Reviews - GEORGE VECSEY

Sport in the Rear-View Mirror – I

12/27/2014

Looming over the city, all ego, not much substance.

One thing I have noticed: when you don’t watch football,
Your brain does not become concussed.

I have not watched a down all season,
And don’t plan to start now.

Best thing about retirement
Is not having to trek to the Meadowlands.
Unchurched on Sundays,
I thank the maker for sweet entire liberated days.

One Saturday we were enjoying barbecue in Red Hook,
And a college game was blaring over my shoulder.
Somewhere in the South. Alabama. Ole Miss. Whatever.
The cadence was familiar. Run-pass-kick.

                        *       *     *
I think I could still love basketball,
But that is impossible
In a city of new pencil skyscrapers
And Carmel Anthony.

I cannot believe Phil Jackson took that job
Without permission to unload him.

The Knicks are currently 5-and-26.
I would have thought with a gunner like Melo
They would at least
Be 6-and-25.

*      *    *
Soccer helps, but it comes at the wrong time of day.
I need to write in the morning.

Still, Boxing Day. I love that name.
Rooney and Stevie Gerrard and even that vile John Terry.
There’ll always be an England --
Maybe into the knockout round of the World Cup.

*     *     *
My dream (see Tim Rohan’s piece in the Sunday Times)
Is that on the first warm day of spring
I will slip into the vast empty steppes near the food court,
With a mozzarella hero from Mama’s,
In the presence of other hard-core lifer true believers,
Who are not there to take freaking selfies.

Entire sections for each pilgrim,
We separately watch Lagares go back on a fly ball,
(“He’s got it,” I reassure my wife, when we watch at home),
And DeGrom’s hair and arms flap in the spring breeze.
And the two kids strut out of the bullpen,
And earnest Daniel Murphy (the Peepul’s Cherce).

That sustains me
Through the winter of bad teams and ugly new buildings.

Gene Palumbo

12/28/2014 03:18:56 am

"I would have thought with a gunner like Melo
They would at least
Be 6-and-25."

Great line!

bruce

12/28/2014 04:20:50 pm

george,

we've discussed football and major revenue university sports (don't call it college when they're universities up here in canuckistan). as you know, I share your opinions. when you think about it a bit......both baseball and hockey share at least one thing. there is more appreciation of the past in their sports.

mike from Whitestone

12/28/2014 05:03:47 am

Seasons Greetings GV & all.
Dolans Follies continue while 'Sideshow' at the St James theater closes, where's the fairness? Melo retires with no bling.
No MJ, no Kobe, no Zen mastery. Melo not in their class.
50 or so days until pitchers & catchers.

Ed martin

12/28/2014 06:02:08 am

Back from exhausting Caribbean cruise. The walk to the nearest beach and back to the buffet was exhausting. No thoughts of sports except snorkeling. Canadian friends find curling interesting-do you have Cablevision?

bruce

12/28/2014 04:14:36 pm

ed,

i'm Canadian. I've never curled.

however, it is, I think, the perfect sport for television.

that--and sumo....

bruce picken

George Vecsey

12/29/2014 03:32:45 am

I saw curling in St., Paul 20 years ago....and a bit at the Olympics. Harvey Araton was the king of curling reporters in Almost Heaven, West Nagano, in 1998.
Thanks for noticing Anjali's photos...and for news of Caribe vacation, and a reminder of mid-Feb. My kid brother and I walked past a Mets poster Sunday -- photos of De Grom and Lagares. We felt warmer already.
Happy New Year, you all.
GV

bruce

12/29/2014 03:56:35 am

george,

just got a note that i'd unsubscribed from this site. must've pushed the wrong key.

i'm assuming all I have to do is click the 'notify me.....' to correct it.

bruce

George Vecsey

12/29/2014 05:01:28 am

Bruce, that's because you made the NSA remark and somebody said, cut off that cheeky Canadian.
As for the way the web site works, I'm barely hanging on the technology I know...let me know if you have a problem. I'll trouble-shoot it (he joked)

GV

bruce

12/29/2014 05:12:24 am

george,

couldn't have been. reacted too quickly, no?

bruce

Alan Rubin link

12/29/2014 02:43:54 pm

George

You should not pick on Canadians as they are they are special.

We had just started a two week vacation in Nova Scotia when the exhaust pipe on my muffler broke. We were on the road to Fundy and the only gas station available did not have a replacement. The mechanic said, "let's put it on the lift and see what we can do."

There was a two inch by half inch gap when the broken pipe was held together. He proceeded to bridge the gap by tack welding bead upon bead. Since I had worked for a few years doing welding research, I knew how tricky this was.

Although it was back in 1967, the $2.50 charge was ridiculously low. It would have cost at least $20 in the states, if they had bothered to do the repair. I argued with him that it was to low, but he insisted. I gave him $5 and told him to keep the change, which he refused and said, "have a good vacation."

He set the tone for our trip and all subsequent ones over the years.

Thor A. Larsen

12/29/2014 02:44:50 pm

George,

You should consider driving to Brooklyn's Barclays Center, a relatively easy drive for you vs me, and watch the emerging Brooklyn Nets! They have an evolving team with new stars almost in every game. They seem to master the 'TEAM' concept and are improving. (They won again this evening.). Well., you had been an avid fan for another Brooklyn sports team in the past, so maybe the Nets can fill that void. As far as I, the addition of Jeremy Lin to the Nets would be perfect.

George Vecsey

12/30/2014 05:00:44 am

Thor, I read the box scores, and I love the idea of a team in Brooklyn, but there have been exhibits at the Brooklyn Library and Brooklyn Museum since our last run to Brooklyn a few weeks ago....I think I've just heard enough noise in stadiums for one set of eardrums.

But better the Nets than the hideous Knicks, I agree.

GV

Ed Martin

12/30/2014 11:27:09 am

About Canadians and hockey. I young, ambitious, MBA was sent to Canada to check out prospects for expansion there. When he returned he was invited to his boss's house for dinner. At dinner the boss quizzed him. "Poor prospects," the MBA said, "theres nobody there but hockey players and hookers." There was a longish silence and the boss said, "My wife is from Canada...."; The young man replied, "Oh yes, what position does she play?"

bruce

12/30/2014 11:31:24 am

country seems to change with the times.

Comments are closed.

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

Sport in the Rear-View Mirror – I

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