Telling a story without intruding

Sometimes reporters are invited guests, and sometimes it’s just assumed that we’ll be places. But there are other times where I feel like an intruder.

That’s kind of how I felt this week, when I was assigned to cover a memorial service observing the one-year anniversary of a crash that killed four Taylor University students and an employee.

You might have read about some of the developments after the crash.

The identities of two victims were confused. A family from a small northern Michigan community buried their daughter after a funeral that brought more than 1,000 mourners.

The other family stood at the bedside for five weeks while their daughter lay in a coma.
Except that when she awoke, she was able to communicate that she was in fact the girl presumed to have been dead.

I cannot imagine the joy felt by the one family or the despair by the other.

I also realized this was one of those once-in-a-career stories. I don’t think I’ll ever come across anything like it again.

What made it tough was that the families involved refused to talk to the media. That's entirely within their rights. They certainly didn't ask to be thrust into the national spotlight.

The TV types for sure can be intrusive. But I’m safe, at least I try to be. And what people don't realize is that we’re going to write a story anyway. We have to, especially something as amazing as this. It would be better if they could talk to us and make sure we get the right information instead of watching us track down neighbors and friends so we can get some kinds of details.

One of my assignments when this first broke was to head three hours north to the hometown of girl who ended up being alive to, well, talk to neighbors and friends. It was incredible to see the impact she had on this small community and the collective joy people there experienced. I sensed also some collective guilt at being so joyful since their good news plunged another family into mourning, and the people there realized that.

The family kept a blog about the girl’s recovery, and I recommend you start at the first post and read forward for a fascinating and inspiring story. That provided some of the details for us.

I’ve kept up with the story through the months with stories about how this could possibly happen – needless to say, multiple systems broke down in multiple ways – and chronicling the girl’s recovery best as we could.

The anniversary of the crash arrived last Thursday and the paper sent me down to Taylor to cover a memorial service.

Naturally, a nearly four-hour drive provides some opportunities along the way. Well, in places except eastern Indiana, I was thinking as I was more than three hours into the trip without even an interesting rest stop.

Then, as I approached Huntington, Ind., I saw the sign: Dan Quayle Center, United States Vice Presidential Museum.

I was running behind schedule a little after a late start and a driving rain for most of the trip. I thought that I should probably avoid this little side trip. That thought lasted perhaps a nanosecond.

After all, what could possibly be in the Dan Quayle Vice Presidential Museum?

Huntington turned out to be a pretty small and humble place. I pulled up to the museum and guessed it was a former bank. I walked in, surveyed the main room noticed that most of the exhibits appeared to be photos, which made it easy to not stay long.

Two women were sitting right inside the door, and pounced. “Welcome, would you like a tour?” They seemed very disappointed when I said I would only tour the gift shop. I picked up some post cards, a magnet and two campaign buttons from Quayle’s 2000 presidential bid. One is especially cool, noting his “hometown kickoff” on April 14, 1999.

I don’t think they get many visitors because using my debit card was an ordeal that required getting the director to come down and work the register.

This gave us time to talk. Quayle lives in Arizona but comes to the museum at least once a year. His brother was publisher of the Huntington newspaper until it was sold recently.

Apparently the second floor of the museum was dedicated to Quayle and the lower level was for exhibits to the other vice presidents that hail from the Hooiser State. The employees were very nice and I was glad I made the stop.

In fairness, I always thought Quayle didn’t deserve the abuse he received. And he did allow Lloyd Bentsen to get loose with the only line anybody remembers from any vice presidential debate.

But I needed to get back on the road and over to Taylor University, which is a small Christian University in Upland. I pulled up and noticed that some of the television crews had already arrived.

Say this about my electronic competition; it is neither stealth nor subtle. And it seems to be the same no matter what city they come from.

Two massive “storm chaser” rolling billboards/satellite trucks were already parked wherever they damn well pleased alongside the chapel.

Stealth is not an attribute of my competition

I first tracked down the student government president because such people usually like to talk and typically are in the thick of things and can give me some pointers on who to talk to and who to avoid. He was very helpful.

And this is a tricky situation, because anybody who knew the girls knows that the parents didn’t talk to the media, and many of them respected that and didn’t want to talk either – especially with the television types already roaming around campus.

And a lot of these people were still grieving, and the last thing I wanted to do was make them upset.

But I found some nice people eating in the student union, including one who was a close friend of the girl who lived and didn’t mind talking as long as the questions didn’t get too personal.

My job was to write a “color’ story about the mood of the campus, then attend the memorial service to write a short story for our Web page then write a full story and e-mail it back to The Press for the next day’s paper.

After camping in the college union – the students recommended the chicken sandwich – and filing the first story and sending a photo, I went across the street to the chapel and found a seat on the side near the front.

And then in walked the girl who survived and her family. It dawned on me that I had written dozens of stories about her and I had interviewed her friends, teammates, coaches and classmates. Yet this was the first time that I had actually seen the girl in person.

The campus is planning a memorial prayer chapel to be dedicated on the second anniversary of the crash.

I suddenly felt conspicuous and moved to the balcony that hugged the room on three sides, sitting off to the side again where I could observe the speakers and still see the reactions of the girl and her family.

And here’s where I felt like an intruder. In these situations we are torn between being an observer and a participant.

The speaker asked everyone to stand and sing two songs, then later to bow their heads in prayer. If I stood it would seem like I was participating. But if I remained seated I would draw attention to myself. I opted to stand and bow my head; writing only when there was something newsworthy being said.

The idea is to be able to be the eyes an ears of our readers and let them know what happened at an event they care about without hurting the people involved.

My pastor is way-cool -- for a Cubs fan

“Dave, body of Christ, given for you. And don’t forget about the draft at 3:30 today.”

“Amen, Pastor. And I’ll be there.”

It’s safe to say that the liturgy from last week’s Holy Communion was amended slightly. But how cool is my pastor?

I knew Pastor Paul was an inspirational speaker and mentor before we formally joined our church three years ago. What I didn’t know was that he’s a huge baseball fan – which only makes him more inspirational in my household.

He’s a Cubs fan, but that’s OK because it’s not like Cubbies are ever a threat in our Mets-centric world. And clearly, the team isn’t favored from above because we pray for it each week and, well, it’s still the Cubs.

And Pastor Paul always has my back – sometimes a little too aggressively. Last year I was pitching in a coed softball game and I heard a voice riding the umpire something fierce.

The Man in Blue shot me a look that said, “You’d better quiet that guy down or I’m going to squeeze this strike zone so much that it’s narrower than the ball.”

I looked over and it was Pastor Paul, standing behind the backstop, arguing balls and strikes.

So I confess it was more out of loyalty than anything else that I joined a fantasy baseball league he founded last year.

Before you start mocking, there are some things you need to know. I’m a reformed rotisserie guy.

I was big into rotisserie baseball back in 1987 when it was actually cool. And I got a sense that it was important to maintain the activity when I was hired at the Flint Journal three years later.

I made this observation after a fair part of the job interview consisted of rotisserie questions. I like to think that my clips were so strong that the editors had already decided to hire me and were just filling time. But that’s probably not the case.

And, as Will and I learned, the old-timers liked when newcomers joined the league – but weren’t as keen when we win it three years in a row. This led to some unpleasantness and there were some other assorted issues, and I swore off fantasy baseball forever.

But Pastor approached me last year, and he was so excited that I couldn’t turn him down.

It’s not your typical fantasy league. We draft players and assemble lineups and rotations, and a computer program simulates games using stats from the previous year.

This eliminates those “Is it wrong to cheer for my guy when he hits a homer against my real-life favorite team” debates.

The program also allows us to add two Hall-of-Famers, and uses an average of the player’s seven best seasons.

I went into this with a pretty simple strategy: Draft as many Mets as possible and absolutely no Yankees. Goodness knows that Yankee taint can ruin even a pretend team.

Naturally, my two Hall-of-Famers were Tom Seaver and Willie Mays. And I was able to snag Carlos Delgado, David Wright, Tom Glavine, Paul LoDuca, John Maine, Jose Valentin, Darren Oliver, Lastings Milledge and even Scott Kazmir (who I pretend is still a Met).

