Good Enough To Dream

Parking lot 15 will make a beautiful baseball field someday. But for now it’s just another patch of asphalt laid down for the benefit of people who don’t live in the Bronx. People around here don’t need parking lots or highways cutting through their neighborhood or cars clogging their streets.

They need quality housing, healthcare, education, transportation and nutrition. They need clean air, fresh water and parks. They need baseball fields where kids can dig for third on a ball in the gap and slide in a cloud of dust.

And they need a baseball academy. A place where kids can go every day and learn the game from the best coaches, on the best fields and with the best equipment.

We owe kids that. The Yankees owe them. Major League Baseball owes them. New York City owes them. This country owes them.

And lots of kids are owed, which is why these baseball academies should be in every Major League neighborhood and every Minor League neighborhood, too. There are academies in the Dominican Republic and Venezuela and they should also be in Mexico, Panama, Nicaragua, Columbia, Brazil and every other country in Latin America. There should be baseball academies all over Africa, Asia, Europe and Australia.

And we should start building them today.

Then, maybe someday, kids in the Bronx can dig for third and slide in a cloud of dust.