Yankee Stadium: Field of Dreams

At tonight’s All-Star Game of major league baseball, there will be a sentimental farewell to the House that Ruth Built, Yankee Stadium, a place that has been the field of dreams for my life ever since boyhood in the Bronx. Herewith a brief excerpt:

One night in the early 1980s, an hour before game time, I was in George Steinbrenner’s private dining room for an evening sponsored by a Christian athletes’ association. A few days earlier, the son of Yankee pitcher Tommy John had fallen from a second-story window and was now in critical condition.

Before dinner, Norman Vincent Peale led us in prayer for little Travis John. I lowered my head and wished hard for the child’s recovery. Days later, the boy was out of danger, and the experience only confirmed what I had always known: The Stadium was a magical place where the hard realities of the world are kept out by a dream life shared by millions over the years of my lifetime.

If you can bear such sentimentality, read the rest of this entry.