Watching the back line of the United States defense Tuesday night, I was reminded of the old Johnny Cash song, “One Piece at a Time,” about the auto worker who brings home a part from the plant every night.
Only trouble is, none of the parts are for the same car. Bruce Arena did the best he could from what he could get his hands on, down in Panama, and managed to leave town with a 1-1 draw and a crucial point in the battle to qualify for the 2018 World Cup. (My deep thanks to Telemundo and the great Andrés Cantor hosting Qualifier Night, on that fine network. Gracias, colegas.) However, the four American defenders did not exactly mesh with each other or with the central midfield of Jermaine Jones and Michael Bradley, who, however admirable in their own clunky ways, do not function together. Great back fours function as a unit. That was the goal in the classic movie, “The Full Monty,” when the lads from the failed plant try to strip in unison, with the Arsenal trap in mind. Franco Baresi and Paolo Maldini worked together like a Lamborghini in the AC Milan/Azzurri defense. (How would I know? I’ve never been in a Lamborghini.) But the American lads just sputtered and free-lanced, none of them resembling Cherundolo or Pope or Balboa or Beasley (who was languishing on the U.S. bench.) To be sure, the U.S. was missing John Brooks, who staggered from a sinus infection last Friday, and Geoff Cameron and Fabian Johnson, who are injured. Arena did not have a lot of options. But Tim Ream was mostly clueless, and Omar Gonzalez will always be a big amiable lug, not what you want in the middle. Graham Zusi is just not a right back, and Jorge Villafaña was the best of the lot – but no DaMarcus Beasley, either. (I imagined Beasley making a jaunt or two down the left side, turning defense into offense.) For all that, the U.S. carried the match on the road, partially because Christian Pulisic kept his wits together despite probably the worst personal attention he has ever received. The Panama players were clearly out to mug him, early and often, and he gestured to the ref for a bit of justice, but he never stopped reclaiming the ball and finding open seams, juking the Panama defense to set up Clint Dempsey’s goal. That young man -- 18 ½ -- has grown up in the Bundesliga. That great league, that great system, has done just what it promised: refined his game. But he will need better support from behind if the U.S. is to sputter and wheeze its way toward the World Cup. The transmission was a fifty three And the motor turned out to be a seventy three And when we tried to put in the bolts all the holes were gone. --lyrics: Wayne Kemp. Who thinks about Casey Stengel these days?
Mets fans should, because he basically invented the Amazin's. Just the other day, a hit rolled into the right-field bullpen and a Braves outfielder flung aside a garbage pail to retrieve the ball -- a garbage pail! -- and I recalled what the Old Man used to say: "Every day in this game of baseball, you see something you never saw before." Still I might have thought history contains all it needs about Stengel, the quintessential figure on all four New York teams – “the Brooklyns,” the Giants, the Yankees, and the Amazing Mets. Casey let a sparrow fly out from his doffed cap as a Dodger; he hit an inside-the-park homer for the Giants in the World Series; he won 10 pennants in 12 years as the Yankee manager; and he managed the Mets for their first four seasons. Now, my friend Marty Appel has found good new stuff about Casey – and his times – in a new book, “Casey Stengel: Baseball’s Greatest Character,” to be published by Doubleday on March 28, just in time for a new season. Appel uncovered some gems about Casey’s childhood in 19th Century Kansas City and his playing career in a Brooklyn so long ago there were no hipsters. He has used computerized libraries and files not available to previous biographers of Stengel, including the late Bob Creamer, a luncheon companion of ours. For example: Appel discovered that the Stengel family lived in the same neighborhood as Charles (Kid) Nichols, a Hall of Fame pitcher who won 361 games from 1890 to 1906. When “Dutch” Stengel was a rambunctious teen-age ball player, the old pitcher advised him to always listen to his managers. “Never say, ‘I won’t do that.,'" Kid Nichols said. "Always listen to him. If you’re not going to do it, don’t tell him so. Let it go in one ear, then let it roll around there for a month, and if it isn’t any good, let it go out the other ear.” This is wonderful advice. I spent a lot of time around Casey from 1962 to 1965 -- in his office and late at night in bars – and I never heard him mention Kid Nichols. But I now know that Kid Nichols helped Casey learn as a player – and teach as a manager. Appel tells a great story (new to me) about a prospect named Mantle, who could run but was slowed down by his habit of looking at the ground. Stengel told Mantle he was no longer playing football in Commerce, Okla., that the major leagues had groundskeepers who created smooth base paths and that he should keep his eye on the ball and the fielders. It made Casey crazy to see blank looks on players. The Old Man also tried to teach “my writers,” in murky soliloquys very late at night. Just when you were about to give up (or doze off) he would grab you with a stubborn paw and say, “Look, you asshole, I’m trying to tell you something.” Appel has learned about Casey’s wife, Edna Lawson Stengel through an unpublished memoir made available by Edna’s niece, Toni Mollett Harsh. Apparently, the Stengels considered themselves too old – in their thirties – to start a family, but they were affectionate toward the wives and children of some of the younger players. (He bought a ginger ale for my oldest child, Laura, in the motel bar in Florida after his managing days. She remembers it vividly.) I learned something else. Appel amends the legend that Stengel’s wealth came through his wife’s family, which owned a bank and businesses in Glendale, Calif. In fact, young Casey paid attention to a teammate from Texas who talked him into buying oil rigs. Casey often barked, “You make your own luck.” Marty Appel reminds us all that Casey Stengel made his own luck. With no clue about the glories about to unfold, my nerves were kicking in, 12 hours before kickoff.
