A SET OF INTERESTING IRONIES

By Edwin Cooney

One of last week's major headlines (aside from those having to do with President-elect Trump's incoming cabinet selections, the change of government in Syria, or the murder of an insurance company executive) has to do with a rather significant American phenomenon. That phenomenon is the contentious selection of 26-year-old outfielder Juan Soto by the Mets, effectively stealing his services from the mighty New York Yankees.

The free agent acquisition of Soto by the Mets was obviously a good decision as the young left-handed slugger is a splendid baseball commodity. However, there are several truths about this transaction that diminishes its significance.

First, it guarantees the Mets absolutely nothing since the "World Champion” Los Angeles Dodgers, the Atlanta Braves and the Philadelphia Phillies will have something to say or do about the Mets' success in the National League next season.

Second, American League teams such as the Boston Red Sox, Houston Astros, Toronto Blue Jays, and other league franchises will have much to say about the fate of the Yankees next year.

However, in New York sports culture which is so dependent on comparison and competition, the Mets undoubtedly won a public relations coup over the mighty Yankees on Sunday night, December 7th, 2024.

There's nothing new about this, especially in New York. Back in 1915, under manager John McGraw, the Giants were the kings of New York. Jacob Ruppert and Tillinghast L'Hommedieu Huston, two ambitious entrepreneur friends of Mr. McGraw, scraped up $460,000 to purchase the lowly Yankees as McGraw suggested. Thus, Frank Farrell and Bill Devery, who had purchased the team in 1903 for a mere $18,000, made a handsome profit. Within eight years, the Yankees were not only outdrawing the mighty Giants, they defeated them in the 1923 World Series in their brand new Yankees Stadium which was just across the Harlem River from the Polo Grounds. Jacob Ruppert, the son of a brewery magnate who was born in 1867, rose in New York society to be elected to Congress from the "Silk Stocking District” of New York. Owner Tillinghast L'Hommedieu Huston, a native of Texas, made his money in the reconstruction of Cuba following the Spanish American War. Once the two were in charge of the Yankees, they disagreed about everything except spending to increase the value of the Club. Huston disliked manager Miller Huggins whom Ruppert backed over the whims of Babe Ruth. The two split up in 1923 when Ruppert paid Huston a million and a half dollars to gain sole control of the Yankees.

Competition between the Yankees, Dodgers, Giants, and, eventually, the Mets was inevitable. In 1965, the Mets under Casey Stengel signed Yogi Berra who had just been fired by the Yankees after losing the 1964 World Series to the St. Louis Cardinals. (Not that it did them much good: the Mets ultimately fired Yogi 10 years later even after he'd taken them to the 7th game of the 1973 World Series against Charley Finley's Oakland A’s.)

The key factor here, as in the past, was the willingness of exceedingly wealthy owners such as the Steinbrenners and, now, "Uncle" Steve Cohen to please Mets' fans.

Another intriguing question is: will an Uncle Steve Cohen "World Championship equal that of the 1969 “Miracle Mets” championship glorified by such names as Donald Grant, Joan Payson, Casey Stengel, Gil Hodges and, of course, Yogi Berra who was their first base coach at the time?

Ultimately, there remains the question, what value does any major league team have to any sports fan? Sports entrepreneurs and even sports writers insist these days that fan support matters above all, but does it really? Are the Mets, Yankees, Red Sox, Dodgers, and other teams really yours or mine?

A few years ago I insisted that I wasn't going to allow George Steinbrenner to ruin "My Yankees.”

Hence the question: who was I kidding?

Ah, but sports is merely entertainment! Therein lies still another question! What's the ultimate value of entertainment?

You tell me, please?

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY

AMERICA, A PEOPLE OF PURPOSE

By Edwin Cooney

Perhaps our innocence was blown away by the assassination of President Kennedy that Friday, November 22nd, 1963, but our purposefulness as a people was more than enhanced. The vital person of the  presidency was shown to be mortal, but the office was an institution authorized and owned by a free people and was not to be denied to them. Hence, we would seek to solve the crime by our own means and in our own individual ways.

Beyond law enforcement, there were suspicions to be investigated. There were political theories to be exercised. Was the rifleman a communist, a racist, a gangster, or even a drug-induced fanatic?

Was the cause too many guns, too few Secret Service personnel, a lackadaisical Dallas police force, or perhaps the existing political divide within the state of Texas?

Who most immediately benefited from the deed? Was the government a party to the assassination? How about the Mafia? Did government and organized crime have a joint stake in JFK's death?  How could "we the people" prevent this deed from ever occurring again? After all, we were a purposeful people.

