Photo of the Day: A Dash of Color to Brighten a Day

These flowers, in front of the building where I work at Rockefeller Center, greet me every morning, and help to make a bit more human the glass skyscraper I enter every day.

Movie Quote of the Day (‘The Commitments,’ on Elvis)

Jimmy Rabbitte, Jr. (played by Robert Arkins): “Elvis is not soul.”

Jimmy Rabbitte, Sr. (played by Colm Meaney): [defensively] “Elvis is God!”

Jimmy Jr.: “I never pictured God with a fat gut and corset singing ‘My Way’ at Caesar's Palace.”—The Commitments (1991), screenplay by Dick Clement, Ian La Frenais, and Roddy Doyle, adapted from Doyle’s novel, directed by Alan Parker

The Commitments is, at least in my opinion, the funniest movie ever made about rock ‘n’ roll. Even in the film’s most incongruous, hilarious line—Jimmy Jr.’s exhortation to his fellow (white) Irish rockers, “Say it loud—I’m black and I’m proud”—it touches on how the genre exemplified by a country boy from the Deep South crossed a musical color line.

In Indianapolis, on this date in 1977, the man that Jimmy Rabbitte, Sr. identified as God—and that others, only slightly less reverently, termed “the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll”—played his last concert. Unfortunately, I have to admit, with the greatest reluctance, that by this point Elvis Presley was closer to the hideous image summoned by Jimmy Jr. His last song was, in fact, "My Way."

In August 1977, less than two months after the Indianapolis concert, Elvis--by this time, weighing more than 300 pounds--was found dead in his bathroom in his mansion, Graceland. In time, the public would learn just how much drugs had become a part of his daily existence.

The figure burlesqued by Jimmy Jr. would shortly become a worldwide symbol not just of the corruption of the body, but also of the corruption of the American Dream—a man who had achieved everything he could desire, only to expire in a gaudy mansion under the sorriest of circumstances.

Jimmy Sr. is having none of it. Neither did the American people two decades ago, when, given the choice by the U.S. Postal Service if they preferred the “young” or the “old” Elvis, chose the former.

John Lennon once said of the performer he got to meet, “Before Elvis there was nothing.” I don’t think he meant it literally any more than Ernest Hemingway believed literally what he wrote about Huckleberry Finn: “All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since." These two were simply testifying to the catalytic influences of two forebears.

The essence of Elvis is of the artist live. I wish there was more of him on YouTube in his early days rather than from the Seventies, but there’s a reasonable approximation: the songs from his 1968 “Comeback Special.”

Check out, for instance, the black leather-clad Elvis of “Heartbreak Hotel” from that landmark TV appearance: funny, loose, spontaneous, sexy. If you want to see someone where the musical DNA of The King runs the strongest, try Bruce Springsteen, especially in this performance of “Fire” fromYouTube. In inducting Bob Dylan into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame, The Boss observed that Dylan "freed the mind the way Elvis freed the body." 

In "Fire," you can see the results of liberation of the body on an exultant audience.

Photo of the Day: As Far As the Eye Can See

I took so many pictures of the Presby Memorial Iris Gardens in Montclair, N.J., a few weeks ago that I felt compelled to post another one—even though the blooming season passed about two to three weeks ago. A flower may pass; the beauty of an image doesn’t.

Quote of the Day (Paul Rudnick, on Computer Passwords’ Security Questions)

“They should go negative. What’s your least favorite color, who’s your least favorite relative and who’s the last person on earth you would date? People would remember those questions, and they’d enjoy answering them far more.”—Writer Paul Rudnick, on security questions for those increasingly aggravating computer passwords, quoted in Jacob Bernstein, “It’s as Easy As 123!@S,” The New York Times, June 24, 2012

This Day in Yankee History (White HR Saves Martin’s Job, Bomber Season)

June 24, 1977—The box score for the New York Yankees’ 6-5 victory over the Boston Red Sox shows that the two-run, two-out home run by Roy White only sent the game tied into extra innings, where someone else decided matters. But that just goes to show how deceptive mere numbers—minus the delicate psyche of teams—can be.

