12/31/2007

No entries since October 9, how about that? Month by month there has been a steady decline in my activity here, and blog entries are not the only things that haven’t gotten done, trust me. The longer the silence, the more pressure there has been to come up with something profound to say upon my return. I don’t think I am going to be able to measure up to that. The end of 2007 has just gotten me to think about how this blog started at the beginning of the year and all that has happened.

I haven’t really been into New Year’s as a celebration since I was a child and the years I could remember were few. I remember 1977 turning into 1978. As a kid, there seemed to be so much wonder in what the new year would bring, including the excitement of getting older. Now that I’m old I know that December 31 is just another day that marks the passage of time. I look back and despite all the excitement there must have been at the time, there wasn’t anything really remarkable about 2002 turning into 2003. It’s best not to get our hopes up anyway. We live a touch-and-go existence. A really great year is too much to ask for. It’s best to hope for a year where we are mostly fortunate, and I think we have been. A long December and there’s reason to believe maybe this year will be better than the last, someone said once ; )

I read about Jim Leyritz yesterday, finally. What a truly depressing end of the year. Coincidentally I had just met Jim Leyritz a couple of months ago at an appearance he made at a car dealership here in town. This was something I had meant to write about because the guy from Vision Ford, which sponsored the appearance, was such a clown.

I spent about ten minutes talking with Leyritz and the person from the dealership who apparently booked the appearance. The topic of Derek Jeter’s trip to Rochester for a stag party came up, and we laughed about how the club owner falsely promoted it as a public appearance and how fans showed up. They guy from Vision confided in Leyritz the name of Jeter’s friend getting married, “TJ” or something, so the guy was trying to establish I guess that he is some kind of insider. Poseur is more like it. At one point between all his important cell phone calls, he asked Leyritz to confirm the pronunciation of his name. His description of the call he had with the booking agent, though, was the perfect display of arrogance and ignorance. The booking agent provided a list of players available for appearances, one of whom was Roy White. The guy got a big kick out of explaining how he had scoffed at Roy White to the booking agent and chose Leyrtiz instead. Imagine denigrating one former major league ballplayer to another. What credentials does this kid have, other than the silver spoon? And Roy White was a damn good ballplayer. I was in shock and I didn’t say anything. I didn’t think I wanted to get into it with him, but I should have called him out just to embarrass him. It’s like telling David Bowie that Mick Jagger is a horrible singer. And by the way, do you pronounce it “Bow-ee” or “Boo-ee?”

I had Leyritz autograph a copy of The Daily News I had saved from the extra inning playoff game I went to in 1995 when he hit the game winning home run against Seattle. It’s a weird thing to have now. Another memory sullied, sullied right along with Andy Pettite and his fake apology. What is not sullied for me about that game though is watching Don Mattingly in person for the last time, and the sounds of “Don-nie Base-ball” at the Stadium like nothing I have ever heard.

How appropriate that this Christmas I got a copy of “The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty” by Buster Olney. We are looking back already. 2008 is upon us!