Listen to the people talk. It's baseball talk. Two years ago, the city wanted to cleanse itself of baseball, rid itself of the louts who stole the best part of the season. Few places were more embittered by the strike than New York. The Yankees paid dearly for those sins, with enough empty seats that the owner renewed his periodic fantasy of skipping across the river.
Baseball belongs to the city again.
The Yankees are on the tips of a million tongues, lodged in the center of a million hearts. Yankee-haters used to have a nice cottage industry for themselves. You'll have a tough time finding five of them this weekend. At the heart of that amazing truth lies Joe Torre, a kid from East 34th Street and Avenue T in Brooklyn who has made the Bronx the jewel of the city again. Who has made baseball matter around here again.