Before I tell my Jimmy Breslin-Casey Stengel story, let's talk about bad timing for obituaries. (For example: Aldous Huxley and C.S. Lewis both died on Nov. 22, 1963.) Likewise, it is not a good career move to compete with Jimmy Breslin, “the outer-borough boulevardier of bilious persuasion,” as Dan Barry calls him. Chuck Berry died the same weekend as Breslin; the Times rolled out the big guns for his strut and the clanging of his guitar, outside the schoolhouse, urging boys and girls to come out and play. John Herbers was also honored with a Times obituary on Monday. He was 93, one of the great reporters of the civil-rights era, a gentleman all the way who politely treated me like an equal when I joined the national reporting staff. He had been in bad places – Emmett Till’s murder – and never lost the unassuming air of a small-town southerner. Bob McFadden and the Times did right by John Herbers: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/18/business/media/john-herbers-dead-times-correspondent.html Okay. Here’s my story about Jimmy Breslin, my fellow Queens boy. Elderly editors still marvel at his imagination in the wonderful interviews he turned in for $10 fees on long-forgotten sports magazines. In 1962 the New York newspapers acknowledged the Mets' raffish ineptitude early on. By late July Sports Illustrated dispatched Jimmy for his take on the worst team in the history of baseball. Breslin arrived in St. Louis the weekend of Casey Stengel’s 72nd birthday, and watched them bumble away games. One evening the club held a party for Casey in the rooftop room of the Chase-Park Plaza. Casey greeted the headwaiter, who had once tossed batting practice for visiting teams in the old Sportsmans Park. Casey imitated his motion, remembered his nickname. I was fascinated by Casey and never left his side all evening. Breslin was also there, observing. If anybody was taking notes, I do not remember. A year later, a Breslin book came out, entitled "Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?" a plea ostensibly uttered by Casey during his long monologue that evening in St. Louis. Not long afterward, Breslin called me for a phone number or something and at the end I said, "Jimmy, just curious, I was at that party for Casey, never left his side, and I don't remember him ever saying, 'Can't anybody here play this game?'" Long pause. "What are you, the F.B.I?" Breslin asked, his Queens accent turning “the” into “duh.” Years later, Breslin conceded he just might have exercised some creative license. Casey never complained about being misquoted. He would have said it if he had thought of it. That was the thing about Jimmy Breslin. He got the inner truths. He had an insight into people’s hearts, almost like a mystic or a psychic. Given his imperfections and his imaginations, he was a universal voice. He was also a very local voice. As the world becomes homogenized, we lose the local voices, the salt and the spices that make life exciting. (Fortunately for readers everywhere, Corey Kilgannon is covering Queens for the Times.) Chuck Berry caught the feel of Route 66 (“Well it winds from Chicago to L.A./More than 2000 miles all the way/Get your kicks on Route 66.” Makes you want to rev up the engine. John Herbers reported from the Deep South, which he loved and sometimes lamented. Jimmy Breslin understood Queens…and the world. He has not been well for years. I would have loved to read him on the scam artist from our home borough. * * * MUST READ: Dan Barry's personal tribute to Breslin on the NYT site: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/20/insider/dan-barry-way-back-with-jimmy-breslin.html?smid=fb-share Our friend Ina sent this video from a live French broadcast. World was never the same.
Joshua Rubin
3/20/2017 12:42:34 pm
Nice piece.
George Vecsey
3/20/2017 04:45:54 pm
Josh, thanks for that article. 3/21/2017 12:44:11 am
Wonderful column Mr Vecsey. Interesting footnote on the origin of ``Can't anyone here play this game."
George Vecsey
3/21/2017 08:56:11 am
Bill, thanks, you are a great monitor of the media.
Mendel
3/21/2017 02:58:27 am
Dan Barry's tribute reads more like a parable than an anecdote. You can't write about humanity if you cannot relate to human beings.
George Vecsey
3/21/2017 09:00:26 am
Mendel, thanks. Did you see the Barry article I added at the bottom? Another generous unsung side of Breslin -- walking somebody to a frightening health procedure. A true mitzvah.
Mendel
3/21/2017 09:12:20 am
George, I was referring to the article you added. And by "gravel" I meant instantly identifiable and tough, even to a child who could not grasp the content of his ideas.
George Vecsey
3/21/2017 09:29:26 am
Thanks, man. As usual, you are way ahead of me. GV
Roy Edelsack
3/21/2017 07:29:23 am
Saw Berry and Breslin once each but both times memorable.
George Vecsey
3/21/2017 09:06:47 am
Chuck Berry opening????
Brian Savin
3/21/2017 07:48:28 am
I always liked Breslin. Sometimes I thought he was just nuts and sometimes I thought he made a brilliant point. All in all his percentage was pretty damn good. I always thought Hemingway might have been Breslin if he had been a sports writer. Tough guy image where turn of phrase more important than accuracy in reporting.
George Vecsey
3/21/2017 09:12:09 am
Brian: I allude to Murray Kempton and Mike Royko above. Breslin belongs in conversation. My little town had a highly suspicious fire in a historic home recently. I drove past it a few days later and out of my head popped the name: Marvin the Torch -- Jimmy's immortal insurance enabler. He and Royko had their characters., You smiled when you saw their names. Kempton didn't need that. He had real mayors and judges -- and LBJ during his tragic Vietnam blunder. GV
Brian Savin
3/21/2017 09:30:53 am
Yeah, yeah! Marvin the Torch. The construction guy who builds empty lots where buildings used to be!! I've used that line all my life and assumed I must have read it in one of Damon Runyun's stories. If I actually remember it from a Breslin column, he moves a notch above Hemingway I'm my own pantheon. By the way, George, you're hardly a slouch among any and all. (Just gimme a break on the politics once in awhile. I need a restbit!)
Joshua Rubin
3/21/2017 12:00:23 pm
Since you've brought up Kempton, I am hoping my dad will chime in. Kempton was a regular in my dad's store for many years.
George
3/21/2017 12:02:19 pm
Brian: respite for all within a year. GV
Brian Savin
3/21/2017 02:23:58 pm
Oh dear, as they say in the Punjab, "fitteh muh!!"
Hansen Alexander
3/23/2017 11:44:15 am
Beautiful tribute to Breslin, George, not as familiar with the other folks.
George
3/23/2017 09:43:20 pm
Hansen: thanks. Interesting to hear stories you and Dan Barry tell about the up-close Breslin. GV
Gene Palumbo
3/27/2017 04:28:33 am
Sorry to be checking in here so late. Those of you who loved Kempton will want to see this fine anthology: Rebellions, Perversities and Main Events, https://www.amazon.com/Rebellions-Perversities-Events-Murray-Kempton/dp/0517172623
George Vecsey
3/28/2017 04:37:42 pm
Gene, thanks for the tip. I'm backed up on reading right now (James Shapiro's "The Year of Lear") but I will get to the Kempton collection. Comments are closed.
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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 Categories
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