Yankees honor fallen students and pledge...

[efin98]

Hate them if you must but the Yankees did a great thing on Tuesday by keeping a promise made to Virginia Tech a year ago to play a game against the college in honor of those murdered in a 2007 shooting rampage.

Very classy move that has to be commended.

http://newyork.yankees.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20080318&content_id=2442883&vkey=spt2008news&fext=.jsp&c_id=nyy

[Old Sweater]

One is the loneliest number that you'll ever do
Two can be as bad as one
It's the loneliest number since the number one

[AutographCollector]

Yeah, heard about this on Xm last night. Kudos to the Yanks for taking the time to fly up to Blacksburg to visit, pay their respects, and play a game with the Hokie Baseball team. Would have been a neat game to watch/listen to.

[G-String Blues]

I caught part of the game on MLB.TV and indeed pretty cool. After they pulled AROD he went over to the Hokies dugout and watched the game and signed autographs for a while. Pretty cool.

[Mattingly]

One of the victims was a Derek Jeter admirer, and he autographed for the guy's fiance a t-shirt that the late student had.

Yankees honored to play Va. Tech

BLACKSBURG, Va. - As the Yankees visited the Virginia Tech campus memorial site dedicated to the 32 people who were killed in last year's campus shootings, a young woman approached Derek Jeter and asked if she could take a picture with him.

Her name was Marcy Crevonis, and her fiancé, Michael Pohle, was one of the victims of last April 16. One of 32 stones at the memorial had Pohle's name on it, a No. 2 Jeter T-shirt placed directly next to it.

Jeter posed for the photo and signed the T-shirt Crevonis wore, one which featured a photo of Pohle and the date "4-16-07" on the back.

"She smiled. This is part of the reason why we're here," Jeter said. "It reminds me a little of Sept. 11, when we had an opportunity to visit a lot of families. People always ask how this helps, and I really don't know. If it just makes people smile and enjoy themselves for the three hours we're here, it's all worthwhile."

Fulfilling a pledge they made shortly after the campus shootings on April 16, the Yankees made the trip up from Tampa to play Virginia Tech in an exhibition.

Since hating the Yanks is obviously a cottage industry that many of us have acknowledged, a few unusual Yankee haters have come forth (kind of like they did in Boston after 9/11):

Unlikely Yankee fans unite

BLACKSBURG, Va. - Theresa Walsh and Pete Hughes are both Red Sox fans. Tuesday, their feelings toward the Yankees changed dramatically with the Bombers' visit to VirginiaTech.

Walsh, a product of Binghamton, N.Y., graduated last summer and got a local accounting job. She was in one of the classrooms under fire last April 16 when a mentally disturbed student killed 32 people on the campus.

"It was tough; it was a hard day, and it's still hard to look back on it," said Walsh, who was shot at but not hit during the shootings. "You don't want to dwell on it. It's time to move on. It was surreal. It's difficult to talk about and difficult to interact with people that were involved with it. One day, people just want to go back to the way it was."

Hughes is the coach of Virginia Tech's baseball team, and the shootings left him so stunned it took him quite some time before he could even discuss the incident.

"I was only here for nine months, but it affected me where I couldn't even talk publicly about it," Hughes said. "The people who have lived here for 30 years, built lives and this close-knit community, you can still see it in their eyes. It's going to be around forever, but hopefully we can have little moments like this."

[Yankeebiscuitfan]

Hate them if you must but the Yankees did a great thing on Tuesday by keeping a promise made to Virginia Tech a year ago to play a game against the college in honor of those murdered in a 2007 shooting rampage.

Very classy move that has to be commended.

http://newyork.yankees.mlb.com/news/...=.jsp&c_id=nyy

Kudos to you Efin98. After all the negative posts this is good to read.

Thanks. :bowdown:

[YankeeDJW]

It's just a great story. Reading the comments from students at the school and people closely affected by the tragedy of how much this meant to them is quite touching.

Proud to be a Yankees fan.

[Mattingly]

A 9-picture photo essay:

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/yankees/galleries/yanks_go_to_bat_for_va_tech/yanks_go_to_bat_for_va_tech.html