 You can hold it and read it. Grow old together. Things are in the saddle/ And ride mankind. – Ralph Waldo Emerson Salinger is going digital. I read it in the Times. This makes it possible to read the late and reclusive author on your device of choice, flicking words and sentences and paragraphs that the master put down on paper. Perhaps this is progress, or perhaps not, depending on the reliability (the planned obsolescence, the health of the battery) of your particular device. I say this with the cynicism of somebody who manages smartphones and laptops and TV remotes with perhaps better-than-average skill for somebody in my age group (that is to say, old.) I mean, I assemble this little therapy website. Lately I have spent far more time than I ever could have imagined in the clean, well-lighted Apple place where they administer what I have come to consider electronic methadone. There’s always something. As Salinger goes digital, here are two of my most recent adventures with gadgets: 1. I recently bought an iPhone 8 when my 6-Plus reached obsolescence, just as, I am sure, Apple intended. (It’s not the instruments, they tell you with a straight face, it’s the upgraded programs.) The adjustment has been easier than I expected, and there is one fascinating new feature involving robocalls, the price we pay for having a smartphone. I’ve learned not to answer when I see numbers not already linked in my Contacts. This way I avoid conversations with “Billy” or “Betty” in some call center in India. To my fascination, the new iPhone 8 categorizes unknown callers. Potential Fraud. (Casey Stengel called some of his early Mets “frauds.” Nothing personal. They just couldn’t play.) Potential Spam. (What a wonderful term – reminds an oldster of the vaguely meat product we ate during World War Two.) Unknown Name (Thanks for the warning.) Wireless Caller: (Could be just about anybody.) They all get banished to incoming Limbo. 2. The down side of technology is, of course, that stuff doesn’t work. Back in the dark ages, that is to say, 2012, my wife obtained a Kindle device for storing books. A family member gave her a few books about Turkey for our upcoming trip (that turned out to be epic.) But then we didn’t use the Kindle for years. The other day we found it on a shelf, and opened it, and I read the first few chapters of “Istanbul: Memories and the City,” by Orhan Pamuk, who has become one of my favorite (contemporary) writers. Then I got the bright idea of recharging the device. I used the proper plug but it all went dead. I had no booklet of instructions so I went on line and read about the sudden mortalities of Kindles, how they just stop working. From reading the wisdom of consumer-survivors, I determined that you first try re-booting it, and then give it a sharp smack with your hand, If that low-tech stuff doesn't work, and you possess the skills of a cat burglar, then you buy a little kit, pry the case apart, make your own repairs and replace the battery. Or, you “find someone” who repairs Kindles. Unless, of course, the “motherboard” (whatever that is) goes. Then it’s over. Go buy a new one, sucker. The great maw of Kindles has swallowed our few Turkey books, but my wife came up with a great solution – books, with pages and covers. Our house is full of books, plus, they just may be making a comeback against the novelty of gadgets that depend on batteries and kits and motherboards. Plus, in my town of Port Washington, L.I., we have have the Dolphin Bookshop, right near Manhasset Bay, and a few blocks up the hill we have the Port Washington Public Library (with a reading room overlooking the aforementioned bay.) The library is connected to a consortium that delivers books from libraries all over Long Island. The defunct Kindle? One more gadget to toss at the next electronic cleanup at the town dump. Holden Caulfield would not be surprised.
 Then there's this. A book and a library. Kids, it's the latest thing,
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(I wrote the following Mets/Democrats piece before the horrors of last weekend, and the ensuing hypocrisy in a country that cannot deal with the proliferation of weapons of war, in the hands of racists, surely touched off by the president. Is there room or excuse for musing about reality-show "debates" and a baseball team?)
* * * I am a Mets fan and I am a Democrat. I believe these masochistic traits are linked. The Mets, as I typed this, were on a seven-game winning streak. I was not fooled. This will not go anywhere. The rock will fall down the hill. On our heads. And indeed, they got whacked Friday night in Pittsburgh. The Democrats are currently not on any kind of winning streak. You saw it. Both loyalties involve short Dionysian moments of glory and long Appollonian decades of suffering. In other words, the 1969 Mets were John F. Kennedy and the 1986 Mets were Barack Obama. This temporary joy goes way back. In the first year of the Mets, 1962, a pitcher named Jay Hook, great guy, pitched a good game and likened it to picking cherries – some are sour, but then you bite into a sweet cherry, and that keeps you going. In the years to follow, the Mets discarded Nolan Ryan and Amos Otis and Tom Seaver and Justin Turner. They once traded Len Dykstra and Roger McDowell for a mope named Juan Samuel. At the moment, the Mets are being run by a reforming agent and a former pitching coach. Somehow management avoided the Metsian impulse to blow it all up and start over. At the trading deadline, they kept their good pitchers and have won seven straight. I do not expect it to last. I was prepared to suffer with the Mets by a childhood rooting for the Brooklyn Dodgers, who signed Jackie Robinson in 1947. They did the right thing. I was also raised to believe the Democrats tried to take care of people. They did the right thing. Now the Dems are trying to find a candidate who can beat The Worst Person in the World. They paraded 20 candidates on stage on Tuesday and Wednesday, like some laboratory experiment involving small furry animals, who immediately set upon each other with teeth and claws. The worst thing was watching some young wannabes whacking away at old Joe Biden, fair enough, but then linking it to the Obama regime, which I found offensive and self-defeating. I could not tell how much of that act was posturing and how much was real. It was horrible to watch, but I watched, because…because….I am also a Mets fan. I know how to suffer. Okay, it was summer TV fare. You know how icky summer TV is. It did not count. It did not happen. (I was relieved to see that the entire country – everybody! – reacts to Mayor de Blasio the way New Yorkers do.) My main reaction to this summer reality show is that I like Mayor Pete (“He ain’t failed yet,” as Casey Stengel used to say about The Youth of America, that is, young hopefuls) and that Elizabeth Warren is the most knowledgeable and most passionate candidate. She is 70 and has the energy of a 45-year-old. She is from Oklahoma and has experienced deprivation. And as somebody wrote in a letter to the NYT today, if Trump stalks Warren on stage the way he did to Hillary Clinton, Warren has the street smarts, the sense of self, to point to his corner of the stage and say, “Down, boy,” or worse. But one thing I have learned in a life of noble causes: stuff happens.
I learned something very nice today. We were listening to NPR and heard about a young woman who has chosen innovative treatment for sickle-cell anemia. The hopeful procedure is about to take place in Nashville, America’s new hot destination town, in the Sarah Cannon Research Institute. Sarah Cannon. Long ago, several times, I met a wise and mannered lady of Nashville named Sarah Ophelia Colley Cannon. People on the Grand Ole Opry knew her as Minnie Pearl, who bustled onto the stage with a country dress and a straw hat with a price tag always hanging from the brim, and the familiar greeting of, “How-DEEEEEEE!” She was a novelty act – a comedienne, not a singer, not a picker, not a looker in that outfit – but also a mainstay of the Opry. Others came and went but Minnie Pearl and Roy Acuff were almost always there, with a presence that spoke of the establishment. Many of her fans knew she had a degree (a rarity for women, in her youth) from Ward Belmont College (Now Belmont University) and was one of the grand ladies of Nashville. But on Saturday evening they wanted to see and hear her bumpkin persona, lamenting how she could never attract “a feller.” One time I met her was in 1975, at the Nashville premiere of Robert Altman’s movie, “Nashville.” A lot of the in-crowd was bad-mouthing the movie as making fun of the Opry, but a few people seemed to see the vision and art of the movie. Dotty West, redhead and singer, told me, “It's not a put-down. It's a fine picture, and I'm looking forward to seeing it again.” And Mrs. Cannon gave me a tactful quote: “very interesting—maybe I'm too close to Nashville—this is my home, my family—I can't make a judgment now.” I thought she was letting me know that she got it. I knew Mrs. Cannon had passed but did not know the details until today, when I looked up her connection to the hospital. It turns out she had undergone a double mastectomy in the mid ‘80’s, and had a stroke in 1991, and died in a nursing home in 1996, at the age of 83. At some point her name was on the hospital, now part of a broader chain of hospitals, most in the border-state region. Now, at the Sarah Cannon Research Institute in Music City, a young woman seeks relief from a crippling and murderous condition that disproportionately affects African-Americans. Victoria Gray, 34, from Forest, Miss., is at the Sarah Cannon institute, having volunteered for the gene-editing CRISPR technique to treat a genetic disorder. "It's a good time to get healed," Ms. Gray told NPR in an exclusive interview, noting that she cannot move her arms. The interview did not identify Sarah Cannon as the grand old face of the Grand Ole Opry, but I recognized her name. I want to add that I always loved being around the Opry, and that I am delighted, in a very ugly time (and that is all I am saying; you know what I mean), Mrs. Cannon’s life is being used to bring hope to people who suffer from this horrible condition. As Ms. Gray is being treated in Music City, may she hear a word of earthly healing: “How-DEEEEEEE!” NPR article: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/07/29/744826505/sickle-cell-patient-reveals-why-she-is-volunteering-for-landmark-gene-editing-st Sarah Cannon Research Institute: https://sarahcannon.com/about/index.dot Sickle-cell anemia: https://news.nnlm.gov/scr/sickle-cell-anemia-predominant-among-african-americans/ Bio of Sarah Ophelia Colley Cannon: https://www.vacationsmadeeasy.com/NashvilleTN/articles/MinniePearlBiography.cfm My article about Nashville’s reception for the Altman movie in 1975 https://www.nytimes.com/1975/08/10/archives/nashville-has-mixed-feeling-an-nashville.html?searchResultPosition=1  Victoria Gray. Photo by Meredith Rizzo/NPR  Still my go-to cup No reason to give up my cup, a gift from last December. No, I did not smash it with a hammer or shatter it against the kitchen wall. We watched the hearings Wednesday to see if anything had changed, and nothing had. Robert Mueller was not going to tell us what to do. He is a prosecutor, not a politician, and, bless the difference. Mueller was going to leave it up to Congress, and the people, which is too bad, but that’s all there is. I still have the image of Mueller as the Marine officer, taking a bullet in the thigh in Vietnam while leading his platoon. He serves his country, still. He is more than a veteran prosecutor. Robert Mueller is a concept, an ideal -- Paul Revere riding through Massachusetts, warning “The Russians are coming! Hell, the Russians are here! -- and they have a friend in a high place." He did that again on Wednesday and, instead of the Vietcong taking potshots at him, he faced some distempered legislators who seemed offended at being thusly warned. I give the Democrats this much credit: they actually planned their questions. I am sure the Democratic elders had been shamed by rookie legislators like Katie Porter and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who asked informed questions in recent hearings rather than make self-serving speeches like most mossbunker legislators of both parties. Mueller was generally inscrutable, just getting through the day –his plan for his 89th and 90th visits to Congress, and with any luck at all, his last. Mueller clearly was not going to deliver an “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” rant. Through the eyes of somebody half a decade older than he (that is to say, me), he looked like I felt – he needed a nap. So I took one. After a day of reflection, I wonder, even more strongly, if there should be some self-imposed limit, whether elders like Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders should try to “run the country,” as the cliché goes, for the next four years. I also look at the disturbed old man now currently the President, his already meager brain cells obviously crammed with memories of being a reality TV star for the millions, plus the fat from a zillion Big Macs. Incoming senility – or fast-food grease – or malicious intent -- or some toxic combination? (Elizabeth Warren turned 70 on June 22, but she clearly has the physical and psychic and mental energy of a 50-year-old, plus she has done her homework. She knows stuff. Every case is different.) Meantime, the septuagenarian Robert Mueller delivered a warning that the Russians are coming. Most of the country is on vacation, watching videos on smartphones or summer movie sequels, clearly not reading newspapers, much less 444-page reports (mea culpa on that one.) Robert Mueller has tried. Whatever happens next, not his fault. He is an American hero, and in my mind remains one.  Paul Moses quotes Horton the Elephant (by Dr. Seuss) to stress the Semper-Fi values of Robert Mueller.
