DanielSonenberg.com

On this glorious Indian summer day, when the current-day Yankees find themselves on the brink of elimination (and the Sox are on the brink of advancing - don't get me started on how awful that is), Babe and Josh are getting some play on the pages of the New York Times. I saw this print in person when I met Sean Gibson last weekend, and he was beaming about this collaboration with Babe Ruth's great grandson. The two of them met at a wedding, and commissioned an artist to do a series of paintings about imagined meetings between the two greatest sluggers in history (who, to the best of our knowledge, never actually met). I love the way Babe and Josh are captured here in a moment of camaraderie, Josh checking out Babe's bat and the Babe doling out a few words of paternal wisdom to the young phenom who was 17 years his junior. And can you imagine, even in Babe's fading days, if these two men were ever listed in the same lineup? Man, a lot of lame major league teams missed a golden opportunity to take their league by storm before Branch Rickey came along.

Anyway, Harvey Araton has a nice article about the collaboration in the Times today - about the only positive baseball writing I've seen in a newspaper in days.

Man - another Yankee felled in his own plane. Very strange. I haven't time or energy for you. No photo even. But I just wanted to use a little bandwidth to shout out to the #4 starter that we hardly knew - a late September breeze, and an October flame-out. Very sad.

Alex flew off to Connecticut for work tonight, and I visited the cash machine and then Yosaku, which, I've come to agree with Big Al, is the best sushi joint in town. Throwing caution to the wind, I showed up just in time for first pitch (surely you're aware that the playoffs started tonight) and ordered Omakasa. That means let the sushi chef take charge and give you the freshest and most creative offerings he's got. Couldn't do this in New York, of course, because the price would just be obscene. And I probably couldn't do it anywhere else in Portland - where even the sushi chefs bleed Red Sox red. Not here. Yosaku is Yankee-fan owned, and the atmo in there for expats such as myself is downright embracing. The Yanks set about bopping the Tigers around (although the game is a bit closer and still going on now) and I decadently ate about three plates of sushi and a green tea ice cream. The highlight was this blurry spicy scallop roll, brought to you by our old friend Mr. Moto. Spent $55 + tip, so I guess it won't be a nightly occurrence during these playoffs, but the evening lived up to my various and sundry sushi bar fantasizings.

A second night at Hadlock Field, and I'm beginning to pick up the rhythms and traditions of the park, and what's more, the essence, the DNA if you will, of the team. The Sea Dogs are a classic American League type ensemble. They swing for the fences, and tend to hit the ball hard if they hit it at all. Brandon Moss, on the occasion of his 23rd birthday, hit two moon shots, and earned himself some fireworks and 3 RBIs. But he also struck out chasing balls that were feet, not inches, out of the strike zone. Fielding is always an adventure, and tonight, as last night, there were some ugly, ugly defensive moments. In contrast, the visiting Akron Aeros, farm team of the Cleveland Indians and wearers of black bar-league softball uniforms, are slick like butter on the green and brown, scooping up hotshots and snaring liners with major league grace and agility. They also know how to shorten up on the stick and dunk a flare into short left field...play one base at a time without trying to solve all the world's ills with one rotation of the lumber. And still the Aeros found themselves 3 outs away from the long dismal season of...I don't know...parking cars? Waiting tables? What do these boys do when double- or triple-A ball comes to an end? Well, they were about to remember, because it was 5-4 Sea Dogs and the top of the ninth, and there was an out but two on, and everyone was ready to party. Yet there was something else in the air too, and that's when I realized that deep down, all the thousands of eager and oral rooters that surrounded me had as their shared point of reference a lifetime of baseball failure, of near misses, stunning turnarounds, defeats snagged from the clutches of victory in every Dentian, Buckenrian, Boonian way imaginable. And I, in my Yankee blue Johnny Damon shirt, my weathered smudgy NY cap, and my big-as-a-heart Portland Sea Dogs button, affixed to my chest to ward off those who would do me harm, I was accessing a different database. It was one replete with dazzling comebacks, with improbable pennants and trophies and rings and hungover or half-drunk perfect games, an inherited memory of Ruth and Gehrig and DiMaggio and Mantle and Berra and Ford and Stengel and Maris and Nettles and Munson and Jackson and Gossage and Chamblis and Mattingly and Jeter and Rivera and '27, '49, '61,'78, '96 and dozens more. So I felt confident, certain that the team I was busting a lung hollering for would step up, leave some sweat and some guts on the playing field and make the pitches, catch the balls. Well, I'll let you guess whose history, whose interpretation of the zeitgeist, prevailed. But I'll let you know there was no party, I did not find myself dancing among thousands through the green blades of grass towards the dusty mound and into the pile of sweating Sea Dogs, nor did I spend the night in jail. The P.A. blared "Tomorrow" and "Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow," and I bet a dozen other of the golden oldies of loserdom. Into the night I swam amidst the throngs, past the prison and the Greyhound bus terminal and the St. John's Street shopping center. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow...and yet I tell myself it's not my tragedy.

