Back to the Bronx

[batmagadanleadoff]

Who's the narrator?

The trouble with the Yankees was that, although you could see magnificent baseball played by a magnificent team, you had to do it with decorum. You could cheer, even boo, but you couldn't bring pennants around, or noisemakers, or anything else that might draw attention away from the field and into the stands. The Yankees were remote, a proud haughty team sufficient unto itself. The fans who watched them were expected to be spectators, not participants. Yankee Stadium was a place where you took your guests, your clients, your out-of-town visitors. It was part of the New York scene, like the Empire State Building.... Any baseball fan in for a brief visit didn't consider his trip complete without seeing the Yankees in their own back yard. It was time well spent, but you had to behave while you were there. You didn't go to the stadium to make a riotous racket or have a load of laughs, You went in the same spirit that you went to the United Nations or the Statue of Liberty. You were going to see something, not to take part in it. It's altogether different with the Mets. Their fans have no awe, no reverence, no deep stirrings of the soul. At Met games, the fans are part of the spectacle. They go out as much to watch other people as to watch the ball game. They laugh and wave flags and signs and sing songs and write poetry and enjoy themselves, much as they did at Ebbets Field when the Dodgers were there....

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Angell?

[seawolf17]

Wally Matthews?

[Edgy MD]

Thomas Boswell? Samuel Beckett?

[G-Fafif]

Bob Lipsyte?

[Guest Mets � Willets Point]

Their fans have no awe, no reverence, no deep stirrings of the soul.

No deeply-seated sense of entitlement, no lack of humanity, no rod shove up their collective ass.

[Edgy MD]

Yeah, I'm not sure he doesn't lose himself in his florid prose of contrast. Met fans write poetry, but we have no deep stirrings of the soul?

B'sides, Yankee fans write poetry. You should hear this thing they do to the tune of "YMCA."

[batmagadanleadoff]

batmagadanleadoff wrote: Who's the narrator? The trouble with the Yankees was that, although you could see magnificent baseball played by a magnificent team, you had to do it with decorum. You could cheer, even boo, but you couldn't bring pennants around, or noisemakers, or anything else that might draw attention away from the field and into the stands. The Yankees were remote, a proud haughty team sufficient unto itself. The fans who watched them were expected to be spectators, not participants. Yankee Stadium was a place where you took your guests, your clients, your out-of-town visitors. It was part of the New York scene, like the Empire State Building.... Any baseball fan in for a brief visit didn't consider his trip complete without seeing the Yankees in their own back yard. It was time well spent, but you had to behave while you were there. You didn't go to the stadium to make a riotous racket or have a load of laughs, You went in the same spirit that you went to the United Nations or the Statue of Liberty. You were going to see something, not to take part in it. It's altogether different with the Mets. Their fans have no awe, no reverence, no deep stirrings of the soul. At Met games, the fans are part of the spectacle. They go out as much to watch other people as to watch the ball game. They laugh and wave flags and signs and sing songs and write poetry and enjoy themselves, much as they did at Ebbets Field when the Dodgers were there....

Excerpted from page 77, 1st edition of

[G-Fafif]

Nelson knows! (Or is that Miller?)

Just recently got my hands on that book but haven't dug in yet.

[batmagadanleadoff]

G-Fafif wrote: Nelson knows! (Or is that Miller?) Just recently got my hands on that book but haven't dug in yet.

I've owned this book for years, but never got past the 2nd chapter. Finally tore through the whole thing in about two and a half days this week.

[G-Fafif]

Lindsey's later memoir radiated genuine warmth, albeit in a dignified, slightly detached context.

[Ceetar]

I figured that must've been pre bleacher-creature, the only ones that make noise in that mausoleum these days.

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

Surrounding, menacing, and calling kids in other teams' hats ethnic, racial, and sexual-orientation-related slurs is a kind of spectacle, though.

[MFS62]

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: Surrounding, menacing, and calling kids in other teams' hats ethnic, racial, and sexual-orientation-related slurs is a kind of spectacle, though.

They are the primordial sludge scraped from the bottom of the gene pool.

Later