Please see the follow essay from Common-weal Magazine: www.commonwealmagazine.org/i-said-what-i-meant  How come Armstrong and Aldrin could walk on the moon but the Mets cannot collaborate on a simple popup to short left field? Fortunately, the Mets were in Montreal that weekend in 1969, and could not botch up the lunar landing. Fully knowing what would happen,
I, Tiresias, weary prophet Stayed up late To watch. Jacob DeGrom, Latter-day Sisyphus, Pushed rock up hill, Expertly, seven innings. Did he know? Probably. No runs. No runs, ever. The human condition. I loved the glimpses of The City. Cable car. Bridge. Bay. The color orange. Blankets. Parkas. I almost never miss anything from my former life. But last night I felt a twinge: “I used to go there.” Beyond my bedtime, I waited for the inevitable. And there it was. Left fielder and shortstop, Back to 1962. Only one person I could count on being up. I texted my friend Wakefield In the Bay Area Who pitched for the Mets in 1964. Studied Casey. Stanford guy. Probably took a course In Greek myths. Was he there last night? “Left field,” he texted back, Citing the legend of 1962, "Yo La Tengo," When original Mets Botched a similar play With similar results. By now, We have seen it all. Old fans. Old writers. Old players. But still we watch. What does it say About us? * * * The legend of Yo La Tengo: http://phillysportshistory.com/2011/05/21/richie-ashburn-is-the-inspiration-for-the-band-name-yo-la-tengo/ Tiresias: I refer to The Waste Land: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47311/the-waste-land Bill Wakefield’s Baseball Stats: https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/w/wakefbi01.shtml Very nice article by Deesha Thosar in NY Daily New: https://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/mets/ny-jacob-degrom-dom-smith-20190720-36oevoexyfd3vb4r4fldva3yby-story.html  Bob Gibson is fighting pancreatic cancer – “fighting” being the operative word. Everybody knows Gibson’s combative posture as the best right-handed pitcher in the universe, starting in 1964. I was lucky enough to be present when Gibson morphed from very good pitcher to legend, in 22 epic days at the end of that season. He had been underestimated by his first manager, Solly Hemus, who had lost his black players by using a racial taunt on an opponent in 1960. Gibson was still very much a work in progress after Hemus was canned in 1961, replaced by Johnny Keane, who reminded me of the kindly commanding officer, Col. Potter, in the classic series, “M*A*S*H.” After mid-season of 1964, Gibson pitched eight straight complete games – a statistic that probably would blow out the computers of today’s analytics gurus giving orders to managers from the laboratory. Yes, kids, really good pitchers really did finish a lot of games, back in the day. As the Phillies started to fold, the Cardinals and Reds put on a run. On Sept. 24, Gibson lost a complete game in Pittsburgh. On Sept. 28, he beat the Phillies, going 8 innings. On Oct. 2, with the Cardinals in first place on the last Friday of the season, Gibson lost, 1-0, to the lowly Mets as Alvin Jackson pitched the game of his life. Then on a very nervous Oct. 4, Gibson pitched 4 innings in relief, gave up two runs, but was the winning pitcher, as the Cardinals won their first pennant since 1946. I can still see him on the stairs to the players-only loft. “Hoot, how’s your arm?” a reporter asked, using the nickname from the movie cowboy. “Horseshit!” Gibson bellowed. Then he was gone, up the stairs. When Manager Keane gave his pennant-winning media conference, somebody asked why he went so often with a certifiably fatigued pitcher. “I had a commitment to his heart,” Keane said softly. Those words gave me a chill as Keane spoke them; they remain one of the great tributes I have ever heard from a manager or coach. Keane’s faith, his shrewd understanding of the man, helped Gibson demolish the stereotype that many black players had to overcome. Gibson then started the second game of the Series (8 innings, lost to Jim Bouton), won the fifth game in 10 innings) and the seventh game in 9 innings to win the championship. He had pitched 56 innings in 22 days, becoming a superstar after some delay, just as Sandy Koufax had done earlier. In over 70 years as fan and reporter and now fan again, I will take the two of them over any lefty-righty pair you want. Gibson never put away his testy edge. He was rough on rookies, rough on his own catchers and pitching coaches who trudged out to the mound to counsel him. (“You don’t know anything about pitching, except you can’t hit it,” he told Tim McCarver, who has relished that taunt ever since.) He did not observe the fraternity of ball players, even chatty types like Ron Fairly of the Dodgers. One time Fairly stroked a couple of hits off Gibson, who then hit a single of his own. But Fairly made the mistake of engaging Gibson in a collegial way. I always heard that Fairly praised Gibson for his hitting prowess, but Gibson insisted Fairly had raved about Gibson’s stuff and wondered how he had possibly made two hits off him. Either way, Gibson glared at Fairly. Didn’t say a word. Next time up, Fairly observed Gibson, glowering on the mound, and mused to the catcher, Joe Torre, that he did not think he was going to enjoy this at-bat, was he? Torre wasn’t going to lie about it; he just watched as Fairly took one in the ribs. That is Gibson. Don’t mess with him. Torre later brought Gibson to the Mets as his “attitude coach,” as if you can coach attitude. Gibson remains competitive. A decade or so ago, he and Reggie Jackson collaborated on a nice book about the age-old yin/yang of pitcher/hitter. They met me for a power breakfast in New York to discuss their book, and it went fine until near the end. Working on a book on Stan Musial, I asked Gibson if I could ask one question about Stan the Man. “Absolutely not,” Gibson snapped. He and Musial had the same agent, and he knew Musial, long in retirement and otherwise friendly, had put out a fatwa against friends and family discussing him with writers. Gibson’s abruptness caused Reggie to nearly choke on his bagel as he tried not to laugh. Classic Gibson. This is the guy who is going to fight a nasty disease. Knock it on its ass, Hoot. * * * Bob Gibson's career stats: https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/g/gibsobo01.shtml (Below: video of Christopher Russo interviewing Gibson (Reggie in background) about the friendly little incident with Fairly.)  Four members of Congress; Not Trump's kind Even after King’s assassination and Angelou’s poetry and eight years of an idealistic, educated family in the White House, it never went away.
It festered under the rocks, all over America, and then, like some super-microbe, it reasserted itself in 2016 with the affirmation of essentially half a country. Now racism has its spokesman, its hero, speaking things that have been gathering in all corners of this diverse country, things people of color (my friends, my relatives) hear and feel every day: why don’t they go back where they came from? This sentiment generally refers to people of color, people who are “different,” people who speak out. The Other. Now they have their man, looking to weed out all those who don’t fit into the white mold. It’s been there all along. You can see it in the smug nods of the White Citizens Council that gathers behind the Grand Kleagle himself, Mitch McConnell, in the halls of the Senate. Now President Donald J. Trump has blurted it out, perhaps to the consternation of his backers, who prefer to do it by degrees, by gerrymandering, with the assent of the Supreme Court. Goodness gracious, even servile Lindsey Graham, lost without John McCain, has urged Trump to “aim higher” while essentially agreeing with Trump. Trump and his stubby little tweeting fingers let it fly on Sunday, the rant of a bigot who needs a minder, wishing that four women – of course, women, it seems to me that he hates women – of “different” backgrounds, urging them to go back where they came from. Except, of course, three of them were born in the United States, and all of them have succeeded admirably in this country which allegedly rewards strivers. But only if you’re Our Kind. There is no need to insert the quotes here, it’s all out there. The president wants to deport Latino immigrants without the right papers, but he also wants to deport, psychologically at least, people who are different, “troublemakers” (as the Chinese call dissidents), even elected representatives who are challenging their own Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. Trump is speaking to his base, which seems to think the economy is going great -- for them, and that is all that matters. He is betting that the Supreme Court and the McConnells and the state legislatures will give his party – his race – an edge in 2020. And he is willing to play the race card, out in the open, knowing he has support, a lot of support. Speaking of deporting – go back where you came from – it is worth remembering that Trump’s grandfather, one Friedrich Trump, left Bavaria and wound up in Seattle, apparently running restaurants and hotels and maybe even brothels. When that earlier Trump went back to Bavaria and sought to resume his citizenship, they deported him because he had avoided military service – a perfect example of rampaging genetics, come to think of it. Friedrich Trump groveled to the prince: “Most Serene, Most Powerful Prince Regent! Most Gracious Regent and Lord!” And he concluded his plea: “Why should we be deported? This is very, very hard for a family. What will our fellow citizens think if honest subjects are faced with such a decree — not to mention the great material losses it would incur. I would like to become a Bavarian citizen again.” In Bavaria, they told Friedrich Trump: go back where you came from, so he wound up in Queens, New York, and his son, Fred Trump, was soon keeping black people out of his apartment buildings, on his way to shielding his revenue from taxes, to pass on to his children (one of them a judge; only in America.) Now the grandson tells four duly elected members of Congress to go back where they came from, his rant based on racism. He has touched off a storm, but Trump has an audience. It never went away. * * * (The reaction to Trump’s racist bleat on Sunday) https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/14/us/politics/trump-twitter-squad-congress.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage (The deportation of Friedrich Trump) https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-grandfather-germany-letter-deportation-us-bavaria-dreamers-a7903071.html https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2019-07-15/the-latest-trump-renews-attacks-on-4-congresswomen (Even Lindsey Graham urges Trump to aim higher) https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2019-07-15/the-latest-trump-renews-attacks-on-4-congresswomen  Hey, kids, don't emulate Jeff McNeil with the analytics people watching. New York City will clean up the tickertape from the parade for the soccer champions on Wednesday. But who will clean up the Mets? This is the lament of a Mets fan facing the dog days of summer – jealous as hell about the Yankees’ talented young players starting with that nice Aaron Judge, but not able to switch allegiances. For a Mets’ fan, what is there? More than half the major-league teams stink, either through ineptitude or lack of money, and the Mets would seem to suffer from both. They are now going to divest themselves of some players who were supposed to be part of a contending team this season. Now begins the ugly dance of summer for bad franchises – when players get sent away. The Mets’ TV caught Zack Wheeler skulking in a corner of the dugout the other day, and the knowing commentary was that he might be making his last start as a Met last Sunday (which turned out to be a stinker, surprise, surprise.) So what does a fan have left? As a Mets fan in my certified old age, I go on line daily to read the New York Post’s fine sports section to find out what is happening with the Mets. But some things a fan can figure out for oneself. The closest thing to “fun” for the rest of this season could be Jeff McNeil winning the batting title He is currently leading the league with .349, despite the Mets’ brain trust having hoped he would be crowded off the roster by opening day. If Jed Lowrie – 35 years old, career average .262 – had not suffered