When the 12-year veteran yanked the pitch off Bosox reliever Bill Campbell into the right-field seats, he enabled his team—woozy from a three-game, record-setting home run barrage by their American League Eastern Division archrivals the prior week, feuding with each other, and fading before the season was half over—to get off the ropes. Without it, the Bronx Bombers would have slipped to 4 ½ games out of first place in the AL East, in an era before the wild card gave second-place teams a fighting chance to make the playoffs. It saved the job of Billy Martin—the diamond-savvy, feisty, hard-drinking Yankee skipper—from completely losing control of his team and his job.  It launched them on their way to a 100-62 regular-season record, and their first World Series triumph in 15 years.

In short--for myself, jumping off the couch at home when the ball landed in the stands, as well as for the hoping-against-hope 55,000 in attendance that Friday night—it was nothing less than a miracle.

Televised retrospectives of baseball seasons and careers inevitably highlight postseason triumphs or individual season accomplishments. (Think Reggie Jackson’s three-homer barrage in the deciding game of the ’77 World Series, or Ron Guidry’s 18-strikeout game against the California Angels the following season). Less often are turning points within season recalled visually. Yet the diehard fan can’t live without these diamond Gettysburgs. They know that in the ebb and flow of a long season, these possess a drama all their own, and they remember them for the rest of their lives.

The next time, then, that the YES Network runs one of those “Yankee Classic” (they should be called, more appropriately, “Rainout Theater”) contests, make sure they air this one. Young Yankee fans deserve to see games like this that left people like myself hoarse from cheering half a lifetime ago.

The Yankees were a tinder box as the summer started. Over the winter, to put in place the last piece that had prevented them from winning the World Series the prior year from the Cincinnati Reds, principal owner George Steinbrenner had signed a legitimate cleanup hitter in Reggie Jackson.

Two people did not approve of the signing, however. One was catcher Thurman Munson, who was annoyed that Jackson's salary exceeded his own, then was alienated from his teammate when the following Jackson quote appeared in the media": "I’m the straw that stirs the drink. Munson thinks he can be the straw that stirs the drink, but he can only stir it bad.”

The second person was Billy Martin. On July 18, at Fenway Park, it all came to a head on Jackson’s misplay of a Jim Rice flyball. When the Yankee skipper pulled his rightfielder mid-inning, perhaps in imitation of Gil Hodges’ famous removal of best batter Cleon Jones in the Mets’ 1969 championship season, the manager and his slugger had words in the Yankee dugout, and Martin needed to be restrained from going after his player by coaches Elston Howard and Yogi Berra.

It all played out in full view of a nationwide audience on NBC’s “Game of the Week.” Riveting drama, undoubtedly, but also catastrophic for clubhouse morale.

Despite revitalizing squads in three prior managerial stints with the Minnesota Twins, Detroit Tigers and Texas Rangers, Martin had lost them all because of his penchant for drinking and fighting with players. There was no reason to think, with an impatient George Steinbrenner looking for the slightest excuse to shake his team up, that the same scenario wouldn’t recur now.

The Bombers’ morale wasn’t helped in the slightest by everything else going on at Fenway in that series. It wasn’t only that the Yankees were swept, but also the manner in which it was done that was so aggravating. The Bosox set a record of 16 home runs in the three games. “Guys were gettin’ blisters shakin’ hands,” said manager Don Zimmer.

Matters showed no sign of improving in the late innings the next time the two teams squared off, on the 24^th. Yankee starter Jim “Catfish” Hunter had put the Yankees in a hole with three homers. Though the Bombers had some satisfaction in roughing up Red Sox starter Bill “Spaceman” Lee, relievers Bob Stanley and Campbell had proceeded to stifle them from the fourth through most of the ninth inning.

Then, with two out, a triple by Willie Randolph brought White to the plate.

The senior Yankee on a squad almost totally made over by the free-spending Steinbrenner, the 33-year-old White had first arrived in the Bronx in 1965, when the perennial champions had stumbled from an American League championship to 25 games out of first place, the first season with a losing record since 1925.

