I just watched the last game ever to be played at Yankee Stadium. Even though I could care less about who wins a meaningless game between two teams that I really don't like, I still like to see historical things. It was interesting to hear some legends of baseball like Whitey Ford and Reggie Jackson, speak about their experiences. These are people my dad told me stories about when I was a kid. To me, Reggie Jackson was the guy who tried to assassinate the queen of England in The Naked Gun. To my dad, he was the guy who hit three homeruns on three pitches in one World Series game.....at Yankee Stadium. It was strange to see players taking pictures with their own cameras on the field after the game. Everybody that goes to a major league game has a picture of themselves at the stadium, but you never think that it might be just as special (if not more) to the people who actually work there. Players were scooping dirt from the mound into containers, pulling up tufts of grass.....things normally reserved for unathletic dweebs like me who have only been on the field when playing MLB '08 on the Xbox and always wished they had the talent to do what those guys do.
That is the power of sports. Places like Yankee Stadium can bring generations together. Maybe someday I'll be able to go to New York with Jonah and see a game at the new stadium, and I can tell him about the players I got to see play there in 2000. Players like Derek Jeter and Bernie Williams and Mariano Rivera. That I sat in the same right field bleachers that Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle and Reggie Jackson used to hit homeruns into.
That's why I love sports.
No comments:
Post a Comment