Yankee Stadium

To honor Grandpa T's 62nd birthday, we all played hooky and went on a tour of Yankee Stadium. It was a great chance to see the stadium from the inside out. The highlight for Uta was walking through the tunnel in the stadium's belly that leads the players from the locker room out into the light of the big game. He got to sit in the dugout and then run along the edge of the foul line throwing his body into the cushioned walls that line the outfield.

If you know Uta then you know his love for baseball. He was born loving it. As early as two years old he was hitting the ball, granted his bat was as thick as a loaf of bread, but still! At three he would draw a crowd at the play ground as he socked every pitch I threw him way over my head.  He spent the better part of the last two years of his life pretending to be Matsui and Jeter (occasionally Posada). This year, like clockwork, on the first day of spring he woke up and immediately began rifeling through his clothes in a desperate search to locate his Yankee uniform. (Something he didn't even mention once during the winter months.) And the night before opening day Uta had a dream he was discovered by Joe Torre at the playground and signed to the Yankees on the spot. Baseball is in his blood. And the Yankees, well anyone who knows Grandpa T knows that for him rooting for the Yankees is right up there with air and water when it comes to sustaining life. So naturally, Uta loves the Yankees too.

But as the tour of Yankee Stadium drew to a close it suddenly dawned on Uta just what it will mean to lose this piece of history. (Perhaps I am putting words into his mouth.) For Uta it is not about history, it is about the big love that he has right now. He has never had to lose anyone that he loves. Yankee Stadium will be the first. Right on the spot, with this new understanding of the imminent loss, Uta plummeted, completely grief stricken. He was inconsolably angry and sad. Tears streamed down his face as he repeatedly asked why the Yankees needed a new stadium. Nobody could come up with an answer to pacify him.

Uncle J had three words of consolation, "Lets Go Mets!"