The unassuming leftfielder had been one of the few bright spots in the dismal decade that followed, a two-time All-Star with great speed. He had thrilled fans for years with his ability to get to the left-field wall at the stadium, time his jump and rob opponents of home runs. He would undoubtedly have won a Gold Glove for his defense if he had only had a stronger arm.

More to the point, he possessed some power from both sides of the plate. The prior year, he had amassed 14 homers. Long-suffering fans could only hope he would do the same now.

He did, putting one of Campbell’s pitches in the stadium’s short right-field porch. Suddenly, the Bombers had come back from the dead. It not only afforded Martin some breathing room, but also Jackson, who made the best of his opportunity in the bottom of the 11^th to hit a single that brought in third baseman Graig Nettles with the winning win. (Sparky Lyle, a former Red Sox reliever, now in the midst of his Cy Young season, notched the win with 2 1/3 shutout innings.)

The Bombers, of course, swept the rest of that series, and the Red Sox proceeded to lose nine straight. The chase was on, leading to the kind of thrilling pennant races that fans of the two teams had become used to in the DiMaggio-Williams era--one that now, as before, the Bombers pulled out.

Over his remaining 2 ½ seasons with the Yankees, White endured his share of frustrations, especially decreased playing time, as Martin sought opportunities to insert Lou Piniella into the lineup for his bat, but unlike so many others on the squad he never complained about this. That was just the type of player he was. 

On a squad with no lack of drama, White supplied a quality that was absolutely essential on those championship teams: a quiet professionalism.  Throughout it all, he still managed to be there in key moments, including hitting the decisive home run in the decisive Game 4 of the 1978 American League Championship Series against the Kansas City Royals—and, in a sequence that still stings longtime Bosox fans, on base when Bucky Dent hit his famed shot over the Green Monster of Fenway Park in the epic contest that decided the 1978 divisional race with the Red Sox.

Several years ago, I attended a party in eastern Pennsylvania, given by a friend with many connections to retired baseball players. There, I had the chance to meet White. My jaw dropped when I saw him. When I had the opportunity to talk to him a little while later, this baseball hero of my boyhood and youth turned out to be every bit the gentleman that I and thousands of other Yankee fans had thought from watching him play three decades before.

Quote of the Day (Thomas a Kempis, on Man’s Hurts and God’s Judgment)

“What may man do with thee in words or injuries? He hurteth himself more than thee; and in the end he shall not flee the judgment of God, whatsoever he be. Have always God before the eye of thy soul, and strive not again by multiplying of words. And if thou seem for a time to suffer confusion that thou hast not deserved, disdain thou not therefor, nor through impatience minish thy reward. But rather lift up thy heart to God in heaven, for He is able to deliver thee from all confusion and wrongs, and to reward every man after his desert, and much more than he can deserve.”—Thomas a Kempis (1380-1471), The Imitation of Christ, translated by Richard Whitford

Quote of the Day (James Garfield, on the Presidency He Sought)

“My God! What is there in this place that a man should ever want to get into it?”—President James A. Garfield, diary entry for June 8, 1881, quoted in Garfield:A Biography, by Allen Peskin (1978)

President Garfield wrote those words only three months after taking the oath of office. The cause of his lamentation—an endless round of office-seekers that needlessly consumed his time—was also the cause of his death—an unhinged member of this vast tribe who fatally wounded him in July 1881.

I suspect that more than once, Garfield’s private misgiving about his office has echoed, in either its original form or some variation of it, in the minds of every occupant since then. (Though civil-service reform enacted in the wake of his death took care of one drain on his time, yet another appeared in the 20th century: the swelling of executive power that had the baleful effect of voters looking to the President to solve everything.) 

Yet nearly all of those in their first terms, including President Obama, want another crack at it. I’m not sure it’s the trappings of the office that get them so much as the chance to vindicate themselves while they still have time before the bar of history.

What awaits them—as well as their unsuspecting challengers, including Mitt Romney—is another story. Again, Garfield is instructive. This highly intelligent man, now unfairly neglected by posterity, came to know the price of high office. His last written words, scribbled in pain two days before he died in September 1881, were Strangulatus pro republica (Latin for “Tortured for the republic”).