IT COMES BACK AT THE STRANGEST TIMES TO KICK YOU AGAIN:

Baseball Notes>The DiNardo file Gordon Edes, May 16, 2004, Boston Globe)

With the Mets, who drafted him out of Stetson on the third round, [Lenny] DiNardo had the chance to be part of the revival of baseball in Brooklyn, which had been without a team since the Dodgers left after the '57 season until the Mets placed a Single A team there. "Brooklyn, it was great," he said. "They loved us. It was the closest thing to the big leagues, which is ironic, since it was short-season ball." He described a scene right out of "Boys of Summer": "We'd leave the stadium, people would be running after you, kids. It was incredible. They were great fans. I lived in a little Jewish neighborhood five minutes from the stadium. They'd come knock at our door, ask us if we'd play catch with them or Wiffle Ball. We'd go out and play with them, it was really fun." The fun ended abruptly on the night they were to have played Williamsport for the short-season championship: Sept. 11, 2001. "We woke up that morning, turned on the TV, and one of the towers was already down," Di Nardo said. "We went outside, there was ash everywhere. We tried to drive into the city but got stuck in Staten Island. It was surreal, a nightmare." His major league debut came less than three years later, in Yankee Stadium. "It was really fun, something I'm going to tell my grandkids about," he said. "To be in the bullpen and hear them yell, `DiNardo, you suck.' That's something I'm going to cherish. If you don't hear that, there's something wrong."