Looking at this tree filled landscape it is hard to believe this is New York City. This idyllic scene was photographed on the morning of July 4, 1888. Until 1899, Broadway above 59th Street was known as The Boulevard. Continue reading
This monument ceremony seen below was supposed to take place July 4 1941, on the two year anniversary of Lou Gehrig Day in 1939.
Many baseball fans know that the New York Yankees began the tradition of Old-Timers Day with a ceremony on July 4, 1939 to honor Lou Gehrig, the “Iron Horse.” On that day, the Yankees brought together Lou’s old teammates to show their deep admiration for a man who exemplified everything the Yankees were about. At the last minute Gehrig was asked to say something to the packed house at Yankee Stadium.
The words he said, now known as, “The Luckiest Man on the Face of the Earth” speech, live on in immortality because it was completely spontaneous and from the heart.
What you may not know, is that you really have never heard or seen that speech.
You have only seen or heard small portions of Gehrig’s speech, because believe it or not, there is not one extant movie or audio recording of Gehrig’s complete speech. Only snippets.
As incredible as it sounds with all those newsreel cameras present to record the activities at Yankee Stadium, no complete version of the speech has surfaced in all these years. Continue reading
Umpires Make Mistakes: See Baseball History 101
Photo Mike Stobe / Getty Images
Everyone is in an unnecessary uproar over the Dewayne Wise phantom catch of a baseball that disappeared into the crowd at Yankee Stadium on June 26, 2012 during a 6-4 Yankee victory over the Cleveland Indians.
The umpire, Mike DiMuro is human. He made a mistake and admitted it after the game. That was the right thing to do.
Do you want the game to stop every time there is a controversial play? Aren’t the games slow enough?
Mistakes similar to this have been happening since baseball began and have been forgotten unless they affect the pennant race or a World Series game.
One forgotten incident that occurred on August 1, 1920 was whether Joe Jackson of the Chicago White Sox actually caught a baseball Babe Ruth hit into an overflow crowd at Comiskey Park. The aftermath of that play is shown below.
Babe Ruth & Miller Huggins argue with umpire Tom Connolly, Bob Meusel (with bat) listens © blackbetsy.com
Going into the game against the White Sox, Ruth was on a tear, having hit 37 home runs already, shattering his own record of 29 home runs set the previous year. Continue reading
The Beginning of New York City’s Traffic Lights
This ornate traffic light at 34th Street, was one of seven put up in New York City on the heavily traveled Fifth Avenue in 1922.
The city had experimented with traffic signals in 1917 when a device invented by an engineer, Foster Milliken, was installed at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street. The device was a revolving flashlight that would flash signals as red to stop and green for go. This may sound ridiculous now, but in the early days of traffic signals there was no standard for color relating to traffic. Continue reading
June 25, 1923 Intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues
Photo © Osmund Leviness
“Those who died were fortunate it seemed to me when I looked inside the cars. As long as I live I can never forget it. All the people were in a mass there, struggling and screaming, with blood running over them. They all seemed to be bleeding or stained with blood. One woman’s head was terribly cut on top, and one jaw seemed to be crushed in. The hand of another woman was almost cut off. One woman I took out through a window died a few minutes after I carried her into the post office. I can’t forget the inside of those cars. They looked like my idea of purgatory.” – Traffic Officer Joseph J. Ryan who was on the scene immediately after the crash.
This incredible accident happened 89 years ago, Monday, June 25, 1923 as two cars of the BMT derailed and plunged 35 feet into the street at the intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues in Brooklyn. Continue reading
The Yankee Clipper Gets Ready To Return To Play – June 21, 1949
Many who saw Joe DiMaggio play say he was the greatest all-around ballplayer who ever lived. Everything he did seemed effortless. Of course this is a huge exaggeration. Everything DiMaggio did so well required practice, patience and hard work.
When DiMaggio missed the first three months of the 1949 baseball season with a painful heel injury, many fans, players and sportswriters thought he might never play again.
So it was hush-hush when DiMaggio went to an empty Yankee Stadium to test out his heel in a full workout on June 21, 1949.
Things went well and DiMaggio returned to the Yankee line-up on June 28, 1949 at Fenway Park against the Red Sox to start a three game series. He hit a homerun in the first game which the Yankees won by a score of 5-4. The Yankees swept the series and when DiMaggio left Boston, he had hit four homeruns and driven in nine runs.
The impact of his return cannot be understated. In the 76 games DiMaggio played for the remainder of the year, he batted .346, hit 14 homeruns and drove in 67 runs. His on base percentage was the highest of his career, .459. In 329 plate appearances he struck out only 18 times.
