The Daily Miracle is waiting every morning at the top of the driveway, courtesy of a diligent delivery lady, who never misses a day.
Friend of mine at the New York Times plant in College Point, Queens, calls it “The Daily Miracle,” because it returns every day (with the collaboration of thousands of journalists in Manhattan, in Queens, and all over the world.
This bundle in a blue bag is a miracle even though everybody knows young people don’t read newspapers, but there are enough of “us” who want to hold the paper in their hands and flip pages and peruse, peruse, peruse.
(The plant also prints 50-odd dailies and weeklies – part of the miracle but also the foresight of the people who run the NYT.)  
​
Take this from an octogenarian who must have his fingers on “the paper,” there is another miracle in the journalism world – the ever-changing website of the same New York Times, thousands working around the world in all the continents and all the time zones. As we speak.
Nothing like flipping electronic pages in the middle of the day to keep up with the judicial progress against the larcenous and bumptious Trumps. Or waking up and checking what has happened in the Middle East since the cut-throats came across the border to kill and kidnap on Oct. 7.

We get the news and the embellishments from a great news-gathering organization (where I used to work), and that is a miracle because it took decades of insight and doubt and trial and error to save the blue-bag Daily Miracle but also to create the alter ego known as nytimes.com.

The evolution of newspaper into the journal that never sleeps is documented in a new book, “The Times: How the Newspaper of Record Survived Scandal, Scorn, and the Transformation of Journalism,” written by Adam Nagourney, one of the many great reporters, who is still working there.

For 43 years, I knew, I witnessed, I even managed to grumble and whine about the changes being foisted on us. (I do not do change well. I can provide witnesses.)

I was around as a news reporter in the ‘70’s, when bulky and balky Harris terminals swallowed entire masterpieces after hours of pecking away at the keyboards, even though we had pushed, poked, whacked the “Save” keys. A living technology pioneer-saint named Howard Angione talked some of us out of our rages. Later there was another saint named Charlie Competello.

Meanwhile, our bosses competed in their lairs. Some of them understood the online era at first and some did not. The book goes into Shakespearean length to show the decades of the long knives, over policy, over technology, and over flat-out human emotions.  

“Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown”—King Henry the Fourth, Part Two, William Shakespeare.

Top editors feared the managing editors they had just appointed and even publishers and family had a mix of human strengths and weaknesses. But four decades of friction came and went – and the NYT is in Ukraine and the Middle East and all over the United States.

I’m not getting into personalities in this review. I just want to bear witness to the foresight and talent and perseverance of the owners and the editors and the reporters – and the readers.

I had the honor of working for national editors Gene Roberts and Dave Jones and the great copy editors on that staff. I remember being assigned to the federal pen in Marion, Ill., where a lifer bank robber had completed his bachelor’s degree in a prison program. I turned in my article and copy editor Tom Wark called me and said, “This is not up to Vecsey standards…could you run this through the machine again?” I tried. The NYT had dozens and dozens of great editors like him.

Later I worked for Abe (Rosenthal) and Arthur (Gelb) as a Metro reporter in the 70s. They could forget about you for weeks…but then they could give you an assignment that made you glad to be a journalist. (The end of the Vietnam War, 1973, as seen by cynical veterans in a steamy bar in deepest Queens, my choice of venue.)

The  computer age was under way when I returned to Sports in the 80s.
Publisher Arthur Sulzberger, with his snarky sense of humor, held an occasional lunch meeting with us in Sports. One day I played grumpy-lifer and asked why the NYT needed the color that was starting to appear in the paper. The publisher said, as I recall: “We live in color. We dream in color. The Times needs color.” Look at the great reporting by  Amelia  Nierenberg and brilliant photos by Hilary Swift on grieving Maine in the past week. Of course, Arthur was right.

The book describes how the Times dispatched long-time editor Bernard Gwertzman to bridge the gap between the traditional NYT and the infant Web-era NYT. One day, Gwertzman held a lunch with Sports types ad one of our many great reporters complained about his scoops going on line so early that his good pals on other major papers were poaching his work.
Gwertzman was unflappable: “A year from now, we won’t be having this discussion,” he said. He was right. The reporter became a star in the Web age, too.
(Recently, the NYT blew up its talented sports section. That decision will undoubtedly be in the next NYT history book.)

But for now, Adam Nagourney has given Times readers (and Times lifers) a thorough view of the comings and goings of talented, driven journalists. I am in awe of the lavish meals and copious alcohol consumed by our leaders, often followed by sharp managerial decisions ...placed between career shoulder blades.

Nagourney reminds us how long it took for female journalists and gay journalists to get a fair break to use their talents. Good for him.
The editors argued and decided and changed courses. But somehow, somehow, The New York Times is better than ever, 24 hours a day. In print. Online. Either way, a daily miracle.
                    ###

​I take it very personally that Maine has been jolted by the prototypical American disturbed-man -with-military-weapon (empowered by far too many politicians.)

He’s gone now, a suicide near a recycling plant, but he has befouled an entire swath of Maine, beyond the Lewiston area, where he shot up a bowling alley and a bar on a normal Wednesday night in the fall.

On Friday night I sent out a few e-mails to friends we have made in the past decade, in the Bath-Brunswick area, an hour or so from Lewiston. Not far at all.

I learned that a friend I have made – a deaf man with whom I have communicated via texts on our phones, making each other smile or nod agreement from across the table of a restaurant with friends. alongside the Kennebec River in Bath.

In that small world, my friend was close to Bryan MacFarlane, another activist in the deaf community, who was with an outing of youngsters when evil roared into their lives. RIP, Bryan MacFarlane. RIP, some sense of safety and innocence in Maine. I take it personally.

We became loyal Mainers a decade ago when we visited Marianne’s uncle Harold in his cottage alongside the Kennebec River in Bath. He was a marvelous tour guide – he had come from Connecticut as a teen-ager to help dredge the river, married a local girl, and stayed.

​Harold took us to a Civil War outpost along the coast, to a cemetery in Richmond with its monuments in Russian, from Belarus settlers a century ago, and he drove past buildings and farm chicken houses and even some small fishing boats he had constructed in his basement, with his hands and his ingenuity.

