October 25, 2018--Say-Hey Kid: The Catch

Uncle Jack had tickets for two box seats for the first game of the 1954 World Series. It was a day game and the New York Giants were hosting the Cleveland Indians at their home field, the vast Polo Grounds in upper Manhattan. The tickets were for himself and his son Lewis.

Jack owned and ran a thriving international business and so it was not unusual that he had something urgent to deal with just at the time the game was scheduled to begin. So he asked me, I was16 at the time, if I could fill in for him and take cousin Lewis to the game. He was just ten and so I felt flattered to be trusted with so much responsibility and excited to be going to my first World Series game.

And so packed in with other fans we took the rickety elevated train line all the way up to 157th Street and Eighth Avenue, to the former meadow, Coogans Bluff in the center of Harlem, where the Polo Grounds was located.

It was a huge stadium, perhaps the largest of any Major League stadium then or now. Deepest center field, for example, was 455 feet from home plate. Typically a center field wall was and is no more than 420 feet from home plate. As at the Yankee Stadium at the time. And so the Polo Grounds could accommodate 55,000 fans.

I had been to Yankee Stadium once but as a Brooklyn boy, Ebetts Field, which had 32,000 seats, a cosy place by comparison, was my frame of reference.

But we had box seats--also something I had never experienced--and so I anticipated being close enough to the playing field to see the spin on curve balls. Or the spit on spit balls!

An usher peered at our ticket stubs and said, "Good for you boys. I see you have box seats with yours being in the first row of the lower deck. Just head that way," he said pointing,"And enjoy the game."

We raced in the direction of the Giants' dugout and when we got there realized our seats were still further, out toward right field. But when we got there, out of breath, we saw we had to keep going, all the way to center field. From this I knew we would be too far from the diamond that I could forgot any thoughts about seeing the spin on pitches. 

In fact, the Polo Grounds was so vast that we might have to strain even to see the pitchers and batters. But we would have a closeup view of the Giants' centerfielder, the incredible Willie Mays. The Say-Hey Kid. 

"We'll at least be able to see him chewing tobacco," I said to Lewis. In truth feeling a bit deflated. Though Mays played so shallow that even that might not be possible.

It was a pitchers' duel with the score tied 2-2 at the top of the 8th inning.

Cleveland immediately threatened. The Giant's pitcher, Sal (the barber) Maglie, gave up a walk and a single and so there were two men on and nobody out.

Vic Wertz stepped to the plate. He was one of the League's most fearsome sluggers. He had hit 29 during the season. Giant fans suddenly grew quiet.

Wertz got ahold of a fast ball and hit a monster drive to deepest center field. 

At the crack of the bat Willie Mays turned his back to the plate and, running full speed, raced right by where Lewis and I were seated--actually, along with everyone else, where we were by then standing--and right in front of us, close enough that we could almost reach out and touch him, over his shoulder, with his back still to home plate, he caught the ball, cradling it basket style, his signature move, and then wheeling about, threw the ball toward the infield, tumbling to the ground from the effort.

The ball flew directly to the second baseman, a perfect strike, who in turn did not allow the runners to advance.

Some said the catch was the best of all time, others that Mays's throw was what was remarkable.

Probably both were right.

The Indian's spirit was shattered and after the third out in the 8th in effect they collapsed and the Giants won, 5-2.

And they continued to win, sweeping Cleveland in four-straight games.

Another cousin somehow found this picture and enhanced it so you can see me in my striped shirt and my mouth open in wonderment.

We can't as yet locate Lewis.

September 5, 2018--Boooooring

Mika got it right yesterday morning.

I dosed off Morning Joe for a couple of weeks, needing respite from all-Trump-all-the-time, but with the onset of the new season (the "year" starts up again the day after Labor Day) I felt the atavistic compulsion to reconnect to what is going on. Including trolling for subjects to write about that do not have anything to do with Trump.

Lots of luck with that I realized on Tuesday as early as five-after-six, with the first five minutes of MJ devoted to Joe and Willie exchanging barbs about the crumbling fate of the Yankees and the Red Sox's historic run.

Just two minutes into their joshing you could see Mika cringing. Up to their old schtick. If looks could wound her look would draw blood.

"Can we get on with things?" exasperated, she said. They ignored her. "There's lots going on and we need to talk about that."

"Yes, John McCain. His funeral," Joe said without enthusiasm, still more interested in baseball gossip.

"It's over," Mika said, cryptically.

"Not until it's over," Joe said, he thought slyly, quoting Yogi Berra, winking at Wille, with baseball still more on his mind than McCain.

"Not the funeral, but the presidency."