some kind of lingering injury (it really doesn’t matter), my feeling is the Mets would have been playing him ahead of McNeil. Even so, McNeil has been banished from his best defensive position, second base, currently deeded to the ghost of Robinson Canó, trying to come back after a suspension for a performance-enhancing drug. McNeil’s skills are throwbacks to another era – that is to say, Tony Gwynn or Wade Boggs, hitters who knew how to stroke a pitched ball to a vacant patch of fair territory. This conflicts with the analytics promoted by techies in a dark room somewhere in New Shea Stadium. Launch Arc! The techies insist. And the Mets’ management seems to go along. The general manager is a reforming agent named Brodie Van Wagenen, who apparently tossed a chair to demonstrate his manly-man qualities during a post-game tirade with his coaching staff. And the manager is Mickey Callaway, emphatically not from this franchise, who makes me appreciate, more every day, the old-school style of Terry Collins. What do Mets’ fans have? The Post’s Joel Sherman praises management for allowing Pete Alonso to make the team on opening day rather than tying him up in the minors to keep a legal hold on him for another season. Alonso won the home-run derby and drove in two runs in the All-Star Game and has 30 homers this season. Sherman compares Alonso’s run with Jeremy Lin’s short, furious spurt with the Knicks a few years ago. He calls Alonso “a rose floating in sewage.” Jacob DeGrom is looking more and more grim as he faces years of pitching six great innings and watching the bullpen blow it. And Jeff McNeil, reviving an unwanted art, is hitting it where they ain’t, as Wee Willie Keeler exemplified more than a century ago. The Mets also have Gary, Keith and Ron in the TV booth. Their informed excellence makes it hard for me to watch network baseball. That’s it. The dog days. Where have you gone, Megan Rapinoe?   Up on that little championship stage were the soccer champions from the United States, who had just won the World Cup on the field, with skill and resolve. These champions are the products of the Title IX of the Education Amendment of 1972, which required schools and colleges receiving federal money to provide the same opportunities for girls as they did for boys. Since everybody gets money from the dreaded meddling federal government, this was a boost for young women to play sports, just as young men do in this country. That act changed life for young women, who took gym class, if there were any, in floppy gym outfits, with no game uniforms or gym time or teams or schedules, and no challenges. Without Title IX, there would have been no Megan Rapinoe and Rose Lavelle coming back from hamstring twinges to score goals in the 2-0 victory over the Netherlands. There would have been no Alex Morgan and Tobin Heath bedeviling the very able Dutch keeper, no Alyssa Naeher guarding the goal, no trio of big-timers racing in as substitutes late in the match. Title IX created a dynasty, dominating the world’s favorite sport – charismatic players, getting better all the time, and just as important, a goad to the more progressive nations in Europe to keep going with their women’s programs. This wonderful World Cup (in the great French city of Lyon) seemed to capture even more of the American attention. They are America’s great national team, ongoing. None of these raves are meant to shame the American men’s soccer program, which draws from a vastly smaller portion of the population, given the deserved popularity of great team sports like basketball, baseball, hockey, lacrosse and, while negative medical evidence keeps pouring in, American football. In a rare double-dip of championship games, the current American men’s squad played Mexico Sunday evening in the finals of the Gold Cup, an odd-year regional competition. For a while, early in this century, it appeared the U.S. was catching up in soccer, given some epic matches in recent World Cups – the dos-a-cero thumping they put on Mexico in the 2002 round of 16, the last-moment rally against Algeria in 2010, Tim Howard’s epic game in goal against Portugal in 2014. But the U.S. could not even qualify for the 2018 World Cup. On Sunday evening, in the awesome setting of Soldier Field of Chicago's lakefront, fans of both teams gathered with costumes and chants. The Americans looked like an upgrade under new coach Gregg Berhalter, and dominated the first 15-20 minutes, but then Mexico asserted itself and finally scored in the 73rd minute, which, as the Fox announcer said as the ball went into the nets, had been coming on for a while. Uno a cero somehow felt even worse. Where are great young American athletes like the ones currently playing in the summer rookie league of the N.B.A? Could the U.S. soccer federation do better about developing Latino talent and African-American players like one of my all-time favorites, DaMarcus Beasley, who happened to top out at 5 feet, 8 inches? Don’t hold your breath. The American women's program has such a wider reach for talented athletes who have played scholastic and college soccer. One of the best U.S. players on Sunday was Crystal Dunn, who plays attack for her club but had been a quiet, stay-at-home left back (Beasley’s best position) until Sunday, when the plan seemed to have her moving forward, attacking, diverting, and then rushing back to guard her lane. Title IX has made many contributions in education and life itself; on Sunday there was a stage full of the best and the brightest – Title IX’s daughters. NYT article about Title IX legacy: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/health/16well.html * * * My previous articles on WWC 2019: There are other players worth watching in this Women’s World Cup, not just the American captain with the pink hair. Megan Rapinoe sat out the 2-1 victory over England on Tuesday with a hamstring injury, but the high level of soccer continued, from both teams. The details of the match are known – Alyssa Naeher, the American keeper, saved a penalty kick in the 84th minute -- but the overall impression of the match is worth discussing: women’s soccer has reached a new level. Tuesday’s match saw both sides make outlet passes to the exact right place on the field and the teammate would advance the ball in the third leg of the triangle. The skill level and the tactical level have come so far from the early days. I have great admiration for the stalwarts from China, Norway, Germany, Brazil, Japan and the United States who dominated the first three or four World Cups, starting in 1991 in China. They were great days, and I relish the memories of Linda Medalen of Norway and Michelle Akers of the U.S. and the others. But it seems to me that many players today have physical and technical skills beyond that first wave. I watched Wéndèleine Thérèse Renard of France, the tallest player in this World Cup, at 6-foot-1, moving up from left back to flick in a header. The common wisdom was that the loss to the U.S. should have been the final. Then came Tuesday’s match between England and the U.S., two tough teams, with good moves and nasty little tricks. That could have been a final, too. England’s Ellen White, rangy and physical, scored a goal, had another disallowed, and then was whacked for a penalty kick, which a teammate took, a feeble effort, saved by Naeher, diving the right way. When last seen, White was teary-eyed but applauding the English fans in far corners of the Stade de Lyon – a warrior, in the tradition of Linda Medalen, Oslo cop. The U.S. team played well together, not seeming to miss its captain, who takes the free kicks and penalty kicks. The American players were excellent but the team cohesion was even better than the individuals. Some male fans used to scoff at the heart and charisma of the female champs of the ‘90s, saying the women were too slow, too small, to even be compared to male World Cup level. But as my college-age grandson – a soccer maven – texted me the other day, “The women’s game is way closer to the men’s than many would give it credit for.” This was apparent in Tuesday’s semifinal. It is another age (Tuesday's game blog and early story in NYT:) https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/02/sports/soccer/usa-vs-england-score.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage (Below: my ode to Megan Rapinoe, who sat this one out, plus comments, including several by Alan Rubin, former college keeper, now a mentor to keepers. His insights into Naeher are valuable: )  Some athletes just get to you.
They blend physical ability and skill…and attitude. We’ve all got our favorites. I’ve been a fan of Megan Rapinoe since she materialized on the U.S. women’s soccer team in 2011, not quite a regular because of her quirkiness, which is part of her charm. At first, I described her as a “loose cannon” and wondered why the Swedish-born U.S. coach, Pia Sundhage, stayed with her. A reader emailed me to describe her as “a wood elf.” That, too. I could not take my eyes off her because…you never knew. Then, in a quarterfinal against Brazil, trailing in the 122nd minute, Rapinoe unleashed a laser directly to the hard head of Abby Wambach, for the tying goal that helped send the U.S. to the finals against Japan (which they would lose.) By now, it was clear, to Sundhage (herself a piece of work), to the U.S. players, to fans, and to me, that Rapinoe was one of those players you had to watch, even when she was acting impetuously, making a bad pass or an unnecessary dribble, because….you never knew. These days, Rapinoe is the captain of the U.S. with hair dyed the color of pink Champagne, the captain who does not put her hand over her heart or sing the National Anthem as a gesture to many causes. She has attracted the criticism of the American president who shrinks and titters in the presence of the menacing Putin. Tough guy. The criticism doesn’t seem to bother Rapinoe, although she can be thrown off her game. I was watching her during the round-of-16 match against Spain last week. She converted an early penalty kick and then she kept trying to crack the Spanish right back, Marta Corredera, a 27-year-old pro who was having none of it. Corredera jostled Rapinoe time after time, and Rapinoe kept trying, while the rest of the U.S. offense went dormant. The U.S. captain had, to use a technical soccer term, lost her mind. It got so bad that when Corredera stopped her yet again, Rapinoe lost her balance and her hand just happened to smack Corredera across the face, purely an accident, you understand, but the ref gave her a yellow card just the same, meaning Rapinoe now had to be cautious for the rest of the match, and beyond. It shook Rapinoe so much that she converted another penalty kick late in the match to nail it down. (Alex Morgan had been in position to take the PK but the captain took it, after a pause for a video review.) Then on Friday, Rapinoe whacked a free kick, a grass-skimmer through the legs of the sturdy French defense and under the hands of the keeper for yet another early U.S. goal. Then she ran to an American section and saluted the fans with both hands in operatic fashion, like a Roman warrior home from the front. Late in the game she made an enlightened run from the left as the lethal Tobin Heath (a great dribbler and one of the most undersung U.S. players) fired the ball across the middle and Rapinoe drilled another goal. So that’s why I love to watch Megan Rapinoe. Her gracefulness reminds me of the late Jana Novotna, a ballerina masquerading as a tennis player. And her fire and intelligence and skill remind me of Martina Navratilova, who has become one of the great voices in sport, and beyond. On Tuesday at 3 PM, the U.S. plays England in a semifinal. I’ll be watching Megan Rapinoe, roaming the left side, looking for her chance. * * * My NYT blog on Rapinoe’s game-saving pass in 2011: https://goal.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/11/one-play-erases-doubts-about-a-coach/?searchResultPosition=2 More on Sundhage/Rapinoe: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/10/sports/soccer/for-pia-sundhage-swedens-itinerant-coach-its-old-home-week.html?searchResultPosition=7 2019: Rapinoe attracts Trump's flighty attention: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/27/sports/megan-rapinoe-trump-world-cup.htm  It's amazing what you can find on line, from people you don't even know, who are updating ancestry information. New information pops up, virtually day by day.
