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I am working on a super secret Christmas video, and I need the perfect song to open it with. As I was going through classical Christmas songs on the piano on iTunes, Beethoven’s Fur Elise came on, and Ali sang along to it from a McDonald’s commercial from 1986.

That was almost 23 years ago! I have no idea how these things stick with her. Anyway, here is the commercial.

I still get chills after watching this tribute to Yankee Stadium starring Yogi Berra that was played on ESPN on Sunday during the last game at Yankee Stadium.

I love Yogi, all of New York does. He’s a great ambassador to the game, and I couldn’t think of a better person to star in this tribute.

If you live in New Jersey, you really should visit The Yogi Berra Museum and Learning Center in Little Falls, NJ on the campus of Montclair State University. You won’t be disappointed.

This spot really reminds me of the film 25th Hour, (one of my all time favorites, check it out if you haven’t seen it), the way it captures New York (and baseball) and shows it to you as a living, breathing life form.

I haven’t been this blown away over a video in quite some time.

Even if you hate the Yankees, you have to admit that this video is amazing.

Here come the YANKEES
Let’s get behind and cheer the YANKEES
They’re gonna learn to fear the YANKEES
Everyone knows they play to win, cause

They’re the New York YANKEES
Show them today why you’re the YANKEES
No other way when you’re the YANKEES
Wadda ya say we win a brand, new, ballgame

We’re gonna shout when ya powder the ball
We’re gonna scream, “put it over the wall”
The other teams gonna know what it means to play the Y.A.N.K.E.E.S
We love the Yankees

Shout it out loud , We Love The YANKEES
We’re really proud of our YANKEES
And we’re gonna win today
2, 3, 4, Hit, Run, Fight, Score, Go! Go! Go!

We’re gonna shout when ya powder the ball
We’re gonna scream “put it over the wall yo”
The other teams gonna know what it means to play the Y.A.N.K.E.E.S
We love the Yankees

Shout it out loud, We Love The YANKEES
We’re really proud of our YANKEES
And we’re gonna win today

Y.A.N.K.E.E.S. Yes
Y.A.N.K.E.E.S. Yes

I entered a radio contest to try and win Yankees/Astros tickets this weekend in Houston, and I was one of the five selected! This morning I was #1 with almost 60% of the vote! I just fell to second place to some blonde with a crush on Jeter. Help me beat her so a real fan can go see the Yankees!

(Click for full size)

Name – Mike Rastiello

Birth Date – August 9, 1981

Where you’re from – New Jersey originally, but I have been living in Houston for 2+ years

Why You’re The Biggest Fan – Since birth I’ve been a Yankees fan, passed down to me from my father. I can remember watching games on television and listening to them on the radio. On my eighth birthday, my parents gave me tickets to my first game at Yankee Stadium ever.

Every game I went to since that game, I got the same feeling as the first time I walked out of the tunnel into the box seats. The bright sun, the green grass, the sounds of the ball cracking off the bat during batting practice. That experience has stayed with me for 20 years. I’ve lived and died with every playoff and World Series game in the mid to late ’90’s, I even put up banners outside my parents house during the playoffs. Well, not so much a banner as it was a spray painted bed sheet. It also tears me up that the Red Sox have won 2 World Series in the past 4 years.

When I found out that the Yankees were coming to Houston, I immediately logged on to the Astro’s site to get tickets but learned I needed to enter a raffle to buy tickets, which I missed by a long time. I was crushed to say the least. I haven’t seen the Yankees play in 5 years, and now that they are playing in my own backyard and I am going to miss it? That kills me. (Unless I win, that is)

In case you can’t tell from the picture, there are:

-17 Yankee hats (most get worn on a regular basis)

-3 jerseys (1 authentic home Mickey Mantle jersey, 1 retro jersey, and one hockey style jersey).