"Over?" Joe said, paying attention to his cohost and fiancée for a rare moment. 

"This show is so boring," she said. 

I grew excited, expecting a family spat. Mika pops off a few times a year and videos of her meltdowns usually go viral. I thought--what an inventive way for her to launch the year. Trashing her own show.

Having the floor she pressed on. "Nothing is new. In fact, nothing can be new. Everything is predictable. We know exactly what he is going to say. Or tweet. His whole presidency depends on a steady stream of surprises. In there own way, excitements. Engaging outrages. He's the producer of his own reality TV presidency and it's about to be cancelled."

"You know, Mika's half right," one of their panelists, off camera, said. You could sense he was worried that the "half right" could be misinterpreted, come off as patronizing. Which it did. Though smacking of enough truth that she and the others let it go. She was happy just being paid attention to.

As a result there was no more sports talk. They were off and running, making being boring interesting. 

"If his people start to get bored with him," Sam Stein of the Daily Beast said, "he's cooked. Don't mishear me, they believe him, more important they believe in him. They are also there for the show. If you live in some, forgive me, godforsaken place like Fargo, North Dakota, where the most exciting thing is the Charley Pride concert, it doesn't get any better than going to one of his rallies after standing in line for hours to get a seat for his political standup spritz. But before we get giddy about this, at the Fargo rally Trump people claimed 6,000 turned out, though the local press had the number much less than that."

"Like the ongoing numbers game about the size of the crowd at his inauguration," MSNBC's Kasie Hunt chimed in.

"One thing Trump knows for certain," this from WAPO columnist and editor Eugene Robinson, "Is how to pay attention to ratings. The Apprentice didn't go off the air because Trump was running for president but because the ratings were heading south. If the ratings and demographics had continued to be strong NBC would probably still have it on the air. I don't believe the Emoluments Clause in the Constitution forbids that. Making money from a TV show. Look, he's still getting away with making a killing from his hotels and resorts. I'm not hearing about anyone giving up their Mar-a-Lago membership or the Trump hotel in Washington offering weekend discounts."

Willie said, "There are reports that attendance at his rallies is declining. It's not such a hot ticket anymore. And more than a few who show up appear to filter out before his act is over."

"You're right," Joe jumped in,"politics is all about numbers. And enthusiasm. He could be slipping in both realms. If he is, as Mika said, it's all over."

"Well," Mika said, now all smiles, "at the beginning of being over."

Glancing at the clock, also smiling, Joe said, "We made it to six-thirty without being boring. I think we're off to a good start for the year."

February 28 2017--A Week Without Trump: Intentional Walk

Let's see how I do today--

Spring training is underway all over Florida except near Donald Trump's Palm Beach spread, Mar-a-Lago. The Secret Service is shunted visiting crowds away as well as shutting down local airports. But  Major League teams are making the best of the tumultuous situation.

Also, in an effort to speed up the game, they are meddling with one of baseball's most cherished strategies--the intentional walk.

For non-aficionados, an intentional walk or base-on-balls is when a team decides not to pitch to a hot hitter and on purpose the pitcher throws four out-of-the-strike-zone pitches and, with the umpire signaling ball four, the batter trots off to first base.

This takes about 30 seconds. Which appears to be too much time for desperate officials worried about the bottom line. They are eager to add excitement to the game. Like football or basketball they believe that making things move along quicker is the key to engaging alienated young fans who like football's hurry-up offenses, tennis' tie-breakers, hockey's shoot outs, and basketball's 24-second clock.

Baseball has already changed the rules so that batters, once at home plate and in the batter's box are not allowed to step away to readjust their batting gloves, spit, or scratch their crotches.

Also under discussion is reducing the number of times pitching coaches would be allowed to visit the mound to talk with pitchers and the institution of a pitch clock. Baseball's equivalent to basketball's 24-second version.

I hate all of these ideas.

It would be like reducing the number of characters Donald Trump could use when tweeting. Say 130, rather than the traditional 140. What it would do to him is a version of what these schemes would do to our national pastime--dilute and distort things to which we have become accustomed.

In baseball's case, time is irrelevant. In a speeded-up world where time is money baseball remains a haven of calm where time does not intrude or rule. It moves with an unhurried rhythm and pace of its own.

It's bad enough that all ballparks have installed Jumbotrons and blast rock and roll and rap music between innings. But to put pressure on teams to end games in less than two hours when virtually all memorable games unwind for up to four hours would be to change baseball from something it culturally always has been--a boys' (an now girls') game more suited to rural America than urban three-on-three schoolyard basketball pick up games. Baseball has been a reliable place of peace in a world of ceaseless action and conflict.

