Hofstra Honors the Mets, April 26-28

The Glider Will Visit Hofstra This Week

Rusty Staub, Bud Harrelson, Ed Kranepool, Art Shamsky, Ed Charles, Skip Lockwood and Joan Hodges -- just to drop a few names.

A lot of early Mets history will be coming to Hofstra University on Long Island Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Then there are the writers (Stan Isaacs and Steve Jacobson) and broadcasters (Sal Marciano) and historians (John Thorn) among panel members, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Amazing Mets in a conference that figures to be both academic and fun.

I'll be moderating two panels at Hofstra, my alma mater, Friday afternoon.

In the spring of 1962, I was taking my one and, as it turned out, my only graduate course -- the novel, with a terrific three-week segment by Dr. Hull on Ulysses, about a very human being who spends a long day wandering but finally gets to go home. How fitting. .

In sleet and rain, on Friday, April 13, also fitting, I attended the Mets' first home game – as a fan -- at the Polo Grounds, along with my Newsday pal George Usher. By mid-season I was one of Casey Stengel’s “my writers,” standing by his side at his 72nd birthday party in St. Louis, when he most emphatically did not ask, “Can’t anybody here play this game?”

Never signed up for any more grad courses. Dr. Hull and Casey. Both great teachers.  

With my three grad credits, I get to run two panels Friday afternoon at the Hofstra conference.  

At 3:15 PM, I will introduce my long-time friend, Ed Charles, the heart and soul of the 1969 Mets, who promises to recite a new poem for the anniversary.

And at 4:15 PM, I will conduct a panel entitled: New Yorkers Recall the Dark Ages: Four Long Years Before the Birth of the Mets.

Panel members will include Joan Lombardi Hodges, Gil Hodges, Jr., Stan Isaacs, the landmark Newsday columnist known for his appropriately-named column Out of Left Field, and Marty Adler, head of the Brooklyn Dodgers Hall of Fame. 

Although a proud son of Brooklyn, Stan Isaacs promises to stick up for his dearly departed New York Giants.

We will be talking about the four lean years without the National League in New York,and then the bizarre early years of the Amazing Mets.

For information:

http://www.hofstra.edu/community/culctr/culctr_events_mets.html

 

Like the Neil Diamond Song: Brooklyn Roads.