Larry Weiss & Yankee GM Brian Cashman
When Larry Weiss isn’t selling office technology and solutions to one of the 150,000 companies in the New York city area who rely on his dealership, Atlantic Tomorrow’s Office, for their technology needs, it’s a good bet you’ll find him in the Bronx at Yankee Stadium rooting for the home team.
Larry has been a Yankee fan since he was five years old and still has fond memories of one of his first games at the old Yankee Stadium, “The House that Ruth Built”. You would think a kid would be thrilled to be sitting in box seats behind third base, but not Larry. He would rather have been sitting in the bleachers, a much better place in the fifties and early sixties to watch his idol Mickey Mantle patrolling centerfield rather than Hector Lopez, a third baseman/outfielder who was playing the hot corner that day.
“I told my grandfather, ‘I don’t want to look at Hector Lopez, I want to sit in the bleachers and see Mickey Mantle,’” recalls Larry.
‘But there’s no backs [on the bleacher seats] his grandfather told him. ‘I don’t care,’ Larry replied, ‘that’s where I want to be.’
“So I made him take me out to the bleachers and he moaned and groaned the whole time,” laughs Larry.
Since then he’s been to hundreds of regular season games as well as some of the most memorable playoff and World Series games played at the Stadium. Remember the game where Chris Chambliss hit a home run off the Royals Mark Littel to clinch the 1976 American League championship and put the Yankees into their first World Series since 1964? Larry was there. Or how about Game 6 of the 1977 World Series against the Dodgers when Reggie Jackson hit three home runs? Larry was there too.
“That was just unbelievable, three pitches, three home runs,” says Larry.
You won’t find a bigger Yankee fan anywhere in the New York metropolitan area than Larry. Over the years he’s seen some of the greatest players in the game and watched his team make history time and time again. But there was one time when he had the foresight to take a pass on what turned out to be one the most memorable playoff collapses in the history of baseball.
“I know the game I wasn’t at,” he says. “The game I didn’t go to, Yankees Red Sox 2004 divisional playoffs, game seven. I gave my tickets to my friend and his three sons because they were Red Sox fans. I said, ‘I am not going to be at Yankee Stadium for this game.’”
You would think a fan like Larry wouldn’t have missed a game seven, but his instincts told him otherwise.
“I felt it,” he says.
Despite seeing so many memorable Yankee games, the game he missed was the one where the Red Sox came back from three games to none to win the next four games and humiliate the Yankees in their home park before going on to sweep the Cardinals in the World Series.
Thanks to his position at Atlantic and Atlantic’s participation in charitable events, over the years Larry has had an opportunity to meet many past and present players, managers, and executives, including A-Rod, Joe Pepitone, Joe Torre, Tino Martinez, Derek Jeter, and Nick Swisher to name just a few. Last spring Atlantic sponsored a Product Expo attended by 450 companies and 750 guests with Yankee GM Brian Cashman as keynote speaker. The one player Larry never had an opportunity to meet was Roger Maris.
“I’ve been very fortunate just meeting these guys and having good discussions with them,” says Larry.
He’s not a star-crossed fan and enjoys talking baseball with them. And this is a guy who knows his baseball and isn’t afraid to let even the guys who do it for a living know what they’re doing wrong. A few years ago Larry was at Derek Jeter’s Turn 2 Foundation fund-raising dinner and ran into Bobby Abreu who was in the midst of a huge slump and was looking for his seat.
“I asked him, ‘What are you doing?’” says Larry. “He says, ‘I’m trying to find my seat. I said, “The way you’re hitting you’re lucky you were even invited and you want a seat?’ Later on, I walk over to him, and say, ‘This may sound forward, but I can help you get out of your slump.’ He says, ‘You’re kidding me?’ “I said, ‘The whole world knows you take the first pitch it’s so obvious, what I want you to do when you approach the plate is make Vladimir Guerrerro look like a disciplined hitter. I just want you to swing.’”
Two weeks pass and he’s listening to a game and they mention that in his last 683 at bats Bobby Abreu has taken the first pitch 635 times. Now Larry is at a game at the old Yankee stadium 14 rows back from the batter’s box on the third base side. Abreu is at bat and takes the pitch. Larry yells out, ‘I can’t believe you didn’t swing, you’ve got to be kidding! Abreu turns his head and looks at Larry, a glimmer of recognition in his eye.
It’s not just baseball that floats Larry’s boat. In addition to living and dying with the Yankees he coaches youth sports and is involved in enforcing zero tolerance in all sports for the JCC in Rockland County.
“Without sports I don’t know what I’d do because I really don’t have many hobbies,” he says. “I love baseball and football, but when it comes to baseball, it’s like Joe Garagiola says, “It’s a game within a game. I love it.”
Asked if he expects to be at the World Series this year, he quips, “I sure do.”
What a fan!
