Little Darling, It's Been a Long Cold Lonely Winter

2/12/2019

New Shea, Tuesday, from the 7 line. Photo: Andrew Tansey.

Now the Mets have Jacob DeGrom's former agent working as a general manager, negotiating DeGrom's contract -- with an imposed deadline of opening day. What could go wrong, in a franchise that let Tom Seaver get away?
But at least many of the Mets were in Florida on Monday, stretching and throwing, scratching and spitting, doing what ball players do. We survive vicariously.

Dominic Smith greets Jeurys Familia as the big fella returns from his strange exile. Photo: Newsday.

Here comes the sun
Here comes the sun, and I say
It's all right
---"Here Comes the Sun," lyrics by George Harrison, from "Abbey Road," 1969.
Say, what happened that year?

Andy Tansey

2/12/2019 05:49:32 pm

It won't be the first time I've said this, but back when being a bully, while not nice, was not illegal, 10-year-old boys could be mean in 1969. A 10-year-old Yankees fan living in a Flushing ZIP code in 1969 could be made to turn colors and jump on the bandwagon in October. The psychological scars have faded but endure. The name Swoboda still brings fond memories. Frank Robinson played for the O's.

doo-do-do-doo

George Vecsey

2/12/2019 06:19:05 pm

We need to ask Rocky about his memories about FRobby. Rocky is a Baltimore kid....He must have gotten some stick that winter...GV

Peter Kennedy link

2/13/2019 08:47:24 am

Thanks, George. Spring Training, finally!

On a different subject, speaking of Dom Smith, would you please share your "Who's at First" scenario for the 2019 season?

Cheers, Peter

George Vecsey

2/13/2019 02:58:01 pm

Peter: Just scanned the roster. Bernie Madoff Era Lives.
I see two nice players -- Conforto and Nimmo.
Not at all sure about Rosario.
First base? Maybe Marv Throneberry. Maybe Tim Harkness.
Smith looked a little more trim in first spring photo.
My Mets consigliere just texted: "Cano? TJ Rivera? Smith? D'Arnaud? I could see Cano, if McNeil continues to hit."
But Mets seem to disdain McNeil, despite his low salary and high BA. He is not a launch-arc flailer the analytics crowd seems to favor.
Is it time to quote Dante yet? ("lasciate ogni speranza..." etc.)
GV

Josh Rubin

2/13/2019 11:07:50 am

I am in wait-and-see mode. Good pitching (hope the rotation holds together this time). A few big, but uncertain, bats. I don't know where the spark or the engine is that will drive this team.

George Vecsey

2/13/2019 03:03:13 pm

Josh: Wait, I forgot, Tim Tebow is on the roster. One of these years we are going to have that frolic.
Former agent working the other side of the street,
Dante lives!
GV

bruce

2/16/2019 07:47:18 pm

george,

what the hell does this have to do with the blue jays?

big hype about vlad being with the team this season.

supposedly the #1 prospect in baseball.

george harrison wrote some great songs....a bit overshadowed in that particular group.

bruce

Comments are closed.

QUOTES
More and More, I Talk to the Dead--Margaret Renkl

NASHVILLE — After my mother died so suddenly — laughing at a rerun of “JAG” at 10 p.m., dying of a hemorrhagic stroke by dawn — I dreamed about her night after night. In every dream she was willfully, outrageously alive, unaware of the grief her death had caused. In every dream relief poured through me like a flash flood. Oh, thank God!
Then I would wake into keening grief all over again.
Years earlier, when my father learned he had advanced esophageal cancer, his doctor told him he had perhaps six months to live. He lived far longer than that, though I never thought of it as “living” once I learned how little time he really had. For six months my father was dying, and then he kept dying for two years more. I was still working and raising a family, but running beneath the thin soil of my own life was a river of death. My father’s dying governed my days.
After he died, I wept and kept weeping, but I rarely dreamed about my father the way I would dream about my mother nearly a decade later. Even in the midst of calamitous grief, I understood the difference: My father’s long illness had given me time to work death into the daily patterns of my life. My mother’s sudden death had obliterated any illusion that daily patterns are trustworthy.
Years have passed now, and it’s the ordinariness of grief itself that governs my days. The very air around me thrums with absence. I grieve the beloved high-school teacher I lost the summer after graduation and the beloved college professor who was my friend for more than two decades. I grieve the father I lost nearly 20 years ago and the father-in-law I lost during the pandemic. I grieve the great-grandmother who died my junior year of college and the grandmother who lived until I was deep into my 40s.
Some of those I grieve are people I didn’t even know. How can John Prine be gone? I hear his haunting last song, “I Remember Everything,” and I still can’t quite believe that John Prine is gone.
-----
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/30/opinion/death-grief-memory.html
Jan. 30, 2023

Little Darling, It's Been a Long Cold Lonely Winter

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