Ernie Banks

Ernie Banks, who died Friday at the age of 83, was one of the greats of baseball during the time I was coming of age. He began his Major League career in 1953, when I was seven, living in England, and knew little of baseball other than that it was a game my compatriots back home played and liked (neither of my parents was a fan). He retired in 1971, when I was 25, had settled in New York, and was beginning to get interested in the game again after a long latency period. 

He spent all of his eighteen year career in the Majors with the Cubs, a team in which I had little interest, although his teammate Hal Jeffcoat was a neighbor in Tampa, and Hal's two sons were in high school with me. Chicago was remote from any of my connections, and the Cubs were a perennial also-ran. Actually, my predisposition towards underdogs--the reason the Brooklyn Dodgers were my first baseball love--has made me, on an occasion when the Mets' outlook for the season had become seemingly hopeless while the Cubs' hadn't yet, briefly root for the Cubs.

Nevertheless, Ernie Banks was one of those names, like Ted Williams, Willie Mays, Bob Gibson, Mantle and Maris, and Stan Musial, that kept cropping up in my consciousness even when I wasn't following the game. He was great on both offense (512 career homers, .330 on base percentage, .500 slugging percentage) and on defense (.986 career fielding percentage). He's credited with giving Wrigley Field the nickname "the Friendly Confines." His characteristic quotation (on a sweltering Chicago summer day): "It's a beautiful day. Let's play two!"

Addendum: Today's New York Times has a splendid reminiscence by Chicago native and cradle Cubs fan Barry Bearak, who recalls how Banks "wiggle[d his] fingers around the handle of the bat...like a virtuoso fingering the keys of a saxophone."

Can a Chicago dog bark in Brooklyn?

Yesterday afternoon I took a walk to Pier 1 of Brooklyn Bridge Park, where I saw lots of kites flying. On the way back, as I turned onto Everit Street from Old Fulton, ready to head up Squibb Hill to Brooklyn Heights, I saw this sign. "Chicago Dog" brought to mind an al fresco snack during a lake shore stroll years ago. Although I'd had a light lunch earlier--a sambusak and spinach pastry from Damascus Bakery on Atlantic Avenue--my brisk postprandial walk had opened gastric space. Resistance was futile.

When I asked for a Chicago dog, the proprietor seemed pleased by my request, but regretted not having seeded buns on hand. I said that was OK, but added, "I hope you have sport peppers." He nodded yes, and asked if I was from Chicago. I said I had been there many times over the course of my career, and had come to appreciate its many fine points, gastronomic and otherwise.

Here is the finished product. The reason for the epithet "dragged through the garden"--appropriate for a city whose motto is Urbs in Horto*--is evident, as chopped onions, peppers, pickle, relish, and tomato are visible. The Vienna Beef frank seemed rather bland (rather like the wagyū in Mile End's beef on weck), but the condiments, especially the peppers and the proprietor's robust homemade mustard, made up for that.

As you can see, I chose a foreign beverage to wash it down, but if Dad's Root Beer had been on offer, I'd have gone for it.

The Landing is a welcome addition to the neighborhood. Word is that the proprietor is looking for an indoor space to make it more than a seasonal operation. I hope his search succeeds. Next time, I may try his "Sheboygan bratwurst".

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*"City in a Garden". Mike Royko, an astute observer of Chicago politics, suggested replacing it with Ubi est Mea ("Where's Mine?").

Da Bearss let me down.

wikimedia commons

Unfortunately, after taking the field at Lambeau yesterday, the Chicago Bears behaved more like pussycats than the beasts wearing the helmets in the photo above. By losing to the Packers, they kept the Giants out of the playoffs, thereby extinguishing the faint hope that there might be an all-Jersey Super Bowl.

Meanwhile, the Jets, their playoff spot already secured, tore up the Bills, who, because of an injury in last week's Pats game, were missing the sure field generalship of Ryan Fitzpatrick.

Let the Art Institute of Chicago help you with your resolutions.