One day we drove Harold to a specialist in Lewiston, and later we drove around and noticed the large Somali neighborhood – maybe 5,000 settlers – upgrading the old brick mills and apartment buildings, with grocery stores and Somali social agencies. So much to see and learn in Maine.

And the wonderful Bowdoin College Museum of Art in Brunswick – always a new exhibit, with helpful staff.  On our visits, we could envision some kind of new, other life (within walking distance of that gallery.)
But it was a bit late to re-settle our lives, away from families. So we would stay in the Fairfield Inn between Freeport and Brunswick, with its buffet breakfast and diverse clientele – college sports teams, military personnel, and tourists.
I remember an Italian family, two parents and a young woman in a wheelchair, and because I am blessed to know a few phrases in Italian, I asked what brought them to Maine in October and the young woman in the wheelchair said, “I colori.” (The colors.)

It is autumn again – 67 degrees and sunny in Bath as of Saturday, 11 AM –and my wife and I are mourning – for the families and friends of the fallen, for the disturbed sense of safety and order, for Maine. And we are not alone.

One of our late-in-life friends wrote to me Friday night:
“Every time we have one of these shootings, there is a hue and cry for gun control. It never happens. There is no one and nowhere that is safe anymore. In 2022, in the entire state of Maine, there were 29 murders. The whole state is in shock. Our innocence has been shattered with one horrific act. It’s a tragedy in so many ways. My heart is broken.”

In absentia from our “other” home, our hearts are broken, also.

At  the same time, President Biden and his State Department leaders seem to be giving off-screen advice to Israeli leaders to show wisdom, to practice  compassion, in addition to sending up missiles and massing troops on the border.
We don't know if he has, or if he has had any impact.
I only know I will take my chances with Biden's signals,  as much of the world has done as the U.S. backed up  Ukraine. 

Another source of hope is the first 20 trucks bearing a minute amount of aid for the people of Gaza.

The personification of aid comes from an athlete in a red uniform -- Mohamed Salah of Egypt and the Liverpool club in England. He is a compact, charismatic figure who flits about the field, finding open space, often hacked down by defenders and sometimes shown minimal protection by English officials. When he takes a penalty kick, he strides toward the ball with a serene smile. He plays with an otherworldly  grace and enthusiasm, a mixture of aerial sylphs and earthly gnomes. 

In the past week, Mo Salah has called for humanitarian aid to be allowed into Gaza to help those who are suffering, and he has also given a generous donation, according to a story in The Guardian (my go-to sports section in these barren days.) 

Salah was quoted in The Guardian as saying: “It’s not always easy to speak in times like these … There has been too much violence and too much heartbreaking brutality. The escalation in recent weeks is unbearable to witness. All lives are sacred and must be protected. The massacres need to stop. Families are being torn apart."

Mohamed Salah may be thinking of his own swath of the world, but he is also not delivering public diatribes. May he expand his concern to all the people of his region, the way Joe Biden seems to be doing, to set an example "out there." The world needs  all the grace it can get.
​                                            ***

I am so thrilled that the New York Times obituary editors ran a lovely obituary of Joe Christopher, a member of the early New York Mets – and my friend over the decades.
Joe touched a chord in me because he was mysterious and deep. I have learned more since he passed last week, from his daughter Kameahle Christopher. I also collected memories of Joe from two of his old teammates.

In case you miss the NYT obit, here it is (for those who can access it). It is written by Richard Sandomir, now an obit writer, but previously a star sports-media critic (back when the NYT had a sports section.)
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/05/sports/baseball/joe-christopher-dead.html

I became intrigued by Joe Christopher in the first year of the Mets when he was a backup outfielder.  Joe was from St. Croix, apparently the first player born in the Virgin Islands to play in the major leagues. He was a mix of cultures and languages, introverted, but also comfortable chatting with some of the young Chipmunk writers covering the club.
“I’m a better ballplayer than you guys think I am,” he would say, softly.

Sometimes he would chat with me about mysterious religious trends. I don’t claim I understood, but I think he sensed he had a friend.

He was up and he was down with the Mets but in 1964 he played regularly and batted .300. (The obit tells how in the final game he dropped a bunt single in front of old Ken Boyer of the Cardinals to pretty much clinch the distinction of being a .300 hitter. In the pressbox in St. Louis, I almost cheered out loud.)

His career sputtered again in 1965 and he was soon gone from the majors.
Recently, two former teammates had nice things to say about Joe:
Larry Elliott, a fellow outfielder in 1965, sent this memory: “I was trying to break up a double play against Philly. I did not get down in time and Ruben Amaro hit me in the back of my head with a throw. It was my fault. I was in the hospital for five days and Joe was the only one to come and visit me."

My e-pal, Bill Wakefield, sent his memory of 1964, when he was a rookie out of Stanford and reported to the Mets’ spring hotel in St. Petersburg, Fla.
 
“The front desk says, yes, we will give you a room, and assign your roommate. So I take my suitcase to the room.  Open the door, and inside is a startled Joe Christopher. I said, ‘I’m Bill Wakefield and I’m your roommate.’ He seemed surprised but said, fine”

(Wakefield doesn’t need to note that Blacks and whites were not rooming together in those days. And Christopher, who had been introduced to segregation in the U.S., was surely aware of that.)

Shortly, Wakefield received a call from Lou Niss, chain-smoking, worry-wart travel secretary of the Mets
“Come to come to the lobby immediately. I assume it's to get instructions -- don't drink in the hotel bar -- that's Casey's spot -- don't be late for the bus --  wear shower shoes on the bus not spikes, etc.

“He says – ‘ Bill we are moving  you  in with Larry Elliott -- make the change immediately.’ And sort of as an afterthought,  he said  -- I  paraphrase – ‘Baseball has made progress  but we are not ready for black and white roommates yet."

