Intersections are impossibly emotional

A lot of the '67 guys are back in town this weekend and they were standing behind home plate, in uniform, Friday night when 7-year-old Jimmy Fund patient Jordan Leandre sang the anthem, then circled the bases before the second game of the day-night doubleheader.

You can have your Carlton Fisk homer in '75, or David Ortiz's walkoff against the Angels in the ALDS in '04, or even Ted's clout off Jack Fisher in his final major league at-bat in 1960. Jordan's tour de bases was more meaningful and emotional. A lot of us hadn't seen the brave little guy since the home opener in 2006 when he sang the anthem from a wheelchair.

The chair was gone Friday, another victory for the Jimmy Fund. And in the final hours of a two-day WEEI/NESN Radio-Telethon in which citizens of Red Sox Nation pledged more than $3.6 million, Jordan gave us a moment for the ages. He was wearing a T-shirt that read, "Making Dreams Possible," and he was running on legs that weren't strong enough to allow him to stand last year.

This was his 10th anthem at Fenway, but his first without a brace, a cast, or a chair. He ran for every kid who ever battled cancer and every Boston baseball fan who ever put a quarter in a Jimmy Fund box. And when he crossed home plate, staggering to the finish, he was swept up and held aloft by Jose Santiago, who won the final game of the August '67 series with the Angels, a game in which the Sox trailed, 8-0, in the fourth inning.

Andrews, now 64 and chairman of the Jimmy Fund, was standing next to Santiago when Jordan crossed home plate. No longer a rookie, Andrews has been working for the Jimmy Fund for 29 years and he remembers when not many of the kids were saved.