Over sixty years ago right fielder Bobby Thompson crossed home plate and a thousand kids in nickel caps danced on Harlem stoops with dreams filling their heads that someday they too would swat the high fastball into the left field bleachers at the Polo Grounds and win the pennant, finally, for their New York Giants.

And then, in 1964, the dream was over.

The ball club moved west. They tore down the park, razed the land and built the Polo Grounds Towers. A sanctuary that children used to sneak into became low-income housing on West 155th Street, a place children can only hope to escape. Runs from the fire department punctuate daily life and even the most modest dreams often collide with hard realities. The only thing that signals a game was ever played there is a bronze plaque on the pillar of the North Tower and a decrepit and sectioned off staircase that leads down from Edgecombe Avenue.

Pete Hamill, novelist and storied New York reporter, winces as he remembers the meaning of the departure. He points out that it was at ballparks like the Polo Grounds where immigrants like his father truly became Americans because it was within those walls that they sat shoulder to shoulder with other New Yorkers. It didn't matter if they were from Salerno or Cork. The only thing that mattered was the game and the team and when that was gone many of those memories crumbled along with the skeleton of the park, all of it in a city where some never forgot.

And for those people the Polo Grounds still exists. Bill Kent, President of the New York Baseball Giants Nostalgia Society, still recites with youthful exuberance line-ups and days sixty years past when he lounged in the bleachers between double-headers. For him and the society he runs, the park could never leave. After all, no one forgets their first love. As Mr. Kent sits outside his apartment and bears his heart, it's almost as if at any moment, he'll turn and look toward Edgecombe Avenue so that he might catch a glimpse of the stadium lights still there, still shining and hear those cheering voices carried along by the Harlem River winds.

Things won't change any time soon at the Polo Grounds Towers. Sometimes change isn't always for the best and as time passes fewer and fewer people on those Harlem streets will talk about the 'Say Hey Kid' and 'The Shot Heard 'Round the World.' Eras end. Parks are torn down. Fields are paved over. But, as Bill Kent shows, memories can rebuild what has been lost. Dreams still make the old young and there will always be the high fastball and the left field bleachers for those who remember....

Bruce Silverglade simply describes the business he owns as a "fight gym." Nothing more, nothing less. And after opening the big door and hulking up to the second floor of 77 Front Street in DUMBO, anyone who enters can plainly see that, yes, this is a boxing gym. But describing it as just a fight gym or a boxing gym is a bit like calling Yankee Stadium just another ballpark. That definition, fight gym, doesn't do the space justice so it's better just to call the place by its proper name: Gleason's.

Gleason's is literally world-famous throughout the universe of boxing. It has been the backdrop of a myriad of films, TV shows, and photo shoots. The gym has all the central casting elements: old metal lockers line the walls and the three rings are usually filled with sparring partners. Heavy bags dangle from the ceiling and the place has a sweat and blood smell and feel that cannot be faked.

But among 200-pound men skipping rope and beautiful women engaged in combat, you might also notice the pictures on the wall: Jake LaMotta, Mike Tyson, Roberto Duran. Boxing royalty, champions all, men who once called Gleason's home back when New York was at the center of the boxing galaxy.

Gleason's was once a mecca for pugilists. Before moving to Brooklyn, it stood in the Bronx and then in Manhattan on West 30th, near Madison Square Garden, back when 'The Garden' was the premiere locale for a big championship bout. But as time wore on and the allure of Las Vegas became greater, there was a decline. New York City was no longer the capital of boxing and with that, Gleason's no longer the mecca.

But if you wander through Bruce Silverglade's gym, making sure to avoid the bantamweight on the speed bag and the two men shadow boxing in front of the mirrors, and head straight toward the offices in the back you'll surely notice the big yellow sign. Nailed to the wall among dozens of pictures of current and past champions is an admonition from the poet Virgil: "Now whoever has courage, and a strong and collected spirit in his breast, let him come forth, lace up his gloves, and put up his hands."

That defines Gleason's, a fight...