Moving things along in baseball should remain a small-ball goal for batters--hitting behind baserunners so that they can be moved along from first to second base.

Intentional bases on balls are an integral part of baseball's aesthetic and lore and can at times lead to surprising results. It should be an easy thing for pitchers to lob out-of-the-strike-zone tosses to their catchers. But at times they have erred--the concept of error, taking responsibility, also remains an essential metaphoric part of the game--bouncing one in the dirt where it eludes the catcher and the man on third comes scampering home with the winning run. Or at times when the batter manages to reach out of the strike zone and hits the weakly tossed ball for a homer or game-winning sacrifice fly as the Yankee's Gary Sanchez did late last season. A baseball example of the occasional power of upending the predictable.

There is yet one more crackpot idea under consideration--to shorten tied games as the teams move to extra innings the leagues are considering starting each at bat by placing a runner on second base so that the hitting team immediately has a runner in scoring position.

Baseball has traditionally rewarded scrappiness and this proposal to, without effort, give teams base runners, a leg up, is antithetical to the game's culture of hard work and limited reward where players can achieve Hall of Fame numbers by succeeding, making a hit, just three times for every 10 trips to the plate--what 300 hitters eek out.

I won't be making it this year to the Grapefruit League--too much tumult in South Florida when Trump is in residence--but I'll be watching on TV and following closely what is being done to spoil the game I love so much.

*   *   * 

Returning to my agenda for the week--I think I mentioned Trump only three times, which makes me feel I am making progress. The fever seems to be abating, the cold sweats too, as well as the detox tremors. Three more days to go. Let's see how I do after his address tonight to a joint session of Congress. Hopefully . . .

February 20, 2015--Jeb & A-Rod: Mistakes Were Made

In a speech in Chicago Wednesday, presidential-aspirant, former Florida governor, brother of one president, and son of another, to establish himself in foreign policy terms as his "own man" (to quote him), Jeb Bush said--

Look, just for the record, one more time, I love my brother, I love my dad, I actually love my mother as well, hope that's OK. And I admire their service to the nation and the difficult decisions they had to make, but I am my own man, and my views are shaped by my own thinking and my own experiences.

Then, about his brother's decision to preemptively invade Iraq, he torturously added--

There were mistakes made in Iraq for sure. Using the intelligence capability that everyone embraced about weapons of mass destruction turns out not to be accurate.

He did not say that his brother made a mistake by pressing the CIA to "sex up" the intelligence to justify an otherwise illegal war and then waged war based on that cooked information.

What Jeb had to say represents a little progress from what brother George W said after he left the presidency, as part of his efforts to promote his memoir, Decision Points, when he reluctantly acknowledged, in the very passive voice, that "mistakes were made."

On the same day as Jeb Bush's speech, in his own handwriting, Yankee third baseman Alex Rodriguez wrote--

To the Fans

I take full responsibility for the mistakes that led to my suspension for the 2014 season. I regret that my actions made the situation worse than it needed to be. To Major League Baseball, the Yankees, the Steinbrenner family, the Players Association and you the fans, I can only say I'm sorry.

Who knows how sincere this is but at least he fessed up.

July 18, 2014--Best of Behind: The House that Ruth Built

With the baseball all-star game behind us and regular season play about to resume, here is something I wrote in September 22, 2008 that appears to be a baseball story but in reality is about family--

It was early April and the family was gathered at Aunt Tanna's and Uncle Eli’s apartment. After my grandparents died it had fallen to Eli to conduct Passover services and to Tanna, with the help of her sisters, to prepare and serve the sumptuous dinner.

As is traditional, Eli as the host, early in the reading of the Haggadah, set aside a napkin-wrapped portion of matzos, which would serve as the Afikomon. Since Jews no longer participated in sacrificing and serving the Pascal Lamb during Passover, this matzos symbolized that lamb and was to be the last taste of the evening—a sort of desert that was shared by all after the host broke it into enough pieces to serve everyone. Happily, to those of us still too young to understand or enjoy the magic of such symbolism, Aunt Tanna, and especially Aunt Gussie managed to bake delectable treats in spite of the Passover prohibitions against using normal forms of flour or leavening. It was well worth enduring what seemed an endless service and meal to get to Gussie's coconut macaroons and matzos-flour angel cake.

Though I did not at the time appreciate the meaning of the Afikomon, I did love the custom that required the youngest children (boys really) to “steal” and hide it from Uncle Eli. Which we always managed to do with his obvious complicity—he made an art form of looking the other way so that we could snatch and run off with it and hide it behind a sofa cushion in the adjoining living room. When it came time to need it to conclude the ceremonies, Eli would make a broad theatrical effort to search for it, of course--with great sighing and frustration--always failing to find it. Even though the previous year and the year before that my cousin Chuck, his son, and I hid it in the very same place. Obviously stealing and hiding things were not among our limited number of talents.

