Are We Gonna Make It After All?

Fifty years ago this month, The Mary Tyler Moore Show debuted. It lasted for seven seasons and went out on a high note—on Mary’s terms. Arguably not the best season—with the iconic characters not yet fully in character—the first, which originally aired in 1970-71, is nevertheless a classic. I distinctly recall watching the show in its infancy in my grandmother’s living room—just a flight of stairs away—on her color TV, a hulking Zenith with legs, a light-up channel dial, and a picture that didn’t appear until the set sufficiently “warmed up.”

I own the first season of The Mary Tyler Moore Show on DVD. For some reason, I find it especially reassuring. It takes me back to a time and place that were decidedly simpler and more innocent. I appreciate that for the Vietnam War-draft-aged men, 1970-71 was anything but simple and innocent. Still, I was an eight-year-old boy in the second grade at St. John’s neighborhood grammar school. My teacher—a kindly woman—lived up the street from me. I remember—at a class show-and-tell session—bringing in a toy clock that I had gotten for Christmas. It counted the minutes and hours away with indefatigable alacrity. I had this thing for clocks and calendars—a youthful time fetish.

And here I am now, thinking long and hard about the passage of it. Fifty years ago, I was lying on my grandmother’s living room rug with a big fluffy pillow covered with a flowery pillowcase. The latter was my grandmother’s handiwork, just as were the heavy wool socks—a wintertime staple—that she regularly crocheted for her grandchildren. In fact, one of the most captivating things about The Mary Tyler Moore Show was Mary’s cozy studio apartment and her large picture windows leading out to a deck. The fictional Mary Richards lived in the non-fictional Minneapolis, Minnesota with its notoriously cold and snowy winters. We television viewers were thus treated to ample fictional snowfall outside of Mary’s picture-perfect windows. As a boy, I considered snow an awesome weather phenomenon for a whole host of reasons, including outdoor hijinks, potential white Christmases, and—win-win—possible days off from school.

What an awesome time it was to watch prime-time television. Everyone had a favorite show on any given night and there was indeed something for everyone. When The Mary Tyler Moore Show debuted, there were no reality shows with histrionic, insincere narcissists behaving badly or Love Islands with histrionic, insincere narcissists behaving equally badly. Once upon a time, the commercials served as welcome bathroom breaks or—in my grandmother’s presence—apple and grapefruit breaks. The commercial allotments were also reasonable in length, unlike today’s network TV promos, which are at once ubiquitous and intrusive. You could cook a full-course meal during some of these breaks.

One final thought on that special time—1970-71: It represented the last year in existence of “The Garden,” as it was affectionately known, across the street from me. This sprawling “victory garden” was the last of its kind in my neighborhood, Kingsbridge in the Bronx. If I looked out my front window, or my grandmother’s below me, during the first season of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, I spied an elongated makeshift fence covering a sprawling patch of earth that sprang to life in the summertime and became starkly barren in wintertime. It was the end of an era in a city with fewer and fewer empty spaces and undeveloped lots for gardens and youthful adventures. The times they were a-changin’ then and then has gradually become now, which is quite a melancholy thought to entertain. Just gaze out your front window and contemplate where we were versus where we are. Love isn't quite all around us.

 (Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

 

Beware of the Unmasked with Corona

Yesterday, while riding in the recesses of New York City’s cash-strapped subway system, an unmasked man entered my car at Times Square. He stood out like the proverbial sore thumb. We passengers are—by and large—wearing masks and now face a fifty-dollar fine if caught without one on mass transit. Anyway, this lawbreaker compounded his crime with a second transgression: openly drinking a bottle of beer in public.

Unhappily from where I sat, he plopped down directly opposite me. What had been a relatively quiet journey—without incident or an uncomfortable moment—in the land down under became creepy awkward in a New York minute. The inebriate was on the young side—late twenties, maybe early thirties—and not especially menacing. He was, though, clearly under the influence, which created an unpredictability that I would rather avoid, particularly while in subway car in a tunnel during a pandemic. The man glared my way from time to time and muttered various asides. I tried not to meet his leering drunken stare, but it’s not so easily accomplished when you’re sitting less than six-feet apart. In a snapshot in time when we are regularly importuned to maintain at least that distance as much as physically possible, who needs a loose-canon tippler in droplet range?

Straightaway, I contemplated employing my subway-riding nuclear option: the “Charles Manson Rule,” where I make like a tree and leave. Initially, though, I didn’t think this snookered rider merited such a bold move. And, too, I prayed his ride might be a brief one—assuming, of course, he knew where he was going. And so it went—50th Street, 59th Street, 66th Street—and he’s still sitting directly across from me and getting increasingly chatty and a bit louder, too. When this hammered straphanger emptied out the remaining quarter of his beer on a subway car door beside him, it was definitely time to go. I don’t know where he came from or where he was going, but I hope he made it there safely. Maybe, too, he got doubly fined at some point between my departure and his arriving at said destination. It would have taught him a valuable lesson: Drinking and riding the subway without a mask during the pandemic is most assuredly a no-no.

