Hatin' On Pinstripes

I was raised to be a New York Mets fan. I have fuzzy memories of my father trying to teach me to bat when I could barely walk. I have a picture of myself with one front tooth missing, wearing a flannel nightgown and a Mets batting helmet. Oh yeah, and the Mets won the World Series the year I was born. For the clueless, loving the Mets pretty much automatically means hating the Yankees. And to hammer it home, when I later lived in Baltimore and kinda had to be an Orioles fan, the hating-the-Yankees thing still applied. Big time. So the story of Damn Yankees, in which a middle-aged man sells his soul to the devil to give his team a chance to beat the Yankees, is one with which I can sympathize. When I was about 9, my folks dragged the whole family to some small production of Damn Yankees put on at a local theater. Of course, being 9 and dragged, it is not one of the clearest memories of my life, but what I do remember is that it was fun, combining good songs, a morality tale and most important, an anti-Yankees theme. Perfect. See it Tuesday through Sunday, August 17, at Casa Mañana, 3101 W. Lancaster Ave. in Fort Worth. Tickets are $40 to $69, a small price to pay to see Richard Kind as the devil. Visit casamanana.org.
Aug. 12-14, 7:30 p.m.; Fri., Aug. 15, 8 p.m.; Sat., Aug. 16, 2 & 8 p.m.; Sun., Aug. 17, 2 & 7 p.m., 2008