Last Sunday afternoon I was watching the Yankees/Rays game on YES, delighted as the Yanks squandered numerous scoring opportunities and eventually lost 6-4. Play-by-play mainstay Michael Kay—now 63, he’s dialed down the NYY propaganda from the George Steinbrenner days; always smart (and lets you know it), Kay nevertheless was breathtaking in his verbal blow jobs of the team’s stars. The “color” man that day, former big-leaguer Paul O’Neill, complained when the Rays’ Jose Siri took forever to round the bases after hitting one into the stands, “styling,” with O’Neill saying that’s just not the way the game should be played. When I’m rooting for a team, a homer is a homer is a homer, and I don’t care about bat flips, show-off antics or pointing fingers at the opposing dugouts. (It’d be hypocritical for me, anyway, since the Red Sox’s Hall-of-Famer David Ortiz was flamboyant when slowly trotting the bases, lifting a finger to the sky—now common, even for a walk—and sometimes high-fiving fans at Fenway Park.)
I’m put off by some of today’s cosmetic “statements” by MLB players—the jewelry, individualized (and often sponsored) colorful spikes and all the tattoos—but love the game, and the Sox, and if teams pamper their 26 men with pitch counts and excessive days off, that’s modern baseball when owners are reluctant to over-tax their stars signed to multi-million dollar contracts. Hard cheese for me, and other traditionalists, but I accept it. It was interesting to see a tweet, from I believe sports nerd (not a dig!) Gersh Rabinowitz, recounting that Nolan Ryan (then with the Angels), threw 235 pitches in 13 innings against the Sox in 1974, whiffing 19 and walking 10, a science-fiction effort today, and then returned to the mound three days later and tossed six innings against the Yankees.
Anyway, during commercials I scan Twitter and on this afternoon found out that Joe Biden was withdrawing from the presidential election—that his staff (not MIA Sippy Cup) gave the brief letter to Elon Musk’s website and not The New York Times or Wall Street Journal (The Washington Post no longer counts, to no one’s dismay) was political entertainment—and immediately texted my two sons, “scooping them,” and then we yammered on the phone.
Right on cue, not 15 minutes after the mysterious statement was issued, relieved Democratic politicians and liberal journalists—who’d kept up a death-by-1000-bug-bites aimed at Dr. Jill’s husband until that very morning—inundated Twitter with ridiculous encomiums to Biden, saying he was “courageous, “noble,” “putting country before personal ambition,” which was expected but still hard to stomach. (In fairness, their conservative counterparts weighed in as well, with often stupid and nasty comments.) At least the sub-literate bleats from pundits saying the Biden drama since his flabbergasting June 27th debate against Trump was “Shakespearean” will be retired; in fact, I’m not sure much about the enfeebled president will be mentioned from now until Election Day. Almost every Democrat is just relieved that Biden and his dwindling entourage have been politically euthanized.
But no one matched Jon Meacham’s flowery (far, far worse than any of Michael Kay’s thousands of bend-overs for Derek Jeter) tribute to his “friend” Biden—Meacham has “advised” and helped prepare speeches for the still-incumbent—that appeared in the Times on Monday. He writes: “His decision is one of the most remarkable acts of leadership in our history, an act of self-sacrifice that places him in the company of George Washington… I know him to be a good man, a patriot who has met challenges all too similar to those Abraham Lincoln faced… Mr. Biden has put country above self, the Constitution above personal ambition, the future of democracy above temporal gain. It is up to us to follow his lead.”
Meacham has disgraced himself as a historian—in recounting his friend’s career, not one mention of Biden’s serial plagiarism was mentioned—although I’d imagine he’ll make a bundle with a book next year, putting lucre above accuracy. It’s a living—no complaint there—but a very smarmy one.
The two men in the photo above are my maternal grandfather (73) and Uncle Pete (21) in the Bronx. I’ve no idea if my grandfather was a baseball fan (he died seven years before I was born) and Pete could take it or leave it. Still, on a summer day in 1964, 38 of us went to the newly-opened Shea Stadium, hard by the World’s Fair, for an old-fashioned doubleheader. My mom had won the tickets—using different aliases—in a Rheingold Beer contest, and Pete, who was unparalleled in zest for life, had a swell time, telling jokes and, between innings, performing minor magic tricks for the kids.
As for the Biden baloney, both men would surely roll their eyes, since the world, and country, were far more perilous than today.
Look at the clues to figure out the year: James M. Cain’s Mildred Pierce, Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children and Bud Schulman’s What Makes Sammy Run? are published; James Joyce dies and Bernie Sanders is born; Alben Barkley is Senate Majority Leader; the National Gallery of Art opens in D.C.; Woody Guthrie records Columbia River Ballads; Orson Welles scandalizes Hollywood with his first film; John Ford's How Green Was My Valley is released; in California, Bob Hope performs his first USO show; The Great Gildersleeve debuts on NBC Radio; Bulgaria declares war on the United States; Captain Beefheart is born and Jelly Roll Morton dies; Joe Louis is the World Heavyweight Champion; Betty Hicks Newell is the A.P.’s Female Athlete of the Year; Duke Ellington’s “Take the A Train” is a big hit; and Meet John Doe is released.
—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023