As baseball season starts up in earnest, I can't help but think about my own history as a fan of the sport.

When I was growing up, my younger brother Josh was the real instigator when it came to baseball. I suppose that left to my own devices, I could have just ignored baseball for the most part; I was more into comic books and Star Trek.

But Josh fell in love with baseball at an early age, and due to his urgings, my family began following our beloved team: the Yankees.

You read that right. In the beginning, despite living in Queens, the Burstein clan were Yankees fans as well as Mets fans.

There were legitimate reasons for this. We grew up in the 1970s, and in 1977 the Yankees had one of the major success stories of their career. That was the year of Billy Martin and Reggie Jackson, and the year of the World Series. I vividly remember the whole family shlepping to the Bronx to see a game or two; I remember how much we cheered for Thurmon Munson and how tragic it was when he died; and I remember how we idolized Reggie, and his eponymous candy bar.

However, by the time the 1980s rolled around, we had started to mostly follow the major league team in Flushing. I think it was the return of Tom Seaver to the Mets for the 1983 season that caught our imagination, although I do recall that Josh was also a big fan of Danny Heep. Josh started following the Mets regularly, and the rest of us followed suit.

Josh was eager to attend games at Shea Stadium, and so my parents took a step that still boggles my mind today. They bought season tickets to Mets games. Now, we didn't buy tickets for the whole family, nor did we buy tickets for every single home game in the season. Rather, we bought a package of tickets for all Saturday games, and we only bought two seats for those games. The theory was that Josh would get to go to each game, and someone else in the family would take him. Most of the time either Mom or Dad would take Josh to Shea, but occasionally Jon or I would do so.

And to my mind, Shea was the most beautiful stadium in the world. It was big, and blue, and always (believe it or not) very clean. The fans felt united in our love of the team, something I felt whenever the announcer spoke or when they played "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" during the seventh-inning stretch. Our seats were a bit far up, so the field looked somewhat far away, but the view from our seats (along the first base line) was unobstructed. When I sat with Josh at a game, I would take in the expansive, deep blue sky, breathe in fresh parkland air, and root, root, root for our home team. And if they didn't win, it was a shame.

Now, baseball fans are aware that we all have our own little superstitions and idiosincrasies. And it did not escape my notice that every time I attended a Mets game at Shea, the Mets would lose. Rationally, I knew that my presence in the stadium had no effect whatsoever, but in the back of my mind, I felt like a jinx.

So when 1986 rolled around, and the Mets ended up in the World Series, and my family acquired tickets to games one and seven, I was torn about whether or not I should accompany Josh to the games.

For about one second. World Series? I'm there, baby!

Josh was amused when I "offered" to take him to the World Series games, but the fact was that both Dad and Mom didn't care that much about attending in person, and neither did Jon. (Mom's only concern was that we would be safe among the crowds, and I promised her that I would look after Josh.) Josh and I attended game one on Saturday, October 18, and I recall how raucous and boisterous the other fans were. There was something magical in the air – at least, until the Mets lost to the Red Sox 1-0.

We watched the rest of the games on television with trepidation. On the one hand, we wanted the Mets to win the World Series, and as quickly as possible. On the other hand, we had tickets to game seven, and if the Mets won too soon, we wouldn't be able to attend game seven as it would not be played. So we watched, as the Mets lost game two, then won game three and four, then lost game five...

I won't reiterate the details of game six here, except to note how quickly we went from depression to elation. Game seven was delayed by rain and held on the evening of Monday, October 27, and Josh and I went. I remember how disappointed we felt when the Sox took an early lead in the second inning; how delighted we felt when the Mets scored three runs each in the sixth and seventh innings; how nervous we felt when the Sox scored two more runs in the eighth; how pleased we felt when the Mets scored two more in the bottom of that same inning; and how the stadium erupted in joyful cheers when the game ended with a Mets win. The Mets were champions again, for the first time within our lifetime, and we dearly hope to see them win a World Series again at some point soon. (Please.)