“I have no idea -- I just want to do all the right things. So I go back down to the room -- Joe is still there -- he kind of smiles at me -- and I said Lou Niss has assigned me a different room.
“I always worried that Joe thought I had complained and that was the reason for the switch. I really didn't care.
"So I packed up and moved to Larry's room.Joe never mentioned  it again.  He and I became pretty good friends.  

“Joe and I laughed about it over the course of the season. He even got a big smile on his face and would say ‘Nice going, Roomie!!!’ Great guy.”

I have one more memory of Joe, who could wiggle his ears with the best of them. A knot of Mets writers were taking the sun behind the Mets’ dugout during a game in Chicago in May of 1964. As the Mets frolicked to an unforgettable 19-1 final score, Joe would trot in from right field after each inning, levitating his cap with his ears – just for the writers’ sake.”

Joe’s major-league career fizzled but we kept running into each other. In the late 60s, I was in Puerto Rico writing for Sport Magazine about Frank Robinson managing a team in the winter league. I was at a game in Caguas when I spotted Joe playing for Santurce…and we agreed he would ride back in my rental. Then he won the game with a grand-slam homer in the ninth inning and the fans were so annoyed that they made motions to tip my car over. We laughed about it all the way back to Santurce.  I always reminded him how he almost got me killed.
 
Joe and I ran into each other in the 1980s near Times Square. He was carrying a large rectangular portfolio used by artists to protect their work. He came up to the Times for a while, but I never saw his work -- part of the mystery of Joe. The other day, I chatted with Kameahle Christopher, a paralegal with Amtrak, who lives outside Baltimore, and asked about her dad’s inner life.

“He was interested in pre-Colombian art,” she said. “He was in touch with the ancients, the Olmecs and Mayans. He was into numerology…would ask your birthday, would predict things,” Kameahle said. “He was gifted spiritually.”

I asked her about her dad’s childhood and she said he was raised in Oxford, a small settlement in St. Croix.
“He grew up in a small house in the mountains,” she said. “He walked everywhere, and when he came home at night, he learned to follow the North Star.
He said, “‘I’m not going to grow up like this.’ Nobody had ever left the islands.
He endured hardships, but he used to tell himself, ‘I’m Joe from Oxford…and if I have to walk, I’ll walk.”

In his later years, Joe wanted a job teaching baseball; “he carried his baseball gear in his car,” Kameahle said. Joe would coach somebody for the joy of it, remembering how much he had learned from coaches like Rogers Hornsby, Sheriff Robinson, Paul Waner – and his driven roommate with the Pirates, Roberto Clemente. 
​
After talking with Kameahle Christopher, I felt I knew her dad better – where his inner strength came from, standing in the clubhouse, a marginal Met, telling young writers from New York: “I’m a better ball player than you guys think I am."

Kameahle’s loving portrayal made me miss him even more.
 
                              ##
 
 



 
 
 



​

The trip was not all soccer. The group made a side trip to Lake Como and took the ferry, visited Montecatini Terme and Florence.  
“We climbed  the Leaning Tower of Pisa with my sister Kaitlyn. I was happy to get soccer jerseys for AC Milan, Italy and Juventus."
​
Clearly, the vast majority of American youth players do not have the luxury of an overseas trip, but spend the summer working on their skills much closer to home.

Youngsters who do get to make a trip like this can bring home the feeling of how much soccer means to the fans – the tifosi – whose loyalties are often inherited at birth.
​
That comes across on television in the U.S. – and also in the fast-growing Major League Soccer with its middle-sized stadiums and rituals and traditions.

Soccer is here to stay, and young players like Brendan LoParrino are fortunate enough to bring some of that ambiance  back home with them.
Brendan said: "I look forward to this upcoming season with my core team at Palumbo soccer club. We joined a new league and will be playing teams further north that are competitive. We have a tournament in Orlando this December and one next season in Portugal. I will be  playing JV tennis this year and look forward to playing varsity soccer at my school. I am alsolooking forward to the World Cup in 2026."

The U.S. and Canada and Mexico will host a North American World Cup, "only" 32 years after the U.S. was host to a World Cup that filled stadiums from coast to coast and made millions of new fans.
The U.S. has not come close to winning a World Cup -- but the younger generations have their hopes, respectful of the history of soccer, over there.
 
                 ***
Thanks to Brendan for sharing his impressions via his dad, Joe LoParrino.

I know Joe through a mutual friend, the garrulous and knowledgeable Alan Taxerman, an athlete and lawyer who worked with Joe LoParrino. Big Al often shared his strong pro-Yankee and pro-Mantle opinions with the world. through this site. When Big Al  passed in 2018, Joe LoParrino invited me to a memorial I could not attend. We have never met, but we are bonded through our mutual friend, and now soccer. Thanks  to Big Al, and Joe, and Brendan.

(Randolph Fiery is a regular on this website, with his spiritual passages and frequent odes to the vegetables he grows in southern Virginia. On Tuesday he sent the following :)

Can you deny, there's nothing greater
Nothing more than the traveling hands of time?
Sainte Genevieve can hold back the water
But saints don't bother with a tear-stained eye
-- Son Volt (rock band) 
 
Friends, The sun has not risen in the eastern sky. 
Yet I am awake and thinking about those “traveling hands of time……."
 
The three men in the photo are brothers: a photograph taken more than 100 years ago. Three brothers, who came through Ellis Island separately between 1910 and 1917. But on this day, they stood together in New York City to have their photograph taken. A recognition of their struggle to come to a new land. 
 
It would take another 10 years for them to earn the money, to weather the storm of World War I and bring their wives and children to this new land they called America. It is a family story. A fading story held by a few and controlled by the “traveling hands of time.”
 
They were men who could grow gardens. Tomatoes, basil, potatoes were their friends. And yes, grapes… they knew how to make wine. They knew how to cut stone, build houses, and one of them, my grandfather constructed bridges and even a building of coal. Family stories fading with age.
             
But on this day, the summer heat is moving toward the garden. It has been a good year 
​for the garden. Tomatoes, Swiss chard, peas, eggplant, peppers and cucumbers. 

​


​



​.















