This is considered the single greatest moment, not only in the history of New York City baseball, but in all of American sports: Bobby Thomson's come from behind home run that won the National League pennant for the New York Giants over the Brooklyn Dodgers.
October 3, 1951. At the bottom of the 9th inning, with all three bases loaded and the Giants losing 1-4, Thomson whacked the ball into the stands and the Giants overwhelmed the Dodgers to snag the game, 5-4. The crowd went wild (Dodgers fans, like my own grandfather, excepted). The city had shut down for this penultimate game of the series and, when it was over, nearly exploded from the emotion it unleashed.
The next day the newspapers declared this home run "The Shot Heard 'Round the World" - and it literally was, as serviceman fighting in Korea heard it on the radio.
On the same day as this historic game, the Soviet Union tested the first nuclear bomb - another metaphorical, much more ominous shot heard 'round the world.
For many Americans, these two events on the same day became the turning point for 20th century America -- the official end of the World War Two era, the beginning of the Cold War era, and the rise of American of dominance. The tour-de-force prologue of Don DeLillo's great 1997 novel Underworld is devoted to this game and moment, and the rest of this novel - part fiction, part fact - covers the next 50 years of turbulent history that unfurled afterwards.
DeLillo describes it best - the memories of great moments like this, the vicissitudes of history, and feelings they all inspire - when he writes at the end of the prologue: "It's all falling indelibly into the past,"
Here's a partial transcript of Russ Hodges calling the game (since the recording is a little hard to understand):
"There's a long drive... it's gonna be, I believe...THE GIANTS WIN THE PENNANT!! THE GIANTS WIN THE PENNANT! THE GIANTS WIN THE PENNANT! THE GIANTS WIN THE PENNANT! Bobby Thomson hits into the lower deck of the left-field stands! The Giants win the pennant and they're goin' crazy, they're goin' crazy! HEEEY-OH!!!'' [long pause for crowd noise]
I don't believe it! I don't believe it! I do not believe it! Bobby Thomson... hit a line drive... into the lower deck... of the left-field stands... and this blame place is goin' crazy! The Giants! Horace Stoneham has got a winner! The Giants won it... by a score of 5 to 4... and they're pickin' Bobby Thomson up... and carryin' him off the field!"
The Sex and the City movie is about to open and New Yorkers can hardly wait. Tabloids are ablaze with the our politicians' peccadilloes -- Eliot's hookers, Patterson's mistresses, Vito's love child, McGreevey's gay life/endless divorce. Practically every woman in this town is reading Eat, Pray, Love (short review: lady gets divorced, goes to Italy and eats lots of food, goes to India and gets all spiritual, goes to Bali and screws her brains out). New Yorkers write myriad blogs giving us the intimate details of their romantic endeavors. In short, we New Yorkers are pretty frickin' horny. So what else is new, right? Tom Wolfe has often referred to the "season of the rising sap" to characterize periods of lust. And as springtime gradually yields to summer, New Yorkers' collective sap seems to be brimming over this season. To whit, how appropriate then to read Phillip Weiss's article in New York magazine, The Affairs of Men. What's interesting about it is how obvious most of his observations are. See, he arrives at the shocking conclusion that men want to cheat because, well, they crave sexual variety! Who knew?! And not just men, women too! Oh my God! The article also reports that 1 in 4 men and roughly 1 in 6 women cheat. Now that was a shock. I didn't realize the numbers were that low.