The last time I was in Shea was to see the Mets in one of the 1988 playoff games. I don't remember which game it was I saw, or even who I was with. All I remember is that they lost that game, and went on to lose the pennant.

And now, I'll probably never return to Shea again. For this season is the last one that will be played at Shea, as in 2009 the Mets will take up residence in Citi Field, just next door. And of all the news sites to praise Shea Stadium and William A. Shea, oddly enough, it's the Post-Tribune of Northwest Indiana with the best tribute. Check out the article "Mets shouldn't forget Shea when new stadium opens" by Bob Estelle, and learn about how Bill Shea worked to replace the Dodgers and Giants. If it weren't for Bill Shea, I wouldn't have the fond memories of the Mets – and of Shea Stadium – that I have today.

Thanks, Bill.

Tags: baseball, history, mets, mom, nyc, personal

[The following is a personal anecdote about our past weekend trip to New York City. Just so you know what you're getting into before you start reading. The short version includes seeing friends, spending shabbat in Queens, and celebrating the recent wedding of my brother Danny and his wife Barbara. But the long version includes some pictures, so click on the link and enjoy.]

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I'd like to end this post with a philosophical note. This is the first time we've been back to New York City since my brothers and I sold Mom's house, and it felt odd. Nomi and I want to continue taking vacations to New York City to see friends, but we're going to have to start relying on some of those friends to host us on those vacations. I feel blessed by knowing that whenever I've mentioned this concern, we've been flooded with offers. Thank you all.

[For gnomi's take on the weekend, click here.]

Tags: jewish, mom, nyc, personal

Here in Bursteinville, gnomi and I are anticipating a busy weekend, starting tomorrow.

Folks may recall that last month, my half-brother Danny got married to Barbara Heller in Michigan. This Sunday is when they're having a second celebration, and so Nomi and I are heading down to New York City for the weekend. We decided to get to the city in time for lunch tomorrow so we could meet up with one of my high school friends, a gentleman we don't see as often as we'd like.

I know there's a lot going on in the area this weekend, and I know there's always a lot of people to see, so if we miss you this time, maybe we'll catch you next time. For this trip, we're taking advantage of the gracious hospitality of sdelmonte and batyatoon for shabbat, so we're pretty much spending the weekend with them in Queens. Shabbat afternoon, we'll also be getting together with chaos_wrangler and G.

Early Sunday afternoon, Nomi and I will take a cab to the Heller-Burstein celebration, which is at a deli in the northernmost parts of Riverdale. Here's where things get personal in a way I had not expected.

I had decided to call for a cab from Boulevard Taxi, a company that Mom used to use for her daily commute to work. All the folks at Boulevard, the drivers and dispatchers alike, got to know my mom as that nice lady judge in Forest Hills.

Since we needed to know how much the cab would cost, Nomi suggested I call Boulevard last night to find out the price of a ride from the middle of Queens to Riverdale in the Bronx. So when I called last night, and explained I was calling from Boston and why, I made sure to mention my mom. I told the dispatcher that my mom was the judge who they used to pick up in Forest Hills.

"You mean Judge Burstein?" the dispatcher asked.

I was flabbergasted. "Yes."

It turns out they still remember her very fondly, and the dispatcher was delighted to hear me tell him how much Mom had always praised their company's service. On Sunday, he said he's going to take personal charge of making sure I get the cab I need.

Tags: mom, nyc, personal

You know what interests me about today's news? It's that should Eliot Spitzer resign, the next governor of New York would simultaneously be both the first African-American and first blind governor the state has had.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Paterson

(Also see http://patersonfornewyork.com/ and http://www.ny.gov/governor/index-ltgov.html)

Tags: history, nyc, politics, world-news

Thirty years ago today...

On Monday, February 6, 1978, a blizzard covered the northeastern United States. causing snow to fall for about 36 hours straight.