​So on this day, I want to thank you for your hard work, your struggles, and for more than you can imagine, everything that you have given to me. It seems that we never really know what impact another human can have on the life we lead. But on this morning, I am glad that you are still breathing. --Randolph Fiery
                                  ***
Several friends wrote in to ask, who is Genevieve?
I thought I knew. When I was writing the biography of Stan Musial, a gent from southern Virginia,  Randolph Fiery, contacted me to tell how Musial intersected his family’s life.

In 1939, Musial was a kid pitcher in Williamson, West Virginia. The Musial bio says:
“On Sunday mornings Musial would attend Mass, and Geneva Zando, a senior in high school, would observe how devout and handsome he was on the Communion line. Soon she would marry Howard Fiery, who lived in the house Musial had entered by mistake.”

The book explains how late one Saturday night, the boy from Donora, Pa., wandered into an identical home on a main street of the coal town.
Things could have gone wrong, but the Fiery family, knowing he was a Cardinal farmhand, directed him to the nearby house where he was staying.

As Musial became Stan the Man, one of the greatest players of his generation, or any generation, Randy often heard the story about that long-ago Saturday night. Randy says it used to frost his dad when talk turned to the nice young man who attended Mass that summer in Williamson. 

Then Randy launched into gear about his mom: 

"Sitting here now I realize that I really didn’t tell you much about my mother. Yes, she was a saint.
"I  believe that she was unusual for her day and place and time.
"My grandparents were Italian, but mom was Born in BLOODY MINGO COUNTY, West Virginia, during the deadly coal wars between the mine owners, and the young United Mine Workers union. "She was a person of science, earned a biology degree in 1942 and moved to Waukegan, Illinois,  and worked in the laboratory of a Catholic hospital. She ended up marrying my dad, a college football star at William and Mary.
"She raised five children, four boys, and a girl on three acres of land in southern West Virginia. My dad worked construction, building bridges. His jobs were in Virginia and he only came home on Saturdays and Sundays. She cooked, cleaned, challenged her children to foot races in the yard. She never cursed, never talked badly about anyone, never whipped us, and at 85 years old her arms were still like rocks. She took us to church every Sunday, but she never spoke of religion.
"She was humble, self-sacrificing and always forgiving. Kindness and compassion flowed through her veins. She was funny and a good storyteller. But mostly she did not show herself and let other people draw the attention.
"As I said, she was a good storyteller. Some stories I had a hard time believing, but it ended up that they were true. She was a cousin of Pope John Paul l, Albino Luciani.    
"The pope’s father was a stonemason in Falcade as was my grandfather and his brothers.
"I’m just babbling George. I can’t really describe a saint, but every human that knew her loved her."​

​

There is nothing more dispiriting to a baseball fan than to see a favorite team toss
helpful players overboard with two months left in the season.
Wait, what about those tickets I bought for three weeks from now? Does that mean we don’t have a chance this year?
​
Of course, baseball fans are smart enough to smell the reek of failure – particularly the demanding patrons of the Mets and Yankees, who can figure stuff out for themselves.

The Yankees are trudging along last in a very tough five-team division – enough to make The Boss up there in the sky (you know which Boss I mean) toss a thunderbolt of rage at the people running the Yankees. (Actually, the Boss is responsible for the current owner and the current general manager of his team.)
The Yankees have been followed by rumors of jettisoning unproductive players with two months to go in this season. A player dump? So very un-Yankee.

But the other New York team is making the Yankees look downright successful and stable. I am talking here about the Mets, who, as I am typing this Sunday evening, have jettisoned their best active reliever (David Robertson) and one of their best starting pitchers, Max Scherzer, after he staged a  tantrum because the Mets had dumped Robertson.

Let’s face it. The Mets would not be in this mess if Edwin Diaz, the best relief pitcher in the majors last year, had not torn up his knee in a celebration dogpile in the World Baseball Classic. Everything bad the Mets have done – let us count the ways – stems from that horrible moment of destructive joy.

Robertson is a useful late-inning pitcher – good enough to give Mets fans hope in the late innings this year. When Robertson was dumped, Scherzer forced his trade for a prospect.
That really stinks – for Mets fans. But the Mets – and the Yankees – and most teams have played that game over the years.
I have to inform New Yorkers: this is not all about them.

The nicest thing about this season is the high standing of the Baltimore Orioles and Cincinnati Reds in their respective years. I have soft spots for both  – the towns, the teams, their distinctive colors and uniforms – and would love to see them in the World Series.

Meantime, the two New York teams are struggling. Too bad for fans who committed their hearts and their dollars.
Mets fans can wail about the departure of Robertson and the egomaniacal master, Scherzer, pacing the dugout between innings, or babbling on his days off.

But historically, the Mets have benefited from other teams dumping somebody. (Donn Clendenon, upgrading the 1969 Mets the day he arrived.)
Remember 2015? Of course you do. The Mets brought in Yoenis Cespedes, who tore up the league for two months and helped the Mets reach the World Series. Good move by the front office. Of course, some other team (Detroit) had dumped Cespedes to the Mets his fourth team in two seasons.

Fans hate it when it happens to them. One of the most demoralizing dumps I have seen was in 1992, when the Mets were clearly not going to win anything.  So the brass dumped David Cone, a charismatic competitor with a 13-7 record for a mediocre team, who then helped Toronto reach the World Series and, three years later, helped the Yankees reach the league finals.
Mets’ fans groused, insisting that Cone should have remained a Met. Of course, the Mets had picked him up for a reserve catcher after the 1986 World Series.
“Wait til you see this kid,” wise old shortstop Rafael Santana told me on opening day.

Other teams have traditionally picked up highly useful players, I remember when my Brooklyn Dodgers acquired Sal (The Barber) Maglie in 1956, and the main concern was whether Maglie and the Dodgers’ centurion right fielder, Carl Furillo, could co-exist in the same clubhouse, given their long Manhattan-Brooklyn feud.
The Barber and the Skoonj bonded over some Scotch in a hotel room, and made Dodger general manager Buzzie Bavasi look like the genius he was sure he was, and Maglie helped the Dodgers reach the 1956 World Series.

