....June 22, 2:41 PM
 
 
 
American Kids And The Meaning Of Loyalty

By MICHAEL SCHENKLER

1957 was a sad year.

For one young kid sitting in his Queens bedroom, the summer was devastating. The impact of that awful time reverberates today. It pounds in my head, it rips at my heart, and it tears at my soul.

For me, it was the end of loyalty.

Kids don’t think about faith and continuity or stuff like that. They often don’t know why they’re hurting especially when they can’t see the blood. But sometimes little kids suffer and learn. And sometimes the painful lessons are so deep-seated, that 50 years later – in the summer of ’07 – they sit down again to try to understand.

It was more than the announcement that my New York Giants were playing their last season of baseball in New York. It was more than the fact that their arch-enemies the Brooklyn Dodgers would move with them to the West Coast. It was a blow far greater than the loss of those weekend days with dad at the Polo Grounds. It was the day the American Pastime changed.

It was an end to faith – to loyalty – a blow so terrible that this young kid cried for weeks.

I was not alone. The Giant fans in the Bronx and Queens suffered with me, expressing sad outrage at the betrayal. We even were one with the evil Dodger fans in Brooklyn – oh how I hated them – as we couldn’t comprehend that a business decision by some baseball suits – Horace Stoneham of the Giants and Walter O’Malley of the Dodgers – could shatter hopes, and defy the tradition of baseball’s oldest rivalry; the Giants and Dodgers had been at war with each other since 1890.

New York was a baseball town – the baseball town. And National League baseball was what we grew up on. The Yankees would remain an American League baseball team built on mythic giants (with a small “g”) Ruth, Gehrig and the gang, but they were still the anti-christ to us. Why, we would root for the evil Dodgers over the likes of Mantle and Berra -- and we did, often.

Duke Snider was a Dodger. He was the enemy but he had National League class. It mattered.

There was one hero that stood above them all. Willie Mays, who ultimately would return to end his career with the Mets, was going west with the Giants -- the world was ending. No more “Say Hey” kid, no more basket catch, no more, no more.

The pain was deeper than what was inflicted on that young kid sitting in his bedroom in the summer of ’57. Professional sports had declared that it was no longer about the fans or the kids. Sure, they were the source of the revenue but loyalty was available to the highest bidder.

So for the promise of new homes and new fans and a couple pieces of silver, baseball expanded to the West Coast and set the stage for the new American Pastime: loyalty for sale.

And the bidding was just beginning.

Other teams and other sports started following the golden brick road in search of new stadiums, new fans and business growth.

Soon the players caught on and a Giant of yesterday became an Oriole tomorrow. Players learned to jump from team to team quicker than owners could change cities. Free agency was born. Loyalty was to the almighty buck alone. The “me generation” of sports became evident in the locker room, on TV and in life.

It didn’t stop there. Baseball has always been at the soul of the nation – a nation of children grew up learning its values. And those children soon got to the corporate boardrooms and seats of government and lived their lives based on the model that baseball set. Some coached their kids sports teams and demonstrated the newly accepted sportsmanship acquired by example. Baseball cards became sought for their dollar value and the new loyalty took hold.

And America grew up learning from baseball that loyalty was for sale. It was for sale in baseball and therefore, it was for sale in life.

And 50 years later, the summer of ’57 still marks one of the saddest moments for baseball, for American and for this kid.

Michael Schenkler can be reached via this contact form.

 
 
Early Budget Agreement Marked By Cooperation

By HENRY STERN

The early agreement on the 2008 city budget between Mayor Bloomberg and the City Council is the latest example of their “era of good feeling.” The Mayor and Council Speaker Christine Quinn have forged a constructive relationship that has generally been helpful to the city. This is part of Ms. Quinn’s strategy for a mayoral race in two years, when the mayoralty will be open as a result of the Term Limits.

