The Electric Egg Cream

The recent Auld Lang Syne observances in honor of our two departing baseball teams are a big business in NYC  lately. Last week, we had the Yankees depart amidst a parade of saccharine nostalgia and commercialized praise; this week, it’s the Mets (not to be outdone; but, as always, ultimately outdone) departing amidst a similar display of  pretentiousness. Both teams moving to the greener pastures of brand new stadiums: the Yankees new stadium, located practically across the street; the new Shea stadium, arising in the old stadium’s parking lot. Needless to say, the teams’ final games in their respective stadiums were sold out beyond the infinite; each stadium now relegated to a giant yard sale where everything will soon be going at the going rate or to the highest bidder.

“The Mets report that Shea seats [literally] are selling briskly at $869 a pop (’86 and ‘69—get it?) [the years that they won the World Series], while the Yanks’ seat sale is on hold as the team haggles with the city over how much of a cut it will get for acting as salesperson, and how much taxpayers—who actually own both stadiums, seats and all—will get out of the deal. The Mets, meanwhile, have already announced a “zero-tolerance policy” for fans who attempt to make off with bits of Shea before the official dismantling.”

“‘It’s like squeezing the last little toothpaste out of the tube,’” says John Pastier, stadium historian and author of the book Historic Ballparks. ‘Whenever a team is seeking public funds for a new ballpark, they decry the one they have—’it’s outmoded,’ ‘it’s an economic albatross,’ ‘it’s not good for the fans.’ But once it’s time to leave the old joint, they’ll play the final season nostalgia card and try to cash in on that.’”  (Source: The Village Voice)

I remember when Shea Stadium was a new, state of the art construction, further complemented by the futuristic efforts of the nearby and newly-opened World’s Fair in Flushing, Queens. I was 10, and this was probably the first time, while visiting the Fair, that  I became aware of the Mets: formed in 1959 as a expansion team to fill in the league-gap left in NYC baseball by the departure of the NY Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers. The team had played in the Polo Grounds in Brooklyn (the Giants’ former stadium) before moving into Shea Stadium in 1964, where the team played on but the fans failed to arrive in considerable numbers. The old Yankee Stadium, while old and antiquated, always seemed as permanent as granite next to Shea Stadium’s modern yet flimsy-looking architecture.

Despite promotional campaigns and ticket giveaways, the Mets never quite caught on with the public, except with that sizable minority of New Yorkers frustrated or bored with the team’s rivals in the Bronx. From their humble beginning down to the present day, the Mets played in the shadows of the Yankees’  indomitable hype and sensationalism. The Yankees  were THE TEAM and no team could have ever existed before them, beside them or after them; their legendary omnipotence commercially ingrained in the hearts and souls of most New Yorkers. The Mets victories in the 1969 and 1986 World Series, while dramatic, only served to steal the spotlight away  from the Yankees until the next season. Insofar as they were underdogs, I preferred the Mets over the Yankees by a huge margin…and this holds true today, when I’m no longer interested in baseball but find it ingrained in my thoughts.

“Saying goodbye isn’t so hard to do when all you’re doing is walking across the street,” writes Tim Dahlberg in USA Today. Baseball revels in its rich traditions, but that hasn’t stopped the wholesale replacement of stadiums since Camden Yards ushered in the retro concept when it opened in Baltimore in 1992. The two New York stadiums are merely the latest examples of this trend….”

The Yankees and the Mets will be here next season but not their respective stadiums; these were, shall I say, traded for a more lucrative contract…the whimsical free agent deals of ballplayers are now that of ballparks as well. Memories and legends, the sustenance of baseball stadiums, will have to be formed anew within the nooks and crevices of new structures and with the contentious hope that future generations will find them equally profitable for their own memorabilia investments.

Yet another Immortal of the Silver Screen has proven that immortality is, in fact, limited to the silver screen. Even though it was strongly rumored that Paul Newman was dying, it’s never easy to accept the imminent demise of a superstar: our own immortal daydreams rely so heavily on their eternal presence.

Newman will be missed: a superb actor, an accomplished man, a credit to American cinema.

“Paul Newman In Pictures” (NYT)

There are certain sects of religious fanatics (or psychotics) out there whose sole mission in life is to make life utterly miserable for those not sharing in their mission and, hence, not equally miserable.  Every day and every night, while the world endlessly strives towards sweet delight, they tirelessly endeavor to bring endless night to one and all. They’re not content to merely rain on everyone’s parade but also seek to ravage anything even approaching a good time with fire and brimstone: the final revenge for those who can’t get no satisfaction today and tirelessly pray and/or conspire that the world’s inhabitants get even less tomorrow…especially mice, whether real or fictional.

