The Futility Infielder

Reason #264 on "Why I Love New York City" is the way it can bring you full circle at any given moment. This entire week has been one of those times.

The Venn diagram of New York City-based Mekons fans who've been published at Baseball Prospectus is a small one, which is why I found myself emailing Neil deMause last fall after we found ourselves bitching to each other and a few other writer friends about the Yankees' dreadful collapse in the ALCS. A short time after that, with the bleakness of the season's end having been trumped by the even worse travesty of the Presidential election, Neil and I met for dinner, talked baseball and music, and promised that we'd catch a show sometime. When he offered me his extra ticket to last Sunday's Neko Case and the Sadies show at Bowery Ballroom, I was on it like white on rice.

I met up with Neil at 9 PM, and no sooner had we worked our way inside and ventured into the coatcheck line than I head somebody calling my name. I didn't recognize the source at first, in part because I was trying to track Neil as he wandered off, but the bespectacled redhead, behind his unfamiliar beard, revealed himself to me as Mike, my downstairs neighbor and friend from the tail end of my time living in Providence, Rhode Island.

Ten years ago today, Mike and his friend Keith helped me load my belongings into a U-Haul and waved goodbye as I left town. I'd spent about six years in Providence, four of them in college and two more as a working stiff, long after most of my classmates had moved on. When I outgrew my job as the production manager of a show horse magazine, it was time to go, and Mike gracefully helped usher me out of town.

My destination was New York City. Manhattan. The East Village. Seventh Street. I had never in my wildest dreams considered moving there until my car was stolen for the second time inside of a year. But I could no longer take the ordeal of protecting my vehicle, keeping up with its maddening quirks that needed repair, or finding parking for it when I would go to visit my then-girlfriend in Boston; I needed a place where I could get by without one. I had never considered living in New York until about three months before I moved. Several of my school pals had migrated to the city. They had all figured out how to make a buck down here without getting shot, and within a few visits, they had me convinced I could, too.

Some four hours after leaving Providence, I reached the Triboro Bridge and screwed up a lane change so badly that I ended up having to re-cross the bridge and pay the toll a second time. This rube was out six bucks before he even hit town. Finally taking the correct exit, I got off on 125th Street, found Second Avenue, and carefully drove 111 blocks south, stoplight by stoplight, my thumbs pounding on the U-Haul's steering wheel to the music on the boombox, as I rode the brake all the way down Second. I entered the city listening to Exile on Main Street because there's no easier way, in my mind, to make 67 minutes fly by -- especially under the duress of driving an unfamiliar vehicle with all of my worldly possessions within -- than with that Stones album.

I treated the friends who helped me unpack the truck to dinner that night at El Sombrero, a Ludlow Street restaurant with the greasiest hot-plate Mexican food you could possibly hope to find. I lost count of how many pitchers of frozen margaritas I paid for, went home and carved out a space to lay my futon, and fell into a deep, tequila-aided slumber.

Somewhat bewildered, I awoke the next morning to see the boxes and furniture strewn randomly around my room. Seven stories up, from where I lay I could see the Empire State Building and the Chrysler standing tall against the blue Manhattan sky. I've never forgotten that view or the excitement I felt that morning, and I've never looked back.

When I came to this city, I fancied myself a writer based on a few published pieces in various music rags, most of then now as long-gone as the golden age of indie rock. I was out of sorts as a baseball fan (the previous year's World Series had been cancelled), I hadn't heard of the Internet, and blogs hadn't been invented. The idea of writing every day (well, several times a week) was a pipe dream because I put myself through such agony writing about music.

The day I moved down here is a dark one in rock and roll history, as it happens. Bob Stinson, the dress-wearing lead guitarist of the Replacements, died that day. A few days after I moved here things got even darker; Kurt Niemand, a schoolmate of mine in the same greater group of friends as well as the bassist for Six Finger Satellite, my favorite Providence band, turned up dead of an OD. Kurt had been one of the Six Finger members I interviewed for my first paid piece of writing, a profile of Six Finger Satellite in Option magazine.

If you asked me ten years ago whether I'd be writing a decade later, I'd have nodded, but without conviction. To say that I had any idea that I'd wind up doing this even as a hobby is farfetched, but this little site is just one more of the great things that's happened to me during my time here. Reacquainting myself with baseball via Yankee Stadium and with a dynasty-building team in front of my nose did a lot to bring me back, helped along by bonding with some of my closest friends over our trips to the ballpark or merely catching the games on TV. Just as players don the pinstripes with an eye towards a World Series ring, I needed to prove that like the Sinatra song, I could make it here, I could make it anywhere. I've lasted a decade, and now I can't envision living anywhere else.

I love New York City in all of its grandeur and its gritty, grimy glory. I live here because I'm honestly more scared of what goes on in the rest of the country, in those strip malls where the only choices are Bennigan's, Appleby's, TGIFriday's and the Olive Garden, than of anything I might find at the wrong end of some dark alley here. I feel safe and at home in NYC, and I crave returning every time I leave. I'd rather be here to smell the eye-watering stench of garbage on St. Marks Street as the sun strikes it on an August morning than to live someplace that lacks the energy, excitement, diversity and even chaos that New York City offers. Consider this my belated valentine to my city. As the Mekons sing, I (Heart) the Apple.