One Big Family

I come into Yankee Stadium behind Homeplate. The Reverend Sun Myung Moon is holding his Bicentennial God Bless America Festival; for weeks, the city has been plastered with his posters. The first two decks are full and there is a good crowd in the third deck and the bleachers; almost everyone here is excited-either raucous, or cynical, or enthusiastic. I take a seat beside a relatively subdued man in a beige raincoat. “Are you for Reverend Moon?” I ask, and he replies, “Oh, I’m not for or against; I’m just… looking for someone.”

Bags of white balloons hang from the rafters like pollen sacs; entire sections wave plastic American flags in unison; a band on third base (the Go-World Brass Band) plays good-time music. The local punks-dudes in their pimping clothes, bearded creatures in railroad caps-stream steadily in through the tunnels, but they can’t believe it; they stand in the aisles and gawk until some Moonie (wearing a red, white, and blue sash) directs them courteously, but firmly, to an empty seat.

About the Author

Richard Brookhiser

Historian Richard Brookhiser is a senior editor of National Review and a senior fellow at the National Review Institute.

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I come into Yankee Stadium behind Homeplate. The Reverend Sun Myung Moon is holding his Bicentennial God Bless America Festival; for weeks, the city has been plastered with his posters. The first two decks are full and there is a good crowd in the third deck and the bleachers; almost everyone here is excited-either raucous, or cynical, or enthusiastic. I take a seat beside a relatively subdued man in a beige raincoat. “Are you for Reverend Moon?” I ask, and he replies, “Oh, I’m not for or against; I’m just… looking for someone.”

Bags of white balloons hang from the rafters like pollen sacs; entire sections wave plastic American flags in unison; a band on third base (the Go-World Brass Band) plays good-time music. The local punks-dudes in their pimping clothes, bearded creatures in railroad caps-stream steadily in through the tunnels, but they can’t believe it; they stand in the aisles and gawk until some Moonie (wearing a red, white, and blue sash) directs them courteously, but firmly, to an empty seat.