I hope you’ll forgive the lapse into nostalgia for the next 750 or so words, as I find myself terribly nostalgic this weekend, and I find myself constantly referencing an article that the great Pete Hamill wrote for New York Magazine nearly 44 years ago.
Hamill, writing about Frank Sinatra, recalled a car ride the two of them had taken through the streets of a Manhattan some years earlier after watching a Jets game on TV together at Sinatra’s old hangout, Jilly’s. Sinatra and Hamill were recalling the New York of their youth.
“It’s sure changed, this town,” Sinatra said, melancholy thick in his voice. “When I first came across that river, this was the greatest city in the whole g–damned world. It was like a big, beautiful lady. It’s like a busted-down hooker now.”
“Ah, well,” Hamill replied. “Babe Ruth doesn’t play for the Yankees anymore.”
“And the Paramount is an office building,” Sinatra said. “Stop. I’m gonna cry.”
But that’s always been the thing about this magnificent city, right? It’s not a city of ruins. Things feel like they’re forever, then disappear. There have been four Madison Square Gardens. There were five Polo Grounds. We are on the third Yankee Stadium. Items that should have been priceless relics — the copper frieze at old Yankee Stadium, the stone eagles that used to safeguard the original Penn Station — were instead used as landfill, some of it to help build the first of two football stadiums over in Jersey.
Three cherished and iconic whistle-stops on the tours my father would take me on when I was a kid — the Automat, FAO Schwartz, Shea Stadium — are all long gone. This is New York. This is always New York.
So it is possible — some say probable — that Saturday night, I attended the final gathering of the New York Baseball Writers annual awards dinner at the Hilton. And in its own way, the prospect of its passing makes me feel much as Sinatra did when he saw the old theater where he used to make the bobby-soxers wail and weep.
It so happens that this dinner fell exactly 100 years — to the day — from when the first of the 99 dinners (COVID claimed a few of them) did. Back on Jan. 27, 1924, some 300 luminaries from the baseball community gathered at the invitation of the New York chapter of the BBWAA at the old Hotel Commodore next to Grand Central Terminal.
Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the sport’s commissioner, was the guest of honor, but the star was, unsurprisingly, Ruth, who teamed with Yankees owner Jacob Ruppert to perform a skit variously described in the next morning’s seven dailies as “uproarious,” “inspired” and “splendid.” There was also a cabaret put on by the sportswriters less keenly reviewed — though it would remain a part of the program until it was mercifully retired in 1981.
Still, there were moments, so many moments, none more memorable than on Feb. 6, 1952, when Ralph Branca — in perhaps the greatest evidence of good sportsmanship ever — agreed to sing a duet with Bobby Thomson, to the tune of the popular Dudley Wilkinson-Arthur Hammerstein song “Because of You.”
Thomson (to Branca): Because of you, there’s a song in my heart …
Branca (to Thomson): Because of you, I should never been born/Because of you, Dodger fans are forlorn
These past 43 years, the dinner has mostly been a pure and unbridled celebration of the sport, a brief burst of summer in the dead of winter. The first few years, at the Commodore and later the Waldorf-Astoria, they’d import the actual ticket kiosks from one of the city’s ballparks to greet attendees. The big awards — MVP, Cy Young, all of them — were officially presented here, as were a variety of local ones — notably the Good Guy Award.
The dais was an annual who’s-who. Last year Aaron Judge and Kate Upton and Spike Lee and Steve Cohen and Marv Albert and Hank Azaria, all in formalwear, mingled with and amid each other. The speeches are always great — some poignant, some hilarious. As someone who always dreamed of being a baseball writer, attending was always a fantasy come to life. As a baseball fan even longer, I often wondered how I’d describe it all to 8-year-old me.
Sentiment is strong this might be it. A hundred years is a good run, especially in New York, and there is talk of MLB negotiating for the rights to present the big awards apart from the BBWAA dinner, and that would likely be that. I get it. Business is business. New York moves on. Babe Ruth doesn’t play for the Yankees anymore.
Aw, hell. Stop. I’m gonna cry.
Vack’s Whacks
Do yourself a favor and watch “The Dream Whisperer,” a remarkable documentary about the great Dick Barnett and his Tennessee A&I College teammates that will be streaming on the PBS app as of Feb. 1 and will air on Ch. 13 on Feb. 28.
It is a wonderful basketball thing to see Tom Pecora back in the game at Quinnipiac, which is 15-4, and an even better thing to see the Bobcats alone in first place in the MAAC heading into Sunday’s showdown with second-place Fairfield.
All you have to do is tell me that Paul Giamatti is in the movie, and I’m going to watch that movie. Every time. And that was true even before he had his post-Golden Globes dinner at an In-N-Out.
Free Mikal Bridges!
Whack Back at Vac
Stewart Summers: Just as I thought the 40-0 loss to the Cowboys this season was the worst in (Giants) franchise history, I believe the Knicks’ 38-point beat-down of the champion Nuggets was one of the greatest regular-season wins in Knicks franchise history.
Vac: That certainly represents the yin and the yang of the past few months around here.
Brian Gladwin: How can you not love what is happening at St. John’s! Don’t jinx things, too early to talk about the NCAA Tournament.
Vac: I do wish I had the power to jinx or to unjinx. Maybe if I keep doing this a few years longer …
@naturalguy: I wasn’t a fan of the David Stearns hire; however I am willing to give him a chance. How many years did we make big offseason moves and haven’t won, we can’t keep doing the same thing.
@MikeVacc: It’s a close vote, but I do think a plurality of Mets fans feel this way.
Lenny Rodin: Now that the Buffalo Bills have been eliminated, it seems the best football team in New York is NCAA Division III champs SUNY-Cortland.
Vac: Go, Red Dragons!