I did get stuck with one Skankee, Bobby Abreu, who was still a Phillie when I drafted him last year. I also have Jimmy Rollins just for the sheer irony of it all. Consider it reaching out the unchurched.

Now, I don’t want you to think that I belong to some strange church that puts baseball before everything else. Pastor Paul is as passionate about reaching out to the underprivileged as he is to the Cubs, and I’ve never seen a minister so skilled at reaching out to young people.

His lessons bring the Bible to life like no one I've ever seen, and he's been so encouraging as I try to work with our church's youth groups and share with the teens the wonderful things God as done in my life.

And I don’t know how he does it, but he somehow senses when I’m feeling down and knows just how to lift me up again.

Unless, of course, I’m on the mound and behind in the count and an oversensitive umpire is behind the plate.

Bleeping April snow

We’ve had a series of nasty violent incidents in our state and even our fair city in the last week. I blame the snow.

No kidding. We had accumulating snow. Usually in April we get a dusting, but this time it piled up quickly and stuck around.

You know the shock-denial-anger-acceptance stages of grief? Well we in Michigan have stages of snow acceptance. It goes month to month.

November: Sadly, this is when it usually starts. Thanksgiving can either be a wonderful autumn afternoon or the first week that the snowblower gets hauled out of the garage. This is usually followed by much profanity because the gas in the blower has been sitting in the tank since the previous April and the darn thing won’t start. And with relatives from out of state on their way you’re really feeling the pressure. Alas, it’s usually heavy, wet snow and we must stop for a moment and ponder its beauty as it clings to the trees.

December: Snow is acceptable in December. Once it starts, it never lets up and we forget that grass looks like. In fact people get a little cranky in those ultra rare years when the ground isn’t covered. We’ve been conditioned to expect a white Christmas and even feel sorry for those sad folks in warmer climates who don’t experience the joy that Bing is dreaming about.

January: Snow is acceptable, again, in January. Go skiing. I get to wear my fashionable knit Mets cap. By now the blower has nice fresh gas and roars to life at the first pull of the cord. My neighbors on both sides and I have a little system where the first one out clears the sidewalks of the others — but not the driveways. Otherwise we’d never leave the house.

February: It’s starting to get a little old. People comment on this. And when this happens, without fail some smart ass says, "It’s Michigan and it’s February." To which I reply, "Yeah, but I don’t have to like it."

March: When it snows in March — and it always does — people are ticked. We’re tired of smelling like gas after snowblowing. We’re tired of boots. We’re tired of coming out of work in the dark and scraping the frozen crap off the windshield. And there are few sadder sights than the white ground as the plane dips through the clouds for arrival after a trip to spring training. I swear the newly obtained tan melts from your body as the wheels touch the runway.

April: We are openly hostile to snow in April. Actually, we are openly hostile to everything and everyone because of the snow. Woe to the Starbucks barista who puts too much whipped cream on your latte. We refuse to shovel, as if this act of defiance will do anything other than get your feet wet on the way to get the newspaper out of the mail box each morning. We refuse to wear the winter coat once the spring jackets have been out for more than a week. We curse at the television screen when the weather man is on. (In fairness, I curse at the anchors and some of the reporters, too, every day. But that’s just a professional thing.) We shake our fists in rage at the plow driver when he passes the house. We shake our fists at bosses. And kids. And the neighbors’ kids. We kneel damply over or now-limp daffodils that were tricked into shooting out of the ground by a teasing day of 60 degrees. We snap at the little kids who chew on my laptop cord while I'm trying to write a story while my daughter is in dance class. We fondle the new kayak we got for our birthday and wonder if would also work as a sled — then curse that we even think about such things. Usually the Tigers are already six games out of first place at this point, adding to the overall surliness of the month. We sometimes even refrain from blogging for a week because we have nothing nice to say about anyone — especially Jimmy Rollins.

So I wasn’t surprised when Major League Baseball felt the need to move three Indians games from snow-covered Cleveland to Milwaukee with its retractable roof. I’m confident it was for the safety of the players — from fans who had just one snow day too many.

In other words... Lets Go Emps!

Faith and Fear in Flushing is required reading every day, but Greg's post about the origins of the team name -- and some of the others considered -- is so awesome that it must be pointed out for all to read. A classic!

I'm glad Willie is wearing No. 42. I wish David Wright would wear it, too.

I write about an inner-city school district where about 75 percent of the students are minorities.

Every January, the district makes a big deal about Martin Luther King Jr. Day. And it should.

Yet the day seems to pass like any other in our suburban districts. And without getting all PC on everybody, it kind of burns me that the districts seem to think that only people of color can appreciate why King was important.

But mandating the districts do something to recognize the day would be a waste. It has to be sincere to have meaning.

I thought about that today when I read that Mets Manager Willie Randolph will be allowed to wear Jackie Robinson’s No. 42 on Sunday, when Major League Baseball commemorates the 60th anniversary of Robinson breaking the color barrier.

My buddy Will pointed out that it was Reds slugger Ken Griffey Jr. who came up with the idea and called Bud Selig to make the request. Bud liked the idea enough to open it to every team.

Among those jumping on board are former Met Mike Cameron, now of the Padres, and Barry Bonds. Of course, Yankee cyborg Mariano Rivera will be wearing the number, too. He’s the last player still on the field who wore No. 42 before it was retired at a Shea Stadium ceremony in 1997.

I noted that the Red Sox players should be forced to wait until August to wear the number to remind us all of how unenlightened the team was in taking forever to add a black player.

I loved Willie’s widely reported quote: "I said I’d have to fight whoever to get to wear No. 42. Anything associated with Jackie Robinson is an honor for me, and it will be a very special day to wear his No. 42."

Then it dawned on me I’d love the quote even more if it came from David Wright. Or Greg Maddux. Or Chipper Jones. Or Randy Johnson. Or Jim Thome. Or Pronk. Or Curt Schilling. Or any other star who happens to be white.

All of them benefited greatly the day Jackie Robinson bravely stepped on that field, not just the black players. Just like all of us are better off today because of the Rev. King’s life work.

And just once, I’d like to see someone recognize that.

It should be noted that the entire Dodger team is wearing No. 42 for that Sunday game against the Padres when Robinson’s legacy will be saluted. I think that’s a good idea. But I also wonder if it’s like telling the suburban school districts to conduct an assembly on King Day.

Jim McAndrew and unforeseen opportunities

As a reporter, I write a lot of stories about unfortunate folks who just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Jim McAndrew, I submit to you, is someone who can say they were in the right place at the right time, at least as far as our Mets-centric world is concerned.

The pitcher had a tidy little career, coming up to the Mets in 1968 and leaving at the end of the 1973 season, playing just 15 games for the Padres the next year before hanging them up.

His best year was 1972, when he posted 11 wins and 8 losses with a spiffy 2.80 ERA, and he finished 37-53 with a 3.60 ERA.

More importantly, he came up in time to earn a championship ring in 1969 and held on long enough to be a part of the National League champs in 1973. Had he been on the team a few years prior or a couple seasons later, well, the scene would not have been as pretty.

Why, you might ask, are we putting a nice happy face on Jim McAndrew?

Two years ago on this day we celebrated the Tom Seaver birthday. Last year was the Jackie Robinson Birthday. And today, according to the friends at Mets By The Numbers, we just don’t have a lot to choose from.

McAndrew, as I’m sure you have guessed, wore uniform No. 43.

Other Mets to wear it were Ted Schreiber (1963); Bill Wakefield (1964); Darrell Sutherland (1964-66); Dick Rusteck (1966); Joe Grzenda (1967); Paul Siebert (1977-78); Juan Berenguer (1978-80); Terry Leach (1981-82); Billy Beane (1984); John Mitchell (1986-89); Kevin Brown (1990); Dan Schatzeder (1990); Doug Simons (1991); Mark Dewey (1992); Mickey Weston (1993); Mike Remlinger (1994-95); Paul Byrd (1995-96); Toby Borland (1997); Todd Pratt (1997); John Hudek (1998), Rigo Beltran (1998-99); Pete Walker (2001-02); and Jaime Cerda (2002-03) and Shane Spencer (2004). Jason Vargas apparently has this number should be called up from New Orleans this season.

