Last dance in the Bronx

So I didn't make it to Barley's last night. Instead, I pointed the Xterra in the other direction, toward Maynardville, to watch the last dance in the Bronx, the final game at Yankee Stadium, with an old friend.

For the last several years now, Marvin and Sarah West have graciously adopted me into their family. You may not know Marvin's name. Let's just say he's the best writer to ever grace the pages of a Knoxville newspaper. No joke.

Marvin covered the Vols and a whole bunch of other East Tennessee sports from the mid-1950s into the early 1980s for the News Sentinel. He was there for most of the ups and downs of UT football, the Ray Mears era in basketball, the rags to riches to rags story of "Big" John Tate and a thousand other tales.

Marvin left Knoxville in 1985 to become managing editor of the Scripps Howard News Service. He retired in 1997, moved back to East Tennessee and lives in a charming little place on Norris Lake with wife Sarah.

We've gotten together to watch a baseball game each spring for the last 7-8 years. I called him up Saturday night after the Florida debacle (I led my entire section in a verse of "Nearer My God to Thee" in the closing minutes) and asked if he wanted to watch the last game at the Stadium. He said yes.

I've never been a huge Yankees fan, but it was quite poignant to see yet another baseball cathedral (some would say the cathedral) shut its doors. All that history, all those World Series, the House that Ruth Built, will soon be but a memory.

It was a reminder of the fleeting moments of time, how the years pass so quickly, yet another subtle hint that, try as we might to stop it, the ol' world keeps on turning.

I drove back to Halls humming a line or two from an old Sinatra song:

And there used to be a ballpark...

61*

Times have sure changed.

Hard as it is to believe now, baseball players once had to take jobs during the offseason to make ends meet. Roger Maris, the year he hit more single-season home runs than Babe Ruth, made less than $40,000. Heck, back then baseball was *the* sport. Nothing else came close. Now, that too, has changed.

Went over to Doug Harned's house tonight to show him "61*", Billy Crystal's excellent 2001 film that highlights Maris's run for the record. Doug had never seen it. Which surprised me, given what a big baseball nut Doug is.

He enjoyed the film. And, I must say, it's only improved with age.

After the movie ended, Doug went back into his bedroom, promised his wife Mary Jane that he'd go over to vacationing son Dean's house to feed the dogs, and came back out with a vintage Life magazine from 1961. Sure enough, grinning on the cover, is Maris and Mickey Mantle.

I thumbed through the pages, marveling at the pictures, shaking my head. In '61 you could order a year's worth of Life for $1.98. Big ads graced the pages for everything from Lucky Strike cigarettes to products that don't exist anymore.

And, in the middle, is cool photos of Mantle checking his swing and Maris running the bases.

If I knew where former baseball commissioner Ford Frick is buried, I'd probably go spit on his grave. Maris didn't deserve the asterisk beside his record. Yeah, so he played in 8 more games than Ruth that season. Well, Ruth didn't have to play at night or travel to the West Coast. Fay Vincent had the good sense to remove the asterisk in 1991. Too bad it came six years after Maris's death.

Maris didn't deserve the treatment he received, from either the fans or the New York press. So goes the territory, then as today, when one plays baseball in the Bronx. Some things never change.

Came back home and didn't bother with the home run derby. No, I was lost somewhere in my nostalgia, landing tonight back in 1961, when baseball was still king, and the M&M boys graced the cover of Life.