One of the major problems with the Blizzard of 1978 was that it was not widely forecasted. In areas where the storm had been well reported in advance, some people chose to ignore the reports, since New England meteorologists were notoriously inaccurate with many of their reports regarding snow storms. Because of this, people did not have enough time or will to prepare properly for the blizzard.

Many people were stranded in their cars along roads and highways throughout the New England region. Several people perished on Route 128 as snow piled high enough to prevent the exhaust from escaping from their running, idle vehicles. Over 3,500 cars were found abandoned and buried in the middle of roads during the clean-up effort. This figure does not include the countless other vehicles buried in driveways, on the sides of streets, and in parking lots.

While many people had been caught in the storm while driving, most others were trapped in their homes or offices with snow drifts of up to 15 feet in some places blocking the exits.

There was also the issue of flooding along coastal areas. The fierce winds from the storm combined with the precipitation forced the water up over the land along the Atlantic, Long Island Sound, Cape Cod Bay, and other bodies of water.

Personal note: At the time, I was a kid. The Blizzard hit New York City with as much snow as New England, but I don't recall it being a problem. What I recall was how delighted my brothers and I were to have so much snow to play in. We built huge snow forts and threw lots of snowballs. I think school was cancelled for the whole week. Yay!

What do you remember about the Blizzard?

(For more information, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeastern_United_States_blizzard_of_1978)

Tags: boston, history, nyc, personal

For those of you as interested in history, or New York City, or New York City history, or trains, as I am...

Tonight PBS's American Experience is showing "Grand Central," about the history of Grand Central Terminal in New York City. Grand Central Terminal opened on February 12, 1913, eleven years after the January 8, 1902 accident in Grand Central Depot that killed fifteen people. The show's website, Grand Central | American Experience | PBS, will eventually provide the entire episode for your viewing pleasure, as well as a program transcript. For the moment, however, it's still worth visiting for the old photos and newspaper reports. And they've got a teacher's guide!

Tags: history, nyc, television

Yesterday I got the CD of music from the movie Juno. I've already praised the movie, and part of what made the movie the best one of 2007 was the soundtrack. The songs fit the mood of the movie's scenes perfectly, and apparently part of the reason was because Ellen Page, the film's star, decided that her character would most logically listen to the music of the Moldy Peaches, a band that includes singer Kimya Dawson, who performs many of the songs on the album.

I'd never heard of Dawson before, probably because I'm not too up on indie rock or the anti-folk movement. But I can understand why her songs are appealing to me. I'm probably not the best person to try to describe her music, but what the hey. Her lyrics are somewhat surreal, her style is acoustic, and her voice is real. There's an idiosyncratic feel to what she's doing, and as I listen to her songs I feel like I'm enjoying an orthogonal view of the world around me. I think it's because the music is filled with bouncing rhythms and catchy tunes, while the lyrics range from simple, sweet observations of life to the mocking of those very same observations.

Okay, that didn't make any sense. But the music is still cool. And if you're in Boston, there's a great opportunity coming up.

I looked up Dawson on the Internet and found, much to my surprise, that she'll be performing locally next Thursday night, January 17, at Newbury Comics. So if there's anyone else out there who was as enchanted by her music as I was, let me know. Maybe we can get a small group together.

(For my friends in NYC: she's in Brooklyn next Tuesday.)

Tags: boston, movies, music, nyc

Next Tuesday, of course, is Christmas. If you're celebrating Christmas, may you have a merry one, full of happiness.

It's also Isaac Newton's birthday, something I always like to commemorate given my background in Physics.

And earlier in the month of December, I celebrated the festival of Chanukah. Let's take each of these in turn.

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So that's it. To all my Christian friends, as I said before, may you have a merry and joyous Christmas. To all my Jewish friends, I hope you had a happy Chanukah. To all my friends who celebrate some other holiday of the season, may it be for good. And for those of my friends who celebrate no holiday at all, may you enjoy a good start to the Gregorian New Year of 2008.