I was obsessing about the starting lineup – and the formation – and the deep hole in the standings for the American men’s soccer team. I could not summon any of this fear and trembling for the just concluded World Baseball Classic, but on Friday, as the U.S. prepared to play Honduras in San Jose, Calif., I was worried if Tim Howard’s injury and Clint Dempsey’s heart issues would allow them to go full-tilt-boogie. I was looking forward to Bruce Arena’s return as head coach. I was worried about the injuries that have decimated Arena’s player pool. This is true national sporting fear, known to soccer fans around the world, and now a very real tradition in the United States. Then the U.S. displayed the get-out-of-jail-free card and welcomed back Dempsey and Howard and Arena with a 6-0 romp over Honduras. How often, in motion sports like soccer, basketball and hockey, do players display initiative at the changing of a coach? From the whistle, the U.S. was energized and creative. The first sign was relatively new players like Darlington Nagbe (speed, brains and low-to-the-road center of gravity) opening up the field. He was followed by Christian Pulisic and Sebastian Lletget, displaying freedom to find space, to take their shots. And then Dempsey, his glower intact after a bout with arrythmia, scored a hat trick. And Michael Bradley turned and launched a long left-footed goal that reminded me of Jermaine Jones' surprise blast in the last World Cup. And Howard was back in goal, his bald head sweating in a prolonged pre-game practice, his eyes giving direction to his defenders. What I am saying is, in my own home, liberated by retirement to be a fan, I loved it. Now I can start obsessing about the match in Panama Tuesday. I could not summon anything like this for the final of the recent Classic Tuesday although I enjoyed watching a compelling young U.S. pitcher, Marcus Stroman, shut down Puerto Rico in an 8-0 victory. From reading the terrific analysis by Billy Witz in the Times on Friday, I see the American players have reacted negatively to the emotion shown by fans and players from Latin America and Asia. The excitement is cultural….and it is the future of the Classic….but I can understand what the U.S. players are feeling. They are from Major League Baseball, the best league in the world, and so are most of their opponents. In a few weeks they will be playing official games and I will have knots hoping Yoenis Céspedes can hold up all season and most of the young pitchers will be healthy and what adventures will befall our beloved Weepin’ Wilmer Flores. Allowed to shed neutrality, I get tied into knots for my home-borough Mets, not for an all-star national team in March. My friend Clemson Smith Muñiz, editor of a terrific new site on Latin baseball, explains my inner dichotomy: “Hola, George, the irony of the WBC final was Latinos had skin on both side of the field. Team USA starting pitcher Marcus Stroman's mother is from Puerto Rico; third baseman Nolan Arenado's father is Cuban and his mother Puerto Rican; and first baseman Eric Hosmer's mother is Cuban. Yes, it took a ‘Half-Rican’ to beat the undefeated ‘Quarter-Rican’ Seth Lugo and the rest of the Boricuas.” Plus, the stirring Puerto Rican team, with its dyed blonde hair and accent marks on the back of the jerseys, consists of beloved and respected players from the long season: venerable Carlos Beltrán and dynamic Yadier Molina, players we love to watch all season (except maybe when they help crush the Mets.) Those emotions are ahead of us. But ever since Paul Caligiuri’s goal in Port of Spain in November of 1989, the U.S. has had the feel of the World Cup -- the men’s quadrennial struggle to qualify, the women’s reign of excellence, now in decline. Qualifying is brutal – hard faces on Latin players, coming to American soil with much to prove, flying objects and language in ominous places like Azteca Stadium, inexplicable official decisions on the road. The stuff of horror movies. Maybe the World