Sustained Excellence

I was doing my usual complaining the other day with some friends, about how dreary and mediocre the city is becoming.

Oh, sure, in the aggregate it's better than ever.  Richer, safer, less corrupt.  Even quieter (Don't think so?  Imagine about 500,000 wagon wheels with iron rims, passing continuously over uneven paving stones.)

And that's no small thing.  I hold zero nostalgia for crime, filth, decay, etc.

But at the same time...

Looks, it' now all millionaires living over empty storefronts.

Does rich mean we can't have style?  Does rich mean we can't have beauty, and cultivation?

Does rich now mean no great buildings, no great restaurants, no great art, dive bars, newspaper columnists, night clubs, music, great plays, and on and on and on?

Used to be, many of those things seemed to come WITH money.  In fact, they seemed like the whole reason for money.

Not so much anymore.

Take the New York Yankees (you knew I was getting there).

Hey, I'm not saying the team was ever run by people who wouldn't cut your throat for an extra doubloon.  But they brought something to it all.

The Yankees were supposed to be about class, right down their classy pinstripes, and their interlocking "NY" (a Tiffany's design), and their "hat-in-the-ring" logo (lifted from Eddie Rickenbacker's flying squadron, no less).

The Yankees were about a ballpark that looked like a cathedral, and players who seemed like gods.  Don Mattingly was actually amazed to learn that Babe Ruth was a real person.  A hundred years from now, some fresh busher from Indiana will think the same thing about Joe DiMaggio, or Mickey Mantle, or maybe Aaron Judge.

And yes, the Yankees were about dollars.  But also about winning.

Well, even that sounds pretty crass, doesn't it?  At least, that's what generations of sportswriters—from here and elsewhere—and hordes of fans from Boston and Chicago and L.A. have tried to make us think.  "Oh, you Yankees fans just like to win all the time!"

Let's drop the malarkey right now.  Yes, we like to win.  All the time.  And so do those other fans, once they get a taste of it.

Even the lovable Mets, back in the early sixties?  A huge percentage of their gate every year was for Giants and Dodgers games.  In other words, people turning out to see their old favorites.  When it came to just the lovable losers...not so much.

Somebody asked me once how I could like this big, terrible, arrogant team.

My answer was:  sustained excellence.

Isn't that how we should measure accomplishment in most endeavors?  Vocationally, I mean.  Sustained excellence.  Building terrific cars, year after year.  Showing up and teaching a great class to your students, year after year.

You can have all your teams with their miracle years.  Anyone can get lucky, particularly nowadays, when everyone makes the playoffs.

No one is lucky for fifty years.  Or a hundred.

Sustained excellence.

I even admired it in teams I didn't like, such as the Boston Celtics, or that I actively despised, such as the Dallas Cowboys.

That's the standard you measure yourself against.  Without it, sports means less and less.  I know, I know, it's what the owners would like for their cartels:  every year a crapshoot of mediocrity.  Every year, everybody wins between, say, 78-82 games.  Hurrah.

Sustained excellence.  Not simply money.  That is—was—the New York Yankees.