After being on Facebook for ten years, I'm not so certain about the latter.

All's fare again with mass transit.

But is it too little, too late? Electronic subway message boards are now informing riders about the system's dire financial straits and absolute need of federal monies to survive.

A mostly peaceful protester strikes again and the rest of us are less informed because of it.

I requested my absentee ballot and am putting my trust in the United States Post Office, where my father tirelessly labored for over a quarter of a century in the building above.

Recently, important business leaders sent a letter to the city's mayor, imploring him to put away his fiddle and do something about—well—everything, including the unsightly garbage piling up all over the place.

These ubiquitous messes just compound the overall mess.

We just want to see some light at the end of the 2020 tunnel.

People who need people are the luckiest people in the world. Now all we need are the people.

Fortunately, there are brief escapes from reality at our fingertips, like binge-watching Cobra Kai on Netflix. Despite a series of incredible coincidences and people getting brutally kicked in the face a lot without any physical consequences, it was a whole lot more compelling than The Karate Kid. Plaudits to William Zabka.

It depends on what the meaning of "open" is. On September 30th, eateries can begin indoor dining at twenty-five percent capacity. Will that be enough to stave off a restaurant apocalypse? The Good Stuff diner, which I photographed a couple of weeks with its outdoor dining, has shut its doors.

The Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) workers kept the trains and buses running during the depths of the pandemic. They really deserve a break today.

While ridership is definitely picking up somewhat compared with its nadir, it's got a long, long way to go to be back where it was in early March. And the MTA was money-challenged even in the best of times.

There were a smattering of tourists around and visiting Lady Liberty. I wondered where they came from and how they got here with all the travel restrictions and quarantines.

Who exactly is "We?"

The hot dog vendors? They love New York and valiantly endure.

The NYPD on horseback in tranquil Times Square. Such are these non-tranquil times...

It's 2020. Is there an alternative?

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)

From There to Eternity

This past week, three people who played varying roles in my life me passed away: Tom Seaver, Lou Brock, and Kevin Dobson. In a Bronx neighborhood chock-full of Yankee fans, I was a rare bird: a Met fan, nicknamed “Mr. Met.” And with that passionate devotion and youthful enthusiasm for my team came a hero worship of the biggest star of them all—George Thomas Seaver—who threw a baseball both exceptionally fast and incredibly smart. He was a man, too, who conducted himself with class and professionalism on and off the field.

As a boy in the early- and mid-1970s, I watched many Met games on the family’s black-and-white TV set and listened to others on my very own state-of-the-art radio with a super-cool circular tuning dial. It was a First Holy Communion gift from my godmother. I desperately wanted a radio in the spring of 1970 to listen to Met games—and for no other reason than that. There were a lot of close contests—nail biters, as it were—in those days. For my beloved Mets had a stellar pitching staff anchored by Seaver, a.k.a. “Tom Terrific,” and a not-especially productive offense. In other words, there was more than a fair share of two-to-one and one-to-nothing losses to suffer through. In Mrs. Bertolini’s fourth-grade Language Arts class, I wrote an essay about my hero in which I noted: “Tom Seaver throughs with his right hand.” Close enough.

While Bob Murphy, Lindsey Nelson, and Ralph Kiner painted the baseball word picture so eloquently and free of over-analysis and gratuitous criticism, joy or heartbreak came my way day after day after day. Those win-loss highs and lows were kicked up a notch when Tom Seaver took the mound. A friend—and fellow rare bird from the neighborhood—and I fretted over our hero’s E.R.A. when he gave up three or four runs, which, happily, wasn’t very often. Yes, Tom Seaver supplied us with more than a few summers to remember and remember fondly.

Lou Brock, meanwhile, was one of those opposing team stars—and future Hall of Famers—that the Mets played against back in the day when baseball truly was the American pastime. He was simultaneously speedy and classy in an age when athletes weren’t cosseted prima donnas, mega-millionaires, and grandstanders. It was a better time to be a fan of a game steeped in tradition and lore. Nowadays, they’re playing seven-inning games during double-headers and putting an automatic man on second base in extra-inning games. Lou Brock would have gotten there the old-fashioned way—singled and stole second. And just how long would that have taken?

