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There's no smell in the world like the aroma of a used baseball mitt. A more heavenly combination of leather, dirt, sweat, spit and Bubblicious doesn't exist.
Burying my face in my mitt and inhaling its scent takes me back to the days when I learned to love the game and it gives me chills. And if that old glove holds just a tiny speck of America's pastime, then there is one ballpark that encompasses everything. The smell of the mitt is a tiny but beautiful flower in the garden of baseball memories known as Yankee Stadium.
I sat on the No. 4 subway train, eagerly awaiting my arrival at the stadium. I was looking for it so intensely that I almost didn't see the chalk-white facade as it came into view. Then the subway car came to a halt, and there was Yankee Stadium, no question about it.
Upon arrival, your first feeling is one of coming to terms with your past. You're standing there, nodding your head and smiling, saying, "Yep, this is it. After all these years, I finally made it."
Next comes awe. The mouth drops, the eyes twinkle. A mass of people swirled around me and I reveled in the sight of the "Boston Sucks" T-shirts and pinstriped street vendors.
Once inside, it's easy to hear the echoing pride and superiority reverberating between the cement walls. I was still silent with awe as I walked past the gift shops and concession stands. I stopped and decided that I wanted to look at the field, so I walked through the nearest dark, damp tunnel, and suddenly the interlocking "NY" became visible behind home plate. Next came the field, then the bleachers and the facade.
It was as if I had seen daylight for the first time. It took my breath away.
Immediately, I began to cry -- not just a welling up of tears, but giant drops streaming down my face in an all-out sob. This continued for 15 to 20 minutes, but I wasn't embarrassed or ashamed, nor did I try to cover up the tears, because every person there with an "NY" on their cap understood. They had all been in my shoes at some point in their lives.
And can anyone blame me? I had just laid eyes on ground so holy that the Pope himself even trod on it. As the emerald-green grass filled my vision, I brought my mitt to my face and smelled it. Then I looked up and saw the sun in the Bronx sky. I remember thinking that it was quite possible that the Sultan of Swat himself had looked up from this same spot some 75 years ago and saw the same sun in the same position, in the same blue sky.
It was almost too overwhelming to envision Lou Gehrig digging his cleats into that same earth. Then there was Monument Park, a tribute to some of baseball's greatest men, where Roger Clemens religiously wipes his sweat on the forehead of the Babe's plaque before every start.
I glanced at the retired numbers and there was the Mick's No. 7, the same number that I wore proudly on my back through countless youth softball games. I thought of his 565-foot home run off Bill Fischer of the Kansas City Athletics in 1963, which was inches away from becoming the only ball ever to leave old Yankee Stadium, but instead hit that sacred spot on the facade in left field.
People began to filter into the stadium, interrupting my private engagement with the past. Soon they filled the stands, and the place became ALIVE. It was an indescribable energy. That's what baseball's all about.
Yankee Stadium houses baseball in its purest and most traditional sense. You will never hear of a true Yankee admiring or gawking at his home run. He rounds the bases head down, elbows up like the Mick, in respect for the pitcher. There is a certain respect for the game and a sense of leadership that are prerequisites for the players proudly standing on this ground.
Yankee Stadium holds the past, present and future of baseball. The place is timeless.
That familiar glove-scent of leather and dirt is the innocence of baseball, an innocence that Yankee Stadium still preserves. My first primitive need once inside was to smell the mitt, and so I came full circle.
And again, I think about the past. Perhaps it's because my glove was once used by my father, the person who introduced me to this passion for baseball. I possess the knowledge that my past and the stadium's past are connected, and they intertwined before I was even a glint in my parents' eyes.
Wherever the attraction may originate, Yankee Stadium's vastness transcends my experience on this earth, and I am humbled by it.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | April 9 2002 |