That other New York team, the one in pinstripes, has a history of acquiring useful parts from bottom-feeders, most notably their Kansas City cousins. In 1964, the Yanks were negotiating for a long-time antagonist, Pedro Ramos, a pitcher who was often challenging Mickey Mantle to a footrace. The Yankees could not manage to get Pistol Pete until after the Sept. 1 deadline, but he helped them into the World Series, when he was ineligible to pitch. (He never did get to race Mantle.)

Fans are still waiting to see what kind of deals can be done in the final hours before this year’s 6 PM deadline on Tuesday.
However, the Mets’ blight hangs over Queens like the gritty odor of a Canadian forest fire.
Maybe Edwin Diaz will be back, intact, next season. To some of us sad-sack Mets fans, that seems like a long time. A very long time.

As of this moment, the worst seasonal record in the history of the major leagues still belongs to the 1962 Mets – 40 victories, 120 losses, for a nice round percentage of .250.
However, it looks as if the Oakland A’s – 11-45- .196 as of Tuesday morning -- might break that record.

A lot of people who love the Mets are rooting for Oakland to somehow avoid a new low, and leave that honor to Casey Stengel’s 1962 Amazin’ Mets.
Is that twisted? Not from my point of view. The 1962 season remains memorable – the first season for an expansion franchise created to replace the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants, who had bolted to California in 1958.

The Mets were often terrible, but they were also a lot of fun, with Stengel diverting attention from all those losses. Now, 61 years later, many Mets’ fans – and also some vintage Mets players -- are saying they could easily live with that distinction.
“Keep the record!!!” texted Bill Wakefield, who had a decent year as a reliever in 1964.

“I want that to be forever,” says Howie Rose, the Queens kid living out the dream by broadcasting Mets games on the radio. He will be honored by the Mets Wednesday evening and will throw out the first pitch – as fans display their Howie Rose bobblehead dolls.

Rose goes back to 1962 when he was 8 years old and his father took him to the Polo Grounds to see the new team.
“Being a narcissistic kid, I thought it was all for me,” Rose told me over the phone on Monday.
The Mets beat the Cardinals and Gil Hodges hit what turned out to be his last home run. Rod Kanehl – the scrappy minor-leaguer who came to be a folk hero of the early Mets – hit the first grand-slam homer in Met history! Complete game by Roger Craig! Felix Mantilla 4-for-4! My man Joe Christopher playing center field!

“It was a year-long celebration,” Rose said, noting that the Mets somehow won a World Series only seven years later. Amazing.
“You had to be there,” Rose said.
Craig Anderson was there at the start – a Lehigh College graduate, obtained from the Cardinal organization, one of the many “university men” that Casey and Edna Stengel relished.

Anderson was the winning pitcher in both ends of a doubleheader against the Milwaukee Braves, raising the Mets’ record to 12-19. Maybe they were not so terrible, some people said. They promptly lost 17 straight, and finished the season at .250.

Anderson was up and down with the Mets the next two years, and ended his major-league career with 19 consecutive losses – which was the record going into the 1992 season when another Met, Anthony Young, kept losing.
“When Anthony Young approached my 19 straight losses,” Anderson texted Monday, “I wrote him and said I hoped he did not break my record, to no avail. He had good stuff and bad luck. I did the best I could but lost some starts when relievers failed me. So that’s baseball…”
Anthony wound up losing 27 straight decisions with the Mets and Cubs, and died in 2017.

Craig Anderson, 84, watches the Oakland Athletics stumble, as the A’s ownership allows the franchise to dwindle, to make it easier to get out of town, to Las Vegas. (And why not, given MLB’s dangerous new flirtation with sports gambling?)
 
Some people would welcome another team breaking the Mets’ 1962 record. Keith Hernandez, who helped win World Series for St. Louis and the Mets, said on a TV broadcast last week that the Mets and their fans should be glad to get rid of the streak.
 
But Craig Anderson  is not so sure.
He took heart from the old-timers’ day in Queens last summer, a lavish reunion including a few original Mets. Anderson added: “Don't forget a truly professional man, Gil Hodges, on and off the field!”
 
“After the recognition that my teammates and I received last August, I truly feel about playing on the first Mets team was a special moment in my career,” Anderson continued, saying his team was “a small part of baseball history and Mets fans made us feel special too.
 
“So let our record stand. Mets fans proved to me that former players, win or lose, are still special” -- Craig Anderson, 1962 Original Met, and Proud of It.”
                     ###

Jim Brown never lost his dedication to causes. I ran into him in the ‘90s, at some gathering in the city, I cannot remember the cause – health care and support for broken old football players, or racial causes. Whatever. Jim Brown was wearing a fez over his rugged skull, displaying a familiar hard look below the fez.
Omigosh. I felt we were back in the late 60’s maybe in People’s Park in Berkeley, maybe outside Madison Square Garden or some other place that needed an attitude adjustment.
The old days were back: Harry Edwards. Bill Russell. Roberto Clemente or Curt Flood giving writers a seminar in the clubhouse. Richie Havens. Nina Simone. Protest songs. The hallowed John Lewis.

I saw a puzzled look on the face of a Black journalist, half my age, and I kind of giggled.
Jim Brown’s scowl made me feel young again.
And on the Manhasset-Port Washington peninsula, the earth still shudders from the powerful athlete who once played here.  ​

