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Navarros Cherish A Special Night At A Special Place

The Associated Press

Tampa Bay Rays' Dioner Navarro kicks dirt at home plate after a throwing error on a stolen second base by Houston Astros' Miguel Tejada.

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By MARTIN FENNELLY | The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 16, 2008

NEW YORK - They rolled out 64 All-Stars, and 50 Hall of Famers, but there was one headliner Tuesday night.

The stage was the star.

"It's this place," Rays All-Star catcher Dioner Navarro said.

It was the 79th All-Star Game at Yankee Stadium, as national monument had one more national moment, maybe its last, seeing how the Yankees are running. New Yorkers fought back tears as they tried to steal something.

Can you blame them?

Ask Mrs. Navarro.

"I want to take my seat," Sherley Navarro said.

She grew up in the Bronx on 161st Street, the same street as the Stadium, which is closing after this season.

"We always came here from the neighborhood," Sherley said. "We'd sit in the bleachers. It was our neighborhood place. It was our place."

Take a seat, America.

And hear about this place.

Turner Field It's Not

Atlanta Braves star Chipper Jones lost the World Series at Yankee Stadium in 1996 and 1999. It doesn't matter.

"When kids are in their backyard playing pretend games of baseball against their pretend friends, it's 3-2, two outs, bases loaded and they aren't at Ted Turner Field," Jones said. "They're in Yankee Stadium."

They're in this place.

Seemingly everyone who was ever anyone in baseball was at this place Tuesday, including George Steinbrenner. The Yankees owner delivered the baseballs for the ceremonial first pitches by golf cart. This is George's place, too.

Monday morning, Rangers wonder slugger Josh Hamilton, a comeback story to behold, cracked everyone up by talking about hitting one out of Yankee Stadium, something never done.

"Watch out," Josh said.

He then went out in the Home Run Derby and put on as prodigious a display as you'll ever see, home runs everywhere, 500-footers, one off the back wall in the bleachers. People cheered Josh Hamilton's name. It was a special moment.

Uh, no ball left the House.

That's this place.

Hall of Famer Wade Boggs was at the Stadium on Tuesday. Boggs was in the visitors clubhouse in 1986 when he found out his mother had died in a car accident. Ten years later, he was on the back of a policeman's horse as he celebrated a Yankees world championship.

"I've lived it all here," Boggs said.

"The very first time I hit in Yankee Stadium, in 1982, I had to call timeout because I was hyperventilating and shaking so hard. ... They ought to take the home plate circle, dig down about 6 feet and take that dirt and put it in the new stadium, so you still have that piece of America."

Hall of Famer Joe Morgan was with the Reds when they swept the Yankees from the Series in 1976. A year later, he hit a leadoff homer in the 1977 All-Star Game at the Stadium.

"... Every time I walk on that field, I still look around," Morgan said. "I took a friend with me once. He lives in New York. I sat him down in the Yankees dugout and went to do something. When I came back, he was crying. He told me, 'If my dad could see me now.'"

'A Plan' For The Navarros

Dioner Navarro played in his first All-Star Game on Tuesday night. Like teammate and fellow All-Star Evan Longoria, he was a long shot, as long as his team - but not nearly as long as his wife.

The couple has been through so much. Dioner wears the uniform No. 30 because that Sept. 30, 2003, was the day doctors thought Sherley would die during surgery to repair a brain aneurysm.

Then there were the kidney problems that threatened the life of their baby boy, Neco, and the car accident two years ago that could have killed all three of them. They walked away.

"God had a plan," Sherley said.

To them, Tuesday was part of the plan, in this game, back where Sherley grew up, at this stadium.

What a plan.

Rays players came late to this game, but they came all the way. Navarro's eighth-inning throwing error helped the National League go ahead 3-2, only to be picked up by that Human Memories Machine, that man, Evan Longoria, who in his first All-Star Game hit a pinch-hit double to tie the game in the bottom of the eighth. You just knew Longoria would never forget it, not this moment, not in this place, not ever.

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