[Nfbmo] Fw: this is great.

Thu Sep 2 03:05:01 UTC 2010

this went round and around last week on blind talk

Bryan Schulz

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Matthew Sievert" <msievert at sbcglobal.net>
To: "NFB of Missouri Mailing List" <nfbmo at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Wednesday, September 01, 2010 7:42 PM
Subject: Re: [Nfbmo] Fw: this is great.


> Rock on Jane!
>
>
>
>
> On Sep 1, 2010, at 8:01 PM, "Gene Coulter" <escoulter at centurytel.net> 
> wrote:
>
>> My sister sent this to me. I have mixed feelings on this; but, here it is 
>> anyway.
>>
>> Gene Coulter
>>
>> Toughest fan you'll ever meet
>>    a.. Email
>>    b.. Print
>>  By Rick Reilly
>>  ESPN.com
>>  Archive
>>
>>  George Lenker/ESPN Jane Lang, who is blind, is one of the New York 
>> Yankees' biggest fans. During Hope Week, manager Joe Girardi (left) and 
>> pitchers David Robertson, Chad Gaudin and Joba Chamberlain escorted her 
>> on her two-hour trip to the park.
>>
>>  Ask yourself whether you'd do this: Leave home. Walk 20 minutes to the 
>> train station. Take a 70-minute train ride to Penn Station in New York 
>> City. Weave for 10 minutes over to the subway station. Take a half-hour D 
>> train ride to Yankee Stadium. Navigate the vendors and chaos to get to 
>> your seat.
>>
>>  Now ask yourself: Would you do all that blind?
>>
>>  Jane Lang does it, accompanied at most games by only her Seeing Eye 
>> golden retriever, Clipper. Thirty times a year. At 67 years old.
>>
>>  Which is why she was so gobsmacked Tuesday when she set out from her 
>> home in Morris Plains, N.J., only to find Yankees manager Joe Girardi and 
>> four current and former Yankees waiting on her doorstep.
>>
>>  They didn't have a limo. They didn't have a fleet of Suburbans. They had 
>> only sneakers. They were going to make the journey with her.
>>
>>  "Oh my God!" Jane said.
>>
>>  "We think you're amazing," Girardi said.
>>
>>  "Follow me," Clipper seemed to say.
>>
>>  You have to understand what a two-hour, one-way journey to a baseball 
>> game takes for somebody like Jane. She's been blind since birth, and 
>> these trips have not always turned out well. Once, some kids decided it 
>> would be fun to spin her around a few dozen times. Another time, she fell 
>> onto the subway tracks and was nearly killed. But ever since she got a 
>> guide dog, she's been intrepid.
>>
>>  The whole bizarre troupe: Jane, Clipper, the Yankees, their security 
>> guys, the PR men and the media -- paraded past the florist, Tony's pizza 
>> parlor and the little barbershop where one of the customers came out to 
>> wave and holler at Jane with the apron still around his neck.
>>
>>  It's mind-melting to watch Jane and Clipper make their way down the 
>> clogged streets of Manhattan -- Clipper, taking cues from Jane, weaving 
>> her through a maze of street vendors, suits, iPhone zombies, boxes, bums, 
>> secretaries and scaffolding.
>>  Jane and Clipper walk at we-just-robbed-a-bank speed, which caused 
>> current Yankees pitching star Joba Chamberlain to holler, "Hey! Slow 
>> down!"
>>
>>  Soon Yankees fans figured out what was going on and joined in, along 
>> with nearly everybody in town. By the time they reached the train 
>> station, it looked as though Clipper was leading a marching band.
>>
>>  They crammed aboard the train, whereupon ex-Yankees star Tino Martinez 
>> slumped into his seat. "I can't imagine doing this," he'd say. Girardi, 
>> who was sitting next to Jane, said, "She's amazing. We should've done 
>> this blindfolded to give us an even better idea of what it's like."
>>
>>  Pah! You think this is hard? Wait 'til they'd see the next leg -- Penn 
>> Station and the streets of Manhattan.
>>
>>  [+] Enlarge
>>
>>  George Lenker/ESPN In Monument Park with Paul O'Neill, Lang touches the 
>> Mickey Mantle plaque.
>>
>>  It's mind-melting to watch Jane and Clipper make their way down the 
>> clogged streets of Manhattan -- Clipper, taking cues from Jane, weaving 
>> her through a maze of street vendors, suits, iPhone zombies, boxes, bums, 
>> secretaries and scaffolding.
>>
>>  "And we complain about a little traffic on the Deegan [Expressway]," 
>> Girardi mused, shaking his head.
>>
>>  Usually, when Jane finally gets to the D train and takes her seat, she 
>> feels for eight pieces of candy in her right pocket. Every time the train 
>> stops, she transfers one piece into the opposite pocket. When there's one 
>> piece of candy left, she knows the next stop is Yankee Stadium. No need 
>> this time. The very people she was traveling to see were telling her it 
>> was time to get off.
>>
>>  Once Jane and Clipper reached Gate 6 -- two-and-a-half hours from start 
>> to finish -- Girardi and the players took over. They introduced her to 
>> former Yankees star Paul O'Neill, who let her feel his face. She touched 
>> it the way a sculptor would. They let her hold Babe Ruth's bat, Joe 
>> DiMaggio's hat, the 2000 World Series trophy. She felt the monuments. 
>> When she got to Mickey Mantle's face, she said, "He looks tired."
>>
>>  You don't know the half of it, lady.
>>
>>  They introduced her to Mariano Rivera and Derek Jeter, who let her feel 
>> his famous mug. And once, when there was finally nobody talking to her, 
>> she crouched down and felt the infield grass as though it were finely 
>> spun silk.
>>
>>  Imagine. She had learned the game as a girl, when her father had set up 
>> a checkerboard like a baseball field and guided her hands over it. She's 
>> been in love with baseball ever since. Now she was getting a guided, 
>> one-woman tour of the very heart of it.
>>
>>  [+] Enlarge
>>
>>  George Lenker/ESPN In a rare moment alone, Lang bends down to touch the 
>> field at Yankee Stadium.
>>
>>  "I'm the luckiest person in the world," she purred. "I always have known 
>> there were three different things I always wanted: a house with a roof 
>> that didn't leak, someone to love me and kids. And now I got this. It's 
>> the utmost frosting, you know what I mean? I'll never get sick of this 
>> frosting!"
>>
>>  Tuesday was just one day of the Yankees' Hope Week, a genius idea 
>> dreamed up by their public relations extraordinaire, Jason Zillo, who 
>> seems to have an addiction to helping people in ways nobody has thought 
>> of before. The Yankees gave $10,000 in Jane's honor to The Seeing Eye 
>> Inc., a place in Morristown, N.J., that trains guide dogs.
>>
>>  Still, the day was Jane's, and strong, young millionaires kept coming up 
>> to her, praising her guts, skills and moxie. To which Jane would only 
>> shrug and say, "This is just my way of being free and living in the world 
>> the way it is."
>>
>>  And as she stood there relishing the moment, it made a person think that 
>> the world the way it is can be awfully sweet.
>>
>>  Special reporting by George Lenker.
>>
>>
>>
>>
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