Brown-Bagging It to Buckingham
By Russell Baker
Jan. 1, 1989

MY INTENTION WAS TO become a great novelist, not a foreign correspondent, so naturally I never expected to end up in Westminster Abbey covering the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.
The chain of events that put me there began in 1947. The Baltimore Sun needed a police reporter that year. The managing editor mentioned it to an editorial writer who lectured at Johns Hopkins, and the editorial writer mentioned it to a professor, who mentioned it to me and gave me a phone number to call at The Sun. I was to ask for a Mr. Dorsey.
Newspaper work didn't really interest me, but some great novelists had started as newspaper men. Newspaper people could never be much better than hacks. Still, they did write, didn't they? What's more, they got paid every week. I began to feel reality taking residence in my soul.
''What's your experience?'' Mr. Dorsey, The Sun's managing editor, was asking when I came to his office a few days later.
''I've worked on the Johns Hopkins News-Letter.''
''You realize you can never get rich in the newspaper business,'' Mr. Dorsey said.
''Rich?'' I tried to smile the smile of a man calmly resigned to a life of penury. ''I never expect to make a lot of money.''
Mr. Dorsey sent me away with a handshake and a loud snort. A week later, the phone rang while I was eating supper.
''This is Dorsey. If you still want to work for me, you can start Sunday at $30 a week.''
I was flabbergasted. Thirty dollars a week. That was Depression pay. This was 1947. A pair of shoes cost $9. I'd been in New York a few weeks earlier, and the prices there were incredible. A theater ticket had cost me $1.50, the hotel was $4.50 a night, a sirloin steak restaurant dinner, $3.25. Thirty dollars a week was an insult to a college man.
''I'll take it,'' I replied.
A MISFIT AT POLICE REPORTING, after a year on the job I was falling behind at The Sun. New people were being hired, assigned to police coverage for a month or two, then moved inside. ''Moved inside.'' On The
Sun, those words meant having your own desk, being sent on fascinating general assignments, and never having to humor a policeman again.
Luckily for me, The Sun's famously miserable pay had sent morale so low by 1949 that there was constant personnel turnover. Everybody seemed to be looking for a job with better pay, and many were finding them. This left the paper perpetually short of experienced reporters. As a result, to get ahead you didn't have to be very good, you simply had to hang around. Being unmarried and living at home, I could get by on my Sun salary, which averaged $50 a week in 1949, so I could afford to hang around.
By the end of the year, I was making a gaudy $70 a week. This was enough to get married on, if you were young and foolish enough to believe in happy endings, which was precisely how young Mimi and I were.
Then there came a miracle.
The telephone woke me around 10:30 in the morning. I normally didn't get to bed until 4, so it was still dawn on my personal clock, and I growled a sour hello.
THE MARTINIS CAME, THEN THE food and the beer, and when we started to eat, Buck Dorsey said, ''How old are you?''
I said I was 27.
''How would you like to go to London?'' he asked.
The question was so preposterous that at first I did not absorb its implication. Well, I said, a little hesitant, we had just had a new baby, and I wasn't sure it was a good time to go off and leave Mimi alone.
''Could I think about it a little while?'' I asked.
Buck Dorsey was looking at me very strangely, and as the full weight of his great announcement broke over me, I understood why: He wanted me to go to London.
''I mean, how long would you want me to be away?'' I said.
''Probably two years,'' he said. ''That's the usual assignment for men we put in the London bureau. Of course, once you get there and find a place to live, you'd move your family over with you.''
Then Buck Dorsey was talking about the coming coronation of young Queen Elizabeth, which would be the great story during my time in London, but I was now too excited to pay close attention. I was going to escape the drudgery of the local newsroom, after all.

I ROSE AT 4:30 ON CORONATION morning and started dressing in white tie and tails. Heavy rain was beating against the window and it had been raining all night, drenching a million people camped in the streets. What should have been a rosy June morning looked like the start of a wet, black nightmare.
I was going to have to walk out into that downpour in fancy dress because I had been too stupid to apply for a permit to take a car to Westminster Abbey. If I had filled out the forms, authoritative windshield stickers would have been issued, and I could have ridden in splendor.
But I had laughed at the idea. An absurd fuss, a preposterous waste of car-rental money. Living within a short walk of the Abbey, I could easily stroll up there on a lovely June morning. It wasn't just chintziness that impelled me to walk. The American in me was tickled by the idea of walking to a coronation instead of being chauffeured by a lackey. Thomas Jefferson had walked to the Capitol for his first Inauguration. Let the English see how Americans did these things.
Watching the rain outside made me curse my foolishness. That short walk to the Abbey seemed short only because I had never walked it in pouring rain. Actually, it was at least a mile. And in top hat, white tie, tails 

Instructions had been firm about dress. People not entitled to wear ermine, coronet, full dress uniform, court dress, levee dress coats with white knee breeches, kilt, robes of rank or office or tribal dress must wear white tie and tails, with medals.

I didn't have medals. Since I didn't have a dressy suit either, I rented the full rig from Moss Bros., famous among the haberdashery-wise throughout the Empire and always pronounced ''Moss Bross.'' Knowing there would be a coronation run on Moss Brothers, I went early and got a fairly decent fit. Because I'd never worn tails before, I got up a little earlier than necessary against the possibility I might have a breakdown getting into the thing.
Mimi fixed a big breakfast. It was going to be a long day. I had to be in position inside the Abbey by 7:30 and wouldn't get out until 4 in the afternoon. The rain let up while we were eating. Mimi got the camera and, while Kathy and Allen watched, took snapshots of Daddy wearing his coronation suit to show their grandchildren.

Whatever gods may be, they were with me that day. The rain faded to a weak drizzle, then stopped altogether just when it was time to start for the Abbey. No, I would gamble and leave the raincoat home. Walking to the Abbey in top hat, white tie and tails could be a great gesture only if it were done right. Wrapping up in a dirty raincoat would make it comical.
Mimi was going to the house of Gerry Fay, London editor of The Manchester Guardian, to watch the day's events on television. There weren't a lot of television sets in London yet, but Gerry's house had one, and his wife, Alice, had invited several disadvantaged families like mine to come see the show. Because it was a big day for me, as well as for the Queen, I kissed Mimi and the children goodbye, said, ''Wish me luck,'' stepped out into Lower Belgrave Street and headed toward Victoria Station.
Not a soul in sight from Eaton Square all the way to Victoria. I strolled briskly along through the heavy, wet air, getting used to the feel of the high silk hat on my head, happy to discover that it was not going to tip and fall off. In my hip pocket I had a half-pint flask of brandy to keep me awake during the long day. In my hand, I carried a brown paper bag containing two sandwiches and three or four chunks of yellow cheese. In my pockets, I had a sheaf of official cards issued by the Earl Marshal, conveying the Queen's command for policemen to pass me safely through all the barricades and instructing me which church entrance to use, how to conduct myself while eating during the ceremony (discreetly), and where to find toilet facilities in the Abbey.

