Every child loses his innocence, and I will tell you how I lost mine. My mother raised me on 14 acres in the woods outside Goshen, in upstate New York. We didn’t have cable television and she kept me from the Internet, encouraging me to read and explore the natural landscape.

My strongest link to the outside world was the New York Yankees. By seven, I was listening to nearly every game on the radio. On the rare occasions when the team played on one of the seven channels received by our television, I watched every moment. When the Yankees won, I ran through the fields behind our house, impersonating the iconic call of radio sportscaster John Sterling: “Theeeeeee Yankees win!” I repeated this refrain often, as the Yankees won the World Series the first three seasons I followed the team, 1998, 1999, and 2000.

My mother was not a sports fan, but she encouraged my love of the Yankees. …