Damn Yankees: A Review

This is an absolutely true story.

It was the last day of work in December 2010 when I was on my way to meet a former colleague for dinner at Pete's Tavern on 18th Street in Manhattan. Just before getting there I noticed an array of books, hardcover and softcover, laid out on a ledge of one of the old buildings in the area. There were cookbooks, animal books, novels, and the 2010 edition of 'The Best American Sports Writing,' edited by Peter Gammons.

I said to myself if that book was still there when I finished dinner, than I was meant to have it, and I'd take it. That's exactly what happened, and I occasionally peck away at it still. It contains 26 pieces by 26 different writers about a wide variety of sports figures. All pieces were previously published. 'Damn Yankees' is nothing like that book.

'Damn Yankees' is an anthology by invitation of 24 stories by 24 writers about the New York Yankees; likes and dislikes. It is the brainchild of Rob Fleder, a former executive editor of Sports Illustrated who got in touch with a variety of writers and asked them something simple: deliver some writing about the Yankees; whatever you like. The pieces never appeared anywhere before being published in this book. Not your typical sports anthology.

You can't assemble 24 of anything and include everything. Significant to me is that none of the 24 writers in 'Damn Yankees' have a piece in the 2010 book I helped myself to from the widow ledge. Mission accomplished.

Mr. Fleder, in a talk at the Ossining Library several weeks ago explained that he was after writers, not necessarily sports writers, who would write something about the Yankees. Asked further about this, he explained he sort of avoided the beat New York sports reporter.

The advantages to this approach were not lost on me. Mike Lupica is nowhere to be found, and Dick Young is not there either, basically because death prevents him from getting back to anyone in the usual way. So, you've got good writers who happen to be writing about the Yankees. Some are sports writers, but others not.

There's something for everyone. And like a variety of pitches, some are hit out of the park, and some are wild pitches.  For the most part, anyone who has even been a sports fan of some small degree in New York, regardless of allegiance, will recognize the players and the times. It's fairly current stuff.

I've read several reviews of this book and there is common admiration for Pete Dexter's piece on Chuck Knoblauch, 'The Errors of Our Ways.' Chuck might be a bit of a forgotten second baseman who came to the Yankees in the late 90s. His last name is as bumpy and hard to handle as his throws to first became. He is particularly remembered by the Olbermann family, however.

My own least favorite piece is by Frank Deford, who for a seasoned Sports Illustrated writer only contributes something a little less than three pages as to why, despite being in New York for all these years, he absolutely hates the Yankees.

His piece sounds a bit like a schoolyard taunt by the husky, sweaty, spitting kid who tells you your mother "wears combat boots." This never worked on me. My mother really may have worn combat boots, since she was in the army in WWII, albeit as a nurse. But she had to have basic training, and who knows what they asked them to do or wear. She never said.

In keeping with the hate-Yankees-theme is Daniel Okrent's piece on the Fritz Peterson, Mike Kekich trade, something that you'll never find in the Yankee yearbook. I remember this story well, and when the wife swapping details (yes, like the 'Bob, Ted, Carol and Alice' movie) emerged, my friend Andy and I descended on John Sterling at MSG, who then only did a short sports show and New York Raider (WHA hockey) radio play-by-play. We asked John what did he think about that one? He had no answer.

Hating the Yankees, or expressing dislike for them is a bit of a common occurrence in New York, and not just because people might be Met fans. To hate, dislike the Yankees is seen as taking the higher road. There are a few pieces in 'Damn Yankees' that discuss this phenomena: being a better person by not getting sucked into the hype.

My own favorite story along these lines is my own. My mother, who came from an extremely small town in Illinois, who married my father during the war, and who never expressed an interest in any sport result before or after, leans out of the front door in 1955 and mockingly coos to me to tell me that the Brooklyn Dodgers have just beaten the Yankees in the World Series. I was six at the time, and was playing with my friend in a neighbor's driveway. I did have a rooting interest in the Yankees and why I wasn't inside watching the game was probably due to the fact that the TV set was "in the shop" where TVs in the 1950s spent half their existence.

This is a revelatory moment, and shows the extent of anti-Yankee sentiment as none other. A six year-old boy's mother is breaking his balls because the Yankees lost to the Dodgers.

I'll never forget it.

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The Irish

I know a little something about the Irish. I've been married to the same Irish-American woman for nearly 37 years. I've spent a lot of happy times with her slightly madcap, colorful family, and have even toured Ireland for two weeks, even if it was a long time ago. I was once telling a good friend of mine the names of bosses I've had over the years: O'Keefe, Cantwell, McGinley, McCall, and Sweeney. And I didn't even work for the phone company. He remarked, "Gee, you can't get away from us." His last name was McGrane.

I also love short poetic descriptions of things. Take Colum McCann's piece, 'The Long Way Home' in the recently released book 'Damn Yankees,' a baseball anthology of essays about the New York Yankees (more in the next post).

Colum, perhaps as only an Irishman would, blends in his memories of Arsenal soccer and his grandfather in Ireland when thinking of baseball. He lovingly describes a boyhood visit with his own father, visiting his father in a nursing home after an Arsenal tie game, bringing a bonus of Players cigarettes and Powers whiskey to a man the young Colum remembers from stories to be a certain character--"a man given to the Irish trinity of drink, song and exile."

Then we have another nugget. Joseph O'Connor reviews a biography of James Joyce by Gordon Bowker in Saturday's WSJ. I will confess to little exposure to James Joyce. During our tour of Ireland so many years ago we spent some quality lunch time in Davy Byrne's Moral pub in Dublin, apparently a stop made by Leopold Bloom made in the Joyce book, 'Ulysses' when he ordered cheese and wine.

Well, we ordered plenty of Guiness, and were very annoyed when 2 PM rolled around and they stopped serving and tried to clear the place till 5 PM. "Ladies and Gentleman please..." How the Irish ever got a reputation for drinking eluded me during that visit. They always seemed to be stopping. Maybe they just waited till they got to America.

Regardless, Mr. O'Connor sneaks a beautiful line in in the midst of his book review:  "The Irish were the only oppressed people in the world who could foment insurrection in iambic pentameter."

No one can describe the Irish better than the Irish themselves. I can only repeat it.

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The Major Omission

It wasn't until I read Jimmy Breslin's razor-thin book on Branch Rickey last year that I ever knew that Jackie Robinson had a older brother Matt ("McKenzie") Robinson who ran second behind Jesse Owens at the 1936 Olympics in the 200 meter dash, winning the silver medal. Thus, the United States didn't present the Fuhrer with only one black guy who beat everyone in an event, they presented the Fuhrer with two black guys who beat everyone. Talk about making someone madder.

Why it took until 2011 to read about this should itself be a story. Talk about no respect.

Aside from the Jesse Owens story line in the 1936 there was the substitution of the two American Jewish runners, Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller from the 100x4 relay team for Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe, another black American who finished second to Owens in the 100 meter dash.

The explanation advanced for the substitution was always that Glickman and Stoller were pulled because Hitler asked the American team not to run any Jewish athletes. Apparently, in his mind, blacks winning was better than having Jews win.

Whether there is any basis to an alternate take on the episode will likely never really be known. It went that the USA team feared that the Germans hadn't yet used their best runners, and were waiting for the relay to show off their talent, thereby blowing the US out of the water, despite the US being favored before the substitution.

Thus, Owens and Metcalfe were substituted at the last minute in order to assure victory, despite not being originally scheduled to run the event, or even to have practiced baton passing, a key element, that if botched, leads to disqualification.

Because Glickman had a long broadcasting life in New York with the football Giants this part of the Owens episodes is usually told hand-in-glove with Jesse's achievements.

So, until PBS does an American Masters piece on Jesse Owens, I never knew there were two Jewish athletes removed from the relay team, for well-imagined reasons, and not until Jimmy Breslin writes about Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson do I ever hear that Jackie's older brother was a fast guy himself and took home a silver medal, 0.04 seconds behind Jesse Owens.

All you read and hear isn't all there is the read and hear.

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No Sign of Letup

The Angela Merkel public relations machine purrs on.

Today we find her again in a usual spot, front page of major newspaper, in this case the Wall Street Journal, where she is seen with her new public companion Francois Hollande, the newly elected president of France.

She seems to be at a bit of cross-roads, directing the flow on the red carpet that she and Mr. Hollande find themselves on. Perhaps she is tutoring Francois on how to avoid Joan Rivers and daughter Melissa, who usually seem to pop-up whenever a red carpet appears.

The caption to the picture reads what you might expect, but adds that Chancellor Merkel is meeting the French President in Paris, despite Mr. Hollande's plane being delayed after being struck by lightning. The Rivers people deny they had anything to do with creating the lightning.

It would be historically inaccurate for the producers of 'Downton Abbey' to somehow work Chancellor Merkel into meeting Lord Granthan on the moors in the coming season. However, the Lord's mother-in-law, Shirley Maclaine, claims to have personally survived several lightning strikes in prior incarnations.

