2 posts tagged “new york”
I swore off the whole damn thing not a week ago. I vowed that I would shun for the rest of the baseball season a team that I had long rooted for - the New York Mets.
But that's like kicking the White Horse cold turkey.
Not going to happen.
Once upon a time my Mets were a pack of loveable also-rans - playing hard, having fun but not always coming out on top.
But they had their surprises. I was too young for the baseball miracle that was the 1969 champion Mets. But I saw a lousy team suddenly blossom and make it to the World Series in 1973. I was hooked.
They weren't the Yankees (the other New York team - - - the ones we must forever be compared to). The Yanks were juggernauts without a soul. They threw around big money contracts and lured big names.
Not my Mets. They grew their players through the minor leagues.
And then came 1986. The Mets were rough-and-tumble, scrappy and pugnacious. And they won. Big. And they won a championship. A winning team that you could give your heart to.
The years became lean. Then a period where we took some pretty good shots at the top. Once we made the World Series, but the hated Yanks beat them. Then another backslide.
But a couple of years ago the Mets came of age again. They grew new talents... a poster-boy third baseman who could hit the tar out of the ball. A Dominican speedster who electrified the crowd with his all-around skills. And the Mets did something else -- they started to spread the money around too. And they added big-time established stars to their lineup.
Mets fans were okay with that, especially when we made the playoffs in 2006 and came a win away from the World Series. So close. And we were fine with these guys.
Then a year later - 2007 - they choked. A sports term - choke - meaning you have the win in your grasp and you let it get away. That's what they did, losing an ungodly number of games at the end of that season and giving up what seemed a sure hold on first place.
We were hurt, but believed we'd get over it. And then the Mets continued spending big. They forked over something like $137 million to land the services of an elite pitcher. That's okay, we Mets fans thought, they got to turn it around.
And this year -- with all that talent -- they played like logy uncles with their belts undone after Thanksgiving dinner. They seemingly lacked heart and hustle and drive. They were damn hard to watch. They were like the A student who couldn't stop cutting up in class.
So after a particularly bad loss - I vowed I'd stop following the team I had always followed. I made it public (well, at least as public as my Facebook and Twitter sites).
And for a few days I paid them no mind. Then I glanced at the sports pages. Then I check the score on the computer (just a quick glance mind you).
Then a funny thing happened. They started winning, beating teams who were ahead of them in the chase for the playoffs.
And tonight, as I finish this post, they have won their fourth-in-a-row. And they look, well, worthy of the fan adoration I've always showered on them.
Now, I know how this sounds. It's pathetic in a way. I accept that. I'm a grown man with kids and a job and bills to pay.
Why get so worked up about a ball team.
And even if you accept the fan concept -- why get so carried away, like some swoony teen-age girl.
I don't know. I can't explain it.
Just like I could never explain to my parents my ritual at night when going to sleep.
On one wall of my bedroom I had plastered posters of every Met player of the day. It was to the left of my bed.
If they won, I would sleep on my left side, facing the poster. If they lost, I'd go to the right, giving the poster papers my back.
Tonight I sleep on the left side.
You most likely won't know the name, unless you hail from New York (upstate NY in particular).
But you will recognize the makeup of the man. He's the CEO who tries to corner the market, the weekend softball player who slides into second with his spikes up, the political operative who views a victory as everything - whatever the cost.
Let me tell you a little more about this man - Steve Minarik, who has just been ousted from his long time position as the Republican political leader in Rochester, New York.
He grew up a Rochester, New York guy, in the old Polishtown side of the city. His dad dabbled in a number of businesses and was described by the son as stubborn... driven. Steve was an unathletic, overweight kid who compensated by being loud and brash.
He got into politics and, straight out of college, worked for the Monroe County N.Y. Republican Party (Rochester's county). He rose fast because the party was scuffling. By age 32 he was effectively in charge of the party. That was 1992.
He built a fundraising maching at the county GOP headquarters. And he used a hammer to get contributions.
He used the money to demand loyality from Republican candidates, and eventually GOP officeholders. He built winning Republican candidates on the county level -- often by spending plenty on ads. And those ads could be hard-hitting.
On the local level, last-minute mailing would arrive that would often aim at Democratic candidates and the party, like the one on immigration late in Minarik's career.
He cultivated an attack dog image, he seemed to revel in it.
I was a poltiical reporter for Rochester's newspaper during many of the Minarik years. The paper assigned me to write a profile of him about seven years ago. (I can't find a link, sorry). The article was steeped in Minarik's brashness -- he idolized Dale Earnhart (the intimidator)... he had posted in his office a quote from basketball coach Pat Riley - "There's winning and then there's misery."
The article started like this:
Stephen J. Minarik III reclines on a coach in his living room and talks about winning. "It's not about how you play the game. It's whether you win or lost that counts," the chariman of the Monroe County Republican Party said matter-of-factly.
As his wife, Renee, plays on the floor with their 2-year-old daughter, Minarik shifts from political elections to board games.
"I don't lose in Monopoly. I beat the kids," he say referring to Stephen IV, his 9-year-old son from a previous marriage.
"I told him 'Couldn't you let your son win once?' We're talking about Candyland here," Renee says, referring to the preschool board game.
"And what happened with him?" he asks. "Is he competitive or what?"
"He has the same attitude," she says.
"The same drive," he replies.
Frankly, at the time, I could relate. I had a rough-around-the-edges dad who loved me ... but wanted to make sure he prepped me for getting ahead. He played sports like a man possessed -- out to win. I picked up on that. It built my drive.
But as time moved on, I began to question the win-at-all-costs mentality in myself. But you saw it all the time in the politics of the day. Minarik wore it like a shiny suit of armor. And the party won in Rochester and Monroe County beating a Democratic Party there that had no coherent message regularly.
What to what end? The hard principles were obscured by the hard politics. Why strive when it only amounts to a chalk mark for the winning team. What else was there. Minarik called himself a conservative, but it was hard to see governance that put this into play.
What about waging a principled battle - and going down to defeat.
That would mean failure. Oh sure, we're all told that failure is nothing to shy away from - it gives us valuable lessons. And we're told that it's the journey, not the finish line. But American culture has shunned the loser, the failure. So what are we left with? Just win baby (right Al Davis).
Minarik did fail, however. He took over the New York State Republican Party just as their standard-bearer, Gov. George Pataki, was getting out. Minarik applied his style to the state level. It did nothing to stop the slide. He was shoved aside just two years on the job (holding down both the county and state rolls).
His ouster this past week as chairman of the Rochester region Republicans was predicated on the need for a softer, more collaborative Republican Party.
And, of course, my first thought was softer and collaborative is not Steve Minarik.
Then I thought about how Minarik suffered a stroke in 2001 (soon after that profile of him ran actually). I recalled the lesson of his life I had begun to learn -- winning at all costs is no life at all.
But here's the thing about this man. He also freely talked about how his kids meant everything to him back then. He did soften up -- at least for a moment. And then I looked at that profile again and there was this line. He said political foes took him too seriously and that they knew nothing about him. "I'm not the hard-edged, son-of-a-bitch they make me out to be."
I could believe that. He probably wasn't. He just played an SOB on TV (and the papers, and the radio and anywhere else that would get an audience of more than two).
He played the role because it solidified power, even if he was more than that attack dog.
But maybe now Steve can take off that suit of armor, stop playing the heavy and get something more out of life than just winning.
Let's hang onto to that lesson a bit.
