How do you fall out of love?

Does it happen all at once? Or subtly over time until one day you realize that your heart no longer skips a beat when you look at the box score?

I had loved the New York Yankees and, by extension, all of baseball from the time I was about 6 years old. That’s when I first saw the old, old Yankee Stadium, all blue and white. To me, it looked like a wedding cake. The first time I walked inside and saw the field fanning out to embrace infinity, I had only one thought: “I belong here.”

Over the years, I had many memorable moments there – particularly watching the magical teams of the late 1970s – and I would go on to write about the Yanks during their magnificent run at the end of the 20th century.

But also over those years, I found myself so emotionally invested in the Bombers that I couldn’t take their defeats. Then my Aunt Mary, my beloved Tiny, who would’ve been 92 on Oct. 1, became fatally ill, and even winning became painful. Indeed when the team won the World Series in 2009, the gulf between its euphoria and my despair seemed unbreachable.

After that, Tim Tebow and Colin Kaepernick happened to me, and I made the journey that America has...

Tony Gwynn dead June 16 at age 54 – what a shame. Think of Gwynn and you think of three things – tremendous hitter; lovely, smiling face; and class act.

I’ll never forget when Gwynn and his San Diego Padres played my beloved New York Yankees back in 1998 for the World Series. The ’98 Yanks were one of the greatest baseball teams ever assembled. Yankee aficionados put them up there with the 1927 Bombers (the so-called Murderers’ Row that included Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig) and the 1939 team that witnessed the passing of the torch from Gehrig to Joe DiMaggio.

So the poor Padres came up against a juggernaut in the 1998 fall classic and went down in four straight games. But Gwynn was stellar and stayed classy – gracious in victory and gracious in defeat.

Oh, captain, their captain

Tony Gwynn, in memoriam (1960-2014)