I’ve had the pleasure of writing about Weston multiple times over the years, and he is a first-rate person. And Terry Leach sure had moments of glory.

But McAndrew seems to be the best of that lot. And he will be our example for the year to look for good around us, take advantage of the opportunities the Lord has blessed us with even if they don’t seem all that exciting at the time. Remember, the Mets were still somewhat stinky when McAndrew came up in 1968.

Sometimes He sends us into places we don't expect to be, or don't want to be. We don't know what might be around the corner. And sometimes it might be wonderful -- though not always a World Series ring, as in McAndrew's case.

My goal for this year is to trust Him more, confident that He has a plan for me and that I don't get to see it in advance.

Glories of Opening Day

We celebrated the traditional Opening Day on Monday in style in the newsroom .

Folks here are still geeked about the Tigers, and the business writers prepared a feast of hot dogs, Cracker Jack, root beer, Big League Chew and other ballpark-themed snacks.

I contributed my famous chocolate chip cookies — making their second blog appearance of the day — baked while celebrating the real Opening Day the night before as our boys taught the Cards a lesson they won’t soon forget.

It was pretty exciting Monday when the Tigers were tied and Scott Kazmir drilled Derek F. Jeter, proving that deep down he’s still a Met.

Alas, after both the Tigers pen and Devil Rays backdraft bullpen gave away their games, I was the only one still bouncing around happily.

A life saved, a life remembered and lives reconnected

Aaron Heilman is either pouting that he's not a starter or hanging his head in shame for the Molina dinger.


I was sitting on AirTran flight 231 as it taxied on the runway for takeoff in Ft. Lauderdale, lamenting the lack of actual baseball news on the on-board XM Radio’s MLB Home Plate station when I noticed a commotion.

Three rows behind me, a man was shaking in his seat and a passenger was shouting "medical emergency!"

The guy sitting directly in front of me said he was a paramedic, and two women from near the front of the cabin rushed back after one of the stewardesses called for a doctor or a nurse.

As the plane turned around and headed back toward the gate, the paramedic, the women and the stewardess took the man out of his seat and laid him in the narrow aisle. A friend brought the man's son — part of a high school hockey team heading to a tournament — to the front of the plane as someone unbuttoned the man’s shirt.

I heard them say the man was not breathing, and they started using the defibullators. The machines make an eerie sound, with a audible instructions — "Do not touch the patient" — before you apply the shock.

They tried this three times before passengers sitting around the activity applauded. He was breathing again.

By this time the plane had made it back to the gate, and airport paramedics rushed down the aisle. More returned with a backboard, slid it under the man and carried him off. I thought walking down the aisle is difficult with walk-on luggage. They asked passengers down the length of the plane to tuck the man's arms in on both sides as they passed.

Apparently they laid the man back down just outside the plane doors on the jetway because the pilot stood outside his door watching, and occasionally reported the progress.

After about an hour, we backed away from the gate a second time and headed to Detroit.

It was an ominous end to the emotional roller coaster that was the Florida trip. As you know from the previous post, we lost my grandmother last week.

Florida proved to be a bittersweet reunion with family — both baseball family and the ones I’m actually related to.

I arrived Friday evening, just ahead of aunts and cousins, thanks to my brother John heading all the way down to Ft. Lauderdale to fetch me. My folks live about 40 minutes south of St. Lucie and Mom asked if Mets were in town during the weekend. I had not even thought to check. Mom always thinks about me.

In fact the Mets were playing. Saturday actually had two games. Half the team was to be in Jupiter — right near my folks — and the rest in St. Lucie. We decided to stick close to home, and Dad and I went in late morning to grab tickets. Shockingly, the sign said "Standing room only." We called ahead to St. Lucie and were told there were tickets available in the bleachers and on the new berm in right field. So we gathered up relatives and sped north, leaving Mom to intercept the steady stream of flowers and fruit baskets.

I was excited because I haven’t seen the Mets in person in years, certainly not in the Wight-Reyes era. And I had heard that the Tradition Field, as it is now called, has been revamped.

We arrived just before game time and were greeted in the parking lot by scalper named Mark who offered us seats in the grandstand for what seemed like a fair price. How open was the scalping? Mark had a business card.

Exposing the relatives to what passes as the criminal element in St. Lucie — not counting Karim Garcia and Shane Spencer at a pizza place — was not what we had intended. But hey, we were not sitting on the berm.

I didn’t know which of the team would be traveling to Jupiter, but I hoped to at least see Jose Reyes or David Wright. As the Mets took the field I grew more excited as I scanned the positions. Wright, yes! Reyes, yes! Beltran, yes! Shawn Green...Moises Alou...Jose Valentin...Paulie...they were all here — except Carlos Delgado, who we knew was in Puerto Rico with his delivering-at-any-minute wife. Chan Ho Park was standing on the hill.

That was a best-case scenario and I was very glad to not be standing in Jupiter.

Alas, while the players were there, the offense apparently was not. The team managed just one hit off the Baltimore B-squad through the seventh inning, eventually losing 2-1. But it was still glorious.

The revamped Tradition Field is a vast improvement.

In fact, it was so glorious that we made plans to return the next day. Once again, all that was available were bleachers and the berm, so we used Mark’s business card and called him. He had just two tickets left — we needed four — so he said to sit tight for a couple minutes. True to his word, he returned with seats in the top row between home and the Mets dugout. It's best not to ask questions at such times.

Again, most of the regular lineup was in the game. And again, much of the offense seemingly took the day off. Surprisingly, so did the defense. Wright and Reyes must have been told to shift into "don’t get hurt" mode, because it sure appeared that they waved at some catcheable balls.

Mike Pelfrey started and seemed OK, and the Astros were up 5-3 when I decided to take a break from scoring and hit the gift shop and snap some photos of the stadium.

I worked my way through the Island Girl Tiki Bar to the Mets bullpen where Jorge Sosa was finishing his warm-ups. Snapped some shots of him, then of Aaron Heilman hanging around.

Then I made it outside to the team store, tried on every cap and contemplated the assortment of T-shirts and pennants. Bought a Diet Pepsi and a big pretzel properly heated over charcoal and snapped some more photos from that side of the stadium — semi-lamenting that I might have missed an entire inning or possibly more.

Shockingly, Sosa was still on the mound and a 6 was tacked on to the score by the time the frame was over.

Jorge Sosa about to punch his ticket to New Orleans.

They lost both games, but I was just thrilled to see my Mets in person once again. It was just exciting to be surrounded in a sea of Mets caps and jerseys. For a change, I didn't seem like an outsider cheering for my team.

Hopefully it's the last we've seen of Sosa for a while. Apparently Willie had seen enough, Sosa moved his gear to the minor league camp the next day.

Our next day was spent saying goodbye to Grandma. It was a brilliantly sunny morning and my Dad performed a beautiful graveside service. My aunt, sister Lisa, cousin Tim and I shared memories.

I wrote mine out — a modified version of the previous post — and thought I could read it without getting too emotional. That lasted for half of the first paragraph. My Mom came and stood by my side to help. She always thinks of me.

Grandma was such a special person. While the formal eulogies were expressed at the cemetery, the informal ones continued throughout the day and into the evening over sandwiches and snacks. My sister Jen compiled a beautiful scrapbook and everybody had stories to tell. There were tears, but there was also a lot of smiles and laughter.

It's some comfort to know that Grandma rests with Grandpa and my nephew James -- and Perry Como, Grandma's favorite singer. Yes, it's really him. Hall of Famer Billy Herman rests nearby as well.

It’s sad that it takes a funeral to bring families together, but it’s true. And it was a treat to reconnect with people not seen in years.

That led to the next day's plane ride from Ft. Lauderdale. It ended in bumpy fashion, too, with the plan rocking from side to side then seeming to drop while lightning flickered out the window. Passengers applauded when we finally touched down. I’ve never, ever been so happy to see Detroit.

It’s more than a two-hour drive home from Metro Airport. I had a lot of time to think about the activity of the flight and the events in Florida.

I decided life is short and life is fragile. I stopped at both Dunkin’ Donuts and White Castle on the way home.