Tags: history, jewish, nyc, personal, science

Is it just me, or does Thanksgiving weekend seem to go by quickly for other people as well?

Our weekend was filled with dentists, turkey, family, home electronics, errands, television, reading, and sleep. Let's take a look.

( Wednesday )

( Thursday )

( Friday )

( Saturday and Sunday )

And that was our Thanksgiving weekend. I'm very thankful for it.

Tags: brookline, mom, nyc, personal

Normally, I don't sit down on Thanksgiving and come up with a list of reasons to be thankful. It's not that I don't feel gratitude for the benefits I enjoy on a daily basis. It's just that sometimes those benefits seem so trivial to me sometimes, and I feel that expressing gratitude for them would border on gloating.

One friend of mine who posts on LiveJournal ends every single one of her posts with a statement of something she is grateful for. While I admire her dedication, I know it's not something that I could ever do personally. And I do wonder if my expressions of gratitude might come off as self-indulgent.

However, this year is different. It can be hard to express gratitude to the universe in the year of a parent's death, especially when it's the second parent one is mourning. I've been reading a lot about what it is like for people to enter this stage of their life, and I've come to believe that it really is unprecedented, something that can't be completely understood by anyone who hasn't yet experienced it themselves.

So this year, with the loss of my mother still fresh in my mind, and the loss of my father still as poignant as ever, I've decided to note a tiny handful of the reasons why I am grateful to my parents.

I am grateful to Dad for my love of and interest in science fiction. Although by the time I knew him Dad's fiction reading was mostly devoted to paperback mysteries, he had been an enthusiastic science fiction reader in his earlier years. Dad encouraged me to read the short fiction magazines, and he would never turn down a request on my part for a book. It was at Dad's insistence that the family shlepped to an Isaac Asimov appearance at the Books of Wonder bookstore on Sunday, November 4, 1979; I still recall that event vividly, and I sometimes marvel at how much that shaped my life. My only regret is that Dad died before he could see how involved I would become in the world of science fiction.

I am grateful to Mom for never throwing out my comic books. This may sound silly, but over the years I've met many people whose mothers threw out some of the valued childhood possessions. I was lucky in a sense, because my father's mother had thrown out his comic books and my father always regretted that. So armed with that knowledge, my mother never threw out a single one of my comics, and today I still own every comic I ever bought all the back to age five. (Well, except for the ones I chose to weed out of my collection myself.) Mom was never into science fiction or comic books herself (except for Wonder Woman, she once told me), but she once called DC Comics for me and got a young artist named Al Milgrom to give our family a personal tour of their offices. I was in heaven.

I am grateful to Dad for my love of the news and newspapers. I grew up in a home that got four newspapers a day, and each paper presented the news with its own slant and ran editorials that sometimes opposed each other radically. The newspaper business may be changing, but I will continue to believe the importance of receiving my news from many sources.

I am grateful to Mom for taking the family to musicals and shows on Broadway. When she had been growing up in New York, her family had gone to many of the classic original performances of well-known actors and actresses. Thanks to Mom, we got to attend revivals of many of these shows. I saw Richard Burton in Camelot, Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady, Herschel Bernardi in Fiddler on the Roof, Yul Brynner in The King and I, Mike Burstyn in The Rothschilds, and many others. After we saw Brigadoon, Mom took us to meet Lee Sullivan, who lived in a house across the street from ours, and who had played the original Charlie on Broadway. He signed our copy of the vinyl album jacket, and I still have that record.

I am grateful to Dad for instilling a love of justice, and of Judaism.

I am grateful to Mom for the laughter she brought to our world.

Finally, I am grateful to all my ancestors, Bursteins and Cohens and Bakers and Cohns and Sokolovskys who made the decision to come to this country, so I could lead a life that they could barely have imagined. In general, I enjoy my life a lot, and I am grateful for all the myriad steps that led to this point.

Tags: books, comics, jewish, mom, nyc, personal, science-fiction