Home of the American Game.

Legends and ghosts, they all live here. The Babe, Joe D, Yogi, and the Rocket. They all have a place here.

And so does the American Game.

It's baseball - the only team game not governed by the clock.

In theory, a game could last forever. A game played on a symetrical diamond. In the summer - in the sun - and warm summer nights.

But it could be any stadium, in any October. The Home of Champions (of the world!).

The Boston Red Sox - who would have dreamed?

A legacy - a dynasty?
Surely, a long way to travel.

We'll give 'em the winter to ponder it.

There have been teams here before. The pressure to win the next one - after the first one. Twenty-Six and counting....

The New York Yankees. The most hated - and the most revered team ever in the history of sports.

But it's a bigger game than that........there are people - and individuals who we can never forget. Those who created an image in our mind of greatness. They transcended the game - and perhaps even themselves...........

Mickey Mantle - "The Natural". If not for a broken drain in the outfield that blew out his knee, how far could he have soared. And then as even he said, "If I had known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself" - and if he had, could he have soared even higher?

The game is saturated with this kind of intrique.....the people who played the game - the players - the men themselves.

And you have to wonder if a man like Barry Bonds, arguably the greatest player in his time, will one day look back and ask himself - "Did I really have to be such a jerk?"

But for every Barry Bonds, we can find the true "diamonds" in the game too. "Donnie Baseball", the blue collar first baseman who carried his lunchpail to work EVERY day. With a quiet dignity, just doing his job.

But more than anything, and more than any other sport, baseball is a game of numbers. Numbers we suprisingly remember as baseball fans.

Nolan Ryan's seven no-hitters.

Ted Willams four for six on the last day of the season to hit .406.

Pete Rose finishing with 4,256 hits (why isn't he in the Hall of Fame?).

The good ones - the really good ones end up here, or in Cooperstown. The rest of them got to play the game many of us dreamed of playing.......The American Game.