TEST OF LOVE
Hubby & wife on 2 sides of Yanks-Astros tilt
FORGET THE Alamo. A battle of epic proportions is brewing inside the home of Yankee fan Valerie Lubrano and her Houston Astros-loving husband Jorge Quiñones.
Hoping to stave off a marriageending meltdown, the deeply divided couple has already devised a set of ground rules for the series that started Friday night.
No trash talking. No excessive celebrations.
“You can be happy and you can cheer but it can’t be excessive,” said Lubrano, 34, who grew up in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, and now lives in Washington D.C.
“No ‘In your face!’ No ‘You’re going down!’ We have to wake up with each other either way.”
The 34-year-old Quiñones takes the kind of practical approach to the rules that husbands the world over could learn from.
“I like our living situation, so if I want to keep it that way, I kind of have to stick to the rules,” he said.
Lubrano’s love for the Yankees was cemented in her teens when her father brought her to nearly every Friday night home game.
She was in the stands of the old Stadium, all of 13 years old, when Dwight Gooden pitched a nohitter in 1996. She watched Mariano Rivera get the final out in the Yankees’ World Series clinching win in 1999.
Some 1,600 miles away, in the Houston suburb of Missouri City, Quiñones was spending his summer afternoons glued to the TV as the lowly Astros limped along.
One of the highlights of his childhood was a visit to the dentist that brought the 5-year-old Quiñones face to face with first baseman Glenn (Big Bopper) Davis whose kid was due for a teeth cleaning.
The pair later found themselves in the same dorm at Northeastern University in Boston.
Their love blossomed during sophomore year. The couple wed two years ago at a time when Lubrano thought Quiñones’ allegiance to the Astros would never present an issue.
“It was never a big deal because they were never that great,” she said.
Their marriage got its first true test five months later when the teams faced off in the 2015 American League Wild Card game. They mostly kept their mouths shut as they sat-by-side in front of their 40-inch TV — Lubrano in her fraying Tino Martinez Yankee shirt, Quiñones in his Astros jersey.
Staring down a possible seven-game series, they both now fear that their relationship could be pushed to the brink. “Sometimes just mentioning the wrong words in the middle of a pitch can bring accusations that you’re trying to jinx someone,” Quiñones said. “You try to be as quiet as possible but I don’t know how long that can go in a seven-game series. Quiñones paused. “I’m not looking forward to this at all,” he said.