Tuesday, April 16, 2024

Fun exits, stage left

This might sound a little weird, but Sterling's retirement has hit me a lot like my father's death did.

Dad and sis in goofier days
Maybe because both of them brought some fun into my life. My dad, for all his faults--including a long battle with low-level (and worse) depression (hey, thanks for the genetics!)--was fun. He's the one who tuned into the polka program on the radio every Sunday and danced while making dinner, who followed my mom into the pantry and made her giggle, who spontaneously broke into a quick refrain of "Will You Love Me in December As You Do in May" or "Poinciana, Is That Your Nose or a Banana."

After I moved away to the big city, he was the one who insisted on getting a real Christmas tree for my holiday visit, even if it was only for a few days (I think he got it as much for himself, too.) And it was Dad who stood at the kitchen counter at Christmastime, making a ham sandwich and singing along with "The Carol of the Bells" on the stereo. "Christmas is here, let's have a beer..." 

I can mark the sudden disappearance of fun in our family to December 7, 1999, the day he died. I think for him, that had happened several years earlier, when his younger brother (and beer drinking partner) died suddenly. It's like a vacuum sucking a certain kind of goofy joy and delight out of the familial universe.

Sterling being Sterling
Yesterday I got a similar feeling. The Master, gone. Never to call another game. No more goofy comments, silly songs, and just plain good times packaged in a voice and cadence that was fun in and of itself. Much like my father's could be a lot of times.

Of course, Sterling is not my father (at least, my mother never owned up to it). The impact of losing Dad has been understandably greater that losing John's play-by-play and everything that went with it.

But the loss is still similar. A welcome dollop of fun and good times, gone and never to return.

For years, I've thought that getting older is basically a battle against losing fun. Legions of deaths, aches and pains, heartache, regrets and illness don't make it easy. Thank God my wife and I have staunchly remained idiots and wackadoodles all these years.

I guess now we'll just have to ratchet it up a notch.

10 comments:

  1. https://theathletic.com/5418463/2024/04/16/yankees-john-sterling-honored-retirement/

    https://theathletic.com/5418194/2024/04/15/yankees-john-sterling-retirement-suzyn-waldman/

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  2. JM -

    Beautifully put and perfectly summed up. Thank you.

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  3. Thank you. We'll all miss that.

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  4. Very nicely done, JM. Lovely, resonant and relatable.

    From the previous thread - thanks for kind haiku words, Doug. Your three were terrific as well.

    As our physical form ages it’s great to be able to retain the goofy gray matter of a seasoned kid….

    Coffee beckons Now
    Feed then Walk the Dogs Thinking
    How does Suzyn Feel


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  5. Clean Gene McCarthy said running for president is like enjoying baseball...you have to be smart enough to understand the game, and stupid enough to to think it matters.

    Sterling embodied that. I'll miss him. A man of his time, for all time.

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  6. Beautiful tribute to your Dad, and to Sterling, JM. And great haikus, everyone.

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  7. JM, Not at all weird. Sounds like your dad was a great guy!

    I was thinking the same kind of thing, John Sterling going away is like losing a trusty old friend to a retirement home. Having him there, always on the radio for every Yankee game, was like having a good bowie knife in the woods, in the middle of nowhere. It was so comforting to know it was there for you.

    Like the (in)famous song from the opera La Traviata, life is nothing without pleasure! Ratchet it up a few notches, let it rip! Take it up all the way up to 11! (Courtesy of Spinal Tap)

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  8. Thanks everyone. Yes, my father was one of a kind. And so is John!

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  9. I have a feeling I'm quite a bit older than some on the blog. I've lived through the final bows of Marty Glickman, Howard Cosell, Marv Albert, Phil Rizzuto, and now John Sterling. They all hurt. The passage of time and inevitable unrelenting changing of the guard just reinforces our own mortality.

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