Let me tell you about Helen

Grandpa and Grandma Berg, sometime in the 1980s

Grandparents are important. They hold you in the hospital the day you’re born. They sit with your parents at your wedding. They never, ever miss a birthday. And they forgive everything.

Mine are all gone now. We lost Richard in 1970, his wife, Ella, in 1997, Erich in 1999 and Helen on Thursday at age 90.

Grandma had been in poor health for several years. We knew this day was not far off.

Somehow over the years, I gained the reputation as “the hugger.” I don’t remember how it started, but every time I saw Grandma, the first thing she said was: “Where’s my hug?” It was our special routine.

I decided the mental picture I carry like a wallet snapshot won’t be the way we saw her two weeks ago, when I hugged her tightly one last time.

I will think of Christmas Eve – every Christmas Eve of my childhood. The entire extended family would gather at my grandparents’ large house on West Shore Drive in Massapequa.

There was food and laughing, presents and cousins. It was loud and it was wonderful.

Grandma had a silver foil Christmas tree that came with a spotlight and a rotating lens that would make it appear in different colors. Decades later, we still teased her about it.

My grandparents moved to another large house in North Massapequa, then to a condo in Snug Harbor in Amityville. And I remember my first question was what we would do about Christmas Eve. Grandma still hosted, but it was crowded. Very crowded. And still wonderful.

Our family today is so spread out. But every other Christmas we host Julie’s side of the family. It’s crowded and noisy and I love it because it reminds me of those years at Grandma’s.

Helen was the second oldest of four daughters, mother of five, grandmother to 12.

She loved to get dressed up and go dancing with Erich and spend time with her sisters, the last of which we lost last year.

Grandma always made time to listen to me talk about the Mets, or whatever stories I was working on.

For as long as I knew her, Helen was sacrificing for other people. She cared for my great-grandmother until she died at 97. She raised my cousin – Samantha’s an attorney today -- and took care of my aunt.

We were in Florida visiting on the morning my grandfather died. I sat with Grandma on the couch holding her tight while paramedics worked in the other room. She was worried about me. That’s just the way she was.

She was worried about others again when we saw her this month, concerned my children would be startled by her appearance. We shared our hug when we arrived, and again when we left as I whispered "We love you very much" in her ear.

"Give me one more hug," she said.

Snakes in the pressbox and Hillary, too

The Associated Press reported last week that a 3-foot black snake sent reporters into a tizzy after it appeared in the press box as the Mets were enroute to beating the Indians in a spring training game at Chain of Lakes Park in Winter Haven.

I was tempted to dismiss this article at first. My experience in press boxes has been that not only would a snake not cause a stir, but he’d we welcomed and probably have his own seat and laptop.

OK, that’s a little harsh. But truth be told, I’ve been in a number of minor league and major league press boxes and the experiences largely have not been fun.

One time I was so repulsed by the behavior that I went and sat in the stands — and found them to be a much better place to enjoy the game.

My first time, in Yankee Stadium, was not reflective of future encounters. That, of course, was the oft-mentioned meeting of Richard Nixon, Dave Winfield and Matthew "Pop" Shortell, which you can read it here if you have not already heard the wild tale. It's gone downhill from there.

Unless they’ve changed with the newest round of stadium construction, press boxes are pretty much the same. There are rows bar-like connected desks, arranged steeply so the head of the writer in front of you is not obstructing your view. There’s usually a hallway along the back, and wipe board for things like the line-ups and other facts of the day.

Usually there piles of copied game notes and stats, assembled to be easily dropped into stories. I’m often envious because school reporters have to work a little harder to get information.

And, usually, not too many steps away is some kind of free food. Nothing that you’d skip dinner for, but it’s free so the sportswriters like it.

The old Tiger Stadium had one of the worst press boxes. Clearly added during one of the old yard’s many renovations, it was up at the level of the upper deck. You had to take the world’s slowest elevator then walk down a hallway added atop the roof to get to it. And the windows were closed every time I was there, so you couldn’t hear the sounds of the ballpark.

But usually it’s the people and not the facilities that make them unpleasant.

Basically there are a lot of openly surly people up there. I got a sense that the athletes don’t treat a lot of these guys all that well, and when you spend all that time in such an environment you tend to pass it on to whomever you come in contact with.

We were at a game in Baltimore’s old Memorial Stadium the year before Camden Yards opened. You need to know that there are semi-assigned seats. Some of the little desks bear the name of the news outlet, and others are just kind of claimed because the same people sit in them every game. Visiting media usually sit in the last couple rows.

So I had my seat in the last row and was enjoying my crab cakes -- seemed like the frozen kind, but they were free -- and about two innings into the game the staff ushered in a dad and his elementary school-aged son.

I think there were contest winners or something, and both were dressed in Orioles gear. The staffer scanned the box, saw a couple open seats in the first row and placed them there. Both seemed thrilled.

It wasn’t too much later when a late-arriving writer -- I didn’t catch who it was or who he worked for -- saw these two in his seat and went nuts. I don’t mean some grumbling, this guy was yelling.

The Orioles media relations guy told him to calm down and pointed him to a spot in the last row, next to me. The guy walked up and slammed -- and I mean slammed! -- his stuff down on the desk.

"Do you believe this?" he said, as if I would share in his outrage. Since he was all worked up and all, I was going to ask him if I could eat his crab cakes, but I thought better of it.

Shea was a little rough, but it was the staff instead of the other writers.

We grabbed a seat in the back for a game in 1988, and were told to move to auxiliary press box down the hall, which was fine with us. We took our seats and spread out our game notes.

Then a staff member walked over, saw us and said, "You! Out!" complete with pointing and the thumb gesture. Two other guys standing next to him came and took our places. I asked where it would be OK for us to sit, and he said something along the lines of "Not my problem."

I suppose I would have preferred, "Hey fellas, these guys usually sit there and because they’re regulars we need to take care of them first." But that wouldn’t be New York or Shea, and "You! Out!" has become one of our catch phrases.



What was she thinking?

Speaking of New Yorkers. Well, people who are kind of New Yorkers. As a political observer I’ve wondered how Hillary Clinton would fare on the campaign trail. Then I saw this quote from Newsday:

"I cannot let stand that I have ever, ever been a Mets fan: Let's set the record straight," Clinton said. "The Cubs and the Yankees — those were my teams and remained my teams growing up and now in my mature years."

Goodness, is she trying to throw the election? Why not come out and say she'll name Derek F. Jeter as her running mate?

Yankee love? Open Mets hating? That’s quite a confession. Who does she think she is, Tom Verducci? Obama’s people must be doing cartwheels.

Somewhere Gary Hart is sitting there with his Monkey Business T-shirt thinking, "I did some dumb things, but nothing that dumb."

Can you imagine the first primary debate?

Moderator: Sen. Obama, we’ll start with you. What’s your plan for Iraq?

Obama: (Pointing) She’s a Yankee fan. (Gasps in the audience)

Moderator: That’s it? You have plenty of time.

Obama: As if I needed to say anything else. Did you hear me? She roots for the Yankees.

Clinton: Ah, ah ... Yankee pride! Twenty-six world championships! Derek Jeter was robbed last year! Vast right-wing conspiracy!

Moderator: Well hell, this one’s over. That’s a wrap.

Clinton (voice trailing off): ...he dove into the stands to catch the ball...

Should be interesting to see how this plays out.

Cedeno still stinks, and continuing education in the Florida sunshine

The world's biggest Hard Rock Cafe restaurant/classic rock lecture hall.

We had an awesome time being spoiled by my parents in Florida, catching a spring training game, touring Universal Orlando and continuing my son’s formal classic rock training.

The schedule didn’t allow us to check in on the Mets, but we were able to see the Marlins and the Orioles in Jupiter – within two hours of touching down.

And that’s OK, because there’s nothing bad about watching baseball while basking in 75 degrees and brilliant cloudless skies. And it’s downright glorious considering we started the morning driving to the airport in a snowstorm.

One of the fun parts of a spring game is that you get to see veterans trying to catch on with a new club. This game was a severe test of my policy to avoid booing players not named Jeter or Chipper.

There were two very worthy targets. The Marlins were auditioning Aaron “Bleeping” Boone at first base, he of the Yankee homer heroics and killer of Red Sox dreams.