So when Uncle Eli would give up in faux-frustration, with much squealing of delight we would retrieve the Afikomon from the sofa and hand it over to him so he could do his symbolic thing and we, the best part, would get our reward. The year, before we--actually Chuck--asked for two pairs of boxing glove which through the year he used almost every weekend to pummel me, his pathetic sparring partner, as he “trained” to become the last in a long line of Jewish boxing champions. And though I was quite a good punching bag for him, he was better at schoolwork than in our improvised ring and went on to become a successful personal-injury lawyer. What else was appropriate for an ex-boxer?

But this year we planned in advance to ask Eli to take us to Yankee Stadium, to the House that Ruth Built.

Back then, with the Dodgers ensconced and beloved in Brooklyn where we lived, with Chuck, and me under his influence, unlikely and passionate Yankee fans—you could get killed on any Flatbush street corner for showing even mild interest in the hated Yankees—a secret trip up to the Bronx to attend a game in person was a transgressive treat. Eli, who liked the idea that in their risky enthusiasm for the Yankees his son and nephew showed signs of intrepidness—he himself had as a boy escaped from Tsarist Russia and made his way on his own to America—was happy to accede to our request, receive the Afikomon, and bring the long Passover evening to conclusion—it was getting late, the family was showing sign of restlessness, and some had to make the long trek back to Long Island.

A week later, Uncle Eli told us that through a friend he had gotten box seats for the three of us for June 13th. Though my memory is beginning to fail me I will always remember that date vividly because, as good fortune would have it, June 13, 1948 turned out to be the day the Yankees retired Babe Ruth’s uniform number. Everyone knew that the Babe was suffering from throat and neck cancer and did not have long to live, and so they wanted to honor him before he was unable to be there in person to bask in the cheers and love of the more than 100,000 of his fans who packed that great iconic ballpark.

There is grainy newsreel film of the event that helps jog my recollection-- 

A stooped and fragile Babe, desiccated to half his bulky size, wearing his uniform with the familiar number 3 emblazoned on his back, no longer the physical manifestation of the Sultan of Swat he had been during his playing years, on that sultry afternoon, he shuffled haltingly to home plate where he stood, leaning heavily on his bat as if it were a crutch rather than the instrument of divine power it had been, to take in the adoration of his fans. 

And though Chuck, still harbored dreams of stepping into the boxing ring in this very Yankee Stadium, where not that many years before Joe Lewis avenged himself, and all of America, by defeating in slightly more than two minutes of the first round, the great Aryan hope, Max Schmeling, through my own tears I saw Chuck’s.

So many years later, with Chuck prematurely off with the Babe, now in an even-better, loftier box seat, last night my tears flowed again when the Bambino’s 92 year-old daughter Julia threw out the first ball at the last game that will ever be played in the house her father built, soon after that to be torn down and replaced by a new, antiseptic Yankee Stadium. 

More symbolism.

July 8, 2014--Antiques

It's not a comforting thing to find that everything in an antique shop looks familiar.

Not familiar because you were in the shop previously, but because half the things on sale look as if they came from your boyhood home.

"Look," I said, "There's a breakfast room table and chairs just like my mother's. Stainless steel and Formica with blue vinyl seats. And they're asking $250 for it. Can you imagine."

And on the other side of the shop--"A set of the same kind of Lionel electric trains I had as a kid. I'll bet the locomotive emits smoke just like mine. Did you notice that old baseball glove? The one with the splayed fingers, the way they were made before they added webbing between the thumb and pointer finger. That made balls much easier to catch though I did like my old Duke Snider model. Forget baseball cards. They've been collectables for years now. Some, probably ones like those I threw out, go for thousands."

"Over there," I pointed, "a chemistry set just like mine. There were instructions about how to compound things but my friends and I only wanted to cause explosions. Since some of us were successful and injured ourselves they stopped making and selling them."

I drifted into another room. "My Aunt Tanna had a samovar like that one. Her parents brought it with them when they fled from Russia. I loved it when I was a kid. I spent endless hours taking it apart and putting it back together. I once filled it with water and drained the tank through the old spigot. I tasted it hoping it would be like being in Russia. It just tasted metallic. Maybe that's the way tea tasted in Minsk. How much? it's expensive. Almost $600. But it's not as nice as Tanna's. Otherwise . . ."