My wife and I were discussing her ongoing genealogy research of her maternal ancestors in Lancashire, England – so many relatives with the same names, from century to century. People with the same first and last names pop up in Manchester....or Liverpool....or Rhode Island....or Baltimore....or Kentucky.....or Australia....and some of them even back to England. She also researched my mother’s ancestry, in the same region -- centuries of women named Mary and Jane and Elizabeth (right out of the 16th Century history books) plus men named John and James and George. No direct links between families, at least not yet. We agreed there could be a play about the overlapping of the centuries – when suddenly we remembered that just such a play has already been written. “Stoppard!” one said. “Arcadia!” the other said. I refreshed my memory about "Arcadia," and the first thing I noticed was that the playwright, Tom Stoppard (Born Tomás Straüssler on July 3, 1937 in Zlín, Czechoslovakia) is having a birthday soon. Happy birthday, with thanks for one of the most beautiful evenings we have ever spent in the theater. It was July of 1993, and I was not scheduled to write at Wimbledon that day, so I started to duck out of the press tribune around 5, only to hear the cutting tones of my beloved colleague, Robin Finn, alerting the entire press crew: “So, Giorgio, the Missus has theater tickets tonight, huh?” Well, yes. Marianne had picked up tickets for the Stoppard play at the National Theatre on the South Bank, our favorite place in London, or maybe the world. Very often, she would see two plays in one day. This night we watched a play about a country estate in Derbyshire in 1809, where a man is tutoring his precocious charge, just entering her teens. The plot is complicated – Stoppard’s always are – but the main theme is about the maintenance of the mansion; to change or not to change? The action shifts to 1990 or so, when other humans are discussing the very same country estate. (Makes you think there just might always be an England, despite its “leaders.”) The centuries rock against each other like tectonic plates but the twains do not meet until – spoiler alert – the very last scene, when the two generations mingle on the stage. Stoppard can be highly intellectual and abstract, but suddenly my eyes were gushing, tears from nowhere. This is the best thing the theater can do – bring you to your knees, in emotion. My fine drama teachers at Hofstra taught us about “catharsis” – from the Greek, the cleansing, the purging. “Arcadia” made us think and feel deeply. In 2009, The Independent asked if Arcadia was the “greatest play of our age.” One review described “Arcadia” as “a serious comedy about science, sex and landscape gardening.” I also remember a murder mystery and physics mixed in. My best to you, sir. Perhaps you are writing? * * * More about “Arcadia:” https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/features/is-tom-stoppards-arcadia-the-greatest-play-of-our-age-1688852.html https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/1993/apr/18/features.review7 https://literature.britishcouncil.org/writer/tom-stoppard  The 1960 Hofstra College baseball team had the best record in school history – 16 victories, 3 losses, winning the league championship. However, the school did not participate in the NCAA regionals that year because of final exams. Because of final exams. That’s what I said. They were my friends and I felt their pain, then and now. You know what old Brooklyn Dodger fans (like me) used to say every fall? Wait til next year! For Hofstra, this was Next Year. But the athletic department somehow could not arrange for the players to take their exams and play in the regionals, something schools do regularly in these electronic days. Stuart Rabinowitz, the current president of Hofstra University, told the audience that if he had been president back then, he would have fired somebody. On Monday night, the school did right by the baseball team. Eight old players were present as the team was inducted into the Hofstra Athletic Hall of Fame. The bureaucratic bungling, 59 years ago, capped off a year of frustration for our great sports teams. The football team went 9-0 but was not invited to a bowl game. The basketball team went 23-1 but was not invited to a tournament.  John Ayres, Andy Muccillo, Jerry Rosenthal, Dennis D'Oca. Muccillo was also on football team that won all 9 games but was not invited to a bowl game. These players won the Met Conference, a great league of local rivals like Manhattan, NYU, Brooklyn, CCNY, Wagner and St. John’s. For three years I was the student publicist, traveling with the team on the silver Campus Coach charters, sitting on the bench in civilian clothes, sometimes yapping at the other team or the umps. Our biggest rivals, our major tormentor, St. John’s, acknowledged this lowly scorekeeper with the taunt: “Shut up, Pencil!” The coach was Jack Smith, who had held the football and basketball programs together during WWII – and was still coaching baseball during our time. The players mimicked his New England accent, his old-timey ways, his expressions like “Son, son, you’re eating yourself out of the league.” But Mr. Smith loved the game. In 1960 I was hired full-time by Newsday and had other assignments that spring. What I missed! This team did not lack for stars. Five players made the Met Conference all-star team:Lefty Dennis D’Oca had a 9-0 record with an earned-run average of 1.84 – one of the best in the country.  Dennis D'Oca, President Stuart Rabinowitz and Jay Wright Ed Burfeindt was a smooth center fielder, known for timely hits. Jerry Rosenthal took a pitch over the eye in 1958 – I saw it, it was horrible -- but he willed himself back into the batter’s box in summer ball and was a graceful shortstop, good enough to later play in the Milwaukee Braves farm system. (I love Jerry’s stories about how he batted for Rico Carty or outhit Lou Brock one week.) George Dempster was the football captain and the star catcher on this team, providing leadership as well as skill. Brant Alyea was a starting forward in basketball and a pitcher and slugging outfielder. The scouts were sitting in their camp chairs behind home plate, taking notes – and Brant would play five years in the major leagues under famous managers Ted Williams, Billy Martin, Dick Williams. Tiny Bill Stetson probably could have made that all-conference starting team, for his stolen bases – 20 in 19 games. Regulars like Jim Sharkey and Dan Gwydir and Arne Moi were often the stars. John Canzanella could pitch and hit. Bill Martin and John Ayres pitched valiantly. Andy Muccillo and Jack Hildebrandt were backups. Another reserve, Tony Major, who became an actor and maker of documentaries, planned to be at the induction Monday but in late May he passed suddenly, and we miss him badly.  Jerry Rosenthal and Dan Gwydir, seated. Jim Sharkey, Dennis D'Oca and Bob Ainbinder standing. (Ainbinder also on undefeated football team.) Apologies to Jack Hildebrandt, a sturdy former vet, now 87: no photo. As Hofstra held its annual induction at a golf course on Long Island, the old players were still sad at the way their season was truncated in 1960, but their lives and careers are testimony to the education they earned. The president back then was a Shakespearean scholar, John Cranford Adams, not known as a sports fan. While my guys were having their great college careers, Dr. Adams also attracted Francis Ford Coppola, Lainie Kazan, Susan Sullivan and Madeline Kahn to the stage -- and the classroom. A lot of my guys sat out games, or semesters, or even seasons, because of grades or discipline. These people had to be student-athletes in the real sense. My pals, old basketball and baseball players (and one scorekeeper) who meet for lunch occasionally, still feel close to Hofstra because of the friendship of basketball coach Joe Mihalich and baseball coach John Russo (who put up with our ancient tales of "Butch" and "Smitty.") We could not miss the high level of the other inductees Monday – several loyal members of the athletic department, as well as three thoughtful and charismatic stars: Trevor Dimmie, a powerful running back before football was dropped, now a teacher and a minister in Westchester; Sue Weber Alber, three-time defensive soccer player of the year in her conference; and Shellane Ogoshi, a tiny and dynamic volleyball setter who sported the leis of her native Hawaii. The prepared video introductions demonstrated their leadership, their moves. There were no women’s sports at Hofstra in our time; we missed something by not having the company of such proud and accomplished competitors. The final inductee was Jay Wright, who has won two NCAA titles at Villanova since moving from Hofstra. Wright greeted his school friends, his old Rockville Centre neighbors, brought along a contingent of Villanova folks, and talked lovingly about his days at Hofstra. He draws people together. My pals have been hurting ever since that bittersweet spring of 1960. On Monday evening they heard the applause of hundreds of supporters. No NCAA tournament? They won. They won.  Shellane Ogoshi, volleyball star, the pride of Hawaii.  U.S. caught some hell for 13 of these. But stick around. While some of us are fretting over the Americans' 13-0 drubbing of Thailand in the Women’s World Cup, let us look for the reasons for the mismatch. Let us look at FIFA. You remember FIFA, the world soccer body, once seen suffering mass arrests of officials in a lush Swiss hotel, for legal and financial improprieties. That FIFA. The world soccer federation, that gave us the brokered convention that led to Russia holding the 2018 World Cup for men in Russia (reasonable enough) and the 2022 World Cup coming up in Qatar, that world powerhouse in the hot desert. That convention was marked by packets of American $100 bills to buy the votes of delegates. I believe the “A” in FIFA stands for Avarice. Now FIFA is lusting to expand its men’s World Cup from 48 teams to 64, as soon as it can get away with it. This will somehow make more money for the friendly folks from FIFA, even if it guts the grand institution of qualifying regional tournaments, with quadrennial upsets of established teams. What? You thought the cupidity and stupidity ended with the canning of goofy old Sepp Blatter? There’s more where he came from. (Now there is talk of starting a permanent super-team league in Europe; these people must hate their own sport.) What does this catalogue of avarice have to do with the 13-0 goalfest by Alex Morgan and her teammates? Plenty. Expansion produced the one-sided match. To be fair to FIFA, it did create a women’s World Cup in 1991, with 12 teams in China, and the United States winning. FIFA recognized the talent and desire to play on the part of women, and the WWC challenged nations that treated women as second-rate citizens in sports as well as more important ways. The WWC spurred FIFA to expand to 16 and then to 24 in 2015. Group play was sometimes ragged, but as nations caught on, there were more competitive teams. The United States – boosted by Title IX legislation plus the appeal of women’s sports – won three of the first seven World Cups, but never lacked for worthy opponents. Veterans of early World Cups will not forget the vigilance of Linda Medalen, an Oslo cop, who anchored the back line and loved to beat up on the Yanks. Or Ann-Kristen Aarones whose header provided an early lead