There is nothing wrong with Ms. Quinn’s judgment that her best opportunity to attain higher office lies in demonstrating responsibility in her position as Speaker, and aligning herself, so far as practicable, with a generally highly regarded city administration. Her acceptance of the failure to include a tax credit for renters showed good spirit. ”Sometimes you put ideas out there, and it takes more than one year to accomplish.”

Ms. Quinn’s predecessor as Speaker, Gifford Miller, followed the opposite game plan, opposing the mayor on a variety of issues, notably by passing dozens of bills and overriding the mayor’s vetoes. Most of those bills were of minor importance, except to the councilmember who introduced them, so no great harm was done to anyone. Indeed, on major issues, such as the ban on indoor smoking and the increase in the real estate tax, Speaker Miller supported the mayor’s initiatives. Part of the problem from 2002 and 2005 was the generation gap (27 years) between the mayor and the speaker, but most of it came because the mayor was seeking re-election, and the speaker wanted the job, posthaste.

In past years, we have written many articles, which you can find on our Web site, www.nycivic.org, about the budget process, centering on the perennial disputes between the council and the mayor, and the financial irresponsibility of state and city budgets based on borrowing.

When I was younger, so much younger than today, when the President sent the Federal budget to Congress, the legislature was likely to reduce it, because they were not sympathetic to funding some of the programs he wanted, did not want to support some unpopular ideas, and wanted to avoid a situation where they might have to raise taxes. History has reversed that protocol. In recent years, the legislatures, both state and municipal, habitually seek to increase the executive budget, and it is the governor and the mayor who try to hold the line.

The senators, assembly members and council members are responding to constituent pressures for more local services and additional funding for cultural institutions they favor. They receive demands from labor unions, who are fully aware that more than half the discretionary funds the council appropriates end up in their members’ pockets.

This was a flush year for the city, financially, with billions of unanticipated dollars coming in as a result of the advancing stock market and the real estate boom (or bubble). In the past, the city has spent almost all that it received in bonanza years and then was unable to balance its budget during down years. It is now more fully recognized that, particularly in the FIRE sector of the city’s economy (finance, insurance, real estate), revenues are cyclical. Public expenditures, however, change in only one direction: upward. There are a number of reasons for this: One, wages increase each year rather than remain constant or decrease. Two, even modest inflation impacts a $59 billion budget. Three, the state legislature has an apparently irresistible desire, stimulated by the union lobbyists at whose trough they feed, to enact pension sweeteners which have a permanent impact on city budgets but cost the state nothing. Four, the ever-increasing public debt requires that more and more money be set aside to pay interest to bondholders. That expenditure is expected to exceed $3.5 billion in the 2008 expense budget, although the administration is reducing the cost of debt service by prepaying interest.

There is no question that the city’s finances are in much better shape than they were a few years ago. Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s, the rating agencies which evaluate the safety of municipal bonds, have reacted by upgrading the city’ s credit rating, which leads to lower interest cost on city borrowing. If there is no large deficit next year, New York City will still have the money for other purposes, possibly even making some repayment of municipal debt to reduce future interest costs.

Macroeconomic issues of public finance are being reasonably well handled, and harmony, at least for now, is the rule between the executive and legislative. The time is now propitious to attend to operational issues that have not yet been discovered, let alone resolved. There is a digital counter in the bullpen (the large room which is the northwest quarter of the second floor of City Hall, formerly the Board of Estimate Chamber, now the City Hall offices of the mayor and his principal staff) which ticks the number of days remaining in Mayor Bloomberg’s term. Today the number is 924, meaning there is still time to initiate good works.

It is most important as well for the mayor to take an interest in seeing to it that his successor is competent and compassionate, honest and decent, moderate and reasonable, devoted to the poor and the sick in body and mind, while totally committed to protecting New York City and its people from the criminals, psychopaths and terrorists who would destroy us if they could. To paraphrase Alexander King . “May this city be safe from tigers.”

Not4Publication.com by Dom Nunziato
Michael Schenkler can be reached via this contact form.