"Check out that clock. The one affixed to a piece of marble with a brass horse to the right of it. I think everyone in my family had a horse clock. I listened to the Lone Ranger on the radio every afternoon and I loved Roy Rogers. So to me that horse was either Trigger or Silver."

"I know, I know. I shouldn't be thinking so much about the past. But antiques nowadays put me in that kind of mood. As I said, everything looks familiar. I can't pretend otherwise."

"What did you say? Yes, you're right. I too am an antique."

April 7, 2014--C-Section

I thought I was hallucinating.

I'm a poor sleeper and when I wake up at 2:00 a.m. or 3:00 a.m., the Devil's Hour, to lull me back to sleep, I look for something boring to listen to on the radio, thinking it will act as a soporific.  It generally does.

I usually opt for sports talk because after 10 or 15 minutes of listening to arguments about this or that point guard or the contrasting coaching style of the March Madness final-four, I drift back to sleep and am then left with only upsetting dreams to interfere with my rest.

But early, very early this past Saturday morning was different.

At about 3:30, I got swept into listening to a conversation on CBS Sports Radio between the host, Marc Malusis, and his callers. It was about the New York Mets second baseman, Daniel Murphy, taking two days off to be with his wife as she gave birth to their first child. He missed two games of the new season and had been mercilessly attacked on-air for that by two hosts of New York's most-listened-to sports shows on WFAN--Boomer Esiason and Mike Francessa.

Forget that the players' contract with Major League Baseball allows missing up to three games of paternity leave each season and Murphy had sought and received permission from the team to be with his wife in Florida and had spoken about it with his teammates, all of whom seemed comfortable with his decision to be away Tuesday and Wednesday.

Unrepentant Francessa said he and the ballplayers were privileged to have unique jobs, make a lot of money, and therefore should not take any days off for personal reasons, even if they had the right to do so. Earlier, the bloviating Francessa had called Murphy's request to take a brief paternity leave a "gimmick" and a "scam." He proudly pointed out that he didn't miss his own show on the days when his wife gave birth, one time to twins, another time to their son. She conveniently and luckily for him did so an hour away from his studio and at times when his show was not on the air--one only can imagine what he would have done if she had gone into labor during Monday-to--Friday drive time.

Before apologizing, out of fear he would lose half his sponsors, Esiason had proclaimed that since Mrs. Murphy had a caesarian, she should have scheduled it before the season began so her husband wouldn't have had to miss a game. He said, "Murphy's wife should have had a C-section before the season started." He failed to note that hers was not scheduled but deemed necessary by her doctors after she began labor and the baby appeared unlikely to be born vaginally.

Knowing the macho ethic that permeates all of professional sports, I thought I was hallucinating early  Saturday morning when Malusis (himself a sometime host on WFAN) and every one of his exclusively male callers came to Murphy's defense and excoriated Esiason and Francessa. Every one.

A number of the callers spoke movingly about their own experiences being with their wives when they gave birth. They recounted how this was "the most meaningful day," how being able to be the first to hold their newborn sons and daughters gave meaning to their lives, how bonds were forged at those moments that have persisted for a lifetime.

I thought--How the times, wonderfully, have changed. Just a few years ago, I suspect, many of the callers would have supported Esiason and Francessa and how Murphy would have been condemned for "abandoning" his teammates. And that this was especially egregious considering he earns $5.7 million a year to play a children's game.

This doesn't get us all the way to the Promised Land, but represents one small step in a considerable amount of cultural shifting that has occurred quietly and under the radar for at least the past decade.

April 2, 2014--Kill the Umpire!

After a funky start last week that saw the L.A. Dodgers play two games with the Arizona Diamondbacks in Australia, yesterday was the full launch of the official baseball season. For me, a lifelong Yankee fan, this means the Bronx Bombers got off to a bad start against, losing to the Houston Astros 6 to 2.

In addition to a year-long celebration of Derek Jeter's last season (he got one hit and scored a run in the season opener), Major League Baseball is expanding its instant-replay rules. In recent years, because of a number of controversies about whether or not home runs were fair or foul, they instituted replays so umpires could get it right.

Not everyone was happy with any rule changes in America's most traditional sport, but since home runs are so consequential, umpires were allowed to use technology.

For this season, there are new, much more dramatic options available to umpires and, most debated, managers.

As in football and tennis, they are being given a number of challenges.

Up to the 6th inning, managers will have one challenge and then after that two more.

Umpires will still use replay for home runs but managers can challenge if a ball hit down the left-field line is fair or foul, if a runner is or isn't tagged out when running the base paths or attempting to steal, if a fielder catches a ball cleanly or traps it; on a bang-bang play at first base if a runner beats the throw or not; or if a hit qualifies as a ground-rule double.

