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MIAMI — There were so many springs when the old building would lie quiet and still, when nights that should have been filled with the acoustic magic of a big hockey game or a do-or-die basketball game were instead empty and sad.
It got to the point when you could forget just how loud the place could get, how electric. An entire generation of sports fans in our city grew up looking crazily at their fathers and uncles and grandfathers as they would tell tall takes about the way things used to be at Madison Square Garden.
I remember telling a young sports writer not long ago, “You know, not so long ago, baseball season didn’t really start in New York until the day after the Knicks were eliminated in the playoffs, and it didn’t matter if that was the start of May or the middle of June.”
And that kid scribe looked at me like I had broken out in hives.
Maybe the next couple of weeks can reprove that theory. For the first time in years, the dominant threads of choice all across the city are Rangers sweaters and Knicks jerseys, Knicks jackets and Rangers caps. One more time we have a Garden like we used to have, where it seems every night attracts bold-faced names and high-anticipation games.
We already have had five Rangers playoffs games that served