“Death To The Infidel Mickey!,” reads the caption in the National Enquirer, that legendarily awful and notoriously untrustworthy virtuoso of yellow journalism. Now that I’m online I don’t have to wait until I’m in the supermarket check-out line to sneak a peek at this rag and observe such intriguing headlines…indeed, I don’t have to suffer the public embarrassment of actually reading the article. But in this day and age, as the absurd becomes more and more the norm, stories published in the Enquirer are far more anticlimactic than revealing; this story was no exception.

Saudi cleric Sheikh Muhammad Munajid (a barrel of laughs, I’m sure, between jihads) “has claimed the cartoon mouse - as well as Tom and Jerry -are nothing more than ‘Satan’s Soldiers’” Munajid (definitely NOT a former Mousketeer in the Mickey Mouse Club) states that under Sharia Law “both real mice and their animated counterparts must be killed.” (But Tom is a cat!!!…I suppose it’s guilt by association.) This devout and lovable former diplomat at the Saudi Embassy “was teaching Islam’s views on -al-Majad TV, an Arabic net,  when he made his startling declaration of war.”

Because this is a National Enquirer story, I’ll doubt its credibility…that a story appears in the National Enquirer is, in and of itself,  reason enough for doubt. I’ll allow that the Sheikh might have been quoted out of context, delivered his Mickey Mouse Crusade in a humorous or off-the-cuff manner, or had heard the Mickey Mouse March anthem “M-I-C-K-E-Y…” and sank into a brief but chaotic state of catalepsy, etc..

However, in those distant days before 9/11, if I had read that 19 social nomads would hijack four planes that would vanish off the radar, crashing them into a skyscraper complex that would effectively vanish off the face of the earth, etc., my sense of disbelief would have had to vanish into another dimension to even slightly believe it. I would simply write it off as yet another twisted National Enquirer kind of story…such things could only appear in these kind of publications. Isn’t that so?  (Oh, Annette Funicello, where are you?)

clipped from www.brooklynpaper.com

“As if advertising wasn’t trashy enough, a city councilman now wants to sell ad space on city garbage cans, saying that the plan could reap $2.5 million.” (The Brooklyn Paper)

“It will only grow with time, like Lou Gehrig’s farewell, Don Larsen’s masterpiece and Reggie Jackson’s third home run in a World Series game. Untold thousands will say they were there the night the curtain fell on baseball’s grandest stage.” (NY Times)

Are they kidding!!! These pinstriped goons are only moving across the street; it’s unfortunate, insofar that I was hoping that they were moving to some distant locale across the galaxy. These boys of summer will be relocating to a much ballyhooed new stadium in which they’ll celebrate their house warming next season by raising ticket prices (and every other price in this wondrous clip joint)  by at least 15%. The memory of a Lou Gehrig, Mickey Mantle, Babe Ruth, and the other immortals of Yankee history (as well as that of myth), was only besmirched by this present-day gang of overpraised profiteers, disguised as athletes, for at least the past 30 years. Any “ghosts” that may have lingered in the old stadium grounds’ 85-year history were often used for marketing purposes only and proudly invoked but cynically honored; the ghosts could now rest in peace in their abandonment.

“The legacy of Yankee Stadium, it turns out, was never the title fights or the N.F.L. championships, the papal visits or the World Series. It was the fans. In its final season, the Yankees set a record for attendance, 4,298,543. At the end, the fans were drawn to Ruth’s house in ways he never could have dreamed.” (NY Times)

Crowds were roaming around the Stadium as early as noon on Sunday, eight hours before the pregame pomp and circumstances were scheduled to kick off. The beer and reminiscences flowed freely in the glow of a beautiful afternoon.  Everyone appeared excitedly subdued as they whiled away the hours and began to gradually queue at the entrance gate at 1 p.m. for a sort of last hurrah polonaise through the playing field.  Upon finally entering, the fans sporadically cheered for the cameras as police escorted them through. They were then allowed to parade along the Stadium’s warning track, beginning at the left-field bleachers to the entire lower concourse and terminating at the third-base line. By 2:30 p.m., they were asked to suspend their vigil and resume their wait outside until game time.