And the Orioles were trotting out Roger Cedeno, last seen getting glared at by Tom Glavine.

But first the nice things. Miguels Tejada and Cabrerra seemed to be in mid-season form already. Cabrerra fired a laser that hit the centerfield fence about a foot from the top. I don’t think the ball was ever higher than 10 feet off the ground.

The Fish were up by one late in the game, and our man Cedeno actually got a hit to drive in the tying run – only to get nailed trying to stretch it into a double. So much for that speed. That was supposed to be his greatest asset. And the O’s could have used that runner in scoring position, because they didn’t score again.

Roger Dean Stadium is shared by the Marlins and Cardinals.

Roger Dean Stadium is a nice place to see a game, and it’s shared by the Marlins and Cardinals. The gift shop even sold a Mets spring training t-shirt. Sadly, the concession stands were asking for $4 for a 20 oz bottle of Diet Coke. Who do they think they are, Starbucks?

The next day we headed to Orlando and Universal is just a fantastic place, especially if you love big coasters.

Aside from the two theme parks, the resort offers a night club, restaurant and shopping area anchored by the Hard Rock Café.

As you know from the previous post, my 14-year-old has discovered classic rock. And the world’s biggest Hard Rock is like a field trip for his study of the 1970s.

He and I made the pilgrimage one night, sitting under the rotating pink Cadillac at the bar munching on Joe Perry’s quesadillas and Tupelo Tenders and being only slightly afraid of the multi-pierced barkeep with the Mohawk.

The seat afforded us a fine view of a massive stained glass window that featured Elvis on the throne flanked by Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis. The domed ceiling was decorated in a scene resembling the painting in the U.S. Capitol, only George Washington and friends were replaced by images of assorted departed rockers.

We enjoyed a discussion about great music and destructive lifestyles, and then walked around the restaurant amazed at the collection of instruments and signed albums and photos.

The highlight for me was seeing Peter Criss’ Destroyer-era costume. And yes, people get annoyed if you stand at their table to ogle the stuff hanging on the wall above their nachos. Hey, I had to see it up close, OK?

Supposedly the bus from the Beatles’ “Magical Mystery Tour” film is there, but I didn’t see it.

Speaking of the Beatles, I get by with a little help from my blogging friends. Some of you have asked to see my son’s official classic rock iPod playlist, his introduction into his father’s past.

Here it is, but there needs some explanation. Some of the songs might not be my choice, but were requested by my son because they appear either on the PS2 game – “War Pigs,” Quiet Riot -- or the "Supernatural" DVDs. And he asked for the AC/DC.

And I succumbed to pressure and added a Floyd cut. But if I end up in the school counselor’s office defending my parenting skills, I’m bringing you with me. All of you.

Let me know if there are any glaring omissions. Remember, this is a primer for a 14-year-old. We want to introduce him, not scare or overly confuse him.

This is in alphabetical order, as he changes the order on the playlist often.

AC/DC “Back in Black”
AC/DC “Hells Bells”
AC/DC “Shoot to Thrill”
AC/DC “What Do You Do For Money Honey”
AC/DC “You Shook Me All Night Long”
Aerosmith “Sweet Emotion”
Aerosmith “Walk This Way”
Bachman Turner Overdrive “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet”
Bad Company “Bad Company”
Black Sabbath “Paranoid”
Black Sabbath “War Pigs”
Blue Oyster Cult “Cities on Flame With Rock and Roll”
Blue Oyster Cult “Don’t Fear the Reaper”
Boston “More Than a Feeling”
David Bowie “Rebel Rebel”
David Bowie “Space Oddity”
David Bowie “Suffragette City”
Cheap Trick “Surrender”
Alice Cooper “I’m Eighteen”
Alice Cooper “No More Mr. Nice Guy”
Alice Cooper “Poison”
Alice Cooper “School’s Out”
Alice Cooper “Under My Wheels”
Cream “Sunshine of Your Love”
Creedence Clearwater Revival “Fortunate Son”
Creedence Clearwater Revival “Proud Mary”
Deep Purple “Smoke on the Water”
Derek and the Dominoes “Layla”
The Doors “L.A. Woman”
The Doors “Roadhouse Blues”
Emerson Lake and Palmer “Karn Evil No. 9”
Grand Funk Railroad “Bad Time”
Grand Funk Railroad “Some Kind of Wonderful”
Grand Funk Railroad “We’re An American Band”
Norman Greenbaum “Spirit in the Sky”
Elton John “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting”
Jimi Hendrix “Fire”
Jimi Hendrix “Purple Haze”
Kansas “Carry On My Wayward Son”
Kiss “Rock and Roll All Nite”
Kiss “Strutter”
Led Zeppelin “Communication Breakdown”
Led Zeppelin “Immigrant Song”
Led Zeppelin “Rock and Roll”
Led Zeppelin “Stairway to Heaven”
Led Zeppelin “Whole Lotta Love”
Manfred Mann “Blinded By The Light”
Manfred Mann “For You”
Tom Petty “Refugee”
Pink Floyd “Wish You Were Here.”
Rolling Stones “Gimmie Shelter”
Rolling Stones “Jumping Jack Flash”
Rolling Stones “Satisfaction”
Bruce Springsteen “Born in the USA”
Queen “Bohemian Rhapsody”
Steve Miller Band “Rockin’ Me Baby”
Steve Miller Band “Threshold/Jet Airliner”
Quiet Riot “Come on Feel the Noize”
The Raspberries “Go All The Way”
Rush “Tom Sawyer”
Rush “Spirit of the Radio”
The Who “Baby O’Riley”
The Who “Won’t Get Fooled Again”
Yes “Roundabout”
ZZ Top “Tush”

In other words:

If you'd like to read about other adventures from the Florida trip, my work blog tells the turbulent tale of the Cat in the Hat. You can read it here.

Explaining the '70s to a 14-year-old.

My 14-year-old son sides with my wife when it comes to matters of artistic taste.

Books, movies, television, music…if she likes it, so does he. And stuff I like, save for a few Christian rock bands, is sometimes tolerated when not completely dismissed as “80’s crap.”

He’s had the rebellion thing working, although in a rather safe way. I’m conditioned to refrain from expressing appreciation for a new shirt or hair cut. Because saying I like something would bring swift rejection.

But one day last month I was playing Rush’s R-30 DVD – I had nearly gone an unacceptable 24 hours without listening to a Rush song – and the unthinkable happened.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“Rush. It’s a song called “Roll the Bones,” I said, waiting for the mockery.

“Pretty cool,” he responded. “Can you put it on my iPod?”

This caught me completely off guard. I wanted to jump for joy, but knew better.

“Sure, I can do that. I can make you a whole Rush playlist.”

Turns out that was a first step into a totally unexpected foray into classic rock for the freshman. I’d like to say I’m the influence, but truth is that he was getting into songs on the “Supernatural” DVDs – one of the shows my wife likes – and the neighbor’s PlayStation 2 “Guitar Heros II” game.

He requested an entire classic rock playlist, and I considered this a tremendous responsibility. I want him to develop a proper appreciation for important music, but feared that going overboard would send him running to Clay Aiken.

Well, probably not that bad. But I had this slim opportunity to be cool and didn’t want to blow it.

I figured to give him a basic primer into the glorious world of power chords. I probably have about 1,000 songs in this category on my own iPod, and I figured he’d need about 50 or so to get a good foundation.

My first idea was to eliminate any song that mentioned drugs, violence, sex or tongue-in-cheek devil worship. But that wiped out all but 38 of the 1,000 songs. So I had to relax those guidelines somewhat – but only somewhat.

Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid” and AC/DC’s “Back in Black” make the cut, “Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath” and “Highway to Hell” from those same bands are did not.

And I figured I would not be keen on answering questions like, “Why is Robert Plant is making those sounds in the middle of ‘Whole Lotta Love?’”

And I had to take into account that this was all new to him, and some of it is an acquired taste. As much as I can appreciate a 26-minute live version of “Dazed and Confused,” it might freak out a 14-year-old. Heck, I still get freaked out by “The End” from the Doors. And I decided to pass on the entire Pink Floyd catalog – for now.