Baseball Classic will get there some day. Right now, I knew true sporting fear – meaningless, but tell that to my nerves. Before I tell my Jimmy Breslin-Casey Stengel story, let's talk about bad timing for obituaries. (For example: Aldous Huxley and C.S. Lewis both died on Nov. 22, 1963.) Likewise, it is not a good career move to compete with Jimmy Breslin, “the outer-borough boulevardier of bilious persuasion,” as Dan Barry calls him. Chuck Berry died the same weekend as Breslin; the Times rolled out the big guns for his strut and the clanging of his guitar, outside the schoolhouse, urging boys and girls to come out and play. John Herbers was also honored with a Times obituary on Monday. He was 93, one of the great reporters of the civil-rights era, a gentleman all the way who politely treated me like an equal when I joined the national reporting staff. He had been in bad places – Emmett Till’s murder – and never lost the unassuming air of a small-town southerner. Bob McFadden and the Times did right by John Herbers: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/18/business/media/john-herbers-dead-times-correspondent.html Okay. Here’s my story about Jimmy Breslin, my fellow Queens boy. Elderly editors still marvel at his imagination in the wonderful interviews he turned in for $10 fees on long-forgotten sports magazines. In 1962 the New York newspapers acknowledged the Mets' raffish ineptitude early on. By late July Sports Illustrated dispatched Jimmy for his take on the worst team in the history of baseball. Breslin arrived in St. Louis the weekend of Casey Stengel’s 72nd birthday, and watched them bumble away games. One evening the club held a party for Casey in the rooftop room of the Chase-Park Plaza. Casey greeted the headwaiter, who had once tossed batting practice for visiting teams in the old Sportsmans Park. Casey imitated his motion, remembered his nickname. I was fascinated by Casey and never left his side all evening. Breslin was also there, observing. If anybody was taking notes, I do not remember. A year later, a Breslin book came out, entitled "Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?" a plea ostensibly uttered by Casey during his long monologue that evening in St. Louis. Not long afterward, Breslin called me for a phone number or something and at the end I said, "Jimmy, just curious, I was at that party for Casey, never left his side, and I don't remember him ever saying, 'Can't anybody here play this game?'" Long pause. "What are you, the F.B.I?" Breslin asked, his Queens accent turning “the” into “duh.” Years later, Breslin conceded he just might have exercised some creative license. Casey never complained about being misquoted. He would have said it if he had thought of it. That was the thing about Jimmy Breslin. He got the inner truths. He had an insight into people’s hearts, almost like a mystic or a psychic. Given his imperfections and his imaginations, he was a universal voice. He was also a very local voice. As the world becomes homogenized, we lose the local voices, the salt and the spices that make life exciting. (Fortunately for readers everywhere, Corey Kilgannon is covering Queens for the Times.) Chuck Berry caught the feel of Route 66 (“Well it winds from Chicago to L.A./More than 2000 miles all the way/Get your kicks on Route 66.” Makes you want to rev up the engine. John Herbers reported from the Deep South, which he loved and sometimes lamented. Jimmy Breslin understood Queens…and the world. He has not been well for years. I would have loved to read him on the scam artist from our home borough. * * * MUST READ: Dan Barry's personal tribute to Breslin on the NYT site: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/20/insider/dan-barry-way-back-with-jimmy-breslin.html?smid=fb-share Our friend Ina sent this video from a live French broadcast. World was never the same.
The other night, the conscientious Chris Hayes did a documentary from West Virginia, with the impassioned Sen. Bernie Sanders.
