Well, Looks Like We Might Make It to Opening Day

3/28/2018

Glistening wet paint. The 7 train. Photo by Queens boy Andy Tansey,

What a perfect sign of spring -- survival and hope.
Man, do we need that.

I’ve been moping with a head cold, or maybe it’s from the front pages, but along with Passover and Easter come the openings for the Mets and Yankees, and not a moment too soon.

Soccer-buff Andy Tansey took this photo at the Mets/Willets Point IRT station.

I remember the first day at funky little Jarry Park in Montreal in 1969. First game ever in Canada. I got there early and workmen were still touching up the premises.

* * *
Who doesn't love Opening Day? Lonnie Shalton, baseball buff in Kansas City, wrote his own appraisal of the big day. (He mentions a few things I typed -- and also lots of other baseball insights.)
http://lonniesjukebox.com/hot-stove-71/
* * *

Fresh paint may cover some of the flaws of the Mets. They have Syndergaard and DeGrom going in the first two games, and we’ll take our chances after that.

The Mets don’t seem any better than last year – scary thought, that – but the owners did bring back old-reliable Jay Bruce, and maybe Conforto will be ready in late April, and maybe Céspedes can make it through a week or a month.

At least the Mets are haimish – with familiar faces like Weeping Wilmer and Old Pro Cabrera and Prodigal Son Reyes. They are ours, for better or worse, or for right now.

Having seen the first home game in 1962 in the Polo Grounds, I know that to be a Met fan is to root for the familiar, with all its goods and bads.

The Yankees open in Toronto. Why is this Yankee team different from all other Yankee teams? Because they have a new look with Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton, both powerful, both charismatic.

I’ve been conditioned by the recent dynasty to respect and enjoy the Yankees, as much against my religion as that is. Judge is so mature and Stanton is so poised.

Plus, I read that good old John Sterling is working on his home-run call for Stanton – and that John had his cataracts removed and doesn’t have to fake his long-ball calls so blatantly. (What took you so long, dude?)

This is all avoidance, of course. The world is screwed up. Russia incinerated some of its young people in a mall fire through incompetence the way our lawmakers and their NRA patrons put our young people in shooting galleries passing as classrooms.

Did you see the faces of young Russians protesting the shoddy construction and careless operation that killed their contemporaries?
This masterful photo by Mladen Antonov of Agence France-Presse mirrors the mournful but determined never-again postures of American youth last week. The world is indeed small.

I can read a bit of Cyrillic – the young person with the long hair and olive jacket has a sign that says коррупция – Corruption. Can they haunt Putin the way protestors from Parkland are haunting Rubio and all the other “public servants” on Wayne LaPierre’s handout list?

In the meantime, may the paint dry in Queens by Thursday morning.

Meanwhile, in the real world, young protesters in Moscow, mirroring faces in Parkland.. Photo by Mladen Antonov of Agence France-Presse

Andy Tansey

3/28/2018 09:21:15 pm

Thank you, George, for the photo acknowledgment(!) and for providing some perspective, It is good for me to return to this site which, to me, is dominated by open-minded, intelligent, polite discourse.

Word is that there's a soccer tournament in Russia this summer.

Neither original nor very funny nor the first time for me, I root for two baseball teams, the Yankees and whoever's playing the Mets, and so Opening Day at Mets Ballyard, where I park to ride the Flushing Line, is mostly an inconvenience for my commute. Nevertheless, I concede that the young folks from New York and Long Island Cities who ride it for night games seem to be a pleasant lot.

Opening Day is a time of promise, of better days - if not Trouble - Ahead. Hey, Dead & Co. (remnants of the Grateful Dead) play there in June!

Mendel

3/29/2018 02:10:41 am

Thor will hurl his opening pitch after nightfall in Jerusalem and I will root for the Mets immediately after searching for remnants of leavened bread. With hope, my home the next day will be leaven-free and my team will be on their winning way.

Happy Passover and Let's Go Mets

bruce

3/29/2018 02:11:10 pm

george,

i have to go out so i'm going to miss most of the nyy.bj game.

too bad le grand orange has passed on.

i didn't realize you were at the expos' opener at jarry park in 1969.

i watched in on the toob.

also went on a bb excursion to see the expos tho i can't remember now if was 1969 or 1970.

could be wrong about this, but think staub might've homered in one of the games.

loved the ball park and got hit in the side of the head by mr peanut or whatever the hell they called him. he was famous for throwing a bag of peanuts to his customer while the money was passed down the row.

accurate as hell they alleged. i was looking the other way and got whacked.

saw the giants. mays, mccovery, hard and marichal.

mays hit a triple and had a ball get past him in CF for a three base error.

went back again on my honeymoon to see two games in the last week of july in 1971. gowdy and kubek were staying in our hotel.

not so beautiful day here in southern ontario so let's only play one.

let's hope it's a great season and ichiro gets a few hits here and there.

bruce

Altenir Silva

3/29/2018 02:13:21 pm

Dear George,

The Opening Day is when all questions begin to be answered. I wish a great regular season to you all.

Happy Passover and Easter.

Altenir (from Brazil)

3/29/2018 04:18:47 pm

Canada and Brazil. Happy opening day. I had a good opening day at home -- no way I am going to the ball park until the spring thaw.
The day was tempered by the death of Rusty Staub, a special guy.
Before the game, I looked out the window and saw the first redbird of the spring, to match the grand old redbirds on the Cardinals' uniforms.
Good omen for the Mets. Noah Syndegaard went six innings, the Mets won, 9-4, and amazingly have a 37-20 record on opening day. (They lost all the time when I was a young reporter.) Now they have a day off. Back to the real world. GV.)

bruce

3/29/2018 07:06:46 pm

George,

great opening day for Stanton not so much for the jays.

i know you like cardinals as i do.

they're here year round. i have three different feeders outside my kitchen and living room windows.

lots of male&female cards. feeder and a bush about a step behind their favourite one.

skittish tho. even a wisp of movement and they're outta there.

only 161 to go.

bruce

Michael

3/29/2018 04:39:44 pm

R.I.P. Rusty Staub

Alan Rubin link

3/29/2018 05:11:36 pm

Good stuff George. This is the most interest that I have in the NY baseball teams since I was growing up in Washington Heights (upper Manhattan) and we argued about the Yankees, Giants and Dodgers. No matter who you followed, win or lose, something interesting was always happening.

I would love to see Aaron Boone succeed. He certainly has the support of the Scottsdale, Ariz. Youth flag football team, the Steelers, where he was the defensive coordinator. Quality shows at any level of sports.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/29/sports/baseball/aaron-boone-yankees.html
l

In addition to growing up a Yankee fan, most of my soccer preferences are with teams that employ young and innovative unproven managers. It is refreshing when both baseball and soccer try to break the habit of recycling proven losers.

Now if the USMNT would build upon it friend with Paraguay and continue its youth movement.

I view games through the eyes of a goalkeeper and do not have a good grasp of evaluating the nuances of field play. Although much of the post-game commentary was positive, there were many aspects of play that was criticized.

I was impressed with the crispness of the passing and the high number of consecutive one-touches. The players seemed to have an excellent awareness of where their teammates were. Also, the defense continually shut down passing lanes.

But what do I know, I’m only a goalkeeper. At age 13 heading to my first junior high school soccer practice having never seen or played the game, my friend advised me to go out for goalkeeper as you do not have to know anything. I fell in love with the position and never played in the field during my 10 year career.

Brian Savin

3/30/2018 09:33:33 pm

I missed the Mets’ opener yesterday. Probably got them the win. Saw the manager’s post game presser. Homo Skipper Modernus. But pretty cool.

Watching the Yanks now. My gosh but Justice and Stanton look like two sides of a rusty gate. So far, everyone else well prepared.

After the fall of Communism, I went to Budapest with my Hungarian defector business partner to do some work. Frank gave me a tour of “communist concrete” buildings. He wanted to demonstrate corruption. The worst concrete in the world was produced under Stalin. It’s not hard to produce decent concrete. Trump would never have put up with such crap.

bruce

3/30/2018 10:16:20 pm

brian,

Stanton didn't look much like a rusty gate yesterday.

and, my god, could you please zip it about about trump. save it for a non baseball comment.

he wouldn't have had to put up with such crap in hungary.

he would've been put in front of a firing squad and executed as an enemy of the people if he'd been there pre berlin wall collapse.

geezus.

bruce

Brian Savin

3/30/2018 10:42:10 pm

Hey Bruce, what took you so long? It was almost three quarters of an hour! Have a happy Easter! (And please remind your Prime Minister he shouldn’t be breaking bread with terrorists.)
Best
Brian

bruce

3/30/2018 11:02:17 pm

brian,

sorry, i was reading the grant bio and switching back and forth watching the jays and leafs play.

we've got a lot of Indians in parliament here. Trudeau has to keep some of the electorate happy.

his father was banned from entering the states about 70 years ago because they didn't like the looks of his passport.

in any case, i'll take my chances with Trudeau while your guy is cuddling up with putin, Erdogan, xi, sisi, duerte.

and Ivanka.

incidentally, did you hear your guy is studying Esperanto?

he wants to vacation there next year.

bruce

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

Well, Looks Like We Might Make It to Opening Day

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