I'm not one for resolutions. As my wife sometimes says (usually as I'm pouring my ill-advised second helping of Cognac): "You have the willpower of a gnat." Nevertheless, I'm glad to see as distinguished an organization as the Art Institute coming to the aid of those who wish to start the new year, indeed decade, off in good form. As a guide to what should be resolved against (or, according to one of my Facebook friends, in favor of), the Institute has mounted an exhibit of paintings and sculptures illustrating the Seven Deadly Sins, beginning with Lust (see Titian's Danaë--possibly the first-ever recipient of a golden shower--above). For those of you not willing to brave a trip to Chicago in the winter (my friend Marian Saska can give you the chilling details of the winter of 1979 there), the guide to the complete exhibit, with images of the art works, can be seen on-line here.

Goodbye, Koko Taylor

The drumbeat of losses from the music world continues with the death, at 80, of Koko Taylor, who reigned for many years as queen of Chicago blues. Thanks to Kevin of The Woodshed for alerting me to her passing.

A song for our times?

Uncle Tupelo at The Lounge Ax, Chicago, November 8, 1992 (thanks to Pants Elderly).

A heartfelt apology to Cubs fans.

A few posts ago, I expressed the hope (having lost faith in this year's model of my beloved Mets) that this might be the year you would be able to celebrate your team's first World Series championship in a century. I should have realized that, by publishing this, I was jinxing, even cursing your team's fate. My name should begin with "B", because I'm as bad as any billy goat, or black cat, or Bartman (now here's a team that's been beset by killer "B's").

Update: OK, things looked better today. But remember, the Mets are 2-0 against the Yanks so far this year, and, aside from hometown bragging rights, it's done them no good.

A baseball diatribe wherein, sadly, I will offend several friends.

I'm sick and tired of the 2008 Mets. And I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired. I wouldn't feel this way if they'd have shown themselves to be feckless bozos from the git-go. I'd be in a funk, for sure, but it would be a simmering funk from which I could easily be diverted by something like a good book or a blues concert. What I hate is the recurrent cycle of raised and dashed hopes. Roller coasters can be fun, but I want off this one.

So, what's to be done? With respect to the Mets themselves, and Tim Marchman to the contrary notwithstanding, firing the manager isn't going to do the trick. Indeed, at least in the short run, I think it's likely to make matters worse. What about going up the food chain and canning Minaya? He's been around long enough to bear the blame for some of the team's current problems, but I suspect they run deeper than anything for which his removal would be a solution. Minaya got a rep in Montreal for producing overacheiving teams on a tight budget; the Mets are big budget underacheivers. Perhaps the luxury of having some money to throw around made him lose some of his edge. But he's a smart guy and likely to regain it. Firing the Wilpons isn't an option, unless someone can put together enough bucks to convince them to sell. It's hard to imagine, though, a new owner that wouldn't be worse. Most likely, it would be some entertainment-oriented conglomerate that would be clueless about baseball but unwilling to let people who know the game run the show.

In short, I don't see any magic bullet solution to the Mets' woes. They are, I suspect, rooted in a team culture that's been developing for twenty two years, since the Mets last won a World Series, and after which the owners, perhaps responding to other owners' entreaties to hold the line on salaries, let some important players from that championship team go to free agency. Is there such a thing as the Curse of Ray Knight?

Seeing no short-term solutions to the Mets' problems, what am I to do? I could simply decide to ignore baseball for the rest of this season. It's tempting--there are lots of other attractive uses for the time I spend tearing out what little hair I have left every time Reyes makes some goofball error, either with his glove or on the basepath; Delgado grounds into a double play with one out, runners on first and third and the other team up by one in the eighth; Heilman takes the mound in the eighth with a two run lead and leaves down by one; or Perez has a Dark Night of the Soul and gets yanked in the third after notching his ERA up two more percentage points.