When it comes right down to it, Portland is a minor league town. Tonight, the day of game 3 of the Eastern League Championship, a day on which the local Portland Seadogs (who I try to forget is the double AA farm team for the Red Sox) had a chance to win their first ever Eastern League pennant, Alex and I sauntered up to the box office at game time, and for $8 each bought two second-row box seats behind the visitors' dugout. It was a near sell-out, so I'm not quite sure how we worked that out, but the ticket man said our timing was excellent. The game itself was pure delight. We were surrounded by kids, and I even sat next to probably the only other Yankee fan in the whole building (who proudly wore a Seadogs cap). Initially I felt some guilt about rooting for Red Sox affiliated ballplayers, but by the second half of the game I was completely drawn in, and it was a great game indeed. These double A players aren't nearly as perfect as their major league counterparts. Errors abound, which gives the game a wonderful unpredictability. There's also such a wholesome vibe to the whole affair, and you don't feel like you're being robbed and raped each trip to the concession stand (a local microbrew cost $4.50). In the bottom of the ninth, the Seadogs were down 6-4, one out, and Luis Jiminez, their bopper, strode to the plate with two men on. He jacked a 94 mile per hour fastball deep into the heart of the Portland night, and we all gasped collectively and grabbed the arms of our neighbors. Dead center field, it hung in the air forever, and the centerfielder backpedaled and made what, at the time, seemed a futile last ditch leap, his back to the wall. And somehow, he came down with the ball, and the air sizzled right out of the 6,500 or so wide-eyed fanatics in the stands. So close to a walk-off, championship-winning tater, but just another long out. And Alex, in her newly purchased Seadogs sweatshirt, was forced to acknowledge that yes, there are aspects of this game - particularly during playoff time - that simply can't be touched by any other sport. So now I think I have to go back tomorrow night...I've got the fever.

Well, I pretty well jinxed it, di'nt I? I said "if nothing good happens" then I can go ahead and talk about opera and all that good stuff (the upstate New York sky as compared to the Maine sky - there's a riveting blogbit just waiting to materialize for you). And then the Yankees had to go and sweep the Red Sox five straight games in their own stadium. I mean, if that doesn't qualify as "something good," then I don't know what does. Really, don't get me wrong - I don't spend most of my time hating the Red Sox. At least I didn't until I moved here, and they had to go win the whole kaboodle. But in a sense, that victory (in 04) brought with it a sweetish silver lining. I'm generally a sensitive sort, and for much of my baseball rooting life I've had a kind of soft spot for the sox. That is to say, I felt bad for them. If you check out the tally on all the games the Yankees and Red Sox have played against each other, you'll discover that it's pretty close to an even split. And yet until 2004, in basically every single one of those confrontations that really counted for something, the Yankees prevailed. You couldn't help but feel sorry for the Sox. And actually, when I was a kid, due to the kindness of a former business associate of my dad's, I had a chance to meet some of the Red Sox in their own locker room. They had just been drubbed something like 11-10 by the Brewers, I think it was around 1982 (Robin Yount, Cecil Cooper...those Brewers) and I got in to see the sad and naked Red Sox moping about, and the very oldest one of them all gave me a long talk about Jesus when he heard that my father had recently died. I didn't tell him I was Jewish, or a Yankee fan, and he didn't tell me he was Carl Yastrzemski, so it was maybe a less charged consultation than it might have been on both ends. I still have the illegible autograph on my shelf. Anyway, I had a certain feeling for the Sox and their rooters, and even a kind of predilection towards sports-related suffering, as if perhaps in a former life I myself was a Sox fan. But in 2004 the Sox managed not only to win it all, but to humiliate the Yanks in doing so, and to generate a champagne toast at one of my early faculty meetings - first year on the job, the lone Yankee fan amongst a roomful of music professors bleeding Boston Red. Since then, and since all the endless anti-Yankee tee shirts I see all the time, and the anti-Yankee scarecrow I used to drive past on my way to work (I kid you not), and the extreme cold shoulder I've received at some local sports bars when all I wanted to do was root for my team and even be made fun of good naturedly, well since all that I say down with the Sox - I'd even hex them with voodoo if that was my thing. I find that bile, the kind instilled in young children at an early age in these environs (see photo), creeping in. I find myself almost rooting harder against the Sox than for the Yanks. But at least for this little moment in history, or perhaps the moment that just ended this weekend, the Sox are the big nasty boys on the block and my Yankees are the men who would be kings. For once I'm entitled to the bile. So the warm, peaceful feeling that overcame me this sunny afternoon, the feeling that all was right in the world, that the elements had been gently set back in their natural order, that was entirely a result of the crushing, debilitating blow the Yanks dealt the Sox by sweeping the five game series. Knocked not only out of contention for first place, but quite possibly any playoff hopes whatsoever, the Sox probably had a long, quiet flight to the West Coast tonight. And among the angry thousands, the moping throng spread across the summery soil of Red Sox Nation, perhaps a sense too that things are as they ought to be. That suffering, once again, is the order of the day. L'Chaim!

