Sentiment

So they played the final baseball game ever at Yankee Stadium tonight, between two teams that history will little note, nor long remember. The third place team in the division, the hometown Yanks, beat the fifth place team in the division, the Baltimore Orioles. It was a 7-3 win, with Andy Pettite getting the win and Jose Molina, of all people, getting the final home run in the Stadium's 85 year history. Short of a collapse and comeback for the ages, the Yanks are done for the year.

A person from outside of sports would, of course, wonder what the big deal is. A building is a building is a building, and while Yankee Stadium history is clearly the most jam-packed in terms of having more important moments than any other MLB arena, it's not as if the place itself made it all happen.

And yet, as you see the shots of old men and little kids fighting back tears as they watched the Yankees take a victory lap -- and kudos to the Yankees for not holding to their base nature and making people vacate immediately -- you had to feel for them on some level.

The end of a place where you have memories is a reminder that all life is finite, all moments are fleeting, and that you have to take pleasure with the knowledge that it's all tied into the meaning that you give it.

It's just a building, except that it's not.

It's just a game, except that it isn't.

And baseball, even for the Yankees, always ends in the small heartbreak of autumn, when the leaves begin to fall and the cold begins to creep in, and the weather itself reminds you that everything changes, whether you wish it to or not.