Lastly, actor Kevin Dobson died a couple of days ago. He will always be Bobby Crocker to me, Lieutenant Kojak’s loyal, dedicated, and tenacious right-hand man. Kojak was my favorite detective show in the days when I hung on every one of Tom Seaver’s pitches. Dobson was born and raised in Jackson Heights, Queens and worked as a motorman and conductor—among other things—for the Long Island Railroad before becoming an actor. His New York roots go a long way in explaining why he came across as the genuine article in his role as a young NYPD detective. It’s worth noting that the police in the city were on the hot seat then due to rampant corruption and misconduct. Frank Serpico was a household name. Nevertheless, Theo Kojak emphasized the importance of the badge and what it ideally represented—maintaining order and keeping the peace. He once chastised an aggressive private detective and contemporary bounty hunter named Salathiel Harms—as played by Rosie Greer—for crossing the line. “You’re one, big angry man,” Kojak said. “But I got a badge in my pocket that’s bigger than both of us. Respect it!” R.I.P. Tom Seaver, Lou Brock, and Kevin Dobson. So much was lost this week.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro) 

Water to Wine

RIP Tom Seaver 1944-2020. (Originally published 6/26/19).

I just finished the book After the Miracle by Art Shamsky and Erik Sherman. Its subtitle is “The Lasting Brotherhood of the ’69 Mets.” I highly recommend it to—both former and present—baseball fans and Met fans, in particular. Shamsky played first base and the outfield for the “Miracle Mets,” the 1969 World Champions.

After the Miracle was an entertaining page-turner that made me truly appreciate—after all, I hadn’t yet turned seven at the time—the accomplishment. It was impossible not to feel excited while reliving through the principle players that remarkable season from—yes—fifty years ago. It did, in fact, feature a series of miracles—extraordinary on-the-field occurrences and outcomes—that will never be replicated. It’s just not the same game—or world for that matter—anymore. First baseman Ed Kranepool reflected on the moment: “[Y]ou know, back then, baseball was still the workingman’s sport, still cheap enough for people to go. They could relate to guys like me…and all the guys that filled in, like Al Weis. Those fans fought for their team every day. And you know what? That’s why New York is such a great town. The Miracle Mets were a great thing for New York. We’ll never forget it. They’ll never forget it.”

After the Miracle is also a very poignant read as it marries past and present. With the passage of time, key players from that team have passed away, including Tommie Agee, Ed Charles, Donn Clendenon, Tug McGraw, and Don Cardwell. Manager Gil Hodges and the coaching staff—with the sole exception of tomato king, Joe Pignatano—are all gone. But the emotional roller-coaster ride is in the recounting of the reunion of a small group of 1969 Mets—Shamsky, Ron Swoboda, Jerry Koosman, and Bud Harrelson. Knowing that it would very likely never happen again, they visit Hall of Famer Tom Seaver at his home and vineyard. The get-together occurred in 2017. It was known then that Seaver was suffering from Lyme disease-related memory loss—and had good days and bad days—and, too, that Harrelson was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s.

Reading about individuals whom I watched play, rooted for, and idolized when I was a very young boy—when baseball was baseball—who are now in their mid- and late-seventies is kind of unsettling, particularly when some of them are suffering from debilitating illnesses. That’s life, I guess, and it’s a short bumpy ride.

I’ve written often about growing up in the Bronx—a rare Met fan in a neighborhood of predominantly Yankee fans, most notably my father, who faithfully supported his team from the “Joltin’ Joe” DiMaggio days until the day he died some seventy years later. My introduction to the game of baseball found me—alongside my dad—at the original Yankee Stadium, “The House That Ruth Built,” with those annoying concrete posts that obstructed views.

I can’t recall the precise moment I swore allegiance to the Mets, but it definitely happened in the afterglow of the miracle season. I remember that my father brought home for me—purchased at Yankee Stadium of all places—a 1970 Mets’ yearbook, which celebrated the Amazin’ Mets and their storied season. So, the breakaway from tradition was at-hand. The fact that the Mets televised 120 games on free TV back then—versus only 40 Yankee games on the tube—I suspect was the fuel that took my imagination to faraway places like Shea Stadium with the loud airplanes incessantly taking off and landing nearby. Granted, it was only about a thirty-minute ride from my Bronx home, but it might as well have been in another time zone. That’s how my Yankee fan father saw it. At any rate, loyalty to my team was cemented at an early age. As a seven-year-old kid, I could have loved the Mets and liked the Yankees, too. But it soon became apparent that wasn’t possible in the rough-and-tumble of a cross-town rivalry.

Baseball and allegiance to our teams were so much a part of growing up. Tom Seaver was my childhood idol. I received the nickname “Mr. Met,” later shortened to just “Met,” from a Yankee fan neighbor. Being a devoted fan then was akin to being in a marriage—in good times and bad. And both good and bad happened in the wake of the miracle. After the Miracle is, though, compelling testament that miracles do happen on occasion—or used to anyway.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)