Though this will reduce umpiring errors, it will slow down even more a game that routinely moves along at a languorous pace. It can take five minutes to check every camera angle to adjudicate an especially close call. Baseball is often referred to as a "game of inches." With replay it will become a game of centimeters. And if all six challenges are used they will eat up another half hour of game time.

Much more concerning than slowing the game down, this new-fangled approach (from this phrase alone you can see I belong in the traditionalist camp) will result in eliminating from the game any lingering controversies.

One of the best things about baseball has been that it permits controversies to fester, especially during the long off season when blown plays and bad calls are topics for endless discussion over coffee in the Hot Stove League.

Did Reggie Jackson intentionally move his hip in order to be hit by a throw in the 4th game of the1978 World Series, thereby breaking up a potential double play? If he did, he would have been automatically out. The umpired ruled otherwise. Probably incorrectly. And the Yanks went on to win. But who knows.

Did Ed Armbrister interfere with Carlton Fisk's throw to second base in the 2005 American League Championship Series? Who knows.

Was Jackie Robinson safe or out when attempting to steal home in the 1955 World Series? The umpire called him safe but to this day, nearly 60 years later, Yankee catcher Yogi Berra still claims Jackie was out. I saw the play on TV and though I was half-blinded by the snowy black-and-white picture think Yogi's right. But then again, who knows.

Isn't that the point? Who knows indeed.

For certain things getting it exactly right is important, even essential. In triple-bypass surgery, for example, you want things to be exactly right. But for close plays at first or home, not being certain reflects the reality of life itself, where so little is certain.

It is for this reason, before they automate everything, including the calling of balls and strikes (and there is the technology to do so), that baseball endures as sports' most metaphoric game.

Where, as in life, there's a role for stealing; in baseball's judicial system, a place for "judgement calls" and "appeal plays"; and a place for getting something for nothing--bases on balls come to mind. Also, for "errors" as well as bottom-of-the-ninth heroics.

And in a world ruled more and more by time where in nanoseconds one can earn or lose millions, isn't it still nice to have something important going on that doesn't depend on the rule of time?

Best of all, there are 161 games to go before the playoffs.

March 14, 2014--The Babe

It started innocently enough.

My friend Lee Frissell, knowing my interest in baseball, sent me a link to an article in the New York Times about Babe Ruth's 97-year-old daughter, Julia Ruth Stevens, who recently visited the other "house" that Ruth built, the Yankee's old spring training field in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Lee wrote--

Isn't this a great story? I always thought the Babe was just a hedonist with massive appetites of all sorts. I had no idea he was an anti-racist who was kept from managing a team because he would have brought in black players. And, even if his daughter is wrong about that, it's gratifying to know he was both anti-racisit and anti-fascist. I always figured he had no politics or social views. I know he drank a quart of vodka, a gallon of orange juice, a dozen eggs, and a pound of bacon for breakfast, and preferred his women six at a time . . . but this makes me like him even more.

I wrote back with a story of my own, a true story--

My Uncle Eli owned a meat processing plant where the UN is now located. Paramount Meats it was called. The Secretariat  is built on top of what used to be Manhattan's eastside slaughterhouses and meatpacking district. 

Babe Ruth parked his car in a garage across the street and, Eli told me, when he smelled my uncle smoking pigs' knuckles, a Ruthian favorite, he would stop by to pick up a few which he proceeded to eat on the spot. Even without a quart of vodka to wash them down. 

One Saturday, Uncle Eli took me to work with him and, with the air on 45th Street saturated with the smell of smoking meat, the Babe was lured in. 

I was about ten years old and he was visibly near death. But to me he was not just a legend by a looming presence. Mammoth in size and, though it was not cold, wrapped in a full-length, belted cashmere coat. In addition, he was wearing his signature Babe Ruth tweed cap. 

He tousled my hair (I had a full head of curls then!) and you can imagine what a thrill it was for me, a lonely Yankee fan from far away Brooklyn. 

The next week, Uncle Eli brought me a baseball autographed by Ruth on which he had written, "To my pal." 

Of course I should have saved it. But back then street kids didn't have much sporting equipment and a new baseball was a rarity. All the others were battered and wrapped with friction tape. 

So we used mine until someone belted it a mile into some bushes where we couldn't find it. 

Ah, well. I don't have the ball stashed away in a safety deposit box but the memory is sweet.

Within 15 minutes, breathlessly, Lee wrote back--

This email of yours is going to take some time to reply to! But let me begin with--smoking pigs' knuckles???!!!