in the 1995 semifinal, won by Norway. Or the Chinese stalwarts who pushed the U.S. into a shootout in the 1999 finals. Or Birgit Prinz who anchored the German team in 2003 that knocked out the U.S. in the semifinals, or Marta, the gunner who scored twice in Brazil’s 4-0 victory over the U.S. in the 2007 final, or Homare Sawa, the smooth Japanese midfielder who sparked a shootout victory in the 2011 final. The point is, nations have been shamed or inspired to upgrade women’s soccer, producing great players and dangerous teams – Sweden, Canada, and so on. But let’s be realistic: the women’s sport has produced rivalries and memories and technical skills but not the kind of depth that can fill out a competitive 24-team format. Soccer doesn't lend itself to showing superfluous mercy. Plus, male World Cup defenders are big enough to fill up the field a bit more, nasty enough to grind down opponents and wily enough to kill the clock, to minimize losses, even to settle a few scores in the closing minutes (a memorable cheap shot by an Italian player against a Spanish opponent in 1994) plus operatic swoons by the divas of the male game (women do not dive, essentially.) The women stay on their feet, and they keep on playing, which led to that 13-0 mismatch the other day. I read a story in the Times by Hannah Beech, the great correspondent in Bangkok, about the impact of that loss. Life went on, she reported. As clearly seen in the opener, the U.S. has waves of talent, worthy of Michelle Akers and Mia Hamm and Abby Wambach and so many other stars of past World Cups. But down the line, they are going to meet opponents with the swagger of Medalen or the talent of Prinz or the poise of Sawa or the opportunism of Marta. Save your scorn for FIFA as it lusts for a totally unnecessary 64-team World Cup, as soon as the barons of FIFA can slip it in.  More opponents like Homare Sawa, best female player, 2011
 Tony and Sid: Just Like the Old Days Only a few months ago, Tony Major was playing 3-on-3 basketball in an over-75 tournament. He could get off his feet, could pop jump shots from the corner. Sent videos back north so his friends could see. He was an athlete and an actor and now a teacher and documentarian at the University of Central Florida, working on a film about Trayvon Martin. He was looking forward to June 17, when he would rejoin some old baseball teammates from Hofstra, when their 1960 team will be inaugurated into the school’s athletic Hall of Fame. Instead, Tony passed suddenly on May 27, at 79. We just heard about it, and a lot of us who knew him back in the day are gutted by this news. Tony made a quickie visit to campus last October, after half a century. He spent part of the day with old jock friends, another part getting a tour of the new communications building from two nice officials and also visiting the playhouse where he had learned to speak Shakespearean. We were all invigorated by his youthful presence. At lunch, he told us about his life. We knew him as somebody who played three sports, but he felt Hofstra was not ready for a black quarterback and he was not big enough to star in basketball. He was a useful member of the 1960 baseball team that won the grand old Met Conference but could not play in the NCAA tournament because of exams. A son of Florida, he had commuted every day to Long Island from Harlem where his mother now lived. He told us about how he gravitated to the great drama department, had tried out for roles in the annual Shakespeare Festival. Laughing at the memory, he described how a black man from the South had learned to shape his speech into the cadence and pronunciations of Shakespearean English. But he did it. And he kept acting, in the city at first. Later, he graduated from New York University Tisch School of The Arts and also taught film production and producing at NYU for two semesters. His baseball ability and knowledge got him a minor role as the backup catcher in the 1973 movie “Bang the Drum Slowly.” He saw young Robert De Niro playing a dying catcher, crouching behind the batter, extending his hands too far. Tony told us how he had passed along some tips about not getting fingers broken by the bat or a foul tip. He moved to Hollywood, playing some bit parts, but also learning about television production. One year he worked with the Dolly Parton show – and raved to me about her intelligence and kindness. And then he moved to Florida, where the university was expanding in Orlando. He began making documentaries, often with an African-American theme. He married late, a woman from Africa, and they had two children, both still in school. “That’s why I’m still working,” he said, laughing. He had so much going on, and now he was reconnecting with some old teammates, plus me, a student publicist who sometimes traveled with the baseball team. Tony had a gentle soul, did not hide the sting of stereotypes. He felt he was used as a pinch-runner in baseball when he could have played more. He recalled road trips to the Mason-Dixon Line, circa 1960, when black players were restricted in the team hotel. And after that, he created a joyous persona, a productive life and career. Early this year, Tony sent me some photos and videos of the over-75 basketball tournament in Florida. There he was, off his feet, getting a rebound, putting it back in. And there he was guarding Sid Holtzer, a former Hofstra basketball player, also still in good shape. In one staged photo, Tony was waving his hand in Sid’s face. Sid never liked that, Tony said. Still didn’t. He giggled at his own mischief. We were looking forward to his next trip north, on the 17th. Instead, there was a funeral on June 8 in Orlando. If there is any lesson to this, it is: reconnect with old friends sooner, and treasure them. * * * Note: Sid Holtzer, another athlete and friend from Hofstra, attended the service and thoughtfully sent photos from the program. (From the University of Central Florida:) https://www.ucf.edu/news/longtime-professor-tony-major-remembered-for-contribution-to-film-ucf/ http://www.nicholsonstudentmedia.com/news/he-brought-hollywood-and-filmmaking-to-orlando-and-ucf-faculty/article_762c9ad0-86c1-11e9-9af6-9b3c9e59c4c9.html
 Tony was always working on something  Dinner hour at the first Chapin Home in Manhattan (on land once owned by Alexander Hamilton.) In 1869, a group of civic-minded women opened a home for older people, on the island of Manhattan. The leader was Hannah Newland Chapin, wife of Edwin Chapin, a noted Universalist minister in New York. The motto of the Chapin Home was: “What is your need‚ not your creed.” In 1910, the home was moved to the glacial spine of Queens, where it remains to this day. http://daytoninmanhattan.blogspot.com/2012/01/lost-chapin-home-for-aged-and-infirm.html My mother, May Spencer, wrote about the Chapin Home as a reporter, and later Society Editor, of the Long Island Press in Queens. The home was on familiar turf -- right down the block from the beautiful new Jamaica High School, where my mom had been in the first group of students in 1927. The Chapin Home obviously made an impression on our mom. When we began to suggest that she needed more care than she was getting, alone, in the big old house where she had lived since 1925, she was having none of it. However, she allowed as how she had found the Chapin Home to be a nice place when she was a young reporter. And when it became necessary, our mom spent most of the last years of her life in the Chapin Home. For the past month, the Chapin Home has been celebrating its 150th anniversary. How many institutions last that long? Well, in that same year, with the wounds of the Civil War so visible, when these civic-minded woman built a rest home, the American Museum of Natural History was founded in New York City; the “golden spike" was driven in Utah, completing the first transcontinental railroad; the Cincinnati Red Stockings became the first fully professional baseball team. (Jesse James robbed his first bank that year, Happy anniversary, Jesse.) And the Chapin Home is still going strong. I heard about a sesquicentennial party last Friday and accepted an invitation. But first, I consulted my siblings about their memories of Mom in Chapin. We all agreed that Mom’s formidable intelligence and strong will had given the staff a good challenge. One of the caretakers – I believe with a lilting Trinidadian accent – had nicknamed Mom “City Hall.” You know – you can’t tell City Hall anything. My sister Liz recalled how the staff would make sure Mom was dressed for a ride in her wheelchair down the block to Jamaica High and how Mom would sit in Goose Pond, across the street, and tell about her days at Jamaica. Liz’s husband, Rich, has fond memories of the weekly Catholic Mass there, and the musical entertainment – and how he would dance with some of the “showgirls” who lived at Chapin. My sister Jane recalled how “staff members were so welcoming, and helpful,” and how other residents became Mom's friends - and ours. “What a blessing it was for her to spend her final years there,” Jane said. My brother Chris remembered how the staff “showed loving humanity,” particularly a caretaker named Delva (still at Chapin) who “called me several times in Mom's early days at Chapin, either telling me what was most disturbing Mom or placing me in telephone contact with her.” And my wife recalled how the staff made it easy for her to sit with my mom in her final weeks, and play opera on the CDs, and how other residents would visit the room, for the music as well as to give support. With these memories fresh in my notebook, I went back to Chapin last Friday and met Kathy Ferrara, the director of activities‚ volunteers and spiritual care, a friendly face from Mom’s time. I also ran into Janet Unger, the former administrator, now retired, and Jennifer McManamin, now the chief administrator. I felt great energy and purpose from all the staff. Nearly 17 years later, the main hall, under a bright skylight, seemed like home -- full of residents, many in wheelchairs, or with walkers, the clientele as diverse as Queens itself. After lovely music by a harpist, Chapin honored seven residents as centenarians – 100 years or older – and three others who are 99, including Frances Cottone, who wore her red Marines cap, having served stateside during World War Two. (Local Fox News, Channel 5, did a nice feature on the centenarians) https://www.chapinhome.org/news After a few short talks, the staff distributed birthday cake, while a pretty singer entertained with American standards – Gershwin, Rodgers and Hart, plus Tom Jobim’s “Corcovado,” in Portuguese. I later looked up the singer, Hilary Gardner, and discovered she is very active in jazz circles, in New York, Europe and elsewhere – and has a very interesting web site. https://www.hilarygardner.com/about  Some residents smiled and applauded the music; others just took it in. A few ladies danced in place, or with a few young male attendants, and Kathy Ferrara, alert and smiling, just as I remembered her, danced with several women. (She even got me up on my feet for a few minutes for my vague approximation of the lindy.)
Visiting my mom for five years demystified aging for me. On my return, I remembered how hard the staff worked, how they kept the Chapin Home clean and positive. I have no illusions about the daily routine back in the residential wing -- the care needed by the ill and the elderly, the hard work, the constant upbeat attitude.
