Will Kevin Whelan Greet Opposing Batters Like His Great Grandfather Grover?

That's Kevin in the inset before he had to shave his mustache. There's a slight resemblance to Grover

HE WAS MR. New York for 35 years, the city's official greeter and good-will envoy to the world. Top-hatted Grover Whalen was the man who welcomed visiting VIPs, the man who organized the great parades in their honor, the man who rode with them in the shiny, open cars as ticker tape showered down from the windows high above the Canyon of Heroes. This would have been the mayor's job, had the mayor only wanted to do it.
But John F. (Red Mike) Hylan, whatever his other virtues - he promised the voters, for example, that he would keep the nickel subway fare, and that's what he did - was not good at public events. Red Mike tended to get embarrassed at these official welcoming ceremonies, and that was a problem in 1919, with the Great War over and New York City playing host to homebound soldiers and the dignitaries of the peaceful new world order.
The mayor's secretary was considerably better at the gregarious glad-handing. When two reception committees were formed, one for the troops and one for the swells, dapper Grover Whalen was named executive vice chairman of both. Whalen did not actually invent the New York ticker-tape parade, but in 1919 he began perfecting the art as the city welcomed the returning regiments, Gen. Black Jack Pershing, Marshal Foch, King Albert and Queen Elizabeth of Belgium, British Prime Minister David Lloyd-George, French Premier Georges Clemenceau, President Woodrow Wilson and the Prince of Wales.
That was just the beginning for Whalen........