Rounding Victoria Station, I heard the hum of a great, damp concentration of humanity. Packed from curb to building line on both sides, all along the five-mile route of the coronation procession, people had spent the rain-soaked night on the sidewalks. How many there were I didn't try to guess. The papers said millions, overstating it a bit, as newspapers usually do when writing of crowds. Still, there were plenty.
I had walked among them the night before. They were bedded down in sleeping bags and soggy quilts, under raincoats and makeshift oilskin tents. Many had brought camp stools, portable stoves, knapsacks, picnic baskets, knitting bags, radios. They brewed tea on the sidewalk, they read, they slept, they sang, they sat stoically in the rain with only a felt hat against the downpour, they dozed with heads pillowed against tree trunks and lampposts.
During the war, London's ability to ''take it,'' no matter how much punishment the Luftwaffe gave them, became such a cliche that it later turned into a small joke. On this cold, bitter, rainy night, with those good-natured hordes cheerfully camped on rainswept concrete, I had a glimpse of that peculiar British fortitude, dogged and indomitable in the face of adversity, which made them so formidable to Hitler.

At the morning's soggy dawn, in my top hat and tails and graced, I hoped, with some of the elegance Fred Astaire brought to the uniform, I presented my credentials to the police guarding the barricades on the route to the Abbey. Miracle of miracles! The police recognized them, passed me through, waved me into the broad empty avenue called Victoria. The avenue ran straight to Westminster Abbey. I prayed I could make it before the skies opened again and stepped out as rapidly as I could without losing dignity before the damp mob staring at me.
And, yes, now applauding me. A smattering of applause came off the sidewalks as I strode along. They had been waiting so long for something wonderful to appear. Now here was the first sign that wonders would indeed pass before their eyes this day. I fancied myself a vision for them, a suave, graceful gentleman in top hat, white tie and tails, signaling the start of a momentous event.

At that moment, I was the event. The applause grew as I stepped along. Having always prided myself on shyness, modesty and distaste for theatrics, I was surprised to find myself not only enjoying my big moment, but also, here and there, where the applause seemed especially enthusiastic, tipping my silk hat to the audience.
It wasn't until I got within a block or two of the Abbey that I understood what was happening. There I noticed a man in the crowd talking to a companion and pointing to my hand holding the brown bag with my lunch. At this, his companion laughed, then applauded vigorously: What delighted the crowd was the spectacle of a toff brown-bagging his lunch to the coronation.
By this time, I was certain to reach the Abbey before the downpour resumed. That certainty and the pleasure of strutting a great stage exhilarated me. Triumphantly, I raised my lunch over my head and waved it at the crowd, and was washed with a thunder of cheering and applause that the great Astaire himself might have envied. A moment later, I passed into the Abbey for a long day's work.

I HAD A GOOD SEAT IN the Abbey. It was in the north transept looking down from about mezzanine level onto the central ceremonial theater. It provided a clear, unobstructed view of the Queen and the throne in left profile. Opposite, in the south transept, sat the lords and ladies of the realm in scarlet and ermine. The few good seats allotted to American correspondents had been distributed by a lottery drawing, and I had got lucky.
After being ushered up the ramp to the chair I was to occupy for the next seven or eight hours, I took a spiral note pad out of my pocket and began taking notes, just as I would have done at a three-alarm fire in Baltimore.

This was by design. After worrying for weeks how to cover a coronation, I had decided to cover it pretty much the way I would cover any routine assignment on the local staff. I would show up, keep my eyes open, listen closely and make notes on what I saw and heard.
My hope was to produce a story that seemed fresh, and I thought this might be possible if I treated it as though I'd just strolled into the newsroom one afternoon and the city editor had come dancing at me, shouting: ''They're having a coronation up at the Abbey in 10 minutes. Get up there as fast as you can.''
This was not the safe way to cover the coronation, but it offered the best chance of doing a good story. The safe way was to write the story before the coronation was held. This was also the surest way to produce a lifeless story.
This idea I discarded quickly. For one thing, I was cocky about my ability to produce a fresh story of several thousand words under deadline pressure. I had always worked well on deadlines, maybe even better than when there was time to dawdle.
So I entered the Abbey with no backup story ready to send in case of emergency, took out my spiral pad, and started jotting notes on what I saw. Tier upon tier of dark blue seats edged with gold. The stone walls draped with royal purple and gold. The stained glass of rose windows transforming the gray outer light into streams of red, yellow, green and blue high up against the Abbey roof.
Many of these notes appeared almost unchanged.
''Yellow men and tan men, black men and pink men, men with cafe au lait skins and men with the red-veined nose of country squiredom.''
''Malayans with bands of orange and brown-speckled cloth bound tightly about their hips. . . .''
''Men dressed as Nelson might have dressed when he was sporting in London . . . like courtiers who dallied with the Restoration beauties of Charles II's court . . . like officers in Cornwallis's army. . . .
''. . . violins far away eerily unreal. . . .''
Writing to my mother later, I disposed of the coronation in a single paragraph:

''I am so sick of the whole business that I can't write about it. Suffice it to say that I was in the Abbey about 7 and didn't get out until 4 P.M. In this time, I ate two sandwiches, several chunks of cheese, went to sleep three times, and drank a half pint of brandy to keep my blood flowing. I was seated in the midst of all the African and Oriental potentates and had a fine view of the staircase leading down to the water closets, where I could see Africans in leopard skins and Chinese dressed like French admirals queuing up to wait their turn to make water. I came out of the Abbey, stiff as a board and woozy, and had to run through a cold driving rainstorm to find a taxicab. Then I had to write for six hours, producing that mass of type which ran in The Sun. I didn't feel that I laid an egg completely, because next day mine was the only story from any American newspaper which had parts reproduced in any of the London papers. Considering that papers like The New York Times and Tribune had 25 and 30 reporters to do the job, I felt we did fairly well.''

