5/2
I grew up as a sports crazy kid in Yonkers, NY, and since all of my friends were the same way, we played pickup games all year-round. Tackle and touch football and baseball and stickball and whiffle ball and dodgeball and kickball and basketball. Little League baseball was the only organized sport so that was the only time I actually played on an official team. Mostly, after school, we just picked up teams and played until it was too dark or it was time for dinner. We did this pretty much every day.
One memory I have is the summer I decided I wanted to be a left-handed pitcher (I was normally right-handed). I would wait until my father got home from work and after rushing him through dinner I'd make him come outside and play catch with me. He would stand there indulging me while I either bounced pitches off his legs or winged them over his head into Mr Levy's yard next door. I don't imagine this was fun for him but he never complained. He was great about that stuff. He might have been tired after a long day but he never said no. Thankfully, for him, this left-handed obsession lasted only one summer.
My dad died suddenly at the end of January so this is the first year I can remember where we weren't discussing spring training or the upcoming Yankee season. He was a life long Yankee fan and watched all the games with great enthusiasm. He would often call me in Boston with the highlights of some afternoon game he had just watched. A funny thing he did was call the players by their first names. He'd say things like, 'Mariano was just terrific' or 'Derek got two hits' or 'Andy pitched a great game'. It was like all his favorite players were members of our extended family so he called them by their first name. It was very sweet.
We had the chance in the last few years to go to some games together. Twice I met up with him and his buddies from the Senior Center to see the Yanks play the Sox at Fenway. Me and thirty or forty old guys sitting in the right field grandstand. It was great. We also went down to Yankee stadium twice. Once Mike Mussina out-pitched Dontrelle Willis and the Marlins for a 1-0 win and in the final season of the old Yankee Stadium we witnessed a Nick Swisher walk-off home run for another win. Those memories would have stayed with me anyway, but now they are especially significant.
Baseball and sons and fathers has become a bit of a cliché over the years (with all the teary sentimental movies it's no wonder), but like most cliché's there's a lot of truth to it. When my mom died suddenly in September 1999, we took solace in watching the Yanks win the World Series. Those games gave us a temporary respite from our collective grief; a brief diversion from our own pain. It brought us closer together and in the years that followed it kept us close. It remained a great comfort to us both.
It's been hard getting interested in baseball this season. I miss my dad.
11/3
The expression 'The best things in life are free' seems silly until you ride the Staten Island Ferry at night.
10/27
My local NPR station had yet another show about the Tea Party this morning. An hour wasted discussing the various angry, crazy, racist, homophobic nitwits that make up what they think is a new wave of Angry Americans. What they don't seem to do is ever look more deeply and question the coded rhetoric of these various people. That the vast majority of them are white and are 'angry' at our black president never comes up. That many of them continue to spout hideous racist sentiments about minorities or immigrants is never questioned, that often what they say is factually incorrect or blatant lies is never challenged. If someone says it, then it must be true. That much of this 'anger' from 'regular people' is, in fact, funded by wealthy Americans (the Koch brothers among others) and foreigners looking to increase their political influence by having other people do their bidding for them is conveniently ignored.
What NPR needs to do is to stop patting themselves on the back with one hand and asking for 'listener support' with the other and get back to being a news organization. There are far too many opinion pieces and columnists and editorials and news analysts and not nearly enough actual reporting. What people need are facts, not another windbag's opinion or analysis about something they can't be bothered to get out of the office and report about.
When NPR's Juan Williams was fired last week there was an uproar about this 'respected journalist' being fired for expressing his opinion. What wasn't discussed was that Mr Williams hasn't been a serious journalist for years, he's an analyst. He simply comes on the air and talks. He's one of the increasing number of people who make a (very good) living giving their opinion on various news outlets. Everybody's got an opinion, even if they haven't done any fact finding. We're a nation of pundits. You know the expression, 'Everyone's got an opinion...' Well, in my opinion (ha ha ha) if Juan Williams was a real journalist, he wouldn't been playing the clown in Bill O'Reilly's circus. Anyone with a level of self respect wouldn't do 'Ol Bill's bidding. He'd also be embarrassed to play the fool on the same network that brings us O'Reilly, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity.
But maybe I'm the fool, because the day after Williams got fired he signed a contract with Fox News for 2 million dollars. So no more pity or outrage for Juan Williams (and no more discussion of racism), because he got what he wanted. A fat check and a chance to play the fool on a regular basis.
P.S. Where was the outrage recently when a gubernatorial candidate in Rhode Island said President Obama "Can take his endorsement and really shove it"? If a candidate had told President Bush to "really shove it" there would have been tons of outrage for being disrespectful towards the sitting president. But with president Obama, the media is noticeably silent; more concerned about Juan '2 Million' Williams.
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