|
|
|
June 19, 1998
NEW YORK ONLINE / By ANTHONY RAMIREZ
A Site That Gets Lots of, Well, Hits
he Yankees have the best record in baseball, winning three out of four games so far this season. But Paul Gomez, a veteran Yankee fan, takes the long view. "In my lifetime," he said, "I've had my ups and downs with th e team." Gomez turned 18 last week.
Whatever his perspective, Gomez has developed one of the liveliest Yankee Web sites on the Internet, called, with disarming simplicity, "Paul Gomez's Yankees Page."
Paul Gomez, in a photo from his site.
Gomez is a child of the Internet. His freshman year in high school in 1994 coincided with the popularization of the Web. The son of an electrical engineer (also a Yankee fan), Gomez remembers looking, at the age of 3, at his father typing on a Tandy T RS-80, one of the first laptops. At the age of 8, Gomez began writing simple game programs on the family's Tandy 1000. "I learned how to type because of that computer," he said.
WHAT YOU SEE Besides the usual game statistics, the highlight of Gomez's site is his two bulletin boards, or what he calls "bullpens." One is devoted to the Yankees and the other is devoted entirely to Derek Jeter, the star shortstop.
In April 1997, Gomez had to set up the Jeter board. That was because so many girls, fans of Jeter's, had been writing in and then clashing with other, usually male, fans of Jeter's, sometimes over the ballplayer's reported romances, most recently with the singer Mariah Carey. Gomez now requires a (free) password before signing on to the Jeter board, which has helped reduce the traffic, at one point more than 100 posts a day, to a more manageable volume.
The exchanges are still spirited. On Tuesday, for example, someone signed Alisha reported about a Michigan television show that had toured Jeter's New York apartment. The kitchen "counters are white and the tile is white," she wrote. "All of the appli ances are white. He said something really funny when they were in the kitchen. He says, 'That's the stove ... I think. I never use it.' ... I have to go to softball practice. But later today I tell ya what his bedroom looks like and anything else I ma y have forgotten since I am typing this in a hurry."
Someone named Michelle2 seemed less worshipful. She replied to Alisha, "We know that Derek's a momma's boy, so how much of the decorating do you think his mom did?"
And on the subject of Jeter and Ms. Carey, "Derek's Princess" is frustrated. She wrote earlier this month, "O.K. I am like so sick of this. First, they say, 'No, we are not together,' then they are like 'no comment,' then they are like 'yeah we are to gether,' now it's like 'no comment' again. I'm so sick of this. I mean come on, Derek, if you're gonna date [her] admit it! I'm sorry, guys, but this is upsetting me big time. What's your intake on this?"
LINKS Eleven, including "Behind the Bombers," another fan Web site but with live chat rooms.
WHAT YOU GET Celebrity worship, but with a fair amount of baseball.
Related Sites
Following are links to the external Web sites mentioned in this article. These sites are not part of The New York Times on the Web, and The Times has no control over their content or availability. When you have finished visiting any of these sites, you will be able to return to this page by clicking on your Web browser's "Back" button or icon until this page reappears.
|