The inevitable scalpers were many but the available tickets were few. Scalpers told reporters that they didn’t know how much any existing tickets were selling for because they couldn’t find any to hawk. Security personnel (nearly 1,600 additional for this monumental ring out the old/ ring in the new event in baseball history) paid little attention to the scalpers because their main concern was in preventing souvenir collectors from helping themselves to any eye-catching relics (seats, for instance). “Like the fans, the players were told that they cannot take whatever they would like,” Trost said in a telephone interview on Sunday. “They were told that if they would like something, they can provide us with a list and then we will see if we can sell it to them and they will pay the same price as fans.” (NY Times)

This menagerie of self-promotion and vainglorious escapades has often been referred to as the “Bronx Zoo” or the “Evil Empire” (after Ronald Reagan’s characterization of the former Soviet Union ), although both names have been defiantly embraced by some fans of the team. Mike Royko, of the Chicago Tribune, couldn’t have put it any better when he stated that, “Hating the Yankees is as American as pizza pie, unwed mothers, and cheating on your income tax.”

Incurable sentimentalist that I am, I’d probably miss them (eventually) if I weren’t going to be saying Hello to them, all over again, next spring; sadly, now that the former Yankee Stadium is no more, they are (in addition to the imminent and outrageously-priced collector’s items that bear their name) the only remaining link in town to baseball’s truly glorious era…so thoughtlessly abandoned.

In Sarah Palin, Republican desperation sought a new and dynamic salesperson to sell America on the old and moldering concepts of God and Country, Family and the American Dream.  These traditional goal-inspiring and spirit-uplifting tag words were lost in the mire of, at least, 20 to 40 years of governmental shenanigans, intrigue and corruption: our society in a general state of moral decay and hopelessness; our economy managed by thieves and cutthroat logic; and our nation in the hands of indifferently elected officials that are increasingly becoming political hacks.

The old saying, stemming from the First World War, that “there are no atheists in the trenches” is all very well and good when soldiers faced the immediate possibility of having their heads blown off. However, there are slower deaths: households facing unemployment, mounting bills and despair; our national pride and honor insulted with everything from Watergate to the Bubba Experience  to Iraq; families becoming nonexistent and shattered whether  by wantonness or by poverty; and, finally, the American Dream relegated to a mirage for the majority of Americans and realized only by those wealthy enough to afford a customized version of it (presently, the only version available). In short, our society in the midst of a sea change that, if it follows its present course, could only be a change for the still worse.

Alas, the stale “God Bless America” chorals, moldy patriotic anthems and catchphrases, and old war stories told by old veterans just weren’t working any longer.  The Republican dream-weavers, not to be outdone by the Democrat dream-weavers, needed a quick someone to keep the the dream going: Enter Sarah Palin, a creation that has outdone everyone’s wildest dreams in being the most innovative dream-sell of all time.

In the midst of this lame presidential race, she descended upon the scene like a  deus ex machina,  in the character of a combination former beauty queen/ obscure mayor/ mighty moose hunter/questionable governor of Alaska and sing Hallelujah songbird. In the wink of an eye this unknown  became  America’s Hope and Promise for Future and Eternal Glory; the de facto, it could be argued, presidential candidate that has left McCain in a very awkward, second-banana position that’s unprecedented in American history.

However, is Sarah Palin for real?…or is she a product of our nation’s terminal confusion? Is this America’s future? If we’re living in the End Times, as Palin’s faith(?) so casually believes, I tend to agree with her: there’s such a thing as a self-fulffilling prophecy. For those with eyes to see, ears to hear, and a brain to keep everything properly configured, Palin is yours to evaluate. And keep in mind that I’m not head over heels in love with Obama…I’m simply playing the hand that was dealt to me. On the morning of September 11, 2001, I would’ve sooner imagined  that my wife and I would be riding on a bicycle built for two somewhere on Mars, before I would’ve imagined our current political state.

Science Daily (Sep. 17, 2008) — “For the first time in waters surrounding New York City, the beckoning calls of endangered fin, humpback and North Atlantic right whales have been recorded, according to experts from the Bioacoustics Research Program at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation” (DEC). (Science Daily )

Well call me Ishmael, but up until today I had assumed that the only form of life in NYC waters was sometimes biodegradable, often skeletal and ultimately toxic in nature: the exuding remains of  yesterdays which help give the town its uniquely exhilarating stench. Well, it appears that I was wrong. In this wild and madcap time of ours, not only are the  hills alive with the sound of music, but it may also  be possible to hear some proud descendants of Moby Dick himself spouting their own oldies-but-goodies off the coast of Coney Island.

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