I settled on what I thought were the best songs from the best groups, and music that carried special memories for me.

So he got some obvious choices. You need some accessible Zep, so he got “Rock and Roll,” “Communication Breakdown” and “Stairway.” Of course some Clapton is there, starting with “Layla.”

A little tribute to his birth city was in order, so there are a couple Grand Funk Railroad cuts.

A kid’s gotta know more about Hendrix than the Spinal Tap-esque “choaked on his own vomit” stuff, so “Purple Haze” and “All Along the Watchtower” shall suffice.

And then you’ve got the ultimate freshman anthem, Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out.”

I don’t think he was too sure about “Gimmie Shelter” – “It’s like her voice is cracking” -- until my wife proclaimed it one of the best songs ever.

And, of course, he needed some Who, a little Bowie, “Bohemian Rhapsody,” and some safe Steve Miller, Boston and Kansas.

Each song I added to his playlist brought back memories of high school successes and failures, summers at Brady Park and Jones Beach and even raking leaves in the front yard with my little red Panasonic tape player fired up to full blast. My neighbors must have been so thrilled when the last leaves were finally raked up.

Angus Young of AC/DC -- we don't look to him for logic in lyrics.

While every note was memory for me, it seems to be a mystery for my boy. We were listening to an AC/DC song in the car and he said, “I don’t get these lyrics. What is he trying to say?”

“Son,” I replied, “He’s looking for two words that rhyme. Any words. Don’t look too deeply here. Pump your fist, bang your head and don’t think too hard about it.”

Of course, assembling a playlist and him actually listening to it are two different things. I didn’t want to push. Then one day I walked past and heard Creedence Clearwater’s “Fortunate Son” bouncing off his walls.

Once in a while you get a ray of light showing you're doing something right. Maybe, just maybe, the Old Man knows some good stuff after all.

In other words...

I know you all read Faith and Fear in Flushing. But do you ever get to read about Faith and Fear? Here's a neat interview with Greg and Jason.

Remembering Clem Labine

Tip of the cap today to Clem Labine, a member of the 1962 Mets -- for a brief time. Clem had a nice career as member of the Dodgers. But more importantly, he was the first Met to wear No. 41, breaking it in for far greater glory.

Clem died today in Florida at age 80. He was the second-oldest living Met, according to my friends on the Crane Pool Forum.

I got to met him back in the late 1980s, wearing my sweet flannel Mitchell & Ness Seaver jersey... which he said was his. You can read about that here.

Mantle? Maybe. W? Never

Typical Yankee trickery!

I’ve collected baseball cards since I was a little kid, and I used to wonder about whether Topps doctored photos when a player was traded.

For instance, as I kid I wondered why Bob Miller in 1973 was wearing a Pirates uniform and a Mets cap -- only a really bad Mets cap.

Later, I learned that Topps artists painted the new caps on the photos, sometimes to disastrous effect.

The company has become much more proficient at doctoring cards in the computer age. Sometimes, like last year’s Billy Wagner card, it’s very tough to tell unless you know ballpark backgrounds and other tell-tale signs that something is amiss.

Then you have the just-released Derek F. Jeter card, No. 40 in the first series.

The card shows Jeter swinging and probably missing. Nothing strange there. But if you look more closely, it appears that Mickey Mantle is in the dugout and President George W. Bush is standing in the box seats.

Where to begin. Let’s start with Mantle. The last time I saw Mantle, he was helping my cable television bill get to its destination.

Now it’s not a shock that the Mick would still be on the Yankees’ roster.

Think about it. Carl Pavano’s on the roster. And between Pavano and Mantle, guess who appeared in more games in 2006. That’s right, it’s a tie: neither of them!

Mantle has a pretty good excuse, being dead and all. But they’re actually cutting checks to Pavano.

But if you look closely, there is proof that Mantle has been PhotoShopped into the photo.

It’s a day game; Mick’s looking all bright-eyed and holding a bat, ready to get into the game.

Anybody who’s read any baseball book knows that Mantle hit the town harder than he hit the ball. And the day after, well, Mick was more likely to be slumped in the corner of the dugout with his cap pulled over his eyes nursing a hangover and lamenting that the barkeep at the Copa allowed himself to be bullied into serving one more round for Mick, Billy and Whitey.

Then there’s the president. Assume for a moment that the Secret Service would even, for a second, allow him to set foot in the Bronx, much less in that outhouse, much less, again, to sit in the box seats among the great, very unwashed masses that are Yankee fans. Imagine the diseases, much less the terrorists.

No, if the card is to believed, Bush is standing there waving or cheering. Nonsense!

The Decider is a red-blooded American. If anything, he’d be jumping up with hand to mouth letting loose a most profound boo that only Jeter deserves, or directing the unseen Boston pitcher to boink one off of Derek’s earflap because, as we all know, it’s just the right thing to do.

Then look at Jeter. Something’s wrong. If Tom Verducci is right, St. Derek The Intangable, patron saint of hype, would have wings, and at the very least a halo. Could it be that the Topps artists air-brushed them out of the picture? Either that, or Jeter isn’t all that Verducci makes him out to be. (A friend in the always-glorious Crane Pool Forum gets credit for the halo line. Clink on the link on the side to read more from that always interesting forum.)

I bounced this all to my friend Clay Lurchasi, a Topps spokesman. He said it’s true; the card has been doctored.

“Between the final proof and the printing, someone in the art department thought it would be funny to do it. I have to admit it -- it’s pretty funny.”

OK, Clay. Just keep them away from my David Wright card.

Moses, Caro and swinging for the fences

Robert Moses, master builder and grade-saver.

I jumped at the chance to cover a lecture by historian Robert Caro at the Gerald Ford Museum on Tuesday.

There are people or songs or books that are linked with a time in your life, for both good and bad. And Caro instantly brings me back to the fall of 1984, my first semester at the University of Missouri.

It was my first, and nearly my last. I thank Caro for his unknowing assist in making sure things turned out OK.

I was transferring from Nassau Community College. The Missouri School of Journalism tossed out my credits for journalism courses, and demanded several courses as prerequisites that we were not aware of – including three semesters of a foreign language.

I would have to take summer classes at Nassau, then use my first semester at Missouri to take the rest of the prerequisites, entering the J-school in the spring, assuming I posted at least a 3.0 GPA.

No problem, I figured. I was a B or better student in subjects that did not involve math, and the math credits transferred over.

But I hadn’t taken a language class since my sophomore year of high school. And the thought of learning a new language during the summer was daunting, so I cheated a little and took Spanish, which is what I studied in high school. I was really rusty, but did muy bien.

But Spanish 3 at Missouri was another matter. The class was all conversational and the instructor was from Belize and barely spoke English. I struggled mightily.

By late-semester, panic was setting in. Nothing was helping. I was looking at a big, fat, ugly D – which was not helpful to a gaining a 3.0 GPA.

I was getting an As in two other courses. The fourth was American urban history. I love cities, but the class was tough. And weighing heavily was the knowledge that anything less than an A and there would be no 3.0 and no journalism school. And if there was no journalism school, there would be no justification for leaving my family and heading halfway across the country. It would mean returning home embarrassed and a failure.

And here’s where Caro comes in. The topic for the last quarter of the urban history class was Caro’s book “The Power Broker, Robert Moses and the Fall of New York.”

“Caro’s a journalist,” I remember the professor saying. “So he’s not dry like a lot of historians. You’ll like this book.”

Of course, anyone growing up on Long Island has heard Moses’ name, or at least seen it on signs for the causeway and park.

I remember flipping through the massive book and seeing photos of the Jones Beach bath houses, the Varrazano-Narrows Bridge and, amazingly, Shea Stadium – all things I had been to a million times.

One of the first pages was a map of all the parks on Long Island, including the Massapequa preserve, which was four blocks from my house.

Then it struck me. I had come from Long Island to the middle of the Heartland to learn about…Long Island.

I’m not self-centered enough to think the Lord cares about my academic life, but this was if he was saying, “I’ll throw you a fastball down the middle, but you still have to hit it over the fence.”

And it had to leave the yard. It was home run, or run home in shame.

