Perfect Pitch

Author: Susan Laney Spector

  • “I cried myself to sleep…”

    Crying_on_pillow_3 Today is really a Black Friday for my husband, Garry. 

    I don’t know what he’s more tearful about today:  the current Mets slump and anticipated rout at Yankee Stadium or remembering the Mets trading Tom Seaver thirty years ago today.

    I wanted my husband to be a guest contributer for this post today to write about his thoughts surrounding events thirty years back, but he is far too busy to do so.  Not having been a baseball fan much less a Mets fan thirty years ago today, I wouldn’t presume to retell this emotion-packed story.  Better to hear it from the key players in the drama themselves or from more knowledgeable bloggers, such as Greg at Faith and Fear in Flushing.

    But trying to paraphrase his thoughts, my husband–who was home in Albany after his freshman year at Columbia University at the time of these events–says he cried himself to sleep that night.  He mentions the general presumption that he and others held that favorite players of theirs would finish their careers playing with the same team they started with having been shattered in that instant.  He speaks of it being made unfailingly clear to him on that night–one-and-one-half years into free agency–that, indeed, "no on was untouchable". 

    Setting the stage for me, he tells me that–as had been true for a number of years–the Mets were not a great team that year.  In spite of that fact, Seaver had remained with the team and had been its main draw. 

    So.  The team stinks.  And its ace has just left town for more money.  What could be worse?  The cross-town Yankees win the World Series that year.  And again in 1978.  Some very hard years to hold your head high as a Mets fan, I’m guessing.

    He also remembers that the year Seaver was traded, the All-Star Game was held at Yankee Stadium, and Seaver was selected to the National League All-Star Team.  When his name was announced and he strode onto the field, wearing his red-and-white Cincinnati Reds uniform and number 41 jersey, he received a huge, long ovation from the New York fans.   

    "It was like a dagger to the heart of any Mets fan," says Garry.

    06110503 Those days may be be long gone, but obviously the pain is not so deeply  buried for many. 

    That makes me feel all the better about having been able to arrange a very special Father’s Day present for Garry a few years ago.

    A local business had arranged for Tom Seaver to do a signing, and my daughter and I took him there as a surprise.  I loved seeing the thrill on his face when he was able to introduce his then seven-year-old daughter to Tom, referring to him as "the greatest pitcher who ever lived."

    My camera captured this moment when Tom, without hesitation, looked my daughter square in the eye and said to her, "Your Daddy’s a very SMART MAN."

  • Day of Wrath!

    Last_judgment_mich_detail2wblackhat_copy UGH.

    Where do we go from here?

    Oh, that’s right:  THE stadium.  To play the Yankees who are coming off of a ten-day winning streak.  Who have their Rocket back on the launch pad.  Who have their SWAGGER back. 

    God help us.

    I don’t have any suggestions…not that anyone’s asking me. 

    I’m not looking to point fingers at anyone.  I hope the players themselves don’t start doing that either; that NEVER helps. 

    I don’t possess any special amulets or prayers or a lucky rabbit’s foot…nor am I superstitious enough to believe in the effect of any such bunk.

    I have had one observation, though, about the Mets this season that–while I won’t go as far as saying this particular item is CAUSING them to lose, removing this from their pre-game regimen would certainly cause no harm and its omission might right the ship.

    This thing that I have noticed has been going on all season, actually, well before this slump.  I’m talking about the choice of music–accompanied by a fast-moving New York City video montage–just prior to the Mets taking the field.

    My guess is most fans probably think of this theme–which is played at every home game–as just kind of a "let’s get revved up" kind of rhythmic music.  In fact, while this rap song is playing, I have often watched the players, primarily Jose Reyes and Ruben Gotay, practice their elaborate congratulatory handshake routines and "pumping up" in general for the game.

    But I went online to find out more about this musical selection, I found out what perhaps many of the players and fans already knew about it:  Juelz Santana featuring Just Blaze recorded the song for a Nike ad–"Second Coming"–shown during the 2007 AFC and NFC championship games.  That ad, featuring the music we all hear at Shea for every home game, can be seen here. 

    But what I’m guessing many fans and the players and managers might NOT know is that the instrumental on this rap song was sampled from Franz Liszt’s Totentanz ("Dance of Death") which had in turn been inspired by the Dies Irae (literally, "Day of Wrath")–Dies20irae_1whose origins lie in 13th century plainchant. 

    The melody was later incorporated into the official Catholic liturgy for the Latin Mass for the Dead. 

    Many classical composers have used the text of the Requiem Mass, including the Dies Irae portion, to beautiful effect.  My personal favorites are the Verdi Requiem and the Mozart Requiem. 

    Also, many classical composers have directly quoted the motif, e.g., Hector Berlioz in the "Witches Sabbath" portion of his Symphonie Fantastique, Mahler in his Second Symphony, Camille Saint-Saens in his Danse Macabre, and Rachmaninoff in several compositions, including his Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, as well as countless other classical music references.   

