![]() (This being the season of Passover and Easter and Opening Day, a time of rejuvenation of body and soul and spirit and good writing about sport, I am sharing the Charles Barasch poem about the first President to throw out the first ball on opening day.) William Taft’s Dream The players liked my ceremonial pitch, so when Walter Johnson’s arm gives out, he points, beckons me from the stands. I hand my suitcoat to Helen, remove my tie and cuff links, roll up my sleeves. An usher opens a gate, and when I step onto the grass, for a moment I’m confused, the crowd’s roar surrounds me and I feel weightless, as if lifted by an ocean surge. I’m afraid I’ve gone down with the Titanic, but then an urgent chant,“Big Bill,” shakes the stadium. I wave to the throng and ascend the mound. Cobb has never seen pitches like mine, the first two race past him faster than Barney Oldfield, and he swings over a drop-pitch, my hummingbird. Frank Merriwell strikes out too, and then it’s Booker T. Washington’s turn, but W.E.B. DuBois pinch-hits, shoves him aside. He glares as I wind up and uncoil like a cobra, and now the pitch buzzes in like an army airplane. He swings and the ball sails into the sky, but I sprint across the outfield and snag it. Helen comes out of the dugout. I ask her if I can stay and play baseball, but she says no, I have to be president. I throw my glove on the ground and follow her home. --Charles Barasch (Poem originally published in “Dreams of the Presidents,” by North Atlantic Books -- 43 poems, each a president’s dream. Many of Barasch's other baseball poems are in the anthology, “Baseball, I Gave You All the Best Years of My Life,” also published by North Atlantic Books. (Barasch and I played softball a few times back on Long Island; now he teaches and writes poetry in Vermont. Two years ago, into his 60s, he played hardball against Bill Lee. Yes, that Bill Lee. "Luckily, he threw me a fastball; his curveball is impossible for me. I blooped it over the shortstop but the left fielder, playing me appropriately shallow, caught it." So many baseball memories end with documentable failure which is why it is such a wonderful sport for writing or reading.)
bruce
4/11/2015 03:03:49 am
George,
George Vecsey
4/11/2015 04:43:42 am
http://www.cihlhockey.net/the-cihl-officially-welcomes-the-milton-battle-arts-cobras-into-the-league/
bruce
4/11/2015 05:44:17 am
George,
George Vecsey
4/11/2015 06:17:00 am
Women's World Cup.
Ed Martin
4/13/2015 12:28:32 pm
As Doris Kearne could tell readers, or for that matter Sandy Koufax or even the late Dixie Walker, Rockville Centre is spelled the correct way.
Ed Martin
4/13/2015 12:33:16 pm
She might prefer, however, I spell her name right--Kearns Goodwin.
George Vecsey
4/13/2015 02:19:49 pm
Ed, good point. For that matter, I had a grand time in 1971 writing about he 50th anniv. of the great college FB game between Harvard and Centre College of KY -- the Praying Colonels. Good and lovely little school, SE of Louisville. GV
bruce
4/11/2015 06:35:00 am
i'm the same way. for example, I spell pearl harboUr pearl harbor because that's the way it's actually spelled. there are some spellings that I don't understand. why do we say rome in English instead of roma? it's straightforward and not difficult to pronounce. Napoli, Milano etc. Firenze might be difficult for some so Florence or venezia for venice might make sense, but rome, naples??
George Vecsey
4/11/2015 07:20:13 am
I understand consistency. We saw FC Napoli plays in Naples. OK.
Altenir Silva
4/14/2015 05:22:34 am
Dear George,
George Vecsey
4/14/2015 05:32:13 am
Altenir, with your good ear for English and John Sterling, here's what John called last night for the grand slam:
Altenir Silva
4/14/2015 06:20:03 am
Dear George,
George Vecsey
4/14/2015 08:51:25 am
Dear Altenir: The morning radio newscasters on WINS and WCBS like to imitate John Sterling...and did the other day with his first A-Bomb chant.
Josh Rubin
4/14/2015 11:14:55 am
My dad's been quiet lately in these comments, so I thought I would intrude twice in one week. I hope no one minds. I was just thinking that any discussion of baseball and poetry ought to make mention of Phil Rizzuto.
Gene Palumbo
4/15/2015 08:46:38 am
Fellow blog readers: it’s time for all of us to lean on George with a non-negotiable demand: from now one, he must alert us immediately when he publishes a column in the Times. I hadn’t checked recently, and just now saw that he had one last Thursday:
George Vecsey
4/15/2015 09:51:43 am
Gene, sorry, I misunderstood, I thought you added a comment on the NYT site. Thanks for caring. I thought about tweeting about it, but didn't have the psychic energy. Gracias, amigo, GV 4/19/2015 01:29:44 pm
The Roosevelt-Taft double bio was a remarkable read on many levels. In addition to adding to my understanding of both men, it introduced me to Ida Tarbell and the “muckrakers”.
George Vecsey
4/19/2015 02:48:06 pm
Alan, did you know that Rizzuto had a special bunt signal for the NYT photog, Ernie Sisto, in the days when photogs were on the field? That way, Ernie had his Graphlex pointed at the Scooter. GV Comments are closed.
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QUOTES
Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online. The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal…. After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness. The progress stems mostly from three factors: First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot. Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.) Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year. “Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.” That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.” That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data. One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines. Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks. Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths. The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions. Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately Republican and white. Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.) *** From the great Maureen Dowd: As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop. But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels." --- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing. *** "Putting out the paper," we called it. Much more than nostalgia. ---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html |