Moses was a master builder, but Caro is a master storyteller. The book is fascinating, spinning the tale of how Moses for 40 years was the most powerful politician in New York despite never even holding elected office.

He was a brilliant planner, and also deeply flawed. You know why the overpasses on the Southern State Parkway are so low? Apparently so buses bringing poor people from the city could not fit under them, making it harder for lower-class folks to get to Jones Beach and other parks.

We were assigned to read only portions of the 1,246-page book, but I couldn’t put it down. I was spouting Moses facts to anyone who would listen. You know why they’re called parkways? Because Moses was in charge of parks and then he could control the roads.

And unlike, say, Carlos Beltran in NLCS Game Seven, I swung from the heels. I wrote the term paper of my life, about Moses’ impact on the growth of Long Island suburbs.

I earned an A on the paper, and it all came down to the final exam. I thought I launched one into the seats, but so did Todd Zeile in the first game of the 2000 Subway Series. He hit the top of the fence and watched it bounce back onto the field.

The envelope with the Mizzou logo in the corner arrived a couple weeks later arrived with the grades – and the acceptance letter from the Journalism School. It was one of the happiest days of my life. I wanted to go kiss the magnificent Jones Beach water tower.

I sold most of my non-journalism textbooks back to the bookstore, but I held on to The Power Broker. Once in a while I pull it off the shelf and read a chapter or two.

The book earned Caro the Pulitizer Prize, and he is now wrapping up his fourth volume on the life of Lyndon Johnson, the topic of his lecture on Tuesday. I brought my son to hear him speak. And again, Caro was fascinating, revealing incredible details.

LBJ, another amazing yet flawed person, was adamant that letters to constituents be replied to on the day they were received. Caro said few knew that Johnson had horrible problems with eczema, and he’d stay up nights signing letters with towels wrapped around his hands so blood wouldn’t get on the letters.

I knew there would be a short book-signing session after the speech, so I brought along Caro’s third Johnson volume and my battered copy of Power Broker.

I meekly slid it across the table, and the man on line behind me laughed as Caro tried to find a page to sign that didn’t have the the Mizzou bookstore price tag or wasn’t dog-eared or torn.

“It’s a very special book to me,” I told the author. “I know it’s beat-up, but it has a lot of sentimental value.”

Caro signed his name and underlined it, smiled and shook my outstretched hand.

I thought about telling him about the urban history class and the term paper and how getting into to the journalism school led to a career that has led to experiences I could never have imagined and wife who I love.

But you tell someone a story like that and they typically either back away slowly or call for security. Perhaps it’s something the master storyteller was better off not knowing.

Aaron's car and other spring training news.

If there’s anything that can at least mentally melt the snow piling up around Grand Rapids this week, it’s the phrase “pitchers and catchers reported to spring training.”

And it was so nice to see the Mets out there frolicking around Port St. Lucie that I didn’t even mind the stupid new batting practice caps they’re being forced to wear.

And what contrast between the Mets camp and the hi-jinks going on across the state in Yankee land.

We’ve had Pedro showing up, looking nice and healthy and announcing that he was rehabbing ahead of schedule.

D-Wright is living up to his do-right reputation with every quote he gives, and Mr. Cover Boy has been all over the place.

Willie was walking around flashing his World Series rings, making it clear that playing deep into October last year isn’t going to cut it this year, a message we all like to hear – especially when the management goal not to long ago was to be playing “meaningful games” in September.

Even the owners are getting into the act, with Fred Wilpon announcing a $12 million donation to the University of Michigan for some health and athletic programs.

About the only thing that comes close to spoiling the good mood was Aaron Heilman griping about his parking spot. And we’ll get to that in a minute.

In contrast, at so-called Legends Field about the best thing they can say is that Derek Freaking Jeter hasn’t become the latest to declare he’s a potential father of Anna Nicole Smith’s baby. Of course, he’d be exposed as a liar right away because even Anna Nicole had some standards. And when you rank below Gabor husbands on the acceptability scale, that's saying something.

But let’s review. Yankee icon and helmet-tosser Bernie Williams was kicked to the curb. Apparently Bernie thought his years of solid play and not embarrassing the Yanks earned him a little more than a minor league contract. I guess Bernie didn’t think spending the summer at Scranton-Wilkes Barre waiting for Johnny Damon and Hideki Matsui to get hurt was his idea of a farewell tour.

Then cyborg-closer Mariano Rivera mouthed off that Bernie was being mistreated, and oh yeah, he wants a contract extension or he’ll walk at the end of the season. I didn’t know Rivera was programmed to speak at all, much less criticize management.

Stunned that he was being out-quoted by a guy who previously never spoke, Mike Mussina started tossing verbal bombs at slacker-pitcher Carl Pavano, who has spent a lot more time on the DL than the mound since signing a big deal.

Then, not content to allow the players to do all the stupid things, George Steinbrenner’s son-in-law and designated successor Steve Swindal is facing charges of driving under the influence after allegedly weaving and driving 61 mph in a 35 mph zone.

Yankee turmoil is like shrimp sample day at Costco, you just can’t get enough.

Now, back to Mr. Heilman. Apparently Aaron was peeved because some of the biggest stars and veterans have assigned parking spaces at the Mets camp and Aaron’s ride is going to reside with the rookies and everyone else.

Aaron. Dude. What are you doing? Last time I saw you, you were looking over shoulder as a pitch to Yadier Molina was flying into the left field bullpen in the ninth inning of NLCS Game 7.

Molina, he of the .216 stick during the regular season, is the reason my Christmas list did not consist entirely of 2006 World Series merchandise.

It wasn’t quite a Kenny Rogers meltdown, but there are enough people who think your new middle name should be “Bleeping” to suggest that you should not be so cocky arriving in camp.

Aaron, you should have been the second guy in camp. I’d say first guy, but I think Wright has been there since Halloween trying to make up for his own post-season woes.

Then you should have quietly slipped in a side door, hustled out to the field, and practiced your change-up so no one with a .216 can never ever get solid wood on it again.

Then, you should have marched to the stands to sign everything for everyone whether they asked for it or not, and write “I’m sorry” under every autograph.

Park your car and pitch well, and you can be redeemed.

Using the Mick to stick it to 'em!

I get pretty excited when the Post Office puts baseball players on stamps.

Not that I’m a big stamp guy, but since you have to use them anyway, I’d rather use the ones with something cool or New York-ish, like the Statue of Liberty.

And the Post Office did a fine job a few years back when it offered a "Legends of Baseball" issue that had portraits of 20 players, only two of them Yankees — Ruth and Gehrig, probably among the least objectionable Yankees, if there is indeed such a thing. And it was easy to overlook them when they are surrounded by players like Jackie Robinson, Christy Mathewson, Roberto Clemente and former Mets coach Rogers Hornsby.

So I was pretty excited earlier this year to see that there was a new "Baseball Sluggers" issue. I know it’s unlikely that a Mets player would appear since a person has to have made their final out on Earth at least 10 years ago to be eligible. I’m in no rush to get Willie, Tom, Mex and our other heroes immortalized in that way.

But after the success of the Legends issue, I was hoping for something cool.

Alas, the first day I asked for a sheet there was great disappointment, then horror.

There were just four players repeated over and over. Three were guys we can all cheerfully honor: Roy Campanella — excellent — Mel Ott and Hank Greenberg. Then I saw player No. 4. Mantle.

Yikes! Not only a Yankee, but practically Mr. Yankee!

Just so you know, if you ask the postal clerk to remove all the Mantles from the sheet and replace them with Campanellas, not only will she deny your request but she will laugh out loud and tell the other postal clerks what you wanted her to do and say something about getting this all down for the employee newsletter.

Trust me.

So I brought the sheet home with all these moral issues.

First, I’m glad that these are the self-sticking kind of stamp because the last thing I want to do is lick the back of dead Yankee. I don’t even want to imagine what that would taste like.

But how exactly can you use a Mantle stamp? I can’t justify throwing them away now that they cost 39 cents each.

But it’s not like you can use them on certain types of mail, either. How do you send a card to your mother? It’s like saying, "Hey, hope all is going well, Mom, despite the fact that there’s the image of a booze-hound Yankee punk stuck to your envelope."

Or, "Happy birthday, nephew. Don’t consider the guy under the postmark to be any kind of role model."

And the nieces. Can you imagine how many My Little Pony sets I’d have to send to Florida to make up for the sobbing phone call, "Uncle Dave... I thought ...you loved me...why is...that scary man...on my envelope?"

I had to come up with some guidelines. Loved ones get the Campanellas, since he is a former Brooklyn Dodger, which is kind of like being a Met before there were Mets. Occasionally I can use the Ott -- a valid New Yorker -- or Greenberg, a swell guy we all like, when I use up all the Campys.

Mantles, I decided, go on the bills. And not just any bills. The kinds of bills that get you ticked off just writing the check. The ones where you can fell you can make a statement by slapping the Mick right there in the top corner.

Exxon Mobil and your $3 a gallon gas and record profits? Take a Mantle and his "I’ll outspend you without caring about the cost to everyone else" team he represents.

Comcast Cablevision? I’d like to be able to get the SciFi channel for my wife without having to pay for digital cable -- despite the fact that every other system includes it in the basic package. You get a dead Yankee!

Sports Illustrated subscription bill? Hell, the people who employ Tom Verducci would actually like getting a Mantle stamp, so they get Hank Greenberg.

Oh, and don’t tell me that Verducci isn’t preparing a column demanding that all four players in the series need to be Yankees, and shouldn’t the rules be waived so Derek Freaking Jeter can take his rightful place among the game’s most honored?

But I digress.

Phone company? Mantle!

Mortgage company? I like my house, so they get Mel Ott.

But the car insurance company? Oh yeah, baby, the Mick is headed their way.

So at the end of the day, the bills get paid, statements are expressed and I get to vent a little.

Manning's monkey, morons and management mandates

I don’t know about you, but after two weeks of Super Bowl hype, I never want to read about Peyton Manning’s monkey again. Never.

But amazingly, the only place to have worse weather on Sunday than Miami was right here in the Midwest.

We’re used to snow in Michigan.

You can expect it anytime from November through April. But last weekend we had an honest-to-goodness blizzard.

It was the real deal, with below-zero temperatures, 40 mph winds, nearly a foot of snow, whiteout conditions on the roads complete with 70-car pile-ups.

As luck would have it, it was my turn in the rotation to work the weekend shift. Yes, when other people are told to stay home, our job is to defy that order and go in to work and report on the other people defying the order along with the assorted nasty things that happen in such conditions.

But I saw a pair of things that convinced me that the greatest hazard isn’t the snow, the ice, the temperature or even the wind.

No, the greatest threat to public safety is certain members of the public itself. Yup, morons behind the wheel.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m sure these people are morons every day of the year. They’re just easier to spot in the snow.

I was driving into work Saturday, taking side roads because it already was apparent that the Interstates were doomed.

It was slick and nasty and the roads had not yet been plowed well.

And blowing past me in the other direction was a car where the driver apparently had the time to wipe the snow off his windshield, but nothing else. There must have been eight inches of snow on his hood, and I have no idea how he possibly could have seen over it.

So I was getting all worked up, feeling guilty that I hoped this guy would plow right off the road and into the BP station on the corner that always seems to charge a nickel a gallon more than any other station. At least the explosion would warm things up and I would have a decent story to write.

Except I had barely thought up that scenario when I saw a second car speed past. The only spot cleared off on this guy’s car was the driver’s side of the windshield. That’s it. Side windows, back window and the other half of the windshield, all covered in snow.

I almost made a u-turn and followed the guy for a while, because you have to figure it was only a matter of time before something bad happened.

My real job

Usually I cover schools here in Grand Rapids. We’re slowly entering the Internet age, and the folks at The Press have allowed me to blog about education on the paper’s Website.

If you are interested, you can find it here: Head of the Class.

It’s been hinted that perhaps my blind devotion to all things Mets be confined to this space, and that Head of the Class be limited to discussions about education.

Hmmm. Education as in the “three R’s.” And those would be reading, ‘riting and …. Ranting. Yeah, ranting about the Derek Freaking Jeter and his Yankee-hack-loving intangibles and Jose Reyes not getting the respect he deserves and Willie Randolph getting denied his Manager of the Year Award for an ex-Yankee flunkie who finished with a losing record and was promptly fired couldn’t get another job.

Maybe we’re better off sticking to school programs after all, like No Carlos Left Behind.

Saving wrenches

Just returned from chaperoning my church’s high school youth group’s ski trip, and learned some valuable lessons.

I realize that people in Vermont and Colorado would openly mock what passes for mountains here in the Lower Peninsula. What we think of as a wild slope would be considered a kiddie sledding hill in those parts.

And to be fair, some of the ski peaks in the southern regions of the state are actually new uses for former landfills. So trees aren’t a problem.

But we went to a place called Caberfae Peaks, near Cadillac, Mich. about two hours north of Grand Rapids and the hills in that part of the state are tall enough to make things fun.

I love to ski, but don’t get to do it very often. And as a chaperone, you have to go kind of slow to keep your eyes on the kids in the group, making sure everyone is happy and healthy.

Alas, there were some additional challenges that proved even more difficult than getting 22 high-schoolers up for a 7:30 a.m. breakfast call.

Boarders: About half the people on the slopes were snowboarders, and I didn’t quite see the appeal to what they were doing. Watching them hop around with both of their feet locked into place reminded me of those little plastic soldiers I had as a kid, all of them with little bases molded around their feet so they could stand.

Also, they seemed to spend much of the day clasping and unclasping their boots so they could walk around. The rest of the time they seemed to spend on their butts, either because they kept falling or they were sitting in groups, usually smack dab in the middle of a run creating an obstacle for the novice skiers in my group who had not become proficient at turning or otherwise avoiding anything in their path.

Ski lifts: We had two issues. Like I said, it’s been years since we’ve been on the slopes and getting on the lift for the first time in the day was a little tricky. OK, it was disastrous. They had to stop the lift to get us untangled, which prompted everyone else to groan and look.

Later in the morning, it was someone else’s tangling that stopped the lift two chairs after my son and I had been seated — except this time, the staff couldn’t get it restarted. This brought a hurried group of people on snowmobiles with tools. The people in the chair behind us were about 6 feet above the ground and jumped off. We weren’t so lucky, dangling there for about 15 minutes contemplating if dropping the 12 feet or so to the ground would cause serious injury.

Grown-ups in the hot tub: We were staying in what the lodge called "dormitory space," but was basically a big room divided by a sliding wall filled with old furniture and old skis nailed to the walls. We had access to a lavatory, but not showers. Which meant the heated outdoor pool and hot tub became more important.

It was pretty freaky — but kind of cool — to be sitting in a outdoor pool in Michigan in January while it was snowing. The second biggest difficulty was the sprint from the pool to the front door of the lodge, especially after discovering that our once warm and dry towels were covered in snow.

But the biggest problem turned out to be adults -- at least after the kids stopped challenging each other to jump out of the pool and make snow angels.

The kids in my group were all soaking in the tub when some people came over, popped in and a woman started smoking. Who smokes in a hot tub? Yeech. And because of the steam rising off of the bubbling water, she couldn’t see our icy stares. And it soon became a mixture of steam and second-hand smoke. Just plain gross!

Confusing lyrics: Our plan was to spend Saturday skiing, then visit a little Lutheran church in Tunstin, Mich. along the way home on Sunday to worship. Apparently our group had done this in previous years and the congregation enjoys hosting us, and likes us to sing for them.

So one of our leaders brought a guitar, and we practiced "Amazing Grace" on Saturday night. After a couple runs through the song, one of my guys raised his hand and said "We should say ‘screwdriver’ next time."

We mentors apparently looked confused.

"It could be any tool. You know, instead of ‘wrenches.’"

"Ah Jason, the word is ‘wretches,’ it means something different. The line is ‘... saved a wretch like me.’"

"Oh."

We all had a good laugh and a vocabulary lesson, too. We also discussed that the hymn was authored by John Newton, captain of a slave-trading ship who converted after surviving a violent storm at sea in 1748.

The next morning our hosts asked us to stand in front of the church — not what we were expecting — to lead them in song, and there were more than a few smiles when we sang that line.