I couldn’t watch. The state already voted for the poseur, Donald Trump, last November by roughly 68 to 26 per cent over Hillary Clinton. It’s all so familiar. Living in Kentucky, I covered Appalachia for the Times from 1970 through 1972 and remained in close touch for many years afterward. I saw bodies fished out of Buffalo Creek after an earthen coal dam gave way. I saw the crusading Doc Rasmussen going to hearings with an autopsy slide demonstrating Black Lung. I covered a few coal-mine disasters and the Harlan strike of 1974, so grippingly captured by Barbara Kopple. So long ago. So courant. The only thing that has changed is that we know more. Technology has gotten better – and worse. Coal companies can push more detritus downhill into the streams and gardens of their own people and scientists can measure the damage to air and water and lungs more carefully. When I covered West Virginia, Rep. Ken Hechler was the Bernie of his day, speaking out against corruption and pollution. (Hechler passed recently at 102.) A miner named Arnold Ray Miller tromped around to speak against corruption in his union – and was elected president in 1972. There was often hope of change, of throwing out the rascals and the big-city corporations, but decades have gone by, and good people still want to work, and young people have no hope and are resorting to killer opioids pushed on them by the same kind of doctors who said coal dust was good for the common cold. Every reliable study says there is no future, no justification, for digging and burning coal, yet frauds like Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Big Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who calls himself a Democrat, bow down to their masters from Big Coal. It is pathetic. The decency and the religion and the patriotism of people from West-by-God-Virginia make them susceptible to all kinds of drugs – crooked politicians, phony prophets of economic success. Hillary Clinton, in her own artless way, told people that coal mines would be shut down. So they voted against her. Of course, Sanders had won the Democratic primary in West Virginia, proving that people of that state are terribly bifurcated, at their own expense. One of the first things Trump did to Appalachia was to remove barriers to dumping waste into the valleys where people live. And Big Joe shook Trump’s hand after his first speech to Congress. My wife and daughter Laura (who used to cover rascals in Pennsylvania) told me the MSNBC program was terrific. Now it seems people in McDowell County are speaking up for health care and even Big Joe Manchin is getting the message that you can sell out your own state just so long. God bless Bernie Sanders and Chris Hayes and West Virginia, but I just couldn’t watch. Anybody else watching the World Baseball Classic on the dawn patrol?
It's hard to tell the players without a scorecard – and a genealogy printout. National identities blur, and so do team and league ties. Those two players who collided at home plate the other day? Why, they are teammates – Sal Butera of Italy crashing into Salvador Perez of Venezuela, both of them catchers for the Kansas City Royals. In real life, Perez is the star and Butera is the backup but for these few weeks they are playing for national teams, and playing it hard, and playing it right. Butera was trying to score a run that Italy had to have, and Perez moved into his path, and took a hit. The word from Perez is that his knee may not be as badly injured as was feared, but time will tell. There was nothing dirty about the collision. In fact, it was a common sight in international sport: people who spend an entire league season together suddenly represent other nations. Butera, an American, has Italian background and is entitled to play for Italy. Many of the Venezuelan players live in the States for safety and comfort reasons, as James Wagner pointed out in the Times, but they proudly play for their homeland. Sometimes international play can get nasty, the way it did at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona when the American Dream Team of basketball met soon-to-disband Yugoslavia. Toni Kukoc was about to join the Chicago Bulls after receiving a huge contract that frosted a couple of Bulls named Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen who hounded and trapped and jostled Kukoc with a fervor that could only be labelled personal. Welcome to our world, they said, with their elbows and hands and hips and knees and hard stares. (Read all about it in a story by the late Alan Greenberg in the Hartford Courant.) The World Cup of soccer mixes friendships and rivalries and guild-member respect. Men who spend the entire season together in the same jerseys try to beat their pals for 90 minutes – and then exchange jerseys and hugs. One great example was the 2006 World Cup first-round match between Italy and the Czech Republic. Gigi Buffon, the Italian keeper, was sticking with Juventus, which had been downgraded to the second division because of a scandal involving team officials and referees and gambling. His Juve teammate, Pavel Nedved, was also sticking with Juve while other mainstays were exercising their right to leave. On this afternoon in Hamburg in 2006, they were opponents – who happened to know each other’s moves. Three times in that match, Nedved took a shot on his pal, but Buffon stopped him. At the end of the match, a 2-0 Italy victory, they embraced with obvious respect. “Oh to be a fly on the wall of the Juventus dressing room when this pair report back for pre-season training,” said the play-by-play on the BBC web site. Italy went on to win that World Cup (remember the Zidane head butt on Materazzi, an old tormentor from Serie A?) and Nedved retired from the Czech national team but helped Juve's comeback through 2009. Today, Nedved is a youth coach with Juventus and Buffon is still the emotional keeper for Juve and the Azzurri. Recently Nedved told a Czech paper that he hopes Buffon will play until he is 50. Their World Cup match against each other is part of their bond. * * * The subplots are also fascinating in this Baseball World Classic – including the tangled but verifiable ancestries of players, that produces an American named Ty Kelly (with a Jewish mother) playing third base for Israel. (Ken Belson’s stories in the Times have caught the mood perfectly.) Israel won its first four before losing to the Netherlands in the Tokyo Dome on what I think was Monday evening. In their time zone in Israel, Hillel and Mendel, who often comment on this site, have been following Destiny’s Darlings. Hillel Kuttler was interviewed about baseball madness in the Holy Land: https://www.facebook.com/i24newsEN/videos/721330744702264/ While Israel was 4-0, Mendel Horowitz cited great runs by Cleveland and the Cubbies in the World Series, the rally by the Patriots in the Super Bowl, the comeback by Barcelona in the Champions League, and, yes, even the shocking election victory by the candidate-whose-name-shall-not-be-spoken. Israel was hammered, 12-2, on Monday but Horowitz still has his theme: “The Year of the Impossibles.” Who thinks about Casey Stengel these days?
Mets fans should, because he basically invented the Amazin's. Just the other day, a hit rolled into the right-field bullpen and a Braves outfielder flung aside a garbage pail to retrieve the ball -- a garbage pail! -- and I recalled what the Old Man used to say: "Every day in this game of baseball, you see something you never saw before." Still I might have thought history contains all it needs about Stengel, the quintessential figure on all four New York teams – “the Brooklyns,” the Giants, the Yankees, and the Amazing Mets. Casey let a sparrow fly out from his doffed cap as a Dodger; he hit an inside-the-park homer for the Giants in the World Series; he won 10 pennants in 12 years as the Yankee manager; and he managed the Mets for their first four seasons. Now, my friend Marty Appel has found good new stuff about Casey – and his times – in a new book, “Casey Stengel: Baseball’s Greatest Character,” to be published by Doubleday on March 28, just in time for a new season. Appel uncovered some gems about Casey’s childhood in 19th Century Kansas City and his playing career in a Brooklyn so long ago there were no hipsters. He has used computerized libraries and files not available to previous biographers of Stengel, including the late Bob Creamer, a luncheon companion of ours. For example: Appel discovered that the Stengel family lived in the same neighborhood as Charles (Kid) Nichols, a Hall of Fame pitcher who won 361 games from 1890 to 1906. When “Dutch” Stengel was a rambunctious teen-age ball player, the old pitcher advised him to always listen to his managers. “Never say, ‘I won’t do that.,'" Kid Nichols said. "Always listen to him. If you’re not going to do it, don’t tell him so. Let it go in one ear, then let it roll around there for a month, and if it isn’t any good, let it go out the other ear.” This is wonderful advice. I spent a lot of time around Casey from 1962 to 1965 -- in his office and late at night in bars – and I never heard him mention Kid Nichols. But I now know that Kid Nichols helped Casey learn as a player – and teach as a manager. Appel tells a great story (new to me) about a prospect named Mantle, who could run but was slowed down by his habit of looking at the ground. Stengel told Mantle he was no longer playing football in Commerce, Okla., that the major leagues had groundskeepers who created smooth base paths and that he should keep his eye on the ball and the fielders. It made Casey crazy to see blank looks on players. The Old Man also tried to teach “my writers,” in murky soliloquys very late at night. Just when you were about to give up (or doze off) he would grab you with a stubborn paw and say, “Look, you asshole, I’m trying to tell you something.” Appel has learned about Casey’s wife, Edna Lawson Stengel through an unpublished memoir made available by Edna’s niece, Toni Mollett Harsh. Apparently, the Stengels considered themselves too old – in their thirties – to start a family, but they were affectionate toward the wives and children of some of the younger players. (He bought a ginger ale for my oldest child, Laura, in the motel bar in Florida after his managing days. She remembers it vividly.) I learned something else. Appel amends the legend that Stengel’s wealth came through his wife’s family, which owned a bank and businesses in Glendale, Calif. In fact, young Casey paid attention to a teammate from Texas who talked him into buying oil rigs. Casey often barked, “You make your own luck.” Marty Appel reminds us all that Casey Stengel made his own luck. The New Yorker has long been a literary icon but through the odd couple of David Remnick and Donald Trump it has even ratcheted up its importance as a worldwide asset.
Hardly an issue arrives without at least one article about the tentacles of money and power between the United States and Russia and beyond. In the March 6 issue is “Active Measures,” by Evan Osnos, Remnick and Joshua Yaffa, exploring just what Vladimir Putin is up to. At the core is Remnick’s own expertise from his long posting in Moscow. (He started as a young sportswriter, great company at the Olympics.) The March 6 cover is the annual homage to the New Yorker’s dandified mascot, Eustace Tilley, monocle and all, inspecting a yappy butterfly with orange hair. Putin’s normal expressionless face seems to show a trace of amusement: “Who is this strange little fellow?” The March 13 issue has an article by Adam Davidson entitled, “Donald Trump’s Worst Deal,” which could be almost anywhere. In this case it is about Trump sending his entrepreneurial daughter Ivanka-the-Brand to supervise a “luxury” (well, what isn’t?) hotel going up in a grubby corner of Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. This Trumpian deal staggers like Trump’s desperate lunges for success in Russia but in this case some investors are from Iran. The Trump involvement is said to have been terminated in December -- after American voters chose this great American businessman as their president: its obligations and secrets glow like Chernobyl. Literature has not been ignored by the New Yorker. In the past two weeks there have been two magnificent pieces: In the March 6 issue is a short story by Zadie Smith (“Crazy They Call Me,” from the song) imagining the inner voice of Billie Holiday in her final days: every word, every detail, is exquisitely placed, phrase by phrase, leading to the final cry from the soul the reader knew was coming. In the March 13 issue is a poem by Robert Pinsky titled “Branca” -- an ode to the pitcher Ralph Branca who passed recently at 85. Mixing his pitches, the poet refers to Branca’s Calabrian name, his huge family of origin, his instant friendship with Jackie Robinson, and his victimization by enemy spying in the signature moment of his long and admirable life. The New Yorker is best held in the hand, read at leisure as a ritual, early in the work week. In this age, great journalism is being done by the Times and Washington Post on the split second, on the web, and the New Yorker has kept pace. As of Thursday morning I recommend the great Jelani Cobb’s dissection of the latest blathering by Dr. Ben Carson, who equated slavery with immigration. (I have often thought that Carson’s problems with language and reality stem from an infusion of too much anesthesia during the pediatric brain surgery he apparently performed for decades, masterfully. Or, is he doing a Pee-wee Herman imitation?) Cobb, as one would expect, goes beyond my flippancy. The New Yorker also features Roger Angell on the traditions of the magazine, and also occasional pieces on, thank goodness, baseball. * * * I hope these links can be accessed; a subscription to the New Yorker includes full access to the web site. Remnick et al: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/06/trump-putin-and-the-new-cold-war Davidson: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/13/donald-trumps-worst-deal Smith: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/06/crazy-they-call-me Pinsky: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/13/branca Cobb: http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/ben-carson-donald-trump-and-the-misuse-of-american-history?intcid=mod-latest Angell: http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/looking-at-the-field The invitation was an honor – to be interviewed by Randy Cohen on his radio/podcast show, PersonPlaceThing.
