I hope you’ll forgive the lapse into nostalgia for the subsequent 750 or so phrases, as I discover myself terribly nostalgic this weekend, and I discover myself continually referencing an article that the good Pete Hamill wrote for New York Journal almost 44 years in the past.
Hamill, writing about Frank Sinatra, recalled a automotive journey the 2 of them had taken by way of the streets of a Manhattan some years earlier after watching a Jets recreation on TV collectively at Sinatra’s previous hangout, Jilly’s. Sinatra and Hamill have been recalling the New York of their youth.
“It’s certain modified, this city,” Sinatra mentioned, melancholy thick in his voice. “Once I first got here throughout that river, this was the best metropolis in the entire g–damned world, It was like a giant, stunning woman. It’s like a busted-down hooker now.”
“Ah, properly,” Hamill replied. “Babe Ruth doesn’t play for the Yankees anymore.”
“And the Paramount is an workplace constructing,” Sinatra mentioned. “Cease. I’m gonna cry.”
However that’s at all times been the factor about this magnificent metropolis, proper? It’s not a metropolis of ruins. Issues really feel like they’re without end, then disappear. There have been 4 Madison Sq. Gardens. There have been 5 Polo Grounds. We’re on the third Yankee Stadium. Gadgets that ought to have been priceless relics — the copper frieze at previous Yankee Stadium, the stone eagles that used to safeguard the unique Penn Station — have been as an alternative used as landfill, a few of it to assist construct the primary of two soccer stadiums over in Jersey.
Three cherished and iconic whistle-stops on the excursions my father would take me on after I was a child — the Automat, FAO Schwartz, Shea Stadium — are all lengthy gone. That is New York. That is at all times New York.
So it’s doable — some say possible — that Saturday night time, I attended the ultimate gathering of the New York Baseball Writers annual awards dinner on the Hilton. And in its personal manner, the prospect of its passing makes me really feel a lot as Sinatra did when he noticed the previous theater the place he used to make the bobby-soxers wail and weep.
It so occurs that this dinner fell precisely 100 years — to the day — from when the primary of the 99 dinners (COVID claimed a number of of them) did. Again on Jan. 27, 1924, some 300 luminaries from the baseball neighborhood gathered on the invitation of the New York chapter of the BBWAA on the previous Lodge Commodore subsequent to Grand Central Terminal.
Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the game’s commissioner, was the visitor of honor, however the star was, unsurprisingly, Ruth, who teamed with Yankees proprietor Jacob Ruppert to carry out a skit variously described within the subsequent morning’s seven dailies as “uproarious,” “impressed” and “splendid.” There was additionally a cabaret placed on by the sportswriters much less keenly reviewed — although it will stay part of this system till it was mercifully retired in 1981.
Nonetheless, there have been moments, so many moments, none extra memorable than on Feb. 6, 1952, when Ralph Branca — in maybe the best proof of fine sportsmanship ever — agreed to sing a duet with Bobby Thomson, to the tune of the favored Dudley Wilkinson-Arthur Hammerstein music “Due to You.”
Thomson (to Branca): Due to you, there’s a music in my coronary heart …
Branca (to Thomson): Due to you, I ought to by no means been born/Due to you, Dodger followers are forlorn
These previous 43 years, the dinner has largely been a pure and unbridled celebration of the game, a quick burst of summer time within the lifeless of winter. The primary few years, on the Commodore and later the Waldorf-Astoria, they’d import the precise ticket kiosks from one of many metropolis’s ballparks to greet attendees. The massive awards — MVP, Cy Younger, all of them — have been formally introduced right here, as have been a wide range of native ones — notably the Good Man Award.
The dais was an annual who’s-who. Final yr Aaron Choose and Kate Upton and Spike Lee and Steve Cohen and Marv Albert and Hank Azaria, all in formalwear, mingled with and amid one another. The speeches are at all times nice — some poignant, some hilarious. As somebody who at all times dreamed of being a baseball author, attending was at all times a fantasy come to life. As a baseball fan even longer, I usually questioned how I’d describe all of it to 8-year-old me.
Sentiment is powerful this is likely to be it. 100 years is an efficient run, particularly in New York, and there’s discuss of MLB negotiating for the rights to current the large awards aside from the BBWAA dinner, and that may seemingly be that. I get it. Enterprise is enterprise. New York strikes on. Babe Ruth doesn’t play for the Yankees anymore.
Aw, hell. Cease. I’m gonna cry.
Vack’s Whacks
Do your self a favor and watch “The Dream Whisperer,” a outstanding documentary concerning the nice Dick Barnett and his Tennessee A&I School teammates that will probably be streaming on the PBS app as of Feb. 1 and can air on Ch. 13 on Feb. 28.
It’s a great basketball factor to see Tom Pecora again within the recreation at Quinnipiac, which is 15-4, and a good higher factor to see the Bobcats alone in first place within the MAAC heading into Sunday’s showdown with second-place Fairfield.
All it’s a must to do is inform me that Paul Giamatti is within the film, and I’m going to observe that film. Each time. And that was true even earlier than he had his post-Golden Globes dinner at an In-N-Out.
Free Mikal Bridges!
Whack Again at Vac
Stewart Summers: Simply as I assumed the 40-0 loss to the Cowboys this season was the worst in (Giants) franchise historical past, I consider the Knicks’ 38-point beat-down of the champion Nuggets was one of many biggest regular-season wins in Knicks franchise historical past.
Vac: That definitely represents the yin and the yang of the previous few months round right here.
Brian Gladwin: How will you not love what is occurring at St. John’s! Don’t jinx issues, too early to speak concerning the NCAA Event.
Vac: I do want I had the ability to jinx or to unjinx. Possibly if I preserve doing this a number of years longer …
@naturalguy: I wasn’t a fan of the David Stearns rent; nevertheless I’m prepared to present him an opportunity. What number of years did we make large offseason strikes and haven’t gained, we are able to’t preserve doing the identical factor.
@MikeVacc: It’s a detailed vote, however I do suppose a plurality of Mets followers really feel this fashion.
Lenny Rodin: Now that the Buffalo Payments have been eradicated, it appears the very best soccer staff in New York is NCAA Division III champs SUNY-Cortland.
Vac: Go, Purple Dragons!