What did Lee mean? That he needed "some time to reply"? I knew he was at work. I assumed he was busy and wouldn't be able to get back to me until after his meetings. Or whatever. But then what about the "pigs' knuckles???!!!" business. Very strange.

But it didn't take him long to get back to me. What should I make of this???!!!--

Well, I'm not going to get any work done today until I respond to your original email. 

To meet Babe Ruth was probably the most deeply held dream of every American boy born between 1925 and 1975, and to have your hair tousled by Babe Ruth, and then to have been given a ball autographed by him, "To my pal." 

And you fucking played ball with it and lost it! 

How poor could you have been? You had Uncle Eli's knuckle smokery; your Uncle Schlomo's chittlin' factory, and your Uncle Ralph's Cuban sandwich shop. There must have been enough family money to buy a friggen baseball. Or to have used one of those pigs' knuckles. 

I advise you not to tell that story to your wife, Rona. Despite a subsequent considerable body of evidence to the contrary, that is such an act of monumental stupidity that it's hard to believe you could ever make anything of your life. Maybe if playing with that precious ball had laid the foundation for your getting into the Major Leagues and breaking the Babe's records or approaching your 7th Cy Young Award, it would be excusable. Otherwise, there really is no exculpation for you.

Wow!

I know Lee has quite a sense of humor, but he was sounding serious. No exculpation? I'm not even sure what that means, but it sounds serious. Even biblical. Hey, to me, though I know if I had saved the autographed ball and kept it it would be worth a fortune, at the time, to me, it was just a baseball. And life on the streets was mean. Even though there was enough family money, if I took up a collection, to buy a new ball. No likelihood of that.

And, by the way, Lee made up Uncles Schlomo and Ralph. They don't exist. I did have an Uncle Harry who never had a job and an Uncle Bob who owned a gas station on Myrtle Avenue. And also there was Uncle Jack who was in the clock and watch business, decidedly not in the non-kosher, treif food business. And if he didn't live all the way out on Long Island, if he had known we were using rocks as baseballs, he might have come through with some real sporting equipment. He was that kind of generous guy.

But not knowing what to say back to Lee and worried that somehow thinking about Babe Ruth and my, I guess, stupidity, had made him crazy, I thought to try to calm things down by dashing off a bland note staying--

I suppose you're right. I guess you had to be there at the time, blah, blah, blah . . .

But this didn't work. There was more fired back from Lee--

Of course I had to tell this story to our orthodox friend Ed G, who agrees that meeting the Bambino was the fondest dream of an American boy. But he's not perturbed by your Uncle Eli's treifish occupation. "You can't eat it," he said. "But no one said you can't touch it. Nu. It's business." 

I know you're no fan of the hassidim [true], but a pig smokehouse is a little too reformed even for a quintessential goy like me.

Concerned about Lee's blood pressure, again I tried the calm approach--

Does this mean Ed G has exculpated me? That's it's OK that I had an uncle who was in the pork business? 

And while we're talking baseball, did I ever tell you my Jackie Robinson story?

I should have known better. Lee wrote--

I shudder to think what the Jackie Robinson story must be.

Caring a little less about upsetting Lee, though still not understanding what had gotten into him when I mentioned "knowing" Babe Ruth, I couldn't contain myself from writing--

When I was again about ten, that would be 1948 or so, a year after Jackie Robinson began to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers, he and his wife and baby son moved into an apartment four blocks from where I lived. At the corner of East 52nd Street and Snyder Avenue. 

It was a mainly Jewish neighborhood with a few Italian families sprinkled in. When the Dodgers played at home, at Ebbets Field, at the time they were all day games, each evening Jackie would come out and play baseball with us in the street. Can you believe it, teaching us about fielding and batting. His wife Rachel would sit on the stoop with their young son, Jackie Junior, and we would play until it got dark. 

Then one day, as usual when the Dodgers were at home, we raced over to the Robinson's and . . .

That's as much as I wrote. I haven't yet heard back from Lee, which is fine since the story doesn't end well.

That's an exaggeration--I did hear once more from Lee--

As soon as we're back in New York, he wants to go together to Hawthorne, New Jersey, to visit the Babe's grave. And quintessential goy that he really is, he still knows a lot about treif and Jewish cemetery customs--that when visiting a grave we leave a stone on it to note we were there. In Babe's case, he suggests we leave a baseball.

November 19, 2013--Say It Isn't So Mariano

He made at least $10 million this year and more than $15 million in 2012. Over his career he earned $170 million, and it is estimated that his net worth is more than $90 million. So why does he need to do these tacky things?

He is Mariano Rivera, the New York Yankee's quintessential closer, the pitcher they turned to to get the last outs at the end of a game when they had a precarious lead.

He has been baseball's preeminent closer for nearly 17 seasons and retired in September, greatly honored and respected even by his fiercest opponents.

Those who know say he was the greatest of all time. He saved 652 regular season games during his career--more than any other relief pitcher-- and was essential to the Yankees winning five World Series titles. In five years, when he is eligible for the Hall of Fame, it is expected he will be unanimously elected. If this happens, he will be the only former player to be thus honored.

It is reliably reported that he is a fine family man (one of the few professional athletes who didn't fool around while on the road), an exemplary citizen of his native Panama, and a devout and practicing Christian.

So you can imagine my surprise when last week there was a full-page ad in the New York Times that announced a series of events that the public would be able to attend.

For a price. A hefty one.

"Meet Mariano Rivera," the headline proclaimed. "Here's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see the star New York Yankee pitcher in the intimate setting of the New York Times Center."

At that event, he will "share memories of his extraordinary career."

Package #1 offers general admission and to the Q&A session. It costs $99.99.

Package #2 also offers admission, access to the Q&A, plus one "Mariano signed final season baseball." It goes for $349.99.

And the "V.I.P. Package #3" is a real deal--you get two tickets to the Q&A, two tickets to the V.I.P. cocktail party (Mariano doesn't drink), a photo with the closer, access to "two Yankee alumni mingling with guests," "passed hors d'oeuvres," and two Mariano Rivera signed 14x14 inch framed photographs.  

Package #3 will set you back $1,499.99.

I'll take a raincheck on the passed hors d'oeuvres and mingling Yankees and look back to October 16, 2003 when Mariano raced in from the bullpen to save the game for the Yankees who went on to beat the Red Sox to secure a place in the World Series. He came in in the 9th inning with the game tied. It remained tied until the bottom of the 11th when the Yankees scored on Aaron Boone's home run. Rivera pitched the final three innings and got the win by securing the final nine outs.

Priceless!

August 21, 2013--A-Rod

There was a kid in the supermarket wearing an A-Rod shirt. It takes guts to wear an Alex Rodriquez shirt these days, especially up in Maine where pretty much everyone is a rabid Red Sox fan and hates the Yankees.

As a closet Yankee rooter myself--at least while here--I asked him if he thought Rodriquez would win his appeal.

The kid just shrugged.

That's the right answer.

Because of allegedly having used banned human growth substances and lying about it, Major League Baseball has suspended Rodriquez for 211 games. That's considerably longer than a 162-game season and, considering A-Rod's age (he'll be pushing 40 when he would be allowed to play again), it is a version of a professional death sentence.

It may be that, but he is owed about $90 million by the Yankees over the last four years of his contract and he would be entitled to it even if his appeal is denied and he never plays another big-league game. He has that good a contract.

On the other hand, the Yankee owners, who have come to despise him and are attempting to cut the total team payroll to $189 million a year, have an interest in seeing him declared medically disabled and incapable of playing, which would mean that their insurance policy would have to pick up the cost of Rodriquez's remaining contract.

Ah, there may be the rub.

During the past two years A-Rod has had a number of significant medical issues that required at least two hip operations. But he is now healed and rejoined the team about 10 days ago. Since then he has hit a couple of home runs and the Yankees have again begun to win ballgames.

From a Yankee perspective this should be a welcome thing. What team really cares if its players cheat by juicing themselves up with steroids as long as they hit the ball out of the park and fans show up and spend big bucks on tickets and over-priced hot dogs and beer.

To make the game more exciting by making it easier to hit home runs, teams have been moving fences closer to home plate and making the baseball itself livelier. Who cares? We're not talking neurosurgery or rocket science but guys running around in knickers and getting paid millions to play a kid's game.

But, if A-Rod is past his peak (with or without drugs, he is) and is costing his team owners tens of millions, would one be surprised if the Yankee's greedy owners engaged in a little hanky-panky to get rid of him?

Like maybe conspiring with team doctors to claim Rodriquez is ready to play when in fact he is not? To put him out on the field before he is fully healed in the hope that he might become permanently injured and thus could be taken off the payroll and be paid through the team's insurance policy?

Rather than taking his suspension passively like the other suspended players are, A-Rod has hired a new team of kick-ass lawyers to represent him. And he has them claiming that this medical conspiracy in fact occurred.

Before dismissing this assertion too quickly (as I at first did--I don't much like him either), take note of the fact that the doctor who most recently treated Rodriquez and deemed him fit to play has thus far refused to comment about this accusation.

If true, this could qualify as one of the biggest scandal in baseball history. And that includes gamblers fixing the Black Sox 1919 World Series.