Perhaps Ol' Shirl can be fast-forwarded through the English countryside to a red carpet with Joan, Angela, and Angelina, the other woman who the Chancellor has usurped as the most photographed woman. Joan of course could supply that lightning.

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Tree Warden

Tree warden. It's not an occupational title you hear of too often. At least in New York City. But they're there, just as the trees are there.

@Obitsman has Tweeted a reference to the ultimate fell-good story. A 103 year-old man, a former tree warden, is buried in a casket made from the 217 year-old elm tree that he was able to keep alive until about 2 years ago.

It's an AP story out of Maine, and printed in the Miami Herald. Miami, and Florida in general, have quite a share of retirees, and plenty from the northeast, so it's a natural human interest story.

But "tree warden," sounds like something from Dickens, and perhaps it is. No matter. What it is is a spark that ignites the memory of the "tombstone" story that appears on the front page of the May 6, 1912 edition of the New York Times that came as part of one of those Legacy/Ellis island things. Find a relative who came through Ellis Island, and the Times will package a reproduction of the Ellis Island record of the arrival, a picture, or drawing of the ship, and a reprint of the front page of the paper from the arrival day. It's nicely done, and not especially prohibitively expensive.

In my instance, I got a commemorative arrival of my grandfather, who at 30, was making his third trip from Greece in order to bring his 18 year-old brother over to join him.

All that family stuff aside, what is additionally interesting is how bluntly death can be reported in 1912. Not anyone I know, but there on the front page is the following story about a Massachusetts tree warden who didn't make it home alive for supper.

           --------------------
SITS DOWN; BLOWN TO BITS.
           --------------------
Dynamite in Man's Pocket Strikes
Stone Causing Fatal Explosion.

SHARON, MASS, May 5 - Thomas J.
Leary, the town tree warden, sat down
beneath a tree in East Roxboro street to-
night, and a moment later a terrific ex-
plosion blew him to pieces. A hole three
feet deep was made in the ground where
he had been sitting. The report of the ex-
plosion was heard for miles, and houses a
quarter of a mile away rocked danger-
ously.
    The cause of the explosion is not def-
initely known, but the theory is that
Leary, who was a contractor, had a stick
of dynamite in his pocket, and that when
he sat down it came in contact with a
stone. Leary was 35 years old and un-
married.

I guess it will never be known if Leary was drinking at the time. I know my great-uncle never learned to read English, so it is unlikely he read this story on his arrival. I suspect my grandfather was also ignorant of it as well.

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Jay Leno's True Successor

If anyone thinks that just because Nicolas Sarkozy lost an election we're going to see less and less of Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel obviously hasn't counted on her incredible photogenic durability.

The above picture appears in Tuesday's WSJ underneath that of the French victor, Francois Hollande. The picture, taken from an Internet site runs with a caption that reads: "Early attempt at Francois Hollande impersonation."

I don't get international TV, so I don't know if it is really a good impersonation or not.  But if the new French President does look like a version of a blowfish trying for punch line, then Angela, as always, has nailed it.

I expect she might be around longer than Arthur Godfrey.

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Geneaology Dot Com

I don't what happens to others who might read that so-and-so is the seventh generational member of a family, but I immediately start wondering, "how far back does that go?"

I didn't read an answer, but I can make a good guess. The story just came out that Nik Wallenda, the seventh-generation circus performer has secured permission to do a wire act across Niagra Falls. It is scheduled for next month, June 15th.

Nik is now 33 and is no stranger to doing these things. His great-great grandfather was Karl Wallenda, who is where some people's memories of The Wallendas start. It was at least where mine started, when Karl, leading the family and extended family across a high wire doing their famous Seven Chair Pyramid walk in 1962, saw the front man topple, sending two of the act's members to their death, and paralyzing a third. I can still remember the newspaper picture. It looked like one of the most foolish, and impossible of things to do, but then again, if it didn't look that way, who would pay to see it?

Karl later fell to his death doing a wire act in Puerto Rico in 1978. We has 73. His great-great grandson Nik successfully completed that walk in 2011, doing it with his mother, Delilah. They are definitely a family who you're careful about being with if they ask you to take a stroll.

But seventh generation, puts the start where?

Without strenuous research, (like leave the Internet) the start has to be somewhere around 1800, or a little before. This lands the family, described as a "circus family", in Germany squarely around the time of Napoleon. I guess it could easily be speculated that someone in the family perhaps even entertained in front of Napoleon, or even Karl Marx somewhat after that.

Now the conquering will be to high-wire walk across Niagra Falls. Texting while walking reamins to be seen.

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