Sometimes you remember who you are.<\/p>\n
I’m here in the Poconos.\u00c2\u00a0 Actually, I have no idea where I am.\u00c2\u00a0 I got off the plane at Kennedy and I ended up here.\u00c2\u00a0 Where here is?\u00c2\u00a0 An hour from Camelback, that’s what the desk clerk said.\u00c2\u00a0 I thought we’d be closer to Pennsylvania’s largest ski resort.\u00c2\u00a0 Then again, walking the grounds of Woodloch this morning, I saw snow.\u00c2\u00a0 I was on the phone with Felice, trying to describe my surroundings to someone who grew up in California, how I was in the mountains, but they weren’t really mountains, and she asked me if I could see snow.\u00c2\u00a0 I told her I couldn’t see a thing.\u00c2\u00a0 That I was standing on a dock in the middle of a lake and all I could see were my immediate surroundings.\u00c2\u00a0 Then, what I thought was sand by the water’s edge turned out to be snow.\u00c2\u00a0 I guess that’s when it hit me, I’d been here before.\u00c2\u00a0 Not in the mountains of Pennsylvania, but the east coast in April.<\/p>\n
I loved to play baseball.\u00c2\u00a0 I lived to play baseball.\u00c2\u00a0 After school every day I’d walk home, change into my play clothes and walk back to the schoolyard for the game.\u00c2\u00a0 Which began as soon as enough kids showed up.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, we’d hold a little batting practice, but when we had ten people we’d choose up sides and play, adding players as they arrived.<\/p>\n
This almost never happened in March.\u00c2\u00a0 It usually started in April.\u00c2\u00a0 And as I got older, and better, Little League tryouts started then, the very first week of April.\u00c2\u00a0 When the season magically changed from winter to spring.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, sometimes there’d be a flashback, a wicked rainstorm with temperatures in the thirties, but it wouldn’t last, spring would come back.\u00c2\u00a0 Then again, spring wasn’t always so warm.\u00c2\u00a0 I’d wear a windbreaker under my sweatshirt, when I hit the ball my hands would sting, and oftentimes keep stinging, even though I was now in the outfield.<\/p>\n
Adam Goldberg was sitting in front of me on the plane.\u00c2\u00a0 God, I loved him in "Relativity".\u00c2\u00a0 He’s a great actor.\u00c2\u00a0 Live long enough in Los Angeles and you don’t speak with famous people, unless spoken to.\u00c2\u00a0 You respect their privacy.\u00c2\u00a0 But growing up in Connecticut, I never met a famous person.\u00c2\u00a0 And now I was going back to my distant homeland.<\/p>\n
But the limo driver turned towards the George Washington Bridge rather than the Connecticut Turnpike.\u00c2\u00a0 We passed not only Shea, but Yankee Stadium.\u00c2\u00a0 And then we were in the wilds of New Jersey.<\/p>\n
Well, I didn’t expect it to be quite this wild.\u00c2\u00a0 I mean when I looked up from my BlackBerry I saw stoplights!\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, I hadn’t been paying attention.\u00c2\u00a0 It was dark, and rainy.\u00c2\u00a0 But if it was 145 miles, and we’d only been in the car for ninety minutes, shouldn’t we be on the freeway?<\/p>\n
The only reason I knew we were still in New Jersey was that the gas station was full-serve.\u00c2\u00a0 And when I reentered the Town Car with some beef jerky to tide me over for the rest of the ride, I asked the driver, Tony, where were we?<\/p>\n
He’d taken a shortcut!\u00c2\u00a0 He was saving twenty miles!\u00c2\u00a0 He was so proud of himself, following the Garmin GPS atop the dash.<\/p>\n
Then, suddenly, the road was turnier than the one I grew up on.\u00c2\u00a0 And Tony was looking in the rearview mirror.\u00c2\u00a0 He was uptight about the car behind him.\u00c2\u00a0 He remarked that he was worried he was following us.\u00c2\u00a0 So, he pulled over, and turned around.\u00c2\u00a0 Right in the middle of the street.<\/p>\n
