I think he played 2nd base for the Yankees.
The Odd Couple
JERRY: (reading note) Oh my god!
GEORGE: What?
JERRY: This is amazing, you can’t believe this!
GEORGE: What’s it say?
JERRY: Listen to this: “I don’t know what you expect to find out there,
Jerry, you know what you want better than me. But there’s one thing I do know. I know I can stand here watching you destroy everything I’ve ever wanted in my life, wanting to smash your face with my fists, because you won’t make even the slightest effort to offer happiness and still know that I love you. You mean so much to me that I’m willing to take all your abuse and insults and insensitivity.”
GEORGE: WOW!
KRAMER: (emotionally) She’s deep.
JERRY: (reading on) “...’cause that’s what you need to do to prove I’m not going to leave you. I’m sick and tired of running from places and people and relationships. You want me, that fight for me, becau-”
(Kramer blows his noes loudly) “...because I’m sure as hell fighting for you!”
KRAMER: You know Jerry, she sounds like a poet!
JERRY: No one’s ever written me a letter like this. Maybe I was wrong about her!
KRAMER: (pushing Jerry towards the phone) Yeah! Get in there and give her a call. Pick up the phone and call her!
JERRY: Should I?
KRAMER: (screaming) YES! YOU’RE DAMN RIGHT YOU SHOULD! (hysterically) Fight for her, Jerry, she’s sure as hell fighting for you!
JERRY: ALL RIGHT, all right! I’ll call her.
********
(George starts clicking, the first station he lands on is playing Neil Simon’s Chapter 2. After a few seconds, George gets bored, and changes the station)
JERRY: Wait, wait a second! Go back, go back to that. (they watch it a little longer)
ELAINE: It’s Chapter 2, it’s Neil Simon.
JERRY: (on to something) Wait a second... wait a second!! (he watches the TV for another minute) The letter, that’s the letter!
ELAINE: What letter?
JERRY: This is the letter she wrote to me, she stole it right from the movie!
(Jerry get up to go find the letter. A second later, he returns, and starts reading in unison with movie on TV.)
JERRY: “...’cause you don’t even make the slightest effort to offer happiness still know that I love you!!”
GEORGE: This is incredible!
JERRY: I always thought there was something funny about this letter! She copied it right out of Chapter 2! She a thief, a bunko-artist!
GEORGE: Maybe I won’t send her that check.
ELAINE: You know, it’s not really that terrible.
JERRY: What are you talking about? She completely misrepresented herself! (mimicking the letter) I don’t offer happiness. I offer happiness! James Caan doesn’t offer happiness!
I think he played 2nd base for the Yankees.
Probably MANY games, in his dreams.
As a kid growing up in (Brighton Beach) Brooklyn, he was a YUGE fan.
The character in Brighton Beach Memoirs (an autobiography of Simon), Eugene Jerome, loved the Yankees .