Memories of my mom flooded back: sharing her mid-day meal, looking out her window at Joe Austin Park (named for an epic youth coach in Jamaica, an honor bestowed by one of his star athletes, named Mario Cuomo.) Coming back, years later, I felt very much at home.  Really nice photo of Mohamed Salah of Liverpool (and Egypt), via Reuters. (updated Sunday morning) *- It’s a sad thing to have no team in soccer, but I don’t. *- Modern man. Just cannot commit. *- Don't get me wrong: I know the pain of rooting, inasmuch as my only professional club is the eccentric New York Mets. And I learned all about angst from my first team, the Brooklyn Dodgers. (I also root for my alma mater, Hofstra, in basketball.) *- I’m retired from the paper and am allowed to root, but I have no soccer club, a failing that gets in the way of enjoying the Champions League. I have infatuations -- AC Milan with Baresi and Gullit, et al, Chelsea when Drogba carried them on his strong back, Barcelona for the "Dutch" way they moved the ball, West Ham, after spending a few days in 2003, reporting an admirable attempt to include new Muslim neighbors as fans. But I have no lasting loyalty. *- I do root for the U.S. and Italy in the Men’s World Cup and for the U.S. in the Women’s World Cup. I love World Cups. I almost always pick a team in any match I watch. But Champions League finals leave me melancholy, adrift. I have no team. *- True, my mother was born in Liverpool, but always insisted “We were really from Southampton.” My wife once sat next to John Henry, the owner of the Red Sox and Liverpool, at a baseball dinner in Boston, and enjoyed chatting with the rather reserved man. And our grandson has rooted for Liverpool since he was a tyke. But I still don't root. *- My Arsenal pals told me they could see themselves rooting for Liverpool rather than “that bunch” from Tottenham. It’s a North London thing. *- There is a theory about cup competition that when English clubs meet, they play each other into a stupor because they know each other so well. However, I saw Chelsea drub Arsenal, 4-1, on Wednesday (in the company of my sickened Arsenal pals) and familiarity certainly did not inhibit Chelsea. *- I was thinking about that theory on Saturday when Tottenham met Liverpool in the Champions League final. In the very first minute, Tottenham was called for a handball, and Liverpool converted, injecting tension into the match, for all fans, including neutrals like me. *- I had no problem with the call by the Slovenian referee, no doubt backed up by officials with access to a television. The unfortunate Tottenham player, Moussa Sissoko, was caught with his arm extended, the ball skidding from chest to upper arm. His violation was not as blatant as the handball by Germany’s Torsten Frings that robbed the U.S. of a goal in the 2002 quarterfinal, but the ref got this one right. *- Both teams had forwards familiar to fans around the world – Mo Salah of Liverpool and Harry Kane of Tottenham. I like them both. Some stars (Roberto Baggio of Italy, Mia Hamm of the USA) hated to take penalty kicks. Salah approached his task with something close to a smile on his face, and positive body language – and he drilled a shot into the corner. *- Thereby, Mo seized the match before it was 2 minutes old. Salah, an Egyptian, whose sunny and mature presence has won over Liverpool fans, continually put pressure on the Tottenham defense, running at them to keep them busy, as Liverpool won, 2-0. In my opinion, he was the Man of the Match (a lovely soccer tradition.) *- One other observation of the match: English fans defy stereotypes, inasmuch as Liverpool and Tottenham -- at least the ones who could corner tickets and get to Madrid -- seemed quite mixed in origin. *- I found myself furious with the pre-match “concert” – angry-looking blokes pounding on their instruments and shouting – on the tube, from the stadium, before the match. Does TNT not believe in the tension of a stadium rapidly filling up, with fans chanting and singing, and the field being prepared, as the dozens of commentators are yakking it up? Why a freaking concert? If I wanted to watch that stuff, I would. *- None of this adds up to much insight about the match. As I typed this Saturday afternoon, I was concerned with whether Jacob DeGrom of the Mets could get back to his high level later in Arizona. *- DeGrom pitched well for 6 innings as I fell asleep. I woke up Sunday morning and the first thing I did was click on the score and discover the hideous Mets bullpen had blown the game in the 11th inning. I am now in a foul mood, probably much like Tottenham fans, or my Arsenal pals the other day. *- So, yes, I do know fan anxiety.  It was a handball, however inadvertently. My Buckner/Mookie column is back in The New York Times today, nearly 33 years after I wrote it….and rewrote it….in a manic press box on a hectic Sunday morning.
Poor Bill Buckner has passed at 69 and the Times paid him the honor of an obituary by Daniel E. Slotnik and a salute by Tyler Kepner and the NYT also resurrected my column through the glories of digital memory. Having my column back “in print” is also an honor, bringing back memories of that crazy World Series. It recalls a time before the Web when papers had flotillas of sports columnists who were expected to be at major events and be able to type fast, with instant wisdom, for the next deadline for readers who would wonder what daily columnists like Daley or Lipsyte or Smith or Anderson or Berkow (later Rhoden, Araton, Roberts) thought. This is, as I like to call it, ancient history.* It seems like yesterday, that Saturday night in the press box. I had written a column for the early Sunday paper (in fact, the bulk of the print run) based on my meandering through New England on Friday, after the fifth game in Boston. My “early” column was written to make sense, no matter what transpired in the game late Saturday night. I was not predicting, merely musing. So I wrote about how, with a 3-2 lead, the Boston sports radio was squawking and gargling and screaming including how Bill Buckner’s ankles were shot and manager John McNamara should get Dave Stapleton in for defense – tortured Cassandras who saw the truth about to fall on their heads. I wrote my early column about Boston’s feeling of doom, even with a lead in the Series. I tied it to lingering Calvinist New England gloom, and the historically unfortunate sale of Babe Ruth to the Yankees in 1918, but at no point in my column did I refer to any “Curse of the Bambino.” The Red Sox had a lead on Saturday night and I can still see their players edging up the dugout steps, eager to celebrate, and the scoreboard briefly showed a message of congratulations to the visitors, but then the flower pot of history fell off the upper-story window ledge onto Boston’s head and, the assembled journalists commenced pecking away on our rudimentary computers, rewriting whatever we had written about Boston finally exorcising the ghosts of failures past.-xx Now there was a new failure. The great Dave Anderson compared the Mookie/Buckner moment to Bobby Thomson’s 1951 home run off Ralph Branca – Dave knew those guys. I wrote the version in the NYT today and then a dozen or so Times reporters began breathing again. A novice news reporter, in the press box to help out, remarked that he was impressed by how fast we had rewritten our stories. Joe Vecchione, our sports editor who was supervising us in the press box, drily said (sounding like Clint Eastwood in the subsequent movie “The Unforgiven”) “We do it every day, kid.” And you know what? We did do it every day, kid. It was a different world, including journalistically. The seventh game was postponed when the miasma of rain settled over New York, but the teams resumed Monday night and the Mets rallied (people forget that) to beat the Sox to win the World Series and the legion of Times reporters wrapped it up. The headline on my column was “Babe Ruth Curse Strikes Again.” Please note: I am not that smart or inventive to pull that concept out of the dank air. Over the decades, people had laid the failures by the Sox upon the sale of Ruth. In October of 1986, this was not new news, was not instant insight. Eighteen years later, my esteemed colleague Dan Shaughnessy, wrote a book about various Red Sox failures (including Bucky Freaking Dent and Aaron Freaking Boone.) The title was “The Curse of the Bambino,” and the phrase is all Dan’s. How The Sox have become overlords of the American League is a 21st-Century story of talented ownership, management and players. The club stages magnificent ceremonies to honor the past, even the failures. Bill Buckner was a gracious and familiar presence at baseball gatherings, as the obituary and Kepner’s column describe. The rising tide of Red Sox success floated Buckner’s rowboat. He deserved more decades, more salutes, as a superb player who had a bad moment. *- Talk about ancient history. Sports Illustrated was just sold to some other company. It was once a giant that advanced marvelous writing and reporter. I gave up my subscription soon after I retired in 2011 -- didn’t even know it had gone biweekly. xx- A day or so later, the great Vin Scully -- who had just made the marvelous call of the final play as heard in the video above -- was quoted as saying he had been surprised to hear New York sportswriters cheering in the press box. With all due respect, we were not cheering; we were gasping – oy! – at the Mookie-Buckner turn of events, and how we now had to re-write our earlier gems, which were poised to go out to the waiting world. (Deconstructing the legend of "The Curse.") https://www.nytimes.com/1986/10/28/sports/sports-of-the-times-babe-ruth-curse-strikes-again.html https://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/24/sports/baseball/a-myth-that-should-not-be-perpetuated.html https://ourgame.mlblogs.com/the-curse-of-the-bambino-f7b2b83b6e76 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_World_Series By all accounts, Dr. Benjamin Solomon Carson is a superb pediatric neurosurgeon with a grand career of service to his patients and their families.
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/stlm/carson.html However, Dr. Carson is something less of a whiz as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Trump administration. Dr. Carson often gives the impression he has inhaled way too many toots of operating-room anesthesia. Why would anybody expose himself to such a public position when he has not bothered to learn or care anything about it, including the mandatory alphabet-soup of government terminology? The Secretary contributed to a classic video on Tuesday during a House hearing, when Democrat representatives peppered him with caustic yet knowledgeable questions about poverty and wretched housing. His willing appointment to HUD is a constant reminder of the scorn Trump and his fellow Republicans have for the department and for the needs of the poor. (Then again, this administration has been kidnapping migrant children, tossing them into cages, and covering up, always covering up, even when children die.) By going from medicine to mendacity, Dr. Carson put himself in a position where he could be questioned by Rep. Katie Porter, in her first term from a formerly Republican district in Orange County, Calif. Rep. Porter, out of Yale and Harvard, is a protégé of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, and shows the same passion for others as well as attention to detail. (A protégé like Rep. Porter is another reason fervent voters consider themselves members of the Warren Wing.) Rep. Porter knows how government runs because she has worked in it, before running for office. She often does her best to get through five minutes of questioning of witnesses like Carson. She clearly cares about the poor; Carson seemed to be sleep-walking. Several news stories on Tuesday said the Secretary was “humiliated” by the questions of Rep. Porter and other Democratic members of the committee, several of them African-American or Latina:. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CwRxvu5fZU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WurDG8Bzl7g The subcommittee members had the right to grill him because he is doing the dirty work for a political party and a disdainful slice of the (white) American population. Trump wanted to show his contempt for the poor; he found his man. Ultimately, Trump drags everybody down. The real question is why Dr. Carson, who once had enough wits to repair damaged children, took such a prominent position. It cannot merely be the free-loading instincts he and many other cabinet members have demonstrated. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/22/us/politics/ben-carson-hud-dining-set.html What was in this for Dr. Carson, to be exposed in such public fashion?