Hiya everyone. Missed you - traveled, wisely, senza computer these last couple of days.

Alex and I crammed a LOT of living into this past weekend. Left Portland, ME at 7:30 am Saturday, and returned at 2:15 am Monday morning. In between we visited 2 museums, 2 operas, different friends (including 1 new baby), spent too much money, did about 12 hours of driving, and even took some pictures to prove it all (or at least some of it). So hopefully nothing real good happens this week and I can calmly work my way through these momentous events. Because, as you know, if they aren't blogged, they didn't really happen.

So first of all:
The hall of fame, on a second visit, was disappointing. It was rather glorious the first time around - although I had my complaints. My big complaint both times, actually, was this: they haven't done right by Negro League baseball. It's astounding that they haven't, given the blood Major League Baseball has on its hands... (I mean come on, it took until 1971 for Satchell Paige to get inducted?) They have a lovely little permanent exhibit entitled "Passion and Pride" or some such thing, and it has a condensed little history of the Negro Leagues that is oddly weighted towards the beginning and end of the story (say 1800s and late 1940s). There are a few interesting artifacts, like that ball above, which was signed by the entire 1924 Kansas City Monarchs, or the poster next to it, advertising a game between the Grays and Crawfords (both of which teams Josh Gibson, who's in the picture, played for at one time or another - more often the Grays). But speaking of Josh, there was very little mention of him, certainly no special exhibit devoted to him - there's a whole room devoted to Babe Ruth (it's only a little smaller than the Negro League exhibit). The core of my complaint is that aside from this little separate but unequal exhibition, there is basically no mention of the Negro Leagues in the rest of the museum (actually, there was a nice temporary exhibit of art inspired by the Negro Leagues in the art gallery - but I'm not sure how many of the mainstream fans make it down there). In other words, black ball is just as segregated as it ever was - it isn't allowed to assume its rightful role alongside the mainstream development of the game. I acknowledge that I'm more interested than most, or perhaps at least more interested than most white guys, but that's ultimately just the point. Miss turning off into the Passion and Pride room and you could leave knowing nothing about some of the most exciting, highest quality baseball played over more than half a century. I have to add here that, on a crowded Saturday afternoon, I did not see a single African American person in the entire museum. Not one. It was worse than being in Maine (which, it was recently confirmed, is still the whitest state in the country). Not sure if there's a direct causal relationship, but it's worth noting. Anyway, I suppose I'll clean this up in the form of a letter to the Hall, but thought I'd spew it here first. Thanks for listening. P.S. Is that glove on the right Josh Gibson's? No, of course not. They didn't have one of those. It's Thurmon Munson's - who was another boyhood hero of mine (and the subject of one of my songs).

This shirt - the latest brilliant barb in a never-ending offensive - was hanging in the window of a shop down on Fore Street. For every one pro-Red Sox shirt or bumper sticker you see here you'll see about three anti-Yankee items. This one would almost kinda make sense, if it had come out like maybe a month or two after the stunning Red Sox comeback in the 2004 American League Championship Series. But now? Do you sad Red Sox fans really want to go toe to toe over which team's the bigger choker? Are Bucky Dent and Bill Buckner so entirely wiped clean from your memories? Or the fact that the Yankees have won just about one out of every four World Series? And wouldn't it be better to spend your energy celebrating your own team, rather than ripping another one down? I thought a championship would instill a little class, perhaps even some sense of humor in the Sox rooters. But apparently, at least judging by the apparel they wear, they're more comfortable in their perennial role as losers, snarling at the obvious multitude of successes notched by their hated and storied rivals to the south. (I guess this is the time of year when that core identity rises to the surface - seen the AL East standings lately?). Ah well. If Portland's biggest drawback is its misguided baseball allegiance I suppose we're doing okay. But Go Yanks!

