As time has passed, everything has changed as it relates to our heroes. There are no longer any skeletons left in the closet, private lives are anything but, and our favorite athletes are regarded as such more for their fantasy stats than their characters between the lines.
Did all of that die on that summer day. Maybe. Probably not. It's likely an observation that's too romantic and convenient. But in the years leading up to his death and in those that have passed since, I've heard more than once that it was better that I kept the Mick and all his grandeur in my boyhood heart and imagination rather than experiencing the reality of it all. But the reality to me that day was baseball. "I guess it is childish," Daniel Stern‘s Phil says in "City Slickers," "but uh, when I was about 18 and my Dad and I couldn't communicate about anything, at all, we could still talk about baseball. That was real." Real is what you make of it. It is what's in your heart and your mind and your perception. Much of my Dad's childhood was baseball, he was even on the cover of a little-known Nat King Cole record, "Goodnight, Little Leaguer." Much of his childhood has no doubt been passed on to me, just like many fathers do for their sons. Who knows what would've been for me had my Dad not played baseball or cheered for Mickey and the Yankees. Maybe I would've never liked baseball, or even sports. Or maybe I would've cheered for the Red Sox. I shudder to imagine any of the three.  In 1993, Mantle told filmmaker Ken Burns that he tried to hit a homer each time at bat. Now, 13 years later, I look back realizing how much that day meant to me. It stays with me, not because I remember it so clearly in my mind, but because I remember it so ardently in my heart. Whether it is our fathers or for whatever reason, many of us grow up, falling into our dreams every night with thoughts of baseball brilliance, gridiron majesty or any measure of sports splendor in our young minds. And every time one of our boyhood heroes falls, a bit of us falls as well. Perhaps it's as selfish as just feeling older. Maybe it's more. Life's funny, I guess. You can find meaning in a movie like "City Slickers," or at a ballpark as easily as you can a hot dog. But on the only day I've ever been inside Yankee Stadium, thousands cried and, likely even more struggled not to. It was a day of loss even though the home team won. It was a day about fathers and sons, life and death, the greatness and irrelevance of sport. They say legends never die. But they do. Stadiums will fall, legends will pass away, just like our boyhood days. Our memories of them, however, though they will no doubt fade, will live on for as long as we do. Grant Gordon is currently the Sports Editor for the Glendale News-Press, a subsidiary of the Los Angeles Times. You can contact him at
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