I've never seen “Game of Thrones.” Never saw “Dallas” or “Empire” or “Sex and the City” or "The Wire," for that matter. This is not a value judgment. I do understand. I’ve watched exactly one series since our children were home and we watched “M*A*S*H” and “All in the Family.” I can relate to people who watch their compelling series because I fell hard for “The Sopranos,” oh, a few years back. I schemed and plotted so I could be home in front of the tube on Sunday night to feel my blood grow cold and my breath constricted as Tony Soprano killed and lied and cheated -- and I rooted for him to survive. My entire week was built around Tony and Carmela. I remember once on a drive through the Appalachians, stopping at motels until, on a converted strip mine above Hazard, Ky., I found one place that had “HBO.” (In my fevered mind, Tony and Carmela moved to Boca Raton, had their identities and fingerprints altered, and are sitting by the pool, safe, grandparents and churchgoers.)  Enjoy your obsession. I have a few of my own – The Mets are the only team I watch (may have to reconsider this season), and I also watch high-end soccer (The Women’s World Cup from France, this summer.) I have also watched more hours of The Bureau of Wishful Thinking (i.e. MSNBC) than was good for me. Every morning I wake up and find the Times on my doorstep and realize that guy and his cohorts were still here. Lately, I've been reading more, and listening to classical music. Just to stay sane. And for the past few years we have forced ourselves to stay awake until the cold opening of “Saturday Night Live.” After decades, I have gone back to “SNL” because….because….it is still there, having just concluded its 44th season last night. Entire careers on “SNL” came and went while I was on the road or staying up late with friends, but lately I have revived memories of our kids being home and watching Gilda and Steve and Bill and Dan and Chevy (and in some blip of time more recently, the brilliant Tina Fey.) I understand TV obsessions because lately I have had mine – watching Alec Baldwin or Ben Stiller or Robert DeNiro do guest riffs, impersonating people in the news. “SNL” is terribly uneven – a lot of spoofs of game shows or social situations I do not claim to understand, and “musicians” who mostly hop around and point their fingers. But sometimes it catches fire. One of the best shows – maybe ever – was in early March when John Mulaney took over the 90 minutes, with his own monologues and even busting some moves and cool as a white guy at a black music party. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mSGwndFMp8 The overdue arrival of black performers and black perspective has sustained me in recent years. I loved Chance the Rapper and cast members doing a soul song called “Come Back, Barack,” with a bittersweet take. q=youtube+snl+come+back+barack&rlz=1C1GGRV_enUS751US751&oq=youtube+snl+come+back+barack&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i64.4749j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 If my wife or I doze off during the show, we wake each other for the “Weekend Update” with Colin Jost and Michael Che because they often serve as straight men, letting talented cast members go wild. My real obsession is Kate McKinnon, who fearlessly shifts from foul-mouthed, cigarette-puffing harpies to evil garden trolls with sparse hair and menacing grins like Jeff Sessions and Rudy Giuliani. Other times she is absolutely beautiful. For me, she is advancing into Gilda-and-Tina territory. I fear the day she moves on, as most of them do. Anyway, enjoy the finale of “Game of Thrones.” I understand. I was poking around my iPod, listening to downloaded pop songs beginning with “M” – “Manha de Carnival” with Susannah McCorkle, “Manhata” with Caetano Veloso, The Dead’s version of Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried’– and up popped “The Man in Black,” by Johnny Cash.
I was immediately nostalgic for the man, and the mood, his all-black outfits, and the coal-black eyes piercing the soul of the audience. Where are you, man? This became his signature song, performed for the first time at a concert at Vanderbilt University in 1971 – a time of anti-war and pro-civil rights fervor. He addressed some students in the audience, saying that a conversation, few days earlier, had prompted him to write this song, explaining why he wore only black out in public. I want to add that I met Johnny Cash a few times – once backstage at the Opry in the old and beloved Ryman Auditorium, just a bunch of people hanging around, a few feet away from the live performance. He was just one of the people backstage – old Ernest Tubb, young Dolly Parton, vibrant Skeeter Davis, people just hanging and chatting. When he produced a Jesus movie in the mid ‘70s, I interviewed him and June Carter at C.W., Post College where the movie was being showcased. Again, he was the most approachable and democratic star, talking about his faith as a baby Christian, but (a gigantic “but”), not patronizing or dogmatic. They were the nicest couple. My wife and I saw them again at a rehearsal for the country awards at the new (and sterile) Opryland in the early 80s. He and June were smooching during a break in the rehearsals; Anne Murray, sitting nearby, locked eyes with my wife, and they smiled warmly, as if to say, “Get a room.” Johnny Cash and June Carter were in love. Not long afterward, catching a red-eye in California, I saw him coming down an empty corridor, a big man in black, his eyes a zillion miles away. I most definitely did not say hello. Anyway, I think I can say, having been around Johnny Cash a few times, and having listened to his work (his time-growing-short album, “American Songs”), that he had a feel for his country, the poor, the imprisoned, the people trying to get clean, the marginal and the diverse. I think I can say he hated bullies and pretenders. He came from rural Arkansas and he knew cities and campuses, could talk with students at Vanderbilt, could take their questions and make a song out of them. I wish he were writing songs today, in the time of The Man in Orange. * * * (Just in case you are not into Johnny Cash’s voice, here are his lyrics.) Man In Black Johnny Cash Well, you wonder why I always dress in black, Why you never see bright colors on my back, And why does my appearance seem to have a somber tone. Well, there's a reason for the things that I have on. I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down, Livin' in the hopeless, hungry side of town, I wear it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime, But is there because he's a victim of the times. I wear the black for those who never read, Or listened to the words that Jesus said, About the road to happiness through love and charity, Why, you'd think He's talking straight to you and me. Well, we're doin' mighty fine, I do suppose, In our streak of lightnin' cars and fancy clothes, But just so we're reminded of the ones who are held back, Up front there ought 'a be a Man In Black. I wear it for the sick and lonely old, For the reckless ones whose bad trip left them cold, I wear the black in mournin' for the lives that could have been, Each week we lose a hundred fine young men. And, I wear it for the thousands who have died, Believen' that the Lord was on their side, I wear it for another hundred thousand who have died, Believen' that we all were on their side. Well, there's things that never will be right I know, And things need changin' everywhere you go, But 'til we start to make a move to make a few things right, You'll never see me wear a suit of white. Ah, I'd love to wear a rainbow every day, And tell the world that everything's OK, But I'll try to carry off a little darkness on my back, 'Till things are brighter, I'm the Man In Black Songwriters: Johnny Cash Man In Black lyrics © BMG Rights Management  Shades of Wee Willie Keeler and 1897 As a rabid fan of only one team – in all sports – I admit I find a perverse pleasure in watching the Mets suffer with Jeff McNeil in the lineup. This poor franchise has tried hard to marginalize him but in their drunk-stumbling-across-Queens-Boulevard-safely manner, they are stuck with him on the daily batting card. As of Saturday morning, this late bloomer was batting .363 for the wobbly Mets. They keep stocking infielders and outfielders – Jed Lowrie's fabled arrival seems to be delayed; he’s never hit .300 in his life – while McNeil keeps defying the launch-arc wisdom that the stat wizards in the back room have foisted on managers and players. The Mets showed a glimmer of hope early in the season when some of the hitters seemed to be listening to the old-school batting coach, Chili Davis, who told them it was really physically possible to flick the bat and make contact with the ball and put it where the fielders ain't (homage to Wee Willie Keeler. Look him up, kids.) Lately the lads have been locked into their launch-arc stroke but McNeil keeps putting the ball in play in Wee-Willie territory. The other day, Howie Rose, the Queens boy who has been calling games on the radio for centuries now, was rhapsodizing about McNeil, saying – on the air! – that McNeil is a “throwback” who is more of a credit to the real game than the launch-arc flailers. Good on Howie. McNeil took a long time to make it through the Mets’ farm system. That happens. But when a guy hits .329 in 63 games in 2018, does he have to be treated like a supersub deep into the new season? Not only that, but my friend Jerry, who played second base in the minors, tells me that McNeil was quite fine at second base late last season. Then the Mets got Robinson Cano, after his juiced-up years. Maybe the Mets are still evolving under the strange combination of Brodie Van Wagonen, the reforming agent learning the general manager business, and Mickey Callaway, who comes off in New York as The New Art Howe. (I miss Terry Collins.) Bear in mind, I am not around the team, don’t know the people or the gossip, but I watch and listen to a lot of Mets games and occasionally look at the web or read the tabloids so I can find the daily news on the Mets. This is essentially a fan’s rant. Keep slapping the ball where they ain’t, Jeff McNeil.  Wee Willie Keeler Mid-day is a great time for reruns, oldies and goodies. On a cool May Day, I turned on the tube in late morning, highly unusual for me, and there he was, a blast from the past, blustering through touchy moments: Jackie Gleason, The Great One, resorting to a law-school version of his old “Honeymooners” filibuster: “Homina, Homina, Homina.” Gleason used to get caught out on his obfuscations – the camera did it lavishly – but there on national and probably worldwide television was the Attorney General of the United States resorting to time-killing phrases, to while away the 5-minute chunks of time. Sometimes the old blatherer could not escape. Sen. Diane Feinstein asked him about testimony in the Mueller report that Donald J. Trump asked his legal counsel to change his story about being ordered to fire special counsel Robert Mueller. “That’s not a crime,” Gleason/Barr said. The hearing is being covered in the great newspapers that have been coming up with daily news about this seedy administration, and is also echoed on the networks, (Even Fox: see the above video. The Murdochites wrote a headline that said Barr “Embarrasses” Feinstein. Really?)
The Democrat questioners could not fathom why somebody who once had a decent reputation would now cast his fate as a lackey for Trump. Barr gave no clue. There seems to be nothing there, not a twinge of conscience. Was there ever anything more to him? The Republican questioners – particularly Sen. Lindsey Graham, lost without his big brother John McCain -- seemed more intent on trying former Secretary of State and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton for the heinous e-mail offenses she may have committed, now three and four years ago. Barr’s cheeks puffed up as Sen. Mazie Hirono said he had lied, and that he did not seem concerned that Trump had urged his counsel to lie. We all can see that Trump has bad judgment in his choice of lawyers, on his "Where's my Roy Cohn?" crusade, seeking the vile creature who aided Sen. Joseph McCarthy. The best Trump can do are Michael Cohen, Rudy Giuliani, Jay Sekulow, his own personal bums-of-the-month. Now he has the Attorney General of the United States – theoretically, the lawyer for the people, according to the Constitution -- covering for him. On national television. In mid-day. More vital than reruns, but sad, terribly sad, that Trump has lowered the country to this.
All championships are miracles, somewhere, if you think about it.