On what kind of highway can you pull a u-turn?<\/p>\n
And then the road we switched to, was akin to a driveway.<\/p>\n
I got uptight.\u00c2\u00a0 I retrieved my BlackBerry from my pocket.\u00c2\u00a0 I had no access.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m not talking Web-access, or e-mail access, I had no phone access!\u00c2\u00a0 And with Verizon, you always have access!<\/p>\n
I got uptight.\u00c2\u00a0 Was this a hit?<\/p>\n
I know, I know, I was being paranoid.\u00c2\u00a0 But it was like that episode of the "Sopranos" with the Russian in the snow.\u00c2\u00a0 The road was going up and down like a roller coaster.\u00c2\u00a0 We were barely moving…<\/p>\n
Then Tony asked me if I had a cell phone.<\/p>\n
This was a bad sign.\u00c2\u00a0 Did he have to pay for gas?\u00c2\u00a0 Had he gotten enough?\u00c2\u00a0 Was he worried about being stranded in the middle of the night?\u00c2\u00a0 I mean you’re oh-so-confident, some dude you’ve never met in New York books a limo and you don’t think twice.\u00c2\u00a0 Should you?<\/p>\n
Tony was proud to be in America.\u00c2\u00a0 He was going to open a restaurant.\u00c2\u00a0 But he’d embraced the American mind-set a little too much.\u00c2\u00a0 I want the President to make choices.\u00c2\u00a0 I want the CEO to be innovative.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t want my limo driver taking the reins, becoming an entrepreneur, just follow the fucking route!<\/p>\n
Then, suddenly, we were there.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, we’d crossed over to Pennsylvania, we were no longer on Bruce’s Jersey backstreets.\u00c2\u00a0 But there was no town, no plethora of lights, no civilization!<\/p>\n
And the desk clerks, although friendly…at this midnight hour the place had the feel of the Bates Motel.<\/p>\n
But it’s not.\u00c2\u00a0 Woodloch is like the Catskills.\u00c2\u00a0 Except it survives.\u00c2\u00a0 And it doesn’t appear to be all Jews.\u00c2\u00a0 Actually, at lunch I was surrounded by the White Panthers.\u00c2\u00a0 I was the only soul younger than 75.<\/p>\n
Not speaking at this conference until the evening, after lunch I stumbled around the grounds.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s when I found the snow.\u00c2\u00a0 And the miniature golf course.\u00c2\u00a0 And the horseshoe pit.\u00c2\u00a0 And the batting cage.<\/p>\n
Do you pick up a bat?\u00c2\u00a0 Do you risk finding out your skills have departed?<\/p>\n
I figured I had no choice.\u00c2\u00a0 I was taller than the 44" required.\u00c2\u00a0 I could wear the helmet the sign demanded.\u00c2\u00a0 <\/p>\n
But when I’d committed in my brain, I found out you needed a buck, in quarters.\u00c2\u00a0 I had no quarters.\u00c2\u00a0 I escaped, mental reputation intact.<\/p>\n
And that’s when I realized the ground I was walking on was not flat.\u00c2\u00a0 And that it still contained the moisture of winter.\u00c2\u00a0 And that not all the grass was green.<\/p>\n
I thought of going to the Catskills with my family in the sixties.\u00c2\u00a0 Not the big resorts, but a place that’s no longer there.\u00c2\u00a0 My parents went to see "Psycho" in Monticello.\u00c2\u00a0 When the car sank, someone yelled out "The gelt!\u00c2\u00a0 The gelt!"<\/p>\n
I thought of how far I’d traveled, how far I’d gone.\u00c2\u00a0 But I realized it was not far enough to lose my roots.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re still here, on the east coast.\u00c2\u00a0 Where everything’s older, where everything’s closer.\u00c2\u00a0 Where baseball is seasonal as opposed to a year-round road to riches.\u00c2\u00a0 Where sports are avocations as opposed to raison d’etres.\u00c2\u00a0 Where education and place in the community are paramount.<\/p>\n
Do you move back?<\/p>\n
Never.<\/p>\n
Then again, maybe.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe you have to.<\/p>\n
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