Meet the New York Yankees’ biggest fan

On Saturday morning, Yankee fan Don Bridges landed at LaGuardia Airport, wearing a team jersey and a Yankees cap, holding a small duffel bag for his three-night stay.

Surely, there are folks who love the team as much as he does, but it’s hard to imagine anyone putting in more work to see them play. Bridges may be the Yankees’ biggest fan – though he’s never lived in New York.

For starters, Bridges, who is 78, lives about 1,000 miles from Yankee Stadium in Lake Wales, Florida. He flies into LaGuardia Airport in Queens 13 weekends a year to root for his team in person.

And he’s been doing this for about a decade.

A few years ago, when he had a detached retina and couldn't fly, he took the train to New York. The journey was 22 hours one way.

“Other people go fishing, or play tennis. He likes to watch baseball,” said Joe Bastone, who owns the Yankee Tavern and has known Bridges for years.

Bridges fell in love with the team while growing up in Cuthbert, Georgia, listening to games on the radio. He started watching them on local TV in the 1960s, when the franchise was owned by CBS.

As an adult, he moved to Florida and watched their spring training. When he retired after 40 years working for the local athletic department (including a stint coaching a young player named Pat Borders, who went on to become MVP of the 1992 World Series), he got himself season tickets to the Yankees.

But did he ever think about moving to New York?

“Too expensive,” he said, “and I don’t like cold weather.”

Tuesday night, after the Yankees beat the Cleveland Guardians and advanced to play the Houston Astros, Bridges booked his ticket.

Bridges has a game time routine: he’s been staying in the same room, in the same Midtown hotel for a decade. He knows the flight he likes, and he’s on a first name basis with the Delta crew. (Having medallion status helps, he said.) He takes the car service Dial 7 to his hotel, and knows where to stand on the subway platform so he’s closest to the stairs at 161st Street.

Saturday morning, he landed at LaGuardia Airport. Two hours later, he was checked in to his hotel and en route to Yankee Tavern – one of the oldest and best known sports bars near Yankee Stadium – to see friends he’s met over the years.

“You won’t believe how crazy we are,” he warned before heading inside.

Bridges is part of a motley crew that has been pre-gaming (and often post-gaming) at Yankee Tavern for years. They call themselves the “Corner Crew” because they take up a nook by the bar, where they yell greetings to seemingly everyone who enters. They bought the owner, Bastone, a velvet rope to block off their area – it’s mostly an inside joke because they try to arrive at 11 a.m. for a 5 p.m. game. But Bastone keeps the rope by the door.

When Bridges arrived on Saturday afternoon, many of the Corner Crew were decked out in Yankees jerseys, huddled in their spot. Behind them, on a chalkboard, someone had scrawled: “F--- Altuve.”

The group is informal, but they agree on a few basic rules: no Nike swooshes or player names on jerseys. They love Anthony Rizzo – not only for his talent, but also because of his work for pediatric cancer care. They like Aaron Judge, but they’re less effusive about him; they think he’s about to be paid a lot and might not stay.

Early in the afternoon, a security guard from Yankee stadium popped into the bar to say hi to the crew, before heading to his shift.

One member of the group, Andra Gribulis, from Melville, N.Y., owns 39 home jerseys and seven road jerseys. She was dressed head to toe in Yankees gear, wearing number five on her back, along with her bangles, earrings, and a watch. Her nails were done in "NY" decals. It must be known: She owns a Yankees wine barrel. She and Karen Connor, who’s also in the crew, have Yankees tattoos on their legs. (They didn’t plan this, nor did they get them done together.) Andra described it as bleeding for her team. Karen bakes before games, and this Saturday she brought pumpkin spice cookies for everyone.

There is a lot of affectionate ribbing.

There’s a regular at the bar they all call “Nicolas Cage” because he looks like the actor (so does his twin brother). When a man named Diego arrived, they yelled at him for wearing a gray jersey to a home game.

At one point, crew member Ellen Katz, from Manhattan, said something that was deemed too generous about the Padres. For the next hour, she was called a “fake fan.” She wondered aloud what they had against the Padres.

There are two Lous. One of them, Lou DiLullo, lives in Providence, Rhode Island, and works in Massachusetts, but roots for the Yankees. He famously – at least in Corner Crew lore – got kicked out of Fenway twice in the same day. (He says it all started when he was falsely accused of heckling Kevin Millar.)

Lou DiLullo compared the joy of being in Yankee Tavern to seeing friends in high school after a break – except that here, it doesn’t end after four years. He sipped a Jolly Rancher cocktail, a pink drink with an inch of green at the bottom, and occasionally led the bar in song.

“When Lou starts singing, that’s when we start crying,” yelled one friend, at Lou.

There’s a picture of the group right above the door. Karen had it framed. She travels from Brewster, New York, with her husband John Connor. (“I’ll Be Back, the Terminator,” he explained). In 1976, John got so fired up after Chris Chambliss hit a game-winning homer, sending the Yankees to the World Series, that he proposed to Karen on the spot. When they booked their wedding venue, during a Yankees game, the deal was that someone had to announce the score every 15 minutes.

Karen’s so comfortable at the bar, in fact, that she has cans of Michelob Ultra sent to Yankee Tavern because they don’t sell it.

The Corner Crew watches out for the bar, too. Lou ran out in the afternoon to buy cigarettes for one of the bartenders, Tony.

“Better than a woman,” said Tony, in thanks.

In the middle of all this was Don, who was wearing No. 8 on his jersey and had vodka lemonade before moving onto a beer after someone bought him one, but he wasn’t sure who. At one point he connected with a fellow Floridian and baseball coach who’d flown up for the game. He caught up with his friend Mary Williams, from nearby Concourse Village. She showed photos of her daughter’s Ph.D ceremony.

Don Bridges waves to a familiar face on his walk down Gerard Avenue towards River Avenue before the start of the game.

The Corner Crew tries to keep the friendship going in the off season through their group text. They trade family photos. Don doesn’t fly up for the Yankee Tavern Christmas party, but many of his friends go. Karen has already bought their gift for Bastone.

Around 5 p.m. the friends scattered to the stadium to take their seats. Don and Lou sit together, but other friends are in different sections.

So does he log thousands of airline miles for the baseball or the camaraderie?

He paused before answering. “Fifty-fifty,” he said.

The Yankees lost to the Houston Astros, 0-5.

“Maybe we can win tonight,” he texted the next morning. “Team is embarrassing to watch, but am a Yankee fan.”