Sports in New York
January 3, 2010
Richard J. Garfunkel
Yesterday was a surprising day for sports fans in New York. I had the pleasure of going to Madison Square Garden as the guest of my old buddy Alan Rosenberg. We met in the YMHA in Mount Vernon back in the late 1950’s. It was there that we played our own version of the Mount Vernon City Ping-Pong Championship. Alan, a successful CPA in New York, has one of the most remarkable sport’s memorabilia collections on this planet, and as friends for 50 years, we have never had a “discouraging” word between us!
It was a bitterly cold early evening, but we both had the pleasure and convenience of being driven right up to the Garden and we hustled in before the long sharp tongue of Jack Frost chilled our aging bones. Meanwhile the seats were great, and the usually toothless Knicks won 132-89, their greatest margin of victory in their history. I am old Boston Celtic fan, dating back to the pre-Bill Russell days, and other than a short period in the early 1950’s and 1970’s and the part of the Pat Ewing Era of the mid 1990’s the Celts dominated the Knicks. I was actually impressed by a few of the Knicks and sort of glad they won. Even though the Pacers were obviously tired and missing a few of their better players, the Knicks played quite well.
During halftime, Alan took me over to where Cal Ramsey, the record-setting and venerable star of the NYU Violets from the middle 1960’s usually sits. Cal had been on The Advocates this past March 11, and one can listen to the interview at http://advocates-wvox.com. It was a pleasure to say hello once again. Cal never misses a Knick home game, and has been a part of their family for decades.
Across the Hudson River, the snake-bit Jets had a remarkable victory over the Division-winning Cincinnati Bengals 37-0. It was a well-earned triumph for a team that has lost an uncountable amount of big games since Joe Namath predicted and authored their Super Bowl III victory 40 years ago. In a strange, up and down, season, the Jets actually earned their playoff spot after last week’s gift from the Indianapolis Colts, who mailed in their second half effort. That strange and unusual “beau geste” left the door open for the desperate Jets. As for the Giants, after an almost unprecedented 5-0 start, they collapsed by winning only 3 games in the last 11. It is hard to believe that the Giants, who were known historically for defense, were obliterated in the last two games. This season, they gave up the second most amount of points in their long history. Of course they are now playing more games per year now than they did in their first 50 years in business. I haven’t been a Giant fan since they fired Allie Sherman and the emergence of Joe Namath. I had been a Giant fan from my earliest days, and I had the unique pleasure of seeing them play at the Polo grounds against the pre-Johnny Unitas, Baltimore Colts. The Polo Grounds has long been demolished, the Baltimore Colts (whose franchise actually could be traced to the NFL’s Dayton Triangles in 1913) are now in Indianapolis after being spirited out of town in the middle of the night in 1984, and the legendary Johnny Unitas passed away at the age of 69 in 2002. It was therefore, an unusual and a unique start to the new decade. I am sure there will be more surprises to come!
RJ Garfunkel