The humility in this last sentence was entirely bogus. By the time I wrote my mother, the reaction from Baltimore was in, and I felt I had done far better than fairly well. I felt I had scored an absolute triumph. The day following the coronation, I had a cable signed by 16 members of the city staff. It said:
''Magnificent. Your coverage worthy of the coronation, and of Baker.''
Pete Kumpa, one of the best newsmen on the staff and an old friend whose regular correspondence kept me posted on events in the home office, reported: ''Your story received here in the greatest admiration. Magnificent is the word.''
The greatest ego bloater of all, however, was a note from Buck Dorsey's wife, Becky, marked ''Very Personal.'' She reported various compliments about the coronation piece which Buck had received from various high and mighty types in the Sun hierarchy, then said:
''The nicest of all, Tom O'Neill, said, 'Buck, the boy knows how to use the English language. It's a finished piece, beautifully done.' '' O'Neill was the most dashing reporter on The Sun.
Closing, Becky wrote, ''I do not know that Buck would approve of my telling you all this, but on thinking of that fine ignorant old face of yours, I couldn't help myself.''

I could have discounted praise from my friends on the city staff. They had been writing glowing reviews from my very first days in London. They were my cheering section back in Baltimore, and for good reason. Being picked from the local staff for The Sun's plum assignment abroad, I was a symbol of hope for them. If one man from the local staff could escape into the sweet world of foreign correspondence, there might be hope for all. They had a stake in seeing me succeed and wrote constantly, applauding and cheering me on to keep my morale high.
Becky's report about Tom O'Neill, however, was not so easily explained away. Nothing could have done more to puff me with self-admiration than those few words about Tom O'Neill's remarks to Buck. I was not the type to have wildest dreams, but if I had been, the wildest I could have concocted would have had Buck Dorsey listening with the respect he always accorded his favorite reporter as the great O'Neill heaped me with praise.

Two months after the coronation had crowned me with glory, my triumph was confirmed in a cable from Baltimore:
''Ten dollar merit raise effective next week for you. Happy August Fourth and all that. Love. Dorsey.''
That brought my salary up to $120 a week. I was a $6,240-a-year man.
****
Russell Baker is a columnist for The Times. This article was adapted from his book, ''The Good Times,'' to be published by William Morrow & Company in June.

                                        ***
From George Vecsey:
My thanks to Marty Goldman for volunteering this informed essay.
I only wish more had been written about Michael Spivak when he passed, after breaking a hip, according to snippets on the Web. 
One of Spivak's accomplishments has widespead implications these days: his scholarly creation of gender-neutral pronouns, very much an important  subject these days. 

https://wiki.c2.com/?SpivakPronouns 

https://www.liquisearch.com/spivak_pronoun 
 
https://en-academic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/105747
 
https://www.quora.com/What-impact-did-Michael-Spivaks-books-have-on-you-He-died-in-2020

In recent months, we have seen documentaries of singers who have been part of our adult lives.
 
Joni Mitchell was honored by the Gershwin award, at the Kennedy Center, beaming in the front row, as people praised her music, her idealistic messages. Joni has been recovering from a stroke, but -- spoiler alert: -- on this recent night, she agreed to go to the microphone and in an older, huskier but still blatantly Joni voice, she totally aced the Gershwin standard, “Summertime.”
 
https://www.google.com/search?q=joni+mitchell+honored+at+kennedy+center&rlz=1C1GCEA_enUS874US874&oq=Joni+Mitchell+honor&aqs=chrome.3.0i512j69i57j0i512l3j0i22i30l4.18076j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:4cc10676,vid:C815lySYh9w

Another documentary showed how Roberta Flack started singing classical music – not an easy path for a young Black woman -- and over the years how she took control of her own career.
  
We try not to miss the series, “Now Hear This,” with American conductor-violinist Scott Yoo traveling all over the world to talk music with classical musicians.
In all the fields I have covered, I have loved shop talk – from coal miners, from athletes, from politicians, who know their field and, if encouraged, will divulge tricks of the trade.

The other night, Yoo explored how Robert Schuman may have been bipolar, interviewing a doctor/musician who can talk and play Schumann.

A master has died. Ryuichi Sakamoto was an innovator, transcending styles and mediums.

He was so productive that the New York Times ran a lush and knowing obituary on Monday -- yet never mentioned my favorite work involving Sakamoto-san. 

"Casa" did not make the cut, squeezed out by work for movies ("The Last Emperor" for Bertolucci), modern collaborations with David Bowie, a performance at the opening ceremony at the 1988 Summer Olympics.

He was transplanted into my brain, my heart, two decades ago when I was listening to John Schaefer, New York's jewel of a music teacher, with his familiar radio show, "New Sounds." 

Late one evening, Schaeffer's new sound was a CD entitled "Casa" -- "Morelenbaum2 Sakamoto" -- a cellist with a beard (Jaques Morelenbaum), a beautiful singer (Paula Morelenbaum), and a pianist (Sakamoto) -- all three interpretating the music of Antonio Carlos Jobim.

La casa? The interpretetations evolved in the home of  the late Tom Jobim, in Rio, and later recorded in studios in Rio. Rarely do you see creative genius intermingling, so respectfully. Jacques Morelenbaum suggests (in thick English) a dramatic piano chord to end one song, as Sakamoto nods his mane, Paula Morelenbaum reclines casually on a sofa, then out of nowhere she tries out a phrase in Portuguese or maybe English.

Over the years I realized that Sakamoto lived in Greenwich Village and later I read that he was fighting cancer. Then on Monday I read a lush and informed obituary by William Robin in The New York Times. Sakamoto was 71.

Favorite new fact? His influences ranged from Claude Debussy to John Cage (who has been one of my wife's favorites for many years.) 

Maybe you can access the link to Sakamoto's obituary in Monday's NYT: 
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/02/arts/music/ryuichi-sakamoto-dead.html
And maybe you will enjoy the interplay among these artists, courtesy of YouTube: