Earth Weekend Rules!: Zero Tolerance for Baseball's Green Meanies; Tribeca Closings: Adam Gopnik, El Teddy's and Riverrun
The Bosox-Yanks series last weekend began agreeably enough, as Junior and I took an SRO 9-D-B train combo up to Yankee Stadium Friday night, with my slugger decked out in a Sox hat, warm-up jacket, t-shirt and sweatbands. I chatted with a suited-up businessman from Jersey, a diehard Bombers fan who was meeting two of his brothers, and we objectively reviewed the early results of the 2001 season. Upon arriving at 161st St., I bid him a hearty "See you at the playoffs," and then we dodged a trail of tallboy empties on our way to the New York Press loge seats out near the rightfield foul pole.
Boston's Hideo Nomo was wild from the start, doing a Chuck Knoblauch impersonation, not getting a damn ball over the plate. He loaded the bases without giving up a hit, then Tino Martinez hit a monstrous grand-slammer that effectively ended the game in the bottom of the first. Andy Pettitte, whom the Yanks always support offensively, was also shaky in the early going, but then settled into a demoralizing groove. If I were a Lone Ranger, I'd have punched the tub of lard in front of us, who, on every pitch, yelled, "Yeah, baby," in a Bronx water-torture trick, but I tuned the guy out and commiserated with a dozen Sox fans a few rows to the left.
During the sixth inning, there was an ugly episode in Section 31, when four young Aryans, hopped up on suds, all wearing buttoned-up-to-the-neck Yankee jerseys, suddenly started taunting the crowd with alternate cries of "Boston sucks" and "1918!" Jeez, it's only April and already George Steinbrenner's mock-SS troops are given passes from a halfway house on an overcast night. Minutes later, a swarm of security cops ejected the two ringleaders, providing the most excitement in the 6-1 Sox loss as far as Junior and I were concerned. I talked a little business with our seatmate Alex Schweitzer and hoped that rookie sensation Shea Hillenbrand would knock one out of the park, but when Carl Everett smashed a ball out to the warning track in the third inning, only to have centerfielder Bernie Williams make a superb grab, it was all over.
Like a lot of fans at this one-sided contest, we left after the eighth, and waited patiently on the subway platform where a bunch of drunks were whooping it up and mildly harassing a pair of sweet girls wearing Sox hats. The ride home wasn't too much fun: a dozen Princeton '01 coeds blared, not whispered, their silly escapades on this D train, and I amused myself taking photos of advertisements, while Junior munched on peanuts, pretending he was a character out of Conker's Bad Fur Day. The pandemonium died down when we switched to the 9 at 59th St., and we had a quiet ride down to Chambers St., where a lonely violinist was as ineffective as Nomo, with his fedora nearly empty in the deserted station.
Saturday was rugged (relatively speaking, that is?it's not like my business was being looted in Cincinnati), with a full schedule down in Tribeca town. I'd been reading till after midnight, a foolhardy deviation from my normal farmer's hours, and then MUGGER III woke me up at 4 a.m., insisting he must get dressed for his maiden t-ball game in the Downtown Little League. I tried to explain that the first ball wouldn't be thrown out till after 10, but his sense of time is as warped as mine. Mrs. M's been plagued by allergies this damp spring, but she soldiered to the field to see our youngest, a lefty, get a couple of hits?after vexing the other team with continuous foul-ball shots down the first-base line. He ran the bases like a jackrabbit when his teammates connected with the tee. Kids aren't supposed to keep score in this division?a no-exceptions directive from the powers-that-be in the increasingly dictatorial DLL?but it was clear our Giants were slaughtered on this opening day. Fortunately, they all thought they won.
Junior's game was a few hours later. It was his first time hitting from a iron mike, and man, the competitive nastiness with coaches and parents really ramps up when you hit the eight-year-old circuit. I hate this nonsense. An especially galling moment occurred when one of Junior's Indian buddies hit a triple that cleared the bases, only to have the runs erased when a teammate didn't touch third base on the way to home plate. That set off a grab bag of rhubarbs, and I'd swear the five-inning match was declared "under protest" about nine times. I'm all for vigorous play, but would like my kids to be spared the hectoring from the sorts of ugly mothers and loud fathers I remember bawling out their sons from the sidelines at Southdown Field back in the 60s. I distinctly remember one instance of this lunatic behavior. In the last inning of a game, I snared a high, wind-driven pop-up in shallow left field. The mom of our cleanup batter ran out to embrace me, saying, "Rusty, I can't believe you caught the ball, especially with that crummy mitt!" Up yours, lady, I thought.
A few disputes aren't unusual in June, when the weather warms up and the kids improve their skills, but this was far too early for such bitterness. When the ump made an outrageous decision against the Indians, I was standing by the on-deck circle, and said to no one in particular, "Well, that was a Chinese call!" Not all that inappropriate, given the times, but the glare I got from a Tribecan stripped another layer of skin off my weatherbeaten face. So sensitive and protective of our Communist competitors! (When MUGGER III came home that afternoon from a birthday party, his goody bag filled with trinkets made in you-know-where, I saluted every single Kmart shopper.)
I imagine this woman was simply depressed she wasn't in Quebec City, reliving her youth with all those inarticulate college students who were protesting the crucial free-trade summit. Nothing like a belt of tear gas to conjure up prefab nostalgia for the 60s. DeNeen L. Brown, in Sunday's Washington Post, recorded a typical quote from one of the dopes railing against democracy. The reporter wrote: "'The fence, it makes us more aggressive than we already are. It makes me feel more violent inside. I should be able to go on the other side of the fence,' screamed a 21-year-old man with a green scarf masking his eyes. He grabbed the wire of the fence and began to climb, antagonizing a line of police standing on the other side. He rattled the fence to tear it down. Then he took a glass bottle and hurled it. The bottle shattered behind the police line."
Neato, Mark Rudd Jr.
I was tempted to bring up the April 17 landslide vote by Mississippi citizens to retain their Confederate-inspired state flag just to be sportingly provocative, but I'd probably be sent to the showers. Had I been in a surly mood it would've been an excellent conversation piece: the hypocrisy of appalled Northerners, aghast that Mississippians exercised their constitutional rights, is surely one of the more dispiriting events of the past week. The Baltimore Sun had the gall to print a blistering editorial, essentially calling the people of that state neo-Nazi John Rocker imitators (the penultimate insult in some quarters), a stunning show of hubris considering that Baltimore is one of most racially polarized cities in the country.
The I-know-better-than-they-do editorialist wrote on April 19: "Mississippi has a bevy of problems that won't be solved overnight... So erasing the Confederate battle emblem from their state flag was an easy way for Mississippians to prove they're not the hicks everyone thinks they are. It was a chance to prove their ignorance is not conjoined with bigotry, a way to quiet some of the national laughter at their backwardness."
Take it from someone who lived, happily, in Baltimore for 14 years: The Deep South doesn't have a monopoly on "hicks." The Sun should've just demanded that Jesse Jackson fly first class down to Mississippi, demand a recount and maybe spark a riot while he was at it.
The four of us returned home to watch the end of the Yanks-Bosox game on Fox, an 8-3 victory for the visitors, with Manny Ramirez and Hillenbrand in starring roles, while former Oriole Mike Mussina was roughed up again for the Yanks, sinking his record to 1-2 and ERA to 4.21. Frankly, I think Mussina is semi-damaged goods: Peter Angelos' shell-shocked O's just demanded too many innings from him in his years there, and his arm could blow out at any time.
Junior and I have a hapless record when it comes to seeing the Sox live at Yankee Stadium. On Sunday, the whole family traipsed out to the ballpark on the warmest day of the year, and sat in the second row behind the Yanks dugout, thanks to my friend Doug, who was generous enough to think of us. It was a pretty amazing game, even if the Yanks pulled it out in the bottom of the 10th, winning 4-3 with homers by Sourpuss Paul O'Neill and David Justice, who'd struck out four times previously at the plate. Hate to sound like a tv broadcaster, but despite the outcome it was classic baseball: gorgeous weather, an early pitching duel between Tomo Ohka and Yanks rookie Ted Lilly, two solo blasts by Ramirez, a sold-out Stadium and a nailbiter to the end.
Before the game I was taking a piss in the men's room, and one of the guys lined up against the wall let go with a lame, "Boston sucks." I cracked up when a Sox fan next to me at the row of urinals said, "Yeah, and I'll bet you're the only guy here whose dick isn't touching the bottom of the porcelain." He was joking, but it immediately shut up the Yankees fan. Gee whiz, people get incredibly sensitive on Earth Day. I celebrated the holiday by tossing my hotdog wrappers and napkins under the seats and cursing the bureaucratic and posh Sierra Club for their double-talk every hour on the hour.
At least I was outdoors on Earth Day XXXI, unlike the National Review's Rich Lowry, who wrote on the magazine's website for April 21/22: "[N]ature is red in tooth and claw, the way our air-conditioned homes aren't. Yes, nature is about majesty and beauty. But don't forget: Untouched by the miraculous quality of human ingenuity (like, for instance, a softball field!), nature is also about disorder, death and decay. For a suburban boy such as myself, it's hard not to notice these latter, not particularly stirring qualities... So, enjoy the great outdoors this weekend, if you must. I'll be curling up with a New York Times." On that final note, I hope health-conscious Lowry had the sense to avoid Paul Krugman and Richard Berke.
