Bill Loehfelm's Blog, page 63
March 13, 2012
Born This Way: My Life as a Mets Fan
This is the first installment in an ongoing series I hope to do throughout baseball season, in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the New York Mets:
My actual life and my baseball life started on the same day, October 15, 1969. Mets fans don't need any help figuring out where I'm going with this.
A few years ago, my mother made scrapbooks for all her sons of our childhood memorabilia. My book begins with two clippings from the New York Daily News. The smaller article is a paragraph-sized birth announcement commemorating my arrival on Planet Earth. The larger is the full front page of the paper. The headline reads AGEE WHIZ! Underneath the headline are photos of a breathtaking diving catch by Mets centerfielder Tommy Agee, one of two stunning, game-saving grabs he made during Game Three - the game that gave the Mets the lead in the series.
I was born the next night, during Game Four, another game that featured defensive heroics, this time by right fielder Ron Swoboda, and though I know it's apocryphal, I halfway believe the family story that I was landing in the doctor's mitts just as Brooks Robinson's dying line drive landed in Swoboda's outstretched glove.
The next day, at Shea Stadium in Queens, on October 16, the first full day of my life, the Mets won Game Five and took the '69 World Series from the heavily favored Baltimore Orioles, completing their miraculous run from league laughingstock to league champions, becoming once and forever the Miracle Mets. I probably slept through it. I'm sure I'm the only one in my family who did. I wish I'd stayed awake because by the time the Mets won another championship, I was in high school and at least biologically old enough to be someone else's father.
How serious a baseball family was I born into? I was the first grandchild for either side of the family. My paternal grandfather was chief surgeon of Methodist Hospital in Park Slope, Brooklyn - where I was born. He was at the game with my grandmother while my mom was in labor. My parents had their own tickets for the game. We'll never really know how close I came to being born at Shea. I tell my mom she should have gone out there. Season tickets for life, for sure. Talk about a miracle baby! Forget the guy with big head, I would be Mr. Met.
It's fun to joke about, but in reality I know it's better that I was at the hospital. I'm sure Mom would've been sitting with my grandfather the doctor, but I worry about stadium ushers and the peanut guy assisting him with the birth. I'm sure my mom was more comfortable in bed than in the box seats. I'm sure the obstetrician at Methodist had the best hands for the job, better even than Agee's and Swoboda's.
March 10, 2012
February 27, 2012
Rue the Day: My Favorite Coffee Shop Grinds to a Halt
In 1998, I moved into a small studio apartment here in the Garden District. The place had its merits: hardwood floor, high ceiling, fireplace with a big mantle and mirror. And it was cheap. On the flip side, I had to stoop to shower because the tub was under the stairs, and there wasn't a kitchen to speak of. It was tight - I slept with my headboard against the side of the refrigerator. Needing more (make that any) recreational space, I took to hanging out at a Magazine Street coffeehouse called the Rue de la Course.
The Rue embraced the classic coffee shop milieu: surly service, uncomfortable chairs, an ornate chalkboard menu bordered by coffee sipping gargoyles, politically naive pseudo-intellectual graffiti on the bathroom walls (at least in the men's room), excellent espresso drinks and important above almost all else, a smoking section.
As a high school teacher in the late-90's, I graded papers there. At the advent of the Aughts, when I quit teaching for grad school and my own writing, I wrote good papers and bad but improving fiction there. Ten years ago, I moved into a three-bedroom apartment with my wife, a situation that afforded each of us our own office space. Still, the Rue remained my real workplace. The majority of my writing over the past ten years, I did at the Rue. And I hardly visited the place only for work. I perfected the fine art of wasting hours there with friends, talking and laughing, counting out our days in dark roast, two dollars at a time. My wife and I began our first date there, at an outside table for two.
After Katrina, certain places in each neighborhood served as markers of loss and/or recovery. The Rue was one of those markers in my neighborhood. When the Rue re-opened a couple of months after the storm, it was a big step toward establishing the new normal. The first time I sat down there to resume work on the storm-interrupted manuscript that became FRESH KILLS, I had to cover my face to hide the tears (I wept a lot the first year after the storm, usually in public, but that's another essay).
This winter the Rue quietly shut its doors, covered the front windows with big sheets of blank white paper, and began its transformation into what I hear will be a cafe. The loss stings, more because of history than anything else. I hardly worked there at all anymore. I quit smoking a couple of years ago, which made working at home much easier. Now that writing is my full time gig, and since my back decided it was done hunching over a laptop, I've gone back to working at a desktop. I turned in my new book to my editor not long before the Rue shut down. I'm not sure I wrote a word of it there. Regardless, I'm going to miss the place for what it was at its best – a place to sit still. Places like that, like the Rue, they get harder to come by every year.
February 20, 2012
February 16, 2012
They favor the bold …
They favor the bold …
Carter will always be a big part of something that's a big...
Carter will always be a big part of something that's a big part of me.
Rest in Peace Kid
February 15, 2012
February 13, 2012
americanroutes:
Congratulations to Rebirth Brass Band for...
Congratulations to Rebirth Brass Band for winning their first-ever Grammy!
We talked to Philip and Keith Frazier in 2005 about evacuating New Orleans for Katrina, and eventually coming home. And we spoke to drummer Derrick Tabb in 2010 about starting the Roots of Music marching band and music education program.
February 9, 2012
Quick Hit: Writing and music
From a post I did with Largehearted Boy on writing and music:
I'm also a drummer, and people ask if playing music influences my writing. There are parallels, for sure. I pride myself on solid tempo and pacing in my work, and I can obsess about getting the right rhythm flowing sentence to sentence. I love the act of building, the feeling of propulsion, and the sense of momentum that comes with creating something. Both writing and playing feel exactly the same to me. Both are maddening when I suck, spitting out awkward, stumbling crap that makes me wonder why I thought I could ever do it in the first place. And when they go well, there's no better high than hitting that perfect pocket and sitting in it for as long as I can hold it. Both are more empowering and liberating than just about anything else I do.
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February 7, 2012
Yoga's a godsend for writers. Accessible to all body types...
Yoga's a godsend for writers. Accessible to all body types and fitness levels, it slows the hamster wheel in your head and balances out long hours of sitting at a desk.
On today's Fresh Air, science writer William Broad on yoga's risks and rewards: "The benefits start to accrue. It's like putting a little bit of money in the bank every day or every month. The payoff comes as these things start to multiply."