    According to one site, there seem to be a number of pieces of popular music that incorporate the melody as well.  And for even more history on the Nike ad and the hip-hop group performing the selection and the various versions of "Second Coming", another blogger and commentators have discussed this same topic–unrelated to the Mets’ slump, of course–here.  (As there is no direct permanent link, you’ll need to scroll down to "Monday, January 22, 2007 – ‘In which David is confused by The Second Coming.’")

    The text of the Dies Irae portion of the Mass is not uplifting nor comforting, let me tell you:

    Dies Iræ! dies illa
    Solvet sæclum in favilla
    Teste David **** Sibylla!

    ‘Day of Wrath! Upon that day, the world will melt in the twinkling of an eye, as David prophesied and the Sibyl!’

    Quantus tremor est futurus,
    quando judex est venturus,
    cuncta stricte discussurus!

    ‘What trembling is to come, when the Judge appears, to judge all strictly.’

    Tuba mirum spargens sonum
    per sepulcra regionum,
    coget omnes ante thronum.

    ‘The trumpet, casting a wondrous sound through the tombs of all nations, compels all before the Throne.’

    Mors stupebit et natura,
    **** resurget creatura,
    judicanti responsura.

    ‘Death and Nature shall be astounded, when creation rises again to respond to its judge.’

    Memling_1 Those last lines, "when creation rises again", can definitely be connected to the "second coming" reference.  In other words, it appears to me that the producers of the Nike ad were aware of the dies irae reference. 

    My guess is that the Mets chose this rap song thinking that anyone who knew of the Nike ad and it being called "Second Coming" might make an association with the Mets something along the lines of, "Wow!  We got SO close in 2006!  But this year, we’ve assembled a lot of the same guys, tweaked things a little bit, and we’re going to come back and do it all again.  You just wait and see!  The trumpets will sound and the Braves and other teams will be left in the dust heap on Judgment Day!"

    I guess that’s one way of interpreting it.

    But lately, I can only anticipate going back to Shea on Monday and hearing that song as a death knell.  For our outfield.  For our team.  For the NLDS.

    I know:  it’s only a rap song.  But with its religious overtones, its direct associations with the mass for the dead, "day of wrath", "day of terror", the Apocalypse, visions of heaven and earth consumed by ash, etc., MAYBE it’s time to talk to the Media Department about some other high-octane entrance music. 

    Ya think?

  • Bird Banter

    Glove_birdcutout This post will not address the Mets’ current slump.  There are countless blogs that can and will do so…a lot more interestingly than I might, I might add.  I’ll leave all the suggestions and strategizing and thoughts about who should be batting in the Number Two spot, whether Tommy Glavine is too focused on Win Number 300, whether guys are having too much fun and not focused enough on wins, whether acquiring Moises was a mistake, why the Carloses are not hitting, etc., etc., to all of the guys on the call-in shows, the other blogs, and elsewhere.  I certainly have no expertise in any of these areas.

    Instead I will simply try to remain optimistic and, frankly, just aim to be AWAKE for all of tonight’s game!  (West Coast night games are killers for me!)

    And, as in life, I will try to see the humor in things. 

    Towards that end, recalling those giant flocks of SEA GULLS all over the field at Comerica Park over the weekend keeps cracking me up. 

    It wasn’t like, watching the game on TV, you saw a bird now and then.  It was nearly impossible to get a camera shot of the game WITHOUT a bird in it!  And then when we got a wide shot that showed, say, the entire field, I could not believe the sheer NUMBER of birds that were just hanging out there.  It literally looked like a bird SANCTUARY!

    Turns out, Comerica Park is not always like this, and the gulls were not merely attracted to the plentiful concessions.  It seems the Mets left town and, even with no game (nor concession-consuming fans) at Comerica yesterday, the gulls showed up in droves. 

    Officials there became so concerned that the grounds crew even brought in an entomologist to address the situation.  It seems the bird problem has been caused by an earlier hatching of moths, i.e., gull grub. 

    Whatever course of action the entomologist suggested, however, progress must be slow.  Prior to this evening’s game, I saw highlights of Justin Verlander’s no-hitter tonight from Comerica, and I saw PLENTY of those gulls flyin’ high and walking around the infield too.  They don’t seem to be in any hurry to vacate.

    Speaking of sea gulls and the moths that they are attracted to, that reminds me of a recurrent problem related to bugs in my own outdoor work experiences:  every summer the MET performs outdoor performances of operas in concert in local parks in the New York City parks. 

    Although rain-outs are always a concern for any outdoor concert (or  ballgame), several years in a row there was a particular problem related to a specific park located on Staten Island.  Every time we performed at this particular venue, our performance–always in mid-June–seemed to coincide with the mating season of a large colony of June bugs that called that particular area of Staten Island home. 

    Apparently attracted to the hot spotlights focused on the orchestra and soloists onstage, these bugs would begin to congregate shortlyPotd20030604_1  after the overture began and continue swarming in larger and larger numbers as the opera progressed, spawning and then falling to the floor of the stage to die, buzzing all the while, making an enormous racket.

