JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
The New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers are facing off in the World Series. Yes, big hitters brought them there.
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UNIDENTIFIED SPORTSCASTER #1: Aaron Judge finally connects - his first homerun of this post season.
UNIDENTIFIED SPORTSCASTER #2: There's a drive. It's a bullet. Was there any doubt? Shohei Ohtani...
AILSA CHANG, HOST:
But so did a passion for the game. And as sports fans know, fandom is often something you inherit. It gets passed down from generation to generation.
SUMMERS: That's the case for two current players on the Yankees - shortstop Anthony Volpe and pitcher Gerrit Cole.
CHANG: Earlier this week, Volpe's dad shared a picture on Instagram of young Anthony Volpe at the 2009 Yankees Victory Parade in Manhattan.
SUMMERS: That was the last time the team won a championship. Now the 23-year-old is considered one of the best young talents in the sport.
CHANG: Here's how announcers described the hometown kid in his first major league game in the Bronx last season.
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UNIDENTIFIED SPORTSCASTER #3: Anthony didn't just want to play Major League Baseball. He wanted to play shortstop for the New York Yankees - born in Manhattan, wanted to be the next Derek Jeter. He was at the last World Series parade. He was at the all-star game here in '14. Fulfilling his dream - opening day shortstop of the Yankees, Anthony Volpe.
SUMMERS: Volpe jokes that he didn't really have much of a choice when it came to picking a team. The Yankees lineage in his family dates back to his great-grandfather. Here's Volpe after his team clinched a spot in the World Series.
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ANTHONY VOLPE: I always dreamed, but this doesn't even do it justice. To be -you always dream of going to the World Series and playing games like this. But to be on a team like this with the guys and how close you are - it's a family, and that's what makes it better.
CHANG: His teammate Gerrit Cole, on the other hand, rooted for the team from the other side of the country in Southern California. When Cole signed his contract with the Yankees in 2019, Cole took a childhood memento to his introductory press conference.
SUMMERS: It was a sign he'd held up in the ballpark as a kid that read, Yankee fan today, tomorrow, forever.
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GERRIT COLE: I just love the Yankees. My dad was a Yankee fan, and he just introduced me to the Yankees. It was just hard not to love Derek Jeter and the crew, you know, in the late '90s, early 2000s. I mean, it's kind of like, how can you not be a Lakers fan in Southern California when Kobe and Shaq were doing their thing?
SUMMERS: It seems fitting that the former captain, Derek Jeter, inspired two young kids 3,000 miles apart to grow up and bring the Yankees back to the World Series.
(SOUNDBITE OF NANCY BEA HEFLY'S "TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALLGAME") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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