Even if a team assembles a lineup full of Galácticos and runs away with a championship, it seems like a miracle for that time, that place, those athletes, those fans. But here in New York, the Greatest Little Town in the World, we know that our miracles are bigger and better, more stupendous than any other miracles, just because. Take 1969 – precisely 50 years ago, when the Amazing Mets won everything, which is why there is a year-long (more, in the planning) of celebrations and evocations and memorials, to say nothing of a one-event boom in the publishing industry, just as there was in 1970. I have just read – and enjoyed -- two of the lunar tide of books cresting this spring. One is “They Said It Couldn’t Be Done: The ’69 Mets, New York City, and the Most Astounding Season in Baseball History,” by Wayne Coffey. See what I mean about New York being the center of the universe? Coffey’s book is delightful because it replays the surprising surge by a franchise known for its goofy, even charming, failures. (Casey Stengel! Marvelous Marv! Bedsheet banners!) Coffey also catalogues how the Mets firmed up before our unbelieving eyes under the talents and Marine steeliness of manager Gil Hodges and franchise superstar Tom Seaver. Some reporters (me) never believed it until Cleon Jones caught the last out and went to one knee in what only could be construed as prayer. But….the very best part of Coffey’s book is the work he did nearly half a century after the fans stopped ripping up the Shea lawn for souvenirs. Coffey, it turns out, was a schoolboy playing hooky, in that scrum, on that day of days. Later he became a good and versatile reporter for The New York Daily News. Now he writes books…and works at them. I loved, absolutely loved, catching up with people I knew half a century ago. Coffey discloses a previous link between Hodges and the mid-season acquisition, Donn Clendenon, who has posthumously become a more vital part of those Mets. Also, Coffey discloses that Clendenon was mentored at Morehouse College by a graduate named Martin Luther King, Jr., and was often a guest in the King home. By 1969, Clendenon was also a salty vet who hit the Met clubhouse motor-mouthing, heckling everybody, the way the 60s Pirates had done. He told Gil Hodges, Jr., the teen-age son of the manager, to man up and defy his Marine dad. Gilly was wise enough to tell Clendenon: no way. Coffey pays attention to the bigger picture – Karl Eberhardt, the self-proclaimed Little Old Signmaker in the stands, and Jane Jarvis, the hip jazz musician who played the Shea organ with wit and talent, and two batboys from my high school (the late, lamented Jamaica High) who were mentored by Joe Austin, Mario Cuomo’s legendary amateur coach. With Shakespearean breadth, Coffey describes the major players and also the Rosencrantzes and Guildensterns of the Amazing Mets. Yes, it was a miracle. The other book I have read is “Here’s the Catch: a Memoir of the Miracle Mets and More.” If the book sounds like Rocky, earnestly thundering to epic catches and humiliating gaffes, that is because he has been writing it on his own for a while. He describes himself as an average-IQ human and middle-of-the-pack major leaguer but his curiosity and zest have made him much more, over the years. Rocky, going on 75 and vibrant, tells about departed teammates and soul mates like Tug McGraw and Ed Charles and Tommie Agee – guys with whom he competed and talked and drank and ate ribs and gallivanted. Having known him since he was a teen-ager in Met camp in 1965, I know Rocky to be an autodidact (one year of being a jock in college) who often demonstrates his eclectic tastes. He follows the music of the Marsalis Family of his adopted home of New Orleans, and he also mentions classical music…and the Globe Theatre of Shakespearean time….and Jackson Pollock…and Monet….and Don DeLillo and so on. He means it. That is Rocky. Maybe the best part of Swoboda’s book is growing up in a working-class neighborhood of Baltimore – relatives with tempers and guns and wit and opinions, two of them working in the morgue, pulling gory pranks on cops. Then there was the family flasher. Plus, the Chinese cook his earthy grandmother married, who smoked and drank and drove erratically and taught him how to make and eat Chinese food. Swoboda writes about his lovely redheaded wife, Cecilia, and how Casey and Edna Stengel, childless, fussed over the Swobodas’ first-born, and his active scorn for the Vietnam War and the instant rapport when he visited the troops over there, very close to combat. He laments behaving like a jackass toward Hodges, who was not just resolute with big hands but also a wily manager. All sports memoirs should be this earnest, this real. On my incoming table are books by Art Shamsky about 1969, plus Ron Darling’s book, mostly about 1986, which was, of course, another miracle. They all are, but some are more miraculous than others.  Western PA: Halfway between NY and IL, couple crossed Roberto Clemente Bridge to catch a ball game. After months of home-repair madness, it was a treat to spend a quiet Easter at home. Then the pinging began on the phone.  Long Island Sound: The Yapper was taking a walk in the soft spring air. I was puttering around, trying to restore order from the detritus of repairs. Marianne made a delicious vegetable-and-chicken soup.  New England: Easter Egg Atelier checks in WNYC-FM was playing weekly jazz show. Two versions of "April in Paris," first by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, then by Count Basie ("one more -- once") Homage to the stricken Cathedral de Notre-Dame. Mel Torme. Bob Dylan. An American blues singer acing a song. Not American, my wife said. It's Adele. As always, she was right.  Georgia: Aunt and niece bump into each other in the mall. Aunt helps niece select a dress for a dance.  Deepest PA: Enjoying spring sunshine -- with warm boost.  Upstate New York: Real-estate mogul has some planting done  The Fellas at Ye Olde Easter Parade -- Diane was there.  Gargoyles could not save much of Notre Dame While Notre Dame was burning on Monday, several American commentators referred to the book, and subsequent movie, “Is Paris Burning?” – about the German general who allegedly disobeyed Hitler’s orders to level the city during the retreat of 1944. The cathedral is a geographical center for France, and the beating heart of Paris to all of us who visit and love it -- or even have the privilege of living there for a month here and there. We took our three children to Paris in April of 1975, almost immediately visiting Notre Dame, where our youngest fell in love with the gargoyles who still broodingly guarded over the city, even as flames raged on Monday. On that family trip, three decades after the War, we talked about World War Two, grateful that this beautiful city, this beautiful cathedral, had survived. On Monday, les pompiers, the firefighters, controlled the blaze. Paris was burning. Of course, people thought about the book and the movie. However, when I went to the Web, I realized there is considerable historical debate about whether General Dietrich von Choltitz overtly acted to save Paris or merely dragged his feet, while saving his own life and shoring up one tattered corner of his reputation. Did the general really say no? "If he saved only Notre Dame, that would be enough reason for the French to be grateful," the general's son, Timo, told a British newspaper in 2004. "But he could have done a lot more.” The general’s alleged act of refusal and respect for a glorious city – perhaps self-aggrandizement -- comes up sometimes when conscience is the subject. From my American perspective, I immediately linked the survival of Paris, the endurance of the cathedral on the Île de la Cité, with overt acts of terror and torture perpetrated by Donald Trump on the border with Mexico. Who says no? Who follows the law? Who cares for fellow humans? The legend of a general who participated in the Holocaust, is back in the ozone, revived by the horrible fire. We want to be grateful to a German general who may have said “No,” but there are so many questions. He said he acted out of military prudence, as a trained general, who surely considered himself above the unskilled, ignorant, raving “leader.” Germany of the ‘30s never had enough leaders who could say “no.” Does any nation have enough people in positions of power, responsibility, who can muster the inner strength to say no? This is a very current debate for those Americans who now consider the military – the tradition of service, adherence to law – as one of the last strengths of the nation. Who will say no? I am reminded of this every time I see videos of one of Trump’s people, Kirstjen Nielsen, sighing patronizingly when questioned by (Democratic) representatives about putting children in cages. Soon afterward she was pushed out by Trump for not doing enough to separate and harm (torture, if you will) les misérables on our borders. The urge to survive, by Gen. von Choltitz might have helped save Paris in 1944. Is inaction enough when evil orders are given? Who will say no? * * * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietrich_von_Choltitz https://www.thelocal.fr/20140825/nazi-general-didnt-save-paris-expert https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1966/11/06/83551081.pdf  There is a current art exhibit in Washington, D.C., that I am hoping to see -- “Artists Respond: American Art and the Vietnam War, 1965-1975,” at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Holland Cotter in The New York Times calls it “protest art” from the American point of view. But the “second, smaller” part of the show I most want to see is “Tiffany Chung: Vietnam, Past Is Prologue,” a view of the Vietnam War era through Vietnamese eyes – “far more than a mere add-on,” as Cotter put it. The Vietnamese people experienced that war – in some ways 180 degrees differently -- but it is safe to say all suffered. In 1991 I visited “post-war” Vietnam with a small group involved in child care. My wife was doing vital volunteer work by frequently visiting India but she also visited Thailand and the Philippines. I joined her on the trip to Vietnam to deliver goods to a hospital and visit facilities in both “North” and “South” Vietnam. I was most definitely not there to work or act like a journalist, but I could not help looking and listening to how “The American War” had impacted Vietnamese lives. Saigon, now called Ho Chi Minh City: We met a doctor doing complicated surgery. He let us gown up and observe a complicated facial procedure done by a visiting American doctor, the mutual language in the operating room being French. We got to spend enough time with the doctor to learn he had been on the “wrong” side when the North took over, and was sent to a camp deep in the countryside. I gathered that his family had assets, and he had a great reputation, and he was released from the camp and allowed to resume his profession, refreshing his skills at major hospitals in Asia. He was an asset. In a relaxed social setting, the conversation got around to how he was able to put the war behind him, to function, to move on. I totally paraphrase his answer; it has been a long time, after all. He said you cannot live in the past, you have to get back to “normal” as smoothly and quickly as possible. When I (subtly, I hope) asked about the lost years in the camps, he showed no bitterness. He was still a surgeon, putting people back together again. Life went on. Hanoi Region. We worked our way up north (baguettes and coffee on the beach; ancient ethnic villages; a growing crafts shop outside Da Nang) and we flew to Hanoi. On a chilly day, we took a jitney out to visit a rural orphanage. Our interpreter was a woman around 30 who worked in the sciences and was fluent in English. I happened to sit next to her. Far into the countryside, I noticed circular ponds scattered on the flat land. I asked the interpreter what the waterholes were for – fishing? rice? source of irrigation? Actually, she said, with no trace of emotion or agenda, they were holes left over from bombs. She did not mention Richard Nixon or Henry Kissinger or the “Christmas bombing” of Hanoi and Haiphong in late December of 1972. She remembered, she said casually, living at a school, and hearing the bombs, and later discovering children her age had been killed or injured. I did not ask any other questions. The orphanage was shabby, but the workers were doing the best they could. They let us hold children as we walked around. They had a handle on each child, would not release children for adoption if relatives claimed them. We were bringing some aid, and people were courteous. A young worker pointed at my ball cap, from the 1990 World Cup, and he said, “Maradona,” and I gave him the cap. And then we flew on. Now I read about the show at the Smithsonian about the remaining terrible divisions in the United States over the Vietnam War. I hope to see that show, as well as its companion piece about Vietnamese reaction to the American War – “more than an add-on,” indeed. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/04/arts/design/vietnam-war-american-art-review-smithsonian.html Tiffany Chung: Vietnam, Past Is Prologue: https://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/chung My past articles about John McCain, American hero, and Vietnam: https://www.georgevecsey.com/home/category/vietnam My article about the excellent crafts shop outside Da Nang: https://www.georgevecsey.com/home/-happy-lunar-new-year |
 With Dalai Lama, 1979
Loyal Reader Hansen Alexander has filed an interview with, of all people, me. It's on his blog. (Just past photo of rat!) My thanks for his interest. GV notesfromnewratcity.wordpress.com/blog/ MODERN LOVE:
David Vecsey's sweet tale of distant love before the Web, now NYT Podcast, narrated by Griffin Dunne. Please see: https://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/12/15/fashion/before-the-web-hearts-grew-silent.html?referer= Categories
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