Weiss also concludes that the idea of marriage being synonymous with long-term monogamy is a puritanical American myth. The Europeans, he says, appropriately view marriage for what it is: a social convention, a socioeconomic arrangement, where sex and romance aren't its fundamental underpinnings by just by-products -- and that looking for "strange" elsewhere is normal and accepted. So what does this have to do with dating and mating in NYC? Well, Mr Weiss doesn't go into it in his article, but my observations is that we're a little more European than most Americans but certainly more puritanical than most Europeans. Yet at their core, sex and love in NYC is all about status. It's social Darwinism run amok. Welcome to Love New York Style. In a city like New York, with so many people, so much variety, and so many opportunities to meet new people, fidelity is practically impossible -- or at least really, really, REALLY hard. If you're a guy, the better looking you are, the more affluent you are, the more socially accepted you are, the more chicks will be looking to snag you. And if you're an even an only half-way decent looking woman, guys will be willing to spend all of their disposable income, even non-disposable income, trying to score you (obviously if you're a woman, the hotter you are, the more money guys'll spend on you and the more picky you can be about selecting a fella but that goes without saying). And because looks and money rule in this town, the more you have of both, the greater the opportunities you have to cheat. In New York, so much temptation exists, its really hard to refrain. Of course some people are more easily tempted than others, and temptation is not equally distributed to everyone but still ... in NYC, the lure of "sexual variety" exists for everyone and everyone feels its pull sometime. Cheating is therefore inevitable. So ladies: the better looking and richer the guy, believe you me, he ain't gonna settle for only one woman for the rest of his life. And guys: the hotter the lady, the more vicious the competition for her affections will be and the more likely she'll have no problem dumping you at a moment's notice when someone better comes a long. New York may be the epitome of civilization but, when it comes to sex and love here, the laws of the jungle rule. Love New York Style is like so much about life in this town -- a tough game of negotiation wherein some win and some lose.
Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Catwoman, Iron Man, the Hulk ... who would have ever thought they'd be exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art? Well, now they are. Last week we went to the brand-new exhibit Superheroes at the Met. It's still worth seeing if you're interested in the mythology of superheroes in American culture but it's by no means the most incredible exhibit I've ever seen. (Methinks this might be a ploy to hike up attendance.) Basically they show the designs for superhero costumes and try to explain (a little unconvincingly for me) how "the superhero look" has had an influence and transformative effect on American high-fashion and design. You can see the suits that Tobey Maguire wore in Spiderman, Christopher Reeve wore in Superman, even the body armor Robert Downey Jr wears in the current Iron Man movie (guess you can't accuse the Met on not being with the times). They also show other clothing from top-name designers (like Versace, et al.) that supposedly owe a debt to Marvel and DC Comics.
It's not a very large exhibit and a little underwhelming. But, if you haven't been to the Met in a while, seeing this along with the amazing new Greek and Roman galleries makes for a nice time.
Mercifully my week-long technical problems have been solved so I should be able to blog regularly from now on. This was a lesson that if you need to solve a problem, DO NOT rely on others if you don't have to. I tried to get some IT people to take a look at my problem and couldn't get anyone fast enough so I took the initiative and fixed it on my own. Part of me feels very proud of myself, part of me feels very annoyed at myself for taking so long just to drum up the self-motivation to do it. Oh well. It's fixed now. Go me ... to a point.
Yesterday was NYU's graduation ceremony at Yankee stadium - a day when young men and woman get together and celebrate together their academic accomplishments. This nitwit character decided to make it all about himself. He took off his pants (but left on his gown), hurled himself onto the field and tried to start running the bases. He was immediately tackled to the ground and removed.
Lot of his fellow grads cheered him on and if you read the message boards, the guy's a hero. My opinion: graduation ceremonies are mind-numbingly dumb so a little spontaneity is most welcome. But this was just stupidly selfish. If a group of NYU grads has swarmed the field and done it together, it would've be great. This was just sad, however.
Full disclosure: I just got a grad degree from NYU and could've been at this ceremony yesterday. If I had known this was gonna happen, I might have gone. Might have.
I've been having technical difficulties with my lovely computer and thus have been unable to blog the last few days. The problems aren't solved yet so I'm using someone' else's 'puter till then. My posting may be a little more sporadic till then but I'll do my best :)
And now a happy story: this is a charming, heartwarming story about a 93 year old woman who still works and still enjoys a stiff drink almost every night at the Cafe des Artistes. The older I get, the more I come to admire folks like this.
