Great NY TIMES Article About Cranbury

[Dan Mulligan]

A nice fun story about our town...

October 29, 2009
Living, and Torn, Between Two Cities
By JOSEPH BERGER

If any spot could be torn apart by the World Series, it would be the town of Cranbury, N.J.

As far back as Colonial days, its Cranbury Inn served as a popular halfway stop on the two- or three-day journey by stagecoach between New York and Philadelphia, and these days both Yankees and Phillies rooters can be found at the inn’s bar.

“We swing both ways here because we have so many connections to both,” said Gay Ingegneri, who with her husband, Tom, has owned the inn for the past 14 years. “We’re definitely on the fence. Our emotions seesaw a lot.”

Exhibit A for this quandary of allegiance is Mrs. Ingegneri herself. She grew up in a small town in eastern Pennsylvania and spent four years living in Philadelphia when she was training as nurse, so she roots for the Phillies when they play any other team except the Yankees. But as the teams prepared to square off in the World Series opener Wednesday night, a childhood memory nudged her heart toward the Bronx.

In the early 1950s, her school in Lampeter, Pa., introduced the children to the new wonder of television by putting up a console in the auditorium. The World Series was on, and that was during the years when the Yankees won the series five years straight. She was smitten, and the Phillies have not been able to tear her completely away. Her husband, born in Westchester County, firmed up her affection through his zest for the Yankees.

“It’s not the World Series without the Yankees,” she said. “But I am definitely very torn.”

There is, of course no precise way to determine where a theoretical Mason-Dixon line might separate Yankee territory from Phillies turf, and which border town might be considered neutral (if there is such a thing in sports).

But geographically speaking, there is no town that more capably serves as a midpoint between Yankee Stadium and Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia.

The town of 3,200 people is in both cities’ orbits, about 50 miles from both New York and Philadelphia, and residents travel to both by driving 15 minutes to the Princeton Junction station, which is on the Amtrak and New Jersey Transit lines. The town also gets television channels from both New York and Philadelphia.

Most people interviewed said the Yankees could claim a distinct loyalty advantage.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/29/nyregion/29midpoint.html