We had a splendid time chatting with the people in our section?exclusively Yanks fans?once they got over that my family was wearing Sox hats and the boys had on the numbered shirts of Pedro Martinez and Nomar Garciaparra. In the first inning, a smart-aleck three rows back yelled to me, "1918!" and since I've just about had it with that lame soundbite, I good-naturedly told him to save it for the Times' worst baseball writer, Murray Chass. Of course, he got on my good side with a rejoinder of "How can you root for a team whose state elects Teddy Kennedy and John Kerry?" Music to my ears, and we then exchanged Republican pleasantries, especially about Bush's sensible words concerning free trade up in Quebec City this past weekend.
So the Bosox come out of the weekend in first place, one up on the Blue Jays, and though April hasn't yet ended, I think Chass and Peter Gammons might want to revise their rash preseason predictions about Boston's chances for the playoffs. Chass: "At least the Red Sox have taken the suspense out of the season for their tortured fans. Neither team nor supporters will suffer the late-season or postseason letdown that goes with the territory." ESPN's Gammons: "They could get through April without falling into Boston Harbor."
Tribeca Closings
The New Yorker is a maddening magazine. That's a key reason it's one of the three or four top publications in the United States. It's easy to get worked up for about five minutes over yet another fatuous article in say Esquire or Talk, but when The New Yorker rankles it can sting for days. Editor David Remnick has an odd choice of marquee writers. As I've written before, most of the political coverage is left-of-center?and in Jane Mayer's case just plain dumb and reckless?and could easily be incorporated into the mush that passes for opinion at The New York Times. On the other hand, the current April 23/30 issue, devoted to money, is superb, with first-rate pieces by Louis Menand on "The Witch of Wall Street" and Larissa MacFarquhar profiling Lester Wallman, a quirky and funny 72-year-old divorce lawyer.
At a certain time, long ago, I'd have said of Gopnik's anecdote, "Isn't that special!"
Why this pretentious writer drew the El Teddy's assignment is beyond me. Surely there's a New Yorker staffer who's both dined at El Teddy's and had the pleasure of drinking a margarita. Someone who might know what the real emotions are about in this neighborhood controversy.
But enough of the Lump named Gopnik. There's another Tribeca institution?probably unknown to the famous weekly mentioned above?that's recently bitten the dust, a victim of the rising retail rents in the area. Riverrun was a Franklin St. staple since 1978, long before Robert De Niro entertained the daft notion of naming himself Emperor of Tribeca. The restaurant/bar started out as a meeting place for locals, a simple joint with great burgers and chicken wings, which drew artists, families and the growing number of affluent loft-owners. The barkeeps?so many over the years, with my favorites being Danny, Lou and Dave?treated everyone the same, as long as they didn't create trouble for other customers. The owners, Don Berger and Joe Distler, created a downtown oasis, and when Tribeca became more trendy they refused to alter Riverrun's atmosphere to make the place more like its competitors, many of which opened and closed within a year.
I used to spend many an afternoon and night at the bar, usually with New York Press colleagues, and the paper held Christmas and Best of Manhattan parties there over the years. In fact, it was many years ago that I first met Mrs. M at Riverrun, when she was waiting tables and I lived around the corner. It was a jolly time. My friend Mike and I once stocked the bar's jukebox with our collection of 45s, a roster that held up for about a year, and threw a party when we unveiled it. It was eclectic: "El Paso," "Look of Love," Kate Smith's "God Bless America," "Eight Miles High," "Bigmouth Strikes Again," "Down in the Boondocks," "You Were on My Mind," "Ain't No Mountain High Enough," "Positively Fourth Street," "Just Like Heaven," "Accidents Will Happen," "Eve of Destruction," "Fairytale of New York," "Lady Marmalade," "Train in Vain," "House of the Rising Sun" and on and on.
One night, back in the fall of '88, a group of us stayed till closing, and our table was so filled with empty pint glasses that the next day Don declared that from then on Mondays would be "Pint Nights," with a discount on every tap beer. It was a loose place, and I never heard anyone speak badly of it. That Adam Gopnik will never write a eulogy about Riverrun doesn't mean a whole lot. There are so many people in Tribeca who already miss the place, and though there will never be a zoning battle over its passing, it's a spot I'll never forget.
Finally, I can't release details, but very shortly there will be flap in the dailies about De Niro's latest heist in Tribeca, a move that will only heighten his reputation as a scumbag, despite his acting skills. I believe artists should be judged on their work; their personal lives make little difference to me. So, when it was revealed that Bob Dylan beat his wife Sara, it was shocking, but I put the blinders on and figured that although I probably wouldn't like the guy personally, it took nothing away from his music. Of course, that was all far away, in Malibu, while De Niro's shenanigans are happening right in my neighborhood and will affect the quality of life of hundreds of people here. He was a king in Raging Bull, but as a local resident? He's nothing but a greedy creep.
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