Sunday, September 30, 2007
My Dinner With Salman
Posted by Bruce Barry on Sun, Sep 30, 2007 at 5:13 PM
For those of us cursed with an addiction to the NY Mets it's been a tough week of anguish and recriminations as the Amazins consummated one of baseball history's most stunning late-season collapses. "For sheer collective failure," wrote George Vecsey of The New York Times on Sunday, "the Mets seemed to be making their own history." Watching this train wreck from afar was hard enough...and then Salman Rushdie came to town. Rushdie spoke at Vanderbilt Friday evening in the first installment of the 2007-08 Chancellor's Lecture Series, and for more than an hour he treated a packed house to an engaging and witty verbal excursion through the relevance and import of literary life in the 21st century (with the occasional Dan Brown-trashing digression thrown in for good measure). I was fortunate to be in the small group invited to break bread with Rushdie after his talk, and until about midway through the main course it was light and polite academic dinner table gab touching on bland and noncontroversial issues—religion, politics, literature, that sort of thing.
Then the conversation meandered in a far more provocative direction, when after being asked how he likes living in New York City, Rushdie let it slip that he's become an ardent Yankee fan. I challenged him: surely a newcomer to the politics of Big Apple baseball, one known worldwide for speaking truth to tyrannical power, would easily prefer the underdogs in Queens to the totalitarians (indeed, the "bombers") in the Bronx. "I like the overdog," Rushdie replied with an impish grin.
Having discovered that he was sitting across the table from not one but two lifelong Mets fans (the other a faculty colleague who had spent formative years in New Jersey), Rushdie went into crosstown taunt mode. He pulled out his Treo and fired up its browser, throwing us a mischievous look as he oh-so-diplomatically proposed that we "have a look at how those Mets are doing tonight, shall we?" Trailing Florida 7-4 in the seventh, Rushdie informed us with glee only marginally in check. "And shall we check in to see how those Phillies are doing? Ah, the city of brotherly love." Phils winning handily. The Yankees, he assured us, were above the fray, safely ensconsed in the playoffs, and what pity he took on those who choose to suffer with the Mets year after year rather than jump on board with those pinstriped winners who play in such a nicer ballpark up on the Bronx. Ever the gentleman and scholar, Rushdie thoughtfully left his Treo on the table at the ready so that he could update us on the tragic doings at Shea periodically through the rest of the meal.
"What a poor misguided literary genius," I thought after saying our goodnights and heading home. The Mets will return from the dead over the weekend, and Rushdie will get what he deserves when the Yankees make their usual early playoff exit. And the new novel he just finished writing will flop, and he will come to realize the error of his ways. Fatwa chance. The Mets, after a tantalizing Saturday rebound, wrote the epitaph for their imploded season in a satanic verse of a first inning on Sunday afternoon. The overdogs win again.
Comments (23)
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As Sal might have said, Karma, baby. I've been waiting for the Mets to endure an historical collapse ever since 1969, when the demise of my Cubs traumatized me at age 12.
Rushdie, a Yanks fan? So is he going to start rooting for the British Empire next?
My team's been out of it for a long time, but I love playoff baseball. Looking forward to:
-Another collapse by the Flubs.
-A-Rod batting under .200 in the division series.
-Seeing Ryan Howard/J-Roll/Shane Victorino/Jamie Moyer(!) in the postseason.
Not looking forward to:
-All the Steve Bartman reruns.
-Tim McCarver's bad dye-job and Joe Buck's smug face.
-Ever seeing another of those goddam Dane Cook commercials.
I've been taunting my best friend, a Yankees fan, all season. I didn't even bother to mention baseball during the middle of the summer, sure that the Mets were safely into the playoffs, though as the yanks did well, he would occasionally mention it. When our last convo inched towards baseball, we both nervously changed the subject.
You outta try living and working in the NYC metro area for as long as I did. I hate the Yankees more for their fans than the team.
Highlight of my working career: Starting a new job in an office walking distance to City Hall in October 1986. Never attended any of the Yanks parades to be sure.
Are you taking the Halos all the way, Randy? The Angels do have pitching depth; Lackey, Escobar and Weaver I'd put up against any of the AL teams' rotations. Cleveland gets a little thin after Sabatthia and Carmona (though Byrd, Westbrook and Lee all have their moments), but they've been deadly, and once you're down 0-2 to the Tribe, does it matter who you're throwing in Game 3?
Having suffered through the subway series while living in NYC, I felt like I had built up enough calluses that, however badly the Mets fucked up, I would be able to take it. Then I woke up this morning and remembered what happened yesterday.
I'd rather go back to the days when we would battle it out with the Cubs for 5th in the old NL East than put up with this again.
Being a Cleveburg boy, I've got to go with the Indians. (Hey, I didn't pick the team name.) And anyone who knows the laws of sports prediction can tell you that the educated sportswriter (Randy) loses to the barely knowledgable fairweather fan (me) nine out of 10 times. Sorry Randy, that's just how it goes.
As I said above, I like Cleveland's chances. The one thing they've got going against them, though, is that they have an ex-Cub in a prominent role (Joe Borowski, closer). And everyone knows the Ex-Cub Factor is the single most foolproof method of predicting who will lose the World Series. But that's getting ahead of ourselves a bit.
Jack:
You're right. That's exactly how it goes. Predictions just give people something to chew over.
I've written before, though it might have been a few years back, about an experiment the sports department of the Dallas Morning News performed. To their weekly football predictions grid, which involved all of their football writers, they added a gorilla at the Dallas Zoo. For each game, they would show the gorilla two slips of paper, one with the name of each team. Whichever slip she picked was her prediction. By the end of the year, she was doing better than at least half of the sports dept. I noticed they dropped the gorillla after that season.
Randy, are you calling me a gorilla?!! Why, I oughta.... I fancy myself more the orangutan type.
Actually, sad as it is to admit, I'm most concerned about this first round against Salman's pinstripe brigade. Unfortunately, the Wankees always give the Tribe fits.
Jack, I thought you were more of a bonobo, myself.
Anyway, just for fun, some predictions to chew over:
Carmines over Halos in 4
Tribe over Bombers in 5
Phils over Friars/Rox in 3
Snakes over Cubbies in 4
I believe the Yankees have beaten the Tribe in all 6 meetings this year.
Which is probably as good a reason as any to think Cleveland will win that series.
Personally, I'm operating on the "You've got Boston's cooties" theory when it comes to the Yanks. Since 1918, the Red Sox have been the team that could take their fans to the brink of a title, only to find spectacular ways to collapse. When they got down 3-0 to the Yankees and then came back to win that series, and then the Series, I believe a mystical transferral took place by which the Yankees have acquired the Curse of the Bambino. Maybe it was because they got rid of the Bambino's reincarnation, David Wells. At any rate, I say the Curse lives. At least till they win another World Series.
I like your "cooties" theory, Randy. Especially the "mystical transferral" part, though I like to think A-Rod is somehow to blame.
If I'm not mistaken, the Yanks never faced C.C. Sabbathia during the regular season, and could face him twice in a short series.
Randy and Steve, keep talking...that way, I can memorize all this info and, while I'm watching the postseason with friends, seem like I've been a diehard Indians fan all year—not the fairweather fan I really am.
Dang, I just broadcast this on a public forum available around the world! D'oh!
