A time for the sports world to step up to the plate

It was in July that I visited relatives in Oklahoma City and, one Sunday afternoon during my stay, toured the OKC National Memorial Museum.

The museum was built to memorialize the bombing of the Murrah Building, which killed 168 innocents, on April 19, 1995.

The murderer, Timothy McVeigh, was apprehended, tried and executed for the crime.

In the aftermath of this week’s slaughter of at least 59 unsuspecting concertgoers and the wounding of more than 520, I retrieved the OKC museum brochure, which I had saved.

On its cover page, the brochure carries this quote, from NBA Hall of Famer Charles Barkley, who has become, in retirement, an extremely popular television personality: “One of the most powerful places I’ve ever visited.’’

Indeed. Displays, films, story after story of heroic rescues (and some heartbreaking failed rescues), etc., indoors and out, make a visit to this museum impossible to forget. I thought of it immediately when the radio gave the news of the Las Vegas shootings.

And I experienced the same hollow, helpless feeling that came with the OKC horror. I happened to be visiting my son and his family at the time of McVeigh’s unspeakable treachery in ‘95, so I extended my stay and wrote several stories for The Hartford Courant, my employer at the time.

I was at the sports stadium when Pres. Bill Clinton, a day or two later, flew to the city to address the enormous crowd with a presidential message of hope. The memory of those dark days and others, like the 9/11 attacks, are still fresh. But through it all, I like to remind myself, well, we’ve still got sports and somehow, that is comforting.

Since big-time sports are having a bad time of it right now, with scandals and controversy coming at us from all sides, that may be a rose-colored glasses point of view. That’s OK with me. I know that I watched a very good, close NFL game Monday night to the end, and that last night (Tuesday), I was going to settle in with strong coffee and very strong feelings of support for the Yankees and stay put until the final out was made in that first MLB playoff game of 2017.

(It’s nice, now that I’m retired, to be able to root openly for a favored team. Objective sports writers worth their salt don’t do that but retire12

d guys can break the rule.)

And I’m into the Yanks. Aaron Judge is to my mind

the most exciting player in baseball, at the moment. It’s not just the sky-shots he hits that makes him so easy to root for, it’s his all-around play. When Yankee fans say he’s the best right fielder since, say, Clemente, I say, ‘Whoa, stop the silliness, curb your enthusiasm.’ But, Judge (or The Judge, as in “here comes the . . .’’) is an outstanding fielder with a

first-class arm. Oh, he’s not Carl Furillo or Rocky Colovito, but his arm very close to theirs — first class. And don’t you love the way he goes diving, throwing that 280-pound body around to catch fly balls and line drives? Go Yankees.

I like them very much and I’ll be pulling for them as long as they last in the playoffs and, dare I say it? — the World Series. Of course, I‘m way ahead of myself, because this is being written before Tuesday night’s elimination game. I don’t even know if, by the time you read this, the Yanks will still be in contention or if Minnesota has ended their 2017 season. In any case the Yanks and the baseball playoffs have taken my mind off the hideous, horrid shootings which dominate the news.