    It was incredibly distracting, if comical, especially when one of the buggers attacked you or your instrument.  Looking around the orchestra while the opera was going on, it was nearly impossible to keep a straight face, much less continue performing:  violinists were putting their bows down to slap their legs, horn players were literally jumping out of their chairs, and the conductor was waving his arms giving extra beats. 

    One particular bug-riddled performance resulted in an unexpected intermission having to be taken because the distraction made it impossible to continue.  The orchestra was having trouble keeping any kind of continuity in the music in between the bug-slapping and, although the soprano was a sport and had gamely continued singing, she was understandably a little grossed-out, having had a bug fly right into her open mouth while singing an aria from the evening’s opera, Lucia di Lammermoor!

    Funny, I didn’t hear anyone screaming, "Is there an entomologist in the house (on the lawn)?!"  Never mind.

    But back to the Comerica Park sea gulls…other than being omnipresent, I don’t think the birds caused any problems.  There was a bird right in front of David Wright in one of the games as he ran forward to field a a chopper and quickly throw to first.  I seem to recall Gary Cohen and Ron Darling of SNY mentioning something about how it was a good thing he hadn’t quickly picked up the bird and thrown it instead.

    I cannot swear that there was no foul play (ar, ar) involving the sea gulls.  (Frankly, I found a lot of the games so frustrating that I was not following them as closely as I usually do.) I did hear somewhere (Was it on SNY?) that Oliver Perez’s Bird_book_1 cap had been decorated with gull droppings sometime within the course of the first game, but I was unable to find an official Press Release on that one.  (I heard it was while he was off the mound.)

    The presence of the birds did provide for lively discourse between Garry and Ron as well as the opportunity for them to mention the incident in Arizona in a 2001 exhibition game involving a poor bird that pitcher Randy Johnson "exploded" (Ron’s terminology). 

    Being reminded of that incident and the proliferation of sea gulls on the field at Comerica Park prompted me to see what I could find out about other incidents where other foul impacted the game.

    I found some interesting things:

    • In 1983, Dave Winfield, then with the Yankees, created a furor in Toronto by throwing a ball that hit and killed a seagull at Exhibition Stadium.  The bird was walking, not flying, and because Winfield was just making tosses to the infield between innings, it appeared to the fans that saw it to be intentional.  The Metropolitan Toronto Police charged him with cruelty to animals, but the charge was dropped the next day.

    It was said that Billy Martin, in his defense of his player, was quoted as saying, 

    "He couldn’t have hit the seagull on purpose. He hasn’t hit the cutoff man all year."

    • Almost exactly one year ago, a baseball collided with a seagull at home plate at a minor league game in Buffalo, New York.  "Seagull hit by pitch (not awarded first base)" read the USA Today headline.  The gull was not awarded a base, but thankfully, he was alright–presumably not meeting a 98-mile-per-hour fastball as in the case of the poor bird, a dove apparently, encountering Johnson’s pitch–and was escorted off of the field.
    • Writing in Baseball Digest in June 2004, Rich Marazzi discussed his contributions to a book that had recently been published on the subject of major leaguers playing from 1950-1959.  In an article entitled "Baseball rules corner: some colorful stories about players from the 1950s", Marazzi writes:
      • "When a batted ball hits a wall or the ground it is no longer considered to be in flight for the purpose of making a catch. If the ball strikes a flying bird, however, it remains in flight. That might not be necessarily true for the bird. And yes, a fielder can make a catch of a batted ball that bounces off a bird. Just ask Frank Ernaga, who had a cup of coffee in the major leagues with the Cubs in 1957 and ’58.

        Playing for Tulsa in the Texas League game against Houston in 1956, Ernaga was in the outfield when Houston pitcher Bill Greason flied to left. As Ernaga waited to make the catch, the ball struck a bird. Nevertheless, Ernaga caught the ball while teammate Bob Will grabbed the bird. No, umps didn’t call "Fowl Ball," they ruled Ernaga’s snare to be a legal catch.

        By the way, Ernaga was flying high when he homered and tripled in his first two major league at-bats. After he glided into the sunset, he became a building contractor in Susanville, California."

    Care to feather your nest with yet one more baseball/bird reference?  You canSaa1361_8  go to this NPR afiliate site for their delightful take on interleague (interspecies?) play. 

    Baseball is certainly not the only outdoor sport to have been plagued by aviary interference.  The results have often been hysterical as witnessed by an ESPN Sport Center-compiled video montage of "Top Ten Bird Moments", running the gamut of the entire world of sports.

    Let’s hope more runs and wins generate news for the Mets in their upcoming games, rather than Mother Nature.  There’s always the Discovery and Animal Planet channels for that, thank you very much. 

  • The Marlins’ mascot, Billy the Marlin, works the crowd.

  • Finally the Mermaids have found a taker for a photo shoot.

  • Daughter Melanie and mascots from the local aquarium prior to Sunday’s game.

  • Shake yo’ booty!

  • Did you notice? These are not even the Marlins’ COLORS!!

  • Rah, rah, rah! The Mermaids provide mid-inning cleavage and pom-poms right in front of the visitors’ dugout.

  • Another view of the in-game rainbow.