Riverdale Avenue Books Publisher Appears on ESPN

David T. Valentin

Riverdale Avenue Books Publisher and die-hard Yankees fan Lori Perkins is featured in a televised national ESPN ad this week as the Yankees face their final series with arch-enemies, the Boston Red Sox.

The ad, which is airing on the ESPN sports channel for the weekend features Ms. Perkins, as well as a host of other Yankee fans, talking about how the Yankees and the Red Sox have been rivals over the decades. In the ad, Ms. Perkins says, “We don’t like the Red Sox,” as she wears a Yankee jacket and sports blue hair for the team.

Ms. Perkins is such a die-hard Yankee fan that when the producers of the commercial spot approached her, she arranged to be interviewed before her treatments for radiation and dyed her newly growing hair blue, as well as had her nails painted with Yankee insignias.

Ms. Perkins has been a Yankee fan since she was a teen-ager attending the Bronx High School of Science in the 70’s when she was part of a class of art students commissioned to make 15-foot puppets of famous Yankees. She was on the team that made the Joe DiMaggio puppet, which she walked across the newly renovated stadium on Opening Day. “I met Thurman Munson and Graig Nettles,” that year, and watched as the Yankees made their first of many World Series wins in the 70s. “I became a fan that year and went to games after school,” she explained.

For the past decade, she has been part of a season ticket share with noted baseball writer and historian Cecilia Tan and they have always gone to Opening Day together, as it falls around their shared birthday in April. For the past 2 years, they have been unable to go due to COVID and Ms. Perkins’ cancer.

Yankee management gave the names of long-time season tickets holders to the executives at Moonshot Productions, who made the commercial, and Ms. Perkins was chosen when they learned she painted her nails with the Yankees logo.

Now cancer-free, Ms. Perkins, is the editor of the Riverdale-based publisher, Riverdale Avenue Books, where she is offering all readers 50% off on their Yankees title, Bronx Bummers - An Unofficial History of the New York Yankees’ Bad Boys, Blunders and Brawls by NY Daily News sports writers Robert Dominguez and David Hinckley, as well as The 50 Greatest Red Sox Games by Cecilia Tan and Bill Nowlin. To get these discounts go to riverdaleavebooks.com and enter the code YANKEES2021.