now his wife, which coincided with the Yankees’ long-term affiliation with the Triple-A Syracuse Chiefs. “I remember when I first came to Syracuse—one of the reasons was I was coming to live with my girlfriend—but the Yankees farm club was here, so it was like the cherry on top. Not only am I coming to visit my girlfriend, but my bride is living here already.”
Never mind the 20 years the Syracuse Chiefs spent as the International League affiliate of the Toronto Blue Jays. “I hated it,” Seely said of the years from 1978 to 2008, when the Chiefs were aligned with the Jays. “When Syracuse lost the Yankees, it lost a lot of its baseball heart. That’s because people hate the Yankees or love the Yankees, and those who hate the Yankees love to see them lose. There could be people out there who love the Toronto Blue Jays but there’s nobody out there wanting to see the Blue Jays lose, except when the Yankees come to town.”
Eventually, Janice Whitmore wed Seely, even though she was well aware of his obsession. Even more remarkable, she has accommodated his own self-described luxury box—his living room—where he watches on the YES network as many Yankee games as makes sense. She did draw the line on expensive gifts Seely would try to give their three children to bribe them into liking the Bronx Bombers.
“Those games go four hours; it’s like crack cocaine: I was going to have the game on every night,” Seely reasoned. “To be honest, since the last couple years of writing this book, watching games at 7, and not going to bed until 11, that’s a bad deal; that’s a lot of time.”
Still, Seely is so devoted that he memorizes rosters, right down to the RiverDogs, in Single-A Charleston, S.C. “I can, I can,” he admitted. “I’m not proud of that. I know the dossier on every single Yankees player in the minors because I track them and have tracked them obsessively for 20, 25 years. People who were thoroughly disappointed in me were always impressed at how big of a Yankee fan I was. It’s probably the thing that I did best—being a Yankee fan—which is really sad.”
Like any good memoir, The Juju Rules carries its own cast of characters and the best part is that they aren’t fictional. There’s former Syracuse New Times cartoonist Tom Peyer, whom Seely tutored into becoming a Yankees fan; old friend Dog Man, who phones after Yankee events and communicates through Bruce Springsteen lyrics; and, most poignant for this writer (and likely for Seely), Old Man Bill Glavin.
“Glavin,” as he’s referred to in Seely’s book, was easily the best teacher I had at the Newhouse School, way back in the early 1980s. He taught me critical writing and eventually became chair of the magazine department. For Seely, however, Glavin became his nemesis, a “Redsock” fan who loved to taunt Seely for any Yankee misstep. After Glavin died in 2010, Newhouse held a memorial for him, which I attended. There Seely spoke about his friend, and in the book he writes about him just as affectionately.
Love or hate the Yankees, the reader of The Juju Rules has to admire Seely’s obsession, even if it is a bit odd. He realizes it. “I’m not a philosopher and I’m not a scientist,” he said. “I’m a Yankee fan. Even though we know magical thinking is bogus, when the universe is working our way we know enough not to screw things up. We know this is crap. But what if, after you die, and you’re in the afterlife, and there’s Immanuel Kant and Jean-Paul Sartre, and they say, ‘You stupid idiot! If you had sat in that chair the Cubs would have won the 1960 World Series. You bum!’
“So every one of us, in the back of our minds, thinks, ‘Let’s keep standing where I’m standing until it doesn’t work and then try another spot.’ It’s stupid, I know. You were there, standing on one leg, when you needed to stand on one leg. I was throwing the ball in the back yard during one game, and the Yankees won, so what else was I going to surmise from that?”
You can learn juju during Seely’s upcoming appearances and book signings, many of them timed to precede a Yankees broadcast at a neighboring pub. “I’m going to attempt to lead juju demonstrations,” he promised. “We’ll get people up and do it until it gets stale or someone beats me up. We’ll video the demonstrations, too, so when it works we’ll post it on the Internet. When it doesn’t we won’t.”
Scheduled bookstore appearances include: Wednesday, April 18, 6 p.m., at The Press Box, 29 E. First St., Oswego, co-hosted by the River’s End Bookstore; April 21, 1 p.m., Creekside Books & Coffee, 35 Fennell St., Skaneateles; April 23, 7 p.m., Barnes & Noble, 3454 Erie Blvd. E., DeWitt; April 30, 7 p.m., C S Saloon, 34 Main St., Brockport, co-hosted by Lift Bridge Books; and May 2, 6 p.m., Nichols & Beal Bar, 10 Utica St., Hamilton, co-hosted by the Colgate Bookstore.
—Molly English-Bowers