But, there's something potentially very exciting going on in the baseball world this year. Actually, a couple of things. The Tampa Bay Rays, after ten years of expansion team frustration (nine lasts and one fourth place finish in the AL East) are in a duel with the Red Sox for first place in their division. I consider Tampa my "hometown", having lived there from the second half of sixth grade through college. Nevertheless, there are a couple of obstacles to my rooting for the Rays. One is that it would upset my household, as my wife is a Red Sox fan. The other is that I find it very difficult to support any American League team, though I've made an exception for the Red Sox, at least when they're not playing the Mets, and especially when they're playing the Yankees.

So, on to the other thing. This really appeals to the history buff side of me. There's a team, an NL team to boot, that hasn't won a Series championship since 1908--exactly a century ago, that now holds a solid division lead. I mean, of course, the Cubbies. I could root for a team that hasn't won it all since the administration of William Howard Taft. Also, I have weaknesses for: Frango mints, "dragged through the garden" hot dogs, the fiction of Saul Bellow, the art of Manierre Dawson, the architecture of Louis H. Sullivan (Boston's gift to Chicago), the blues, and Wilco. A little fling with the Northsiders might fit nicely. In addition, the Cubs have as their skipper my Tampa homeboy, and a true gentleman, Sweet Lou.

So, sorry, Arch. I still think the Cards are the team I would love best if my love were granted on purely aesthetic grounds, despite the diversion from the true faith of little ball during the unfortunate Mark McGwire era. And I know how y'all just loathe the Cubs. Sorry, August; I'll always have a soft spot for the O's stemming from the first regular season major league game I attended, in which Boog Powell proved the decisive factor with a late inning two run homer against the Yanks. Sorry, too, Twiffer, and Dearest Wife. Though if it does come down to a Cubs vs. Red Sox series, I'll keep very quiet.

Mostly, sorry to all the loyal Mets fans (including Homer Fink and Joe Martini) for what I promise is a temporary apostasy. I have confidence that, in the long run, the Mets will solve their problems. Of course, in time, they'll develop a whole new set, but that's how the game goes. Just for now, though, "Ya gotta believe!" rings hollow for me, and I must avert my eyes.

Update: Joe Martini (see comments) takes heart from yesterday's fifteenth inning triumph over the Diamondbacks, a team whose number the Mets seem to have had for some time (despite the previous night's especially dispiriting loss). This may well energize the Mets enough to crank out a few more wins, perhaps even bring them a notch above .500, but it'll be like a sucker rally on Wall Street before the next vertiginous drop. Joe, who also admits to a period of Cubs fandom, and was at Shea for the black cat game in 1969 (though by then I presume he was rooting for the Mets, whose route to their first championship was smoothed by a Cubs collapse), concludes with: "Look... I rooted for my team when they lost 120 games. This is easy."

Yeah, well, I could have rooted happily for the 1962 Mets, a gaggle of no-hope misfits and losers and a few grizzled veterans, skippered by a lovable old baseball legend who knew how to make lemonade from a lemon by doing tummy medicine commercials with the Mets' blooper reel in the background. What annoys me to distraction about this year's Mets (actually, it's been going on for several seasons) is their ability to rouse hopes, then smash them like cheap china. The Cubs may end up doing the same--if they do, it will be characteristic of them--but then the Red Sox had a similar pattern going into the 2004 season.

Steven Goldman has some encouraging words in today's New York Sun. Another wretched Mets season, he thinks, may be just what the doctor ordered.

Twiffer, sensing my attraction to losers, suggests that I root for the Nats. Most mornings, on my Brooklyn Bridge Walk, I pass a guy going the other direction wearing a dark suit and a blue cap with a squiggly "W". I keep wanting to stop him and ask, "Why?" Some teams--the '62 Mets, the pre-'55 Brooklyn "Bums"--are lovable losers, some, like the Red Sox from 1918 to 2004, are tragic losers, and some are just plain losers. Besides, it's a cursed location. To update an old saw: What is Washington? First in war, first in peace, and last in the NL East