Some pictures from the “Concert for Hope” that preceded the Papal Mass

Still working my way through all the pictures we took Sunday at the Yankee Stadium Papal Mass.

But here are a few pictures from the concert that went from noontime to about 2 o’clock.

When we arrived, the West Point Cadet Catholic Choir was singing. The stage is set up on the infield, and the cadets are standing about where home plate is. The stadium was still filling up –

The Irish singer Dana performed –  the second picture is Dana on the Diamondvision screen in right field

Next up – the Irish tenor, Ronan Tynan. I will show my ignorance, by confessing I’d never heard of him. Wow! What a voice, and what a life story!

So after beautiful renditions of several tunes, Tynan says he’s going to sing “God Bless America”. I didn’t know that he was famous for singing it, that he occasionally sang it at Yankee Stadium games, that he’d sung at Ronald Reagan’s funeral… Nor did I know that Tynan was a double amputee, had won many gold medals in the paralympics, and was a physician. Ronan Tynan – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia or RonanTynan.net – Biography

So he starts singing “God Bless America” and everyone stands up, and then everyone starts singing … awesome …

Around this point , I took off for the upper deck behind home plate, to try and locate two friends of ours, Laurie Hurley, and Mary Blake. They both had travelled down from Boston (Laurie lives in VT) and the Boston contingent were in the nosebleed scetion, but with a good frontal view of the podium and altar.

On the way up, I snapped this picture of the Young People’s Choir of New York. Again, they are standing about on where home plate is.

As I was making my way up, the next performer was

Here he is on the stage, as seen from the upper deck, where the Boston people were. And the best view of the layout of the stage and altar –

And two more shots of the crowd in the upper deck on the left field side

And here’s a pix of moi with Laurie and Mary. I ceaselessly pointed out that they were in the Cathedral of Baseball, in comparison to which Fenway Park is a hovel. Mary is a diehard (DIEHARD!!) Red Sox fan and I think had to take benadryl every three hours whilst in the stadium, to keep from breaking out in hives …

As you can see, Mary likes Stadium food (peanuts). If you’re wondering how I originally met these two young, attractive women (quite a few years ago now) – well that is a four beer story which someday I may post about.

In the meantime, I will try and get the Papal Mass posting up tonight.