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A feel-good story (5 Posts)
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Let's try this:
Yankees have helped Lang discover a new world
Originally published: August 17, 2010 8:29 PM
Updated: August 17, 2010 9:46 PM
By BARBARA BARKER
barbara.barker@newsday.com
Quick Summary
Jane Lang is blind and still able to commute from her home in New Jersey to see 30-plus games a year.
Photo credit: New York Yankees | Yankees Manager Joe Girardi, players Joba Chamberlain, Chad Gaudin and David Robertson,
along with former Yankee Tino Martinez surprised Jane Lang at her house
joined her on her trek to Yankee Stadium. (Aug. 17, 2010)Yankees 6, Tigers2010
On a good day, it
takes a little under three hours for Jane Lang to get to Yankee Stadium from her home in Morris Plains, N.J.
First, there is a mile walk with her
dog, Clipper, to the train station. Then, there's a 70-minute train ride
to Penn Station, followed by a potentially perilous walk in thick
pedestrian traffic to Herald Square. Finally, comes the hard part.
Exactly eight stops on the D train to 161st street.
"I used to put eight candies in my
pocket and move them after each stop, so I would know to get off when
there was one left," Lang, 67, said. "Now, I just count."
Lang was born blind, but it
hasn't stopped her from doing everything she's ever wanted to do in
life, including attending 30-plus Yankees games a year with only her
guide dog as a travel companion.
Tuesday, the two had an unexpected escort to the game. Manager Joe Girardi, Joba Chamberlain, Chad Gaudin, David Robertson,
Kerry Wood and former player Tino Martinez arrived at her door at 11:30
with a bouquet of flowers. Lang, who thought she was spending the day
at the Guggenheim with her daughter, was stunned when she opened the
door and heard a familiar voice.
"Hi Jane, it's Joe Girardi,"
the Yankees manager announced before introducing her to his players.
"We're going to escort you to the game today. We think your story is
pretty amazing."
"You're the ones who are amazing," Lang said as she ran her hand over each player's face.
Lang's visit to Yankee Stadium was a
part of the team's Hope Week Community Initiative, which honors a
different person, family or organization each day this week. In addition
to being escorted by the Yankees to the Stadium, Lang received a tour
of Monument Park from Paul O'Neill, one of her all-time favorite Yankees, and was honored in a ceremony at home plate before the game.
"She's just an amazing person," said Chamberlain,
who got to know Lang because his father, Harlan, sits next to her in a
section behind home plate. "Just the fearlessness that she shows by
coming here. She's incredible."
Lang, 67, begs to differ: "I'm just a regular person. I just do things a little differently."
Lang is from Boston, and used to go to Fenway Park without a guide dog as a teenager. One day, however, after she got lost in the snow, her mother convinced her
to go to The Seeing Eye, in Morristown, N.J., the oldest guide-dog
school in the world. After four weeks, she finished training with her
first dog, Sandy, and met a new instructor at the school, Pete Lang,
whom she wed three months later.
She raised three children, Sharon,
Danny and Billy, along with running a knitting business and a
chair-caning enterprise. It was Danny who introduced her to the Yankees
In 2000, she learned how to navigate
to the Stadium with her dog at the time, Laramie. The two went to 256
games, with his last game being the finale at the old stadium.
None of them, however, were as
thrilling as last night's contest. Lang made a point of doing two things
to every Yankee she met Tuesday. She touched their face. And she
thanked them.
Said Lang: "I just want them to know how much pleasure they have given me over the years."This post was edited by an admin on August 18, 2010 1:44 PM.
