Field of Dream

Edited by Jack McCallum

October 10, 1994

The Baseball strike kept Ed Kelly, a 70-year-old Rochester, N.Y., man who is terminally ill with cancer, from making a once-in-a-lifetime visit to Camden Yards to see his beloved Baltimore Orioles play. But through the Orioles and a syndicated television show, The Crusaders, which learned about Kelly from a letter that his son, Ed Kelly Jr., wrote to SI (LETTERS, Sept. 12), a heartwarming variation of Kelly's dream came true in Baltimore last week. He met such former Orioles as Mike Flanagan, Ron Hansen and Tippy Martinez and played catch with Elrod Hendricks. When his favorite Bird, Boog Powell, was nowhere to be seen, Kelly remarked upon the absence of "the skinny little first baseman." Soon enough a portly figure snuck up behind him. "He ain't so skinny anymore," said Powell (above with the two Kellys).