-2 floor mats for my car

-2 Yankee flags

-2 Yankee street signs

-2 framed photographs, (1 of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, the other kids standing outside of old Yankee Stadium)

-2 books, Chasing The Dream: My Lifelong Journey by Joe Torre and and 101 Reasons to Love the Yankees (Like I need 101 reasons)

-1 autographed ball signed by Roger Clemens (pre Mitchell Report)

-1 Derek Jeter bobblehead doll

-1 set of Russian nesting dolls (actually from Russia) The players are from smallest to largest: Bernie Williams, Jason Giambi, Mike, Mussina, Roger Clemens and Derek Jeter

-1 promotional banner listing all of the Yankees 26 championship years

-1 ceramic replica Yankee Stadium

-1 ceramic Yankee “Fan Shop”

-1 promotional baseball “signed” by the championship 2000 Yankees

-1 mug with an interlocking NY

-1 oversized Charlie Brown Pez dispenser that plays “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” when you lift the head to get a pack of Pez

-1 mini baseball bat with the Yankees logo on it

-The desktop picture on my laptop is an interlocking NY

And probably my favorite piece I own, a ticket to the Yankees game the night of September 11, 2001. I could never bring myself to trade it in for another game.

Sadly, not everything I own is pictured here. There is still some stuff, books, DVDs, and more hats that are in boxes in my parent’s basement in Jersey. Also, my girlfriend sleeps in all my old Yankee t-shirts, which also aren’t pictured.

Please pass this on to your friends!

I need your votes!! Vote for Mike Rastiello! http://tinyurl.com/5mr3m5

You can see the full size pics of all the entrants here: http://rodryan.thebuzz.com/cc-common/gallery/display.html?album_id=120339

And vote here, for me: http://rodryan.thebuzz.com/pages/yankeesfan.html

So as most of you may have known, (except for Dianne, that is) Ali and I went out to Louisiana this past weekend.

Driving out there always makes me want to see more of America, because as much as I’ve seen and/or been to, it’s no where near close to what America is.

I’ve been to 27 states, all but 2 states east of the Mississippi River (Kentucky and Michigan), the only states west of the Mississippi that I’ve been to are Louisiana (dir), Texas (dir dir) and Nevada.

Being from the northeast and now living in the south, I see differences in culture, environment and everything in between everyday. That’s a given. But if you go from state to state up there, things don’t change all that drastically. Driving from Texas to Louisiana, things change quite a bit. Hell, things change in Texas quite a bit once you start driving away from the cities.

I would love to be able to one day drive across the country, and visit all the places in America that you hear about and see pictures of. Mountains, hills, farm after farm, little white churches in the middle of nowhere, miles between houses, last chance for gas for 300 miles signs, the desert, the plains, the nothingness and the everythingness.

This site is going to chronicle a trip by blogger/vlogger Cali Lewis of 50 states in 50 weeks. It’s going to be an awesome blog/vlog to follow once they get started around September by their estimates.
http://www.bigtrip.tv/

I will definitely be following that blog in my RSS reader and living through them. One day I would love to have the opportunity to do something like this. Ali and I in an RV, driving across the country at our own pace, stopping where we want, exploring the country, the people, our history.

Field of Dreams. One of my favorite movies ever. I don’t know when I first saw it, I was probably in middle school. But ever since I first saw it, I was hooked.

This time of year, with spring training just behind us and currently being in the first few weeks of the season is a great time for baseball movies on television, Field of Dreams is the only movie I will stop on every time. Ali also knows this. I’ll let her click past just about any other movie that I love, except this one.

Flipping through the channels tonight, I find Field of Dreams. I have to watch it. I love everything about this movie. The story, the execution, the score, everything.

When I watch it, I catch myself smiling as new pieces of the puzzle are reveled to Ray. How he convinces Terrance Mann to come with him (“I’m not showing you my gun!”), when he finds Moonlight Graham walking out late at night and he tells Ray his dream, when he realizes he did this all for his father, his penance.

The last part gets me every time. “Hey Dad… Want to have a catch?” It makes me cry each time I watch it. I don’t even need to hear the line anymore. Once Ray starts talking to his father I get chocked up and the tears start. I’m a sucker for a story about a father and son, and this movie takes the cake. A son, his father, and baseball. What more could there possibly be to create a more magical story?