Somewhere in this mess of an apartment I have a copy of this Sports Illustrated, from November 1979. It's of special interest because there's a big panoramic photograph of all the NYC Marathoners on the Verrazano Narrows Bridge at the start of the race, and in the lower right hand corner you can clearly make out my dad. I was the one who found him there, nursing my fourth-grade gift subscription to SI. I recently bought a copy of this issue on ebay, but it's packed in the storage room now, or in Alex's flatfiles, or somewhere. Hence no scan for you. I think that was his first marathon. He ran it again in 1980, and one more time in 1981, when his time was about 3:10, but he looked pale as a ghost walking up the lane in his mylar blanket afterwards. The next week on Halloween, the day of my first drum lesson, he went out for a run with my sister riding her bike alongside, and he never came back. Massive heart attack, advanced atherosclerosis. Sis did a fine job administering CPR, but there was no hope. He was 41 and I was eleven. The conventional wisdom in my family has always been that his excessive running killed him. He was excessive compulsive, in his way. Took up photography and bought a Hasselblad, won prizes. Took up guitar lessons and then built a guitar, working deep into the early hours of the morn. I like to think, or hope, I carry some of the gene, but not to its deadly degree. So I started running in 1996 (only New Year's Resolution I've ever stuck to), but swore to myself, and more importantly to my mom, that I'd never do a marathon or even get close, and fortunately I haven't had the desire. It's on my mind now because I've upped my regimen significantly for the summer months. Doing 5.5 miles five days a week, which is the most I'll probably do. It's a way to be outside in the occasionally gorgeous weather we get up here, and a way to commune with the spirit of my long departed father, and let's be honest, a way not to be such a behemoth. I'm a big-boned guy to begin with, and I loves me some eatin', so if I don't watch it I hulkify and scare the neighborhood children. After doing this for three weeks I feel fit, a bit slimmed down, and I feel my legs constantly. Not pain, but just a little persistent song - "we're here." In the afternoons I sometimes catch myself thinking "too bad I've already run today, because now would be a great time for it." And on the two off-days I pine to get back out there. When I'm on my more usual 3-day-a-week schedule it's all I can do to make time to get out and at it. It seems a chore, and there's little residual body-awareness (but certainly some degree of anti-hulking agent). I suppose my point is simply that I can see how one could get consumed with it. With those 40 or 60 or 80 minutes where you gambol along, drifting from thought to thought, feeling your body grow tighter and your knees and calfs hum, then icing your shins, french kissing the water fountain's cascade, feeling intense and connected and in control. I can see the drug side of this all. Whenever I push beyond a certain point, though, like if I were to up the 5.5 mile route to 7, my body stops singing and starts hollering, it falls apart at the seems. Pulled muscles, shin splints, stress fractures. It's, I suppose, the blessing of not really being built like a runner at all - an internal alert mechanism to spare me from the familial path to which I am perhaps alarmingly drawn. Whoops, gotta go sleep now - gotta hit the pavement bright and early in the A.M.

You never know what you're going to get with me, and you have to appreciate that. Take today, for instance. Two blog entries on the same calendar date. But look a little closer and you'll realize it's a new day after all. And after God wept and sweated for much of our nation's birthday yesterday, the sun has resumed its rightful mid-summer perch, lawnmowers are abuzzing, and the sky is blue.

And I found a little poem, just for you. By Garrison Keillor, of all people, and it's Casey at the Bat from the other team's perspective! I'll only quote my favorite stanza, but do read the whole thing because it's a pisser.

There was pride in Casey's visage as he strode onto the grass,There was scorn in his demeanor as he calmly scratched his ass.Ten thousand people booed him when he stepped into the box,And they made the sound of farting when he bent to fix his socks.

Here I am at the scene of the crime - darling Eunice must have heard my complaint. (Do any of you not know where this pic was taken?) Rest assured, the shirt has a much more novel effect up here in Maine!

Well, you've seen my sandwich, now see my fantasy shirt (which I don't yet own. This image is stolen.) See, wearing this shirt where I'm at, that'd be a statement. Kinda like the "Yankees Suck" scarecrow I used to drive past on my way to work. As you've learned from this blog so far, the weather and the sandwiches here, top flight. But the baseball? Man. These people take their baseball seriously - as in, without ANY sense of humor. In New York you can walk into a bar w/ a Red Sox hat and you'll get razzed - made fun of, might even get your hat swiped. But you'll probably wind up sharing a brew and reminiscing with some gristly type. Here? Walk into some downtown sports swill hole w/ a Yankee logo on your person and they just freeze you out. Won't even talk to you. If you're interested, have a taste of one of my feeble attempts to find a safe haven when I first moved here. Anyway - baseball season's on and here's what I want for Christmas. Or rather, the 4th of July.

And thanks for checking back! (Hint: Keep your eye on the "Listen" section of this site - I'm adding more stuff as I get permission, and as NMJ puts it up)