The Yankees ended up edging the Red Sox by one game in the final season standings, propelling the Yankees into the World Series against the Brooklyn Dodgers.
DiMaggio would go on to have the worst World Series performance in his storied career, batting just .111. But the Yankees still defeated the Dodgers four games to one, starting their stretch of winning five World Championships in a row.
Circa Late 1940’s Coney Island, New York- Acme News Photograph.
The news slug says: Continue reading
What do legendary blues and heavy metal guitarist, Gary Moore, rock album photographer Jim McCrary and playwright, screenwriter, author and jazz champion Max Wilk all have in common?
When they died, the New York Times did not cover their deaths in the obituary column. We all know space is limited, but these people were significant in their artistic fields, enriching the lives of countless others. It would be nice had the self-proclaimed “newspaper of record” recorded and noted their amazing lives. But The Times editors felt these people were not deserving.
The official policy about who the The Times decides to write up is :
When we look to see whether someone had made a newsworthy impact in some way — who “made a wrinkle in the social fabric,” — we don’t equate significance with fame. In point of fact, 9 out of 10 people we write about are indeed not household names (the 10th is — a movie star, a secretary of state). But that doesn’t negate their importance. Most made their marks in quiet ways, out of the public limelight, but they still made a mark, possibly on your life and mine.
So who is deserving?
Apparently an unremarkable low-life, graffiti tagger, StayHigh 149, a.k.a. Wayne Roberts , can get a full write-up.
Yes, Roberts definitely, as the Times puts it, “made a mark on your life and mine.”
More like a blemish.
Especially in New York City in the 1970’s when the city was bombarded with the eyesore of graffiti defacing public and private property.
As is noted in the obituary, this great man (sarcasm) in the 1960’s was working as a messenger on Wall Street and smoking about an ounce of marijuana a week, earning the Stay High nickname.
Inspired by other vandals tagging subway cars, he then began defacing public property.
Chris Pape a fellow graffiti aficionado says in the Times obituary:
“He (Roberts) rode empty trains all day with markers in his pocket, and he wrote everywhere.” By the early ’80s, Pape said, drugs had begun to take their toll. Roberts left his World Trade Center job, and his wife, because of his drug use. “He was a functional junkie who occasionally did time in prison for stupid things,” Pape said. “He was like that for 20 years. He didn’t want to be found.”
For some reason, I can only think of the millions of wasted dollars that it cost taxpayers to eradicate the vandalism this cretin created. As I have said before – graffiti is definitely not art.
This is the sort of person The New York Times chooses to cover in their obituaries?
For the record, when one of the most influential singers in heavy metal history, Ronnie James Dio, died on May 16, 2010, the following day The Times devoted 493 words to summing up his life.
Graffiti vandal Wayne Roberts had 838 words written about him.
Photo © Ben Heller (Underwood & Underwood)
Looking north from 72nd Street on December 6 , 1937 we see the newly opened stretch of The Henry Hudson Parkway. Continue reading
A Movie Cliche’s New York Origins
If you ever watch any gangster films from the 1930’s or 40’s, one of the lines of dialogue that always pops up is: “up the river.”
Somebody would utter it: a criminal; prosecutor; police officer; or a fellow gangster. Listen and it will be said in most of these early crime movies.
Lines like:
“Didn’t you hear, Rocky’s going up the river.”
“If you don’t talk Ike, I can guarantee you’re going to spend a long stretch up the river.”
“I’m not takin’ the fall to go up the river for a heist you did, Spats.”
The term “up the river” as most people know refers to going to prison.
So where did the saying come from?
In the 1800’s, when you were charged with a crime and sent to prison in New York City, the accused would first be taken to the prison on Centre Street in lower Manhattan which was known as “the Tombs” built in 1838.
The Tombs were so named because the original structure had large granite columns on the outside of the building which resembled Egyptian burial architecture, a.k.a. tombs. The Tombs though, were merely a holding prison for the accused criminals awaiting trial.
After sentencing, convicts were sent to a prison on Blackwell’s Island (today known as Roosevelt Island) in the middle of the East River.
However if you were a habitual offender or committed a very serious offense, you would be sent thirty miles north, up the Hudson River to Sing Sing prison. This is the origin of the phrase being sent, “up the river.” Sing Sing separated the hardened criminals from the run of the mill pickpockets, burglars and ordinary thieves.
Even though, the term “up the river” originally referred to Sing Sing, it was eventually applied to anyone being sent to any prison.