Last night I was lucky enough to go to the home of the Staten Island Yankees, short-season A affiliate for the New York Yankees.  Even though the stadium is the relatively basic style of the new fields that have been built over the last decade, the setting is one of the most beautiful.  It sits right on the edge of the island, overlooking New York harbor.  The skylines of Manhattan, Brooklyn and Jersey City, as well as the Statue of Liberty all serve as the backdrop for the game.  Ships- barges, tankers and sailboats- pass right out side the ballpark.  The Staten Island Ferry terminal is adjacent to the property, and serves to bring fans to and from the game for free, and you can see it come and go throughout the game.

This photo is from a few years ago, but the ballpark hasn’t changed, and I think you can see what I mean about how special the place is.

Home of the Staten Island Yankees

Single A ball is interesting, if you haven’t spent much time watching it.  One can easily forget that many of these guys are just out of high school, perhaps college, and few have hit with wooden bats.  The ball doesn’t travel very far, if the pitching is even moderately decent.  The game was interesting last night because there were some good baserunning, and because the teams seemed pretty easily matched.  The Yankees were playing their cross harbor rivals, the Brooklyn Cyclones, affiliate of the Mets.

If you have been to a minor league game, then you understand the other part of the experience.  The organization tries to find ways to keep you engaged between innings by doing silly games between fans who are brought down to the field.  They really are trying to find ways to highlight sponsors products.  Some of the SI Yankees stuff was very typical.  Water balloon races and contests with fans bungeed together trying to do something before the opponent does it.  But the SI Yankees do one very special thing, only three times a season.  The sponsor, Staten Island University Hospital,  features one of their true success stories.  Last night, the participant was a young boy that had been born prematurely and wasn’t expected to make it.  He was less than 12″ long at birth, and through the care of the hospital has become a little boy that goes to camp, likes to swim and is at the SI Yankees game to run the bases.  Scooter, the Yankees mascot, took the little guy by the hand and helped him circle the bases touching them all.  The incredible part though is that each team- home and visitor- lines the base paths to give the participant a high five as he passes.  When he reached home last night, the team’s manager was waiting to present  a certificate making him an honorary Yankee.  Its a truly moving thing, because it really does represent someone overcoming long odds just to survive.  It puts these young baseball players dreams in perspective- and you see it as they stop the game to stand on the line and cheer him on.  Its one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen at a baseball game, and really what sponsorship should be all about.

Now I should end this piece here.  But I have to just add that many of the other between inning gags I found insulting and offensive.  At one point, they found parents with babies, and brought them onto the field to have the babies take their first sip of lemon juice so that the fans could vote on which child made the worst face after taking that sip.  Uhm, why would you do that to your child?  I think the winner got a t-shirt out of the deal.  A couple of the other tests just made the contestant look bad.  Why would you want to do that to your fans?

Again, I want to go back to the race for life event, which was truly moving.  When sponsorship, and baseball, can honor the miracles of life so clearly- why would you ever want to do anything else?  Sports can lift us up. It can teach us great things.  That should be what those working in it want to aspire to.