Everybody knows Cohen, the original Ethicist in the New York Times magazine, who set such a high bar of being informed, quirky and timely. Now he produces his own show, asking people to discuss their favorite person, place and thing. His invitation included a podcast of his interview with Judy Collins. On the same list as Judy Blue Eyes? Count me in. Cohen’s show took place at the beautiful library in Port Washington, L.I., in front of friends, neighbors and family, facilitated by the ever-personable Jessica Ley. For my choices, I could have gone stone serious but I decided to omit family, religion and politics. Better to go with the first answers that popped into my head – stuff that sustains me, at this stage in my life, outside my deepest ties. Cohen did a great job editing nearly an hour of banter into a tight 25 minutes but I do have a footnote to each category: Person: The tense original first chapter to which I refer is about a confrontation between Confederate soldiers and two teen-age brothers on a road leading to Gettysburg. The famous editor was flat-out wrong to cut it. The author was right. That scene, now restored, sets up the entire novel. Place: I love my adopted home town but I also love my home borough of Queens. Living half an hour east is about as far as I can stand. That helps explain my choice. Thing: Cohen’s subtle editing cut out the fact that he is far more accomplished than I am with my chosen implement. I have immense respect for his weekend jaunts. Nuff said. I’ll be proud if anybody wants to listen and respond in Comments. * * * The link to the show: http://personplacething.org/episode-161-george-vecsey/ The show will also be broadcast in New York on Tuesday at 1:30 PM on WNYE, 91.5 FM, and more broadly Friday night at 10:30 PM across WAMC Northeast Public Radio. You can also download it free at iTunes. I’m having so much fun with spring training baseball, I’m sticking with it. On Friday I watched two of the Mets’ best prospects, Dominic Smith and Amed Rosario, enter an exhibition mid-way and lash hits (off a shell-shocked kid pitcher, to be sure.) They looked so confident -- the way Gary Sanchez did when he arrived with the Yankees during last season. (How nice for them.) This is the stuff of spring training. Some of them are strictly March pheenoms – who’s old enough to remember massive Clint Hartung of the New York Giants a zillion years ago? But sometimes young players are the real thing. Smith plays first base and Rosario plays shortstop. Gary Apple and Ron Darling on SNY-TV were chattering about how both were being groomed for 2018 – but maybe sooner, depending, etc. What baseball fan does not love this kind of talk? It sustains me in March. For the moment, I can even shut out the image of the blundering lout somebody elected president. Go Dominic Smith. Go Amed Rosario. Go Gary Sanchez. * * * We live on a flyway, between two bays. The other morning I went outside and heard honking – hundreds of geese, flying high, moving fast, in a V formation, heading north.
These guys must know something, I thought. And sure enough, the geese were soon followed by ball games, on the radio and on the tube, from a warmer place. Bread and circuses? It’s time for diversion – baseball, even better than the caloric Hershey Kisses being ingested by the very funny Joyce Wadler in her Sunday column in the Times. (You know whom she blames for her chocolate binge: her mom…and Trump.) I got something healthier for you. My email from my friend Big Al said: Yanks-Phils 1 PM on YES. Life begins anew. Big Al is a Yankee fan. What can I say? I found the first Mets game on the radio Friday while idling in the horrendous traffic at LaGuardia Airport. The Mets brought mostly a B squad to Fort Myers, but there was Howie Rose with his haimish accent, straight-from-the-upper-deck-at-Shea. Howie was filling us in on the 11 Mets who will be playing in the Baseball Classic, the world-cup-for-hardball, in March, including Ty Kelly playing for Israel. (Read Hillel Kuttler’s piece: Kelly’s mom is Jewish.) It was delightful to sit in traffic with something important to think about that did not involve mental health and ineptitude and malice – the depth of the Mets’ system that has decent players like Kelly and T.J. Rivera scrambling for spots. Rooting for underdogs is so very baseball, so very New York. Time for a viewing of the 2017 Mets. On Saturday, my pal Gary and I sat in his living room and watched on SNY as the Mets played a home exhibition in 86-degree Port St. Lucie. The first treat was hearing the broadcasters, Gary Cohen and Ron Darling and Keith Hernandez, the familiar banter and expertise. As is only normal we heard about other preoccupations – Seton Hall basketball for Cohen, a delightful 1-year-old son for Darling, and a bad knee that may require replacement for Hernandez. The docs better make sure Hernandez can still scoop up a bunt and fire to third base. But enough about the main act. There was also the undercard -- the 2017 Mets, a work in progress. Lucas Duda was missing because of injections into his aching hips. Jacob DeGrom was sporting a totally hideous mustache that negates his flowing hair and beatific smile. Good old David Wright, in yet another comeback, hit a fly ball and later beamed as he talked about his 1-year-old son. Washington brought along some A-List sluggers, Bryce Harper and Daniel Murphy, and lifer manager Dusty Baker in the dugout, working his toothpick. A moment of terror as the Mets’ Kevin Plawecki had his knee put into reverse in a home-plate collision, followed by at least a dozen horrifying replays and relieved applause as he hobbled off the field, (Update: x-rays negative, better than could have been imagined.) The broadcasters did what they do best. They digressed, about the new rule that allows an automatic base on balls. Darling pronounced it “nothing.” Better they install a time clock for pitchers. Hernandez and Darling bickered over the use of colored grease pens for cast-of-thousands exhibitions. Cohen presided with a paternal sigh. My pal and I watched the entire three-hour marathon. The players. The manager and coaches. The broadcasters. The fans – no politics in evidence – watching the long game. Life under the flyway, enjoying the first honks of spring. |
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