Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris – the best of rivalries

May 26, 2015

One of the fellow customers I met in the jewelry store said I should write about baseball on my blog.

Well, here it is, a post inspired by a Sunday New York Times’ column by presidential historian Michael Bechloss about a friendship/rivalry – should that be frivalry? – between the New York Yankees’ Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris.

In the summer of 1961, the “M & M Boys,” as they were known, electrified the nation as they pursued Babe Ruth’s single season home-run record, 60, together. It helped that they were teammates who had a lot in common. (Although not all teammate rivals are friendly: Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez, anyone?)

Both Mantle and Maris were big corn-fed blonds from the Middle West, Mantle from Oklahoma and Maris from North Dakota. But they were also complements. Mantle, whose father had died young, lived a life of reckless abandon in the big city. Maris never lost his small-town, family roots. Long before “The Odd Couple,” Mantle and Maris roomed together with outfielder Bob Cerv in Queens – cooking out and shopping local. Once a stock boy was so stunned to see the diamond demigods doing something as mundane as grocery shopping, that he took out a row of cans as he fell off the ladder. The M & M Boys had that effect on people, who would reach out to touch them everywhere they went. ...

Tom Brady and Alex Rodriguez: Statistics and probability

May 9, 2015

Is it merely coincidental that Gisele Bündchen skipped The Metropolitan Museum of Art gala precisely at the moment when hubby Tom Brady was about to be raked over the coals for his role in Deflategate?

What is it that they said in the Deflategate report? It’s “more probable than not” that it was a coincidence. Still, she and he have been staples on the gala’s red carpet for years. Let’s just say it was convenient that she had to attend that Chanel Cruise Seoul event half a world away.

Gala empress Anna Wintour filled in the football slot with Green Bay Packers’ quarterback Aaron Rodgers – who is not in trouble for overinflating his balls, to the chagrin of some – and his girlfriend, actress Olivia Munn, whose J. Mendel gown overwhelmed with its sleeves. (The gala’s fashion proved that less really is more. The more straightforward the gown, as in Gong Li’s black lace and marsala velvet evocation of the gala’s Chinese theme, the more stunning it was.) ...

Sports as spice

January 7, 2015

I had to laugh when I saw the title of Richard Sandomir’s essay in the Jan. 4 edition of The New York Times: “The Best Sports Films Often Are Not.”

One of the things people ask about my upcoming novel “The Penalty for Holding” – once they absorb that it’s about a gay, biracial quarterback’s search for identity, acceptance, success and love amid the brutal beauty of the NFL – is, How much football is there? Trust me, they’re not hoping that the answer is “a whole lot.”

And that’s as it should be. For a sports story to succeed, sports have to secondary to the story. There’s a practical reason for this. No specialty tale – which is what any sports story is – can rely on sports fans alone. It must also engage those who are mildly intrigued, those who’d enjoy any good story but don’t necessarily know a lot about sports. And to do that the story can’t be too much inside baseball. Sports are the spice. The narrative is the meat. ...

A guy named Joe: Torre goes to bat for victims of domestic abuse

December 6, 2014

When representatives of the four major sports – football, baseball, basketball and hockey – testified on domestic violence before the Senate Commerce Committee Dec. 2, not one commissioner appeared. It was a snub that wasn’t lost on committee members.

"They were all asked to be here, and leadership does start at the top. And I do think that it's pretty convenient that none of them were able to appear today," said Sen. Kelly Ayotte, a Republican from New Hampshire. "That does say something about: How big a commitment is there going to be on this?"

One prominent sports figure has never shirked that commitment. Joe Torre, who managed the New York Yankees through their magical championship run in the late 1990s, was on hand for the hearing. His interested isn’t casual. Joe is the founding chairman of the Joe Torre Safe at Home Foundation, which seeks to end the cycle of domestic abuse through intervention and prevention programs for youngsters.These are offered in safe rooms in 10 schools and community centers on both coasts, each of which is called Margaret’s Place, after Joe’s mother, who was abused by his policeman father. Since the organization’s founding in 2002, close to 50,000 children have been helped.

“If we’re going to end the cycle of domestic violence, kids are going to have to be part of the solution,” he told fans and shoppers at a special Bloomingdale’s White Plains event Dec. 3. (The store donated 10 percent of sales from the event to the foundation.) “Whether they have the same name as ours or not, they all belong to us. Kids are our future.”