Oh, Ho, Ho, It’s Not 1980

Previously, I’ve lamented the fact that all-too-many people are joined at the hip with their iPhones and a mere beep away from social-media ravings morning, noon, and night. While I personally don’t possess an iPhone, I nonetheless spend a lot of time plopped in front of my desktop computer and check out Facebook goings-on—and the usual suspects beating dead horses—more than I should.

I have a friend in the bright light of day who, for health reasons, has recently gone cold turkey vis-à-vis Facebook. On a daily basis, a handful of his italicized friends would engender apoplexy and elevate his blood pressure into visit-the-emergency-room territory. Occasionally, I forward him snippets of the “best of” our mutual Facebook connections. That is, posts from this virtual theater of the absurd that he’s now missing.

As part of my morning surfing ritual, I call upon a super site for nostalgic Met fans like me. It supplies us with a never-ending portal into past players, significant games, and noteworthy accomplishments—a stroll down memory lane often tailored to the calendar date and sometimes not. Nolan Ryan tossed a one-hitter for the Mets on April 18, 1970 and Gary Gentry, on April 18, 1971. Doug Flynn hit three triples on August 5, 1980. That was the “Magic Is Back” year, by the way, with new ownership in place of the antiquated, which allowed a once proud and lucrative franchise to go to pot. The chief villain was a stuffy patrician who refused to adjust to the changing times—i.e., free agency. Anyway, I remember fondly that baseball season, which bridged my high school days with my college ones. There were plenty of signs of hope that year. And I proudly wore my “Magic Is Back” New York City Department of Sanitation-orange tee.

So, that was forty years ago. I hadn’t even lived twenty in total up to that point. Now, two rounds of twenty have passed by just like that and we are in the midst of a pandemic. Strange indeed. At this anxious, uncertain moment in time—with life itself in a veritable freeze frame—contemplating the past and placing it in some broader perspective comes naturally.

We played stickball in that simpler snapshot in time at a nearby high school. It was almost as if the school was designed with two-against-two stickball in mind. The field wasn’t warm and green, but rock-hard asphalt that became sizzling hot in the dog days of summertime. Now, the high school is an extensive complex with security cameras all over the place. Suffice it to say—even absent a pandemic—we couldn’t play our summer game there today.

And forty years ago while I basked in the newfound magic—dreaming of better days to come—something special was lost: Jane Jarvis tickling the ivories of her organ at Shea Stadium. Uber-loud canned music replaced her. I recall being at a game in 1980 and hearing “Oh, ho, ho, it’s magic…you know” blaring out of the stadium’s sound system. Fast-forward forty years and that 1974 song, “Magic,” by a band called Pilot has been co-opted by a prescription drug called Ozempic: “Oh, ho, ho, Ozempic.” In the good old days of 1980, prescription drugs weren’t advertised on television.

Finally, it’s kind of nice around here on this Sunday. I noticed many more people out and about. Most were sporting masks. In nearby Van Cortlandt Park, however, there were more than a few young kids in an as-yet-finished skateboard section. They looked pretty young to me and not one of them wore a mask. Parental supervision at its best. City parks department personnel were actually chasing youth out of the area before the pandemic and social-distancing decrees.

Stymie Beard once said, “This is getting mo-nop-o-mos.” And it is. As the weather gets increasingly hospitable, social-distancing violators will transcend the skateboard zone, I fear, and the city’s 311 hotline will be overwhelmed with calls reporting violations.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)