“And they’ll walk out to the bleachers, and sit in shirt-sleeves on a perfect afternoon. They’ll find they have reserved seats somewhere along one of the baselines, where they sat when they were children and cheered their heroes. And they’ll watch the game, and it’ll be as if they’d dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick, they’ll have to brush them away from their faces …

America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It’s been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time.

It reminds us of all that once was good, and it could be again.” – Terence Mann (played by James Earl Jones), “Field of Dreams.”

They come from Jim Thorpe, Brodheadsville, and Kresegeville, and all have one thing in common.

They are New York Yankee fans.

They drove hundreds of miles from Northeastern Pennsylvania to Cooperstown, New York for a single purpose, to see their baseball hero, Yankee pitcher Mariano Rivera, inducted into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame.

A Yankee fanatic

Sixty-two-year-old Jack McGavin of Jim Thorpe has been a Yankee fan since his childhood. He used to hop a bus in Bethlehem and go to games at the old Yankee Stadium. He holds many memories of players from many games, but Rivera’s induction called him from his hometown to travel to upstate New York. He joined 55,000 baseball fans to see Rivera and another Yankee pitcher, Mike Mussina, get inducted into the Hall.

“My favorite all-time Yankee is Don Mattingly, but Rivera was unreal and he would dial it up in the postseason. He was almost impossible to hit,” said McGavin, who added that scoring runs against the closer was nearly impossible.

“More men walked on the moon than scored in all the postseasons against Mariano Rivera,” he said.

In 1999, McGavin attended the ticker tape parade in New York after the Yankees had won the World Series.

“I stood on the curb at 7 a.m. and waited for six hours until the parade began,” he said. “I remember watching Yankee owner George Steinbrenner come by in an open car and of course, Mariano was right there too.”

McGavin recalled a game in which Rivera “didn’t have his best stuff.”

“He walked the bases loaded, but then you saw that look in his eyes, and he struck out the next three hitters.”

One part of Rivera’s acceptance speech that McGavin thought was memorable was when the Yankee great apologized to his own son for not being with him for so many of his son’s October birthdays.

“He said he was always too busy that month winning championships for the Yankees, “ McGavin added.

A pace of its own

Paul Kleiwer, a longtime resident of Brodheadsville, became a Yankee fan because of his father whose favorite player was Mickey Mantle.

“My dad watched every Yankee game that he could,” said Kleiwer, whose favorite all time Yankee is also Mattingly.

Kleiwer watches every game that he can, too and although he had never been to the Hall of Fame before, when he found out that Rivera was being inducted this year, he “had to go.”

“My friend, Sean Dougherty and I had seats in the middle of the audience and we got to see Yankee greats like Joe Torre, Derek Jeter, and Bernie Williams up close.”

Kleiwer, who has three children — ages 2, 6 and 8 — worries about the future of baseball as tryout numbers in youth programs across America are dwindling and because a general consensus among millennials is that the game is too boring or too slow to play or to watch.

“Life itself is much too fast,” said Kleiwer. “Baseball has no time clock and one of the best things about it is that it moves along at its own pace and as a fan you move along with that pace so you can just sit back and enjoy.”

It’s all in the name

Kleiwer met Dougherty at a church that they both attend. Dougherty lives in Kresgeville and he and his wife have five children – ages two months to 12-years. Three are boys. When asked how passionate he is as a Yankee fan, Dougherty answered, “I have a son named Sean Jeter Dougherty.”

His father took him to see a Yankee game at the old stadium 16 years ago when he was 21. Of course his favorite player is Jeter, but Rivera is a close second.

“We had great seats for the ceremony just about a football field away. Admission was free.”

Daugherty feels a bond with Rivera because both are Christians.

“We both have put our faith in God everyday,” he said.

What he will most remember about Rivera from the ceremony came from Williams, who is now a musician. Williams played “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” as Rivera was approaching the platform.

“Then, all of a sudden, Bernie breaks into “Sandman” by Metallica, which was played for all those years when Mariano came out of the bullpen to close out a game,” said Dougherty.

Dougherty toured the Hall during his trip and said that it takes about two-and -a-half hours for a baseball junkie to go through all the exhibits. He remarked that this monument to baseball’s greatest players leaves you with a special feeling.

“I’ve been to other halls of fame,” he said, “but when you walk into the Baseball Hall of Fame, there’s a mystique, an aura. You feel something that you don’t feel in the others.”

More than a game

As fans of baseball, Jack McGavin, Paul Kleiwer, and Sean Dougherty have all felt that something special about baseball “as if they have dipped themselves in magic waters.”

They will do their part in passing along their love for the game to the next generation because they believe in the words of Terence Mann (James Earl Jones) from Field of Dreams.

“{Baseball} reminds us of all that was once good and that could be again.”