I don’t know if this movie would have the same impact on me if my father and I didn’t have the type of relationship that we do. We’re very close. We both love baseball and the Yankees, and we bust each other’s chops at any chance we can get. If that bond wasn’t there, and we didn’t share a love of the sport, I don’t know how I would feel about this film. I don’t even want to think about that.

One of the top things on my must do in life list, is get to that field in Iowa. I really wanted to go two years ago during the Netflix Road Show. They showed the movie on a giant screen on the actual field. That would have been amazing, but it was not possible. One day though, I will go to that field.

This morning I got up at the usual ungodly hour (anything before at least 9:30 on a weekend is ungodly) and I listened to a few podcasts, namely You Look Nice Today. A podcast by @hotdogsladies, @lonelysandwich, and @scottsimpson, some of my favorite Twitters.

After the podcasts, I popped on the TV to see if there were any good movies on, or at the very least something halfway decent that I could ignore and play poker. I came across “When It Was A Game” and it’s sequels on HBO. “When It Was A Game” is a documentary series about the heyday of baseball, and it tells the story of baseball and it’s impact on America from the depression and onwards. Watching it, I was really amazed at how much the game of baseball has changed.

It really did used to be a game. It still is, but not nearly on the same level. It’s more business now, and that’s a little sad.

Watching the documentary, I saw kids who were awestricken watching their heroes play ball, dying to get an autograph, or just to get a nod or a wave from the gods on the diamond. Does that happen today? Possibly. No where near the way it was 40 or 50 years ago. I used to go to a bunch of Yankee games a year, at least 15 to 20 and there were kids there, but it was mostly people my age and up. I see the same thing on TV. I remember watching the Yankees on TV with my Dad, him explaining to me what was going on, what the rules were, who the players were. I remember my first trip to Yankee Stadium, or the first trip that I remember that is. I was 8 years old, and I was in heaven. I had my Yankee t-shirt on, my baseball glove in hopes I would catch a foul ball. I will blog about this experience at a later time, hopefully this summer when I make my last trip to Yankee Stadium before it closes its doors at the end of this season.

Growing up, Don Mattingly was the end all be all for me. Donnie Baseball. I had the shirt, the poster, the bat. I wore number 23 in little league a time or two. My friends and I used to play whiffle ball all the time. They were from Boston and were huge Boston Red Sox fans. When we played ball at their house, it was Fenway Park. My house was the grand cathedral Yankee Stadium. Do kids even do that anymore? I have no idea.

My glove is my father’s old glove. It’s broken in perfectly. I don’t really have anyone to play catch with, but I like to throw a ball to myself as a break in between working. It relaxes me and gives me a moment to think. Same thing with my baseball bat. It’s never seen contact with a ball, and it may never, but I just like to hold it in my hands.

But back to the documentary. The games were smaller back then, but so much bigger than today. Everything hung on whether your team won or lost. And not just championships, but every single game. The players were gods, but they were also human and tremendously approachable. The doc said that the reason that is, is because players are paid so much that they lost familiarity with the working man.

Most ball players had winter jobs back in the glory days. They rode the subways and buses into the stadium with the fans. There are stories that Jackie Robinson used to stop and play stickball with kids in Brooklyn after playing a game with the Dodgers.

Today, the league minimum salary is $390,000 a year. If you are a major leaguer, you are making at least that. That’s a huge difference to what some of the all time greats of yesterday made. It’s fifty times more (and up) than some of the salaries that the documentary mentioned.

I love baseball movies. “Field of Dreams” is one of my all time favorite movies. “The Sandlot” is one of my favorite baseball movies. “The Sandlot” captures that feeling that kids used to have towards baseball.

From “Field of Dreams:”

The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. Its been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But, baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, is a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good, and could be again.

I hope that baseball does return to glory, past this era of steroids and gets back to being what it is. A game. A game where if you team wins, you are walking on clouds, and if by some chance they lose, you kick the dirt but keep your hopes up for tomorrow’s game.