We demanded to be safe, secure and, above all, a satisfied people.

As to who we are, it depends on what anyone who seeks to serve us wants. Politicians call us "taxpayers.” Professionals call us “clients” or “customers.”

We are parents, teachers, the educated, the laborer, the patient. In fact, we are so many things to so many people with varying needs and demands. History has demonstrated that the presidency of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson marked the close of 20th Century liberalism going back to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal during which our parents, teachers, and preachers were intellectually and spiritually educated. The political institutions, the colleges and universities, churches and synagogues, lawyers and doctors would struggle for the next thirty to fifty years to meet ever changing expectations.

On November 22nd, 1963, Donald Trump was a rebellious teenager. Joe Biden was attending the University of Syracuse. Barack Obama was two years old. “Shrub" Bush was in high school. Bill Clinton was a teenager who had visited President Kennedy that past August and shaken his hand.  George H. W. Bush was planning a 1964 run for the House. Ronald Reagan was a less than prominent actor. No one had even heard of Jimmy (who?) Carter down there in southwest Georgia. Gerald Ford was about to successfully run for GOP House Minority leader in 1965. Richard Nixon was practicing law in New York City and his presidential prospects were pretty gloomy. As for Lyndon B. Johnson, he was Vice President who a few believed was about to be dumped by the Kennedys.

What none of us could know in 1963 was how our values and understandings would clash during the coming traumatic decades of war, scandal and social upheaval. Sixty one years of politically stormy weather were to pass to get to election day of 2024.

With all of our “ohs" and woes, living in America has been and remains a pretty good deal. As for the immediate future, Democrats may have serious doubts. However, quick as a wink, the ins can become the outs!

Very soon, this willful and purposeful people will ask the powers that be  that inevitable question: "what have you done for me lately?"

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY

AMERICANS INNOCENT: REALLY, TRULY?

By Edwin Cooney

Last week, I quoted CBS newsman Bob Schieffer as observing: "Americans awakened on the morning of Saturday, November 23rd, 1963 stripped of their innocence.”  Are any people truly innocent?

Does any nation, despite its advertised ideology, possess a conscience?
Can there be a national consciousness? Ought there to be?

What would that mean and how might it express itself?

If America indeed awakened on that historic Saturday in 1963 stripped of its “innocence," of what was it innocent? Of what was every other nation guilty in 1776 that newly independent America was not?
 
Although this country had just celebrated its 187th birthday, America was just a baby compared to France which was approaching its 1,263rd  or England (America's mother country) which would celebrate its 897th birthday that Christmas of 1963. Still, like its two European predecessors as a contiguous people, America had developed a set of expectations according to its history. After all, young America was the first Republican form of government free of royalty.

As a newly 18-year-old lad that fall, I had a sense of some of the both admirable and regrettable behaviors of my fellow citizens.

We had fought the South and the Union had prevailed in a Civil War that had set slaves free back in the 1860’s. We had defeated a virulent form of autocracy in World War I and Nazism and Japanese imperialism in World War II. We had established and internationalized the Red Cross. We had assisted Japan in the 1920’s after a devastating earthquake. We had established the new United Nations to prevent future wars and sent some of our sons to Korea to stop the advancement of Communism. We were about to halt Communism in Vietnam.

True, “Jim Crow” was still pretty strong in the South. Northern liberals (later called human secularists) had just relieved our public schools of official prayers. Secularism was growing faster than Christianity and Judaism. As for Islam, hadn't medieval kings, knights and popes settled the hash of that ancient society centuries ago via three crusades?

Summing it all up, we were a pretty decent and fair people with a pretty extraordinary president who was handsome and very personable. Certainly the FBI, CIA and the Secret Service were determined to protect him, weren't they?

About that time in my life, I had learned how to peruse maps. I would look at the capitals and nations under Communism and I would wonder what those sad peoples had done to deserve their police state existence! Did they feel enslaved as some members of Congress suggested during their annual call for the banishment of Communist totalitarianism?

If we weren't innocent, what were we? Good, bad, fair, selfish, grasping, money hungry, all of the above or perhaps none of the above? Did God really “bless America” (as Irving Berlin wrote for Kate Smith back in 1938) just because we were America and not Russia or Yugoslavia or India?

How could we be any closer to God than, say, Israel? After all, Moses came from Mount Sinai where he had received the Ten Commandments  prior to fleeing Egypt for Israel. George Washington came from Westmoreland County, Virginia where he had pruned a lot of cherry trees --except one, of course!

So, if we're not either innocent nor guilty, what are we? Even more, who are we? Do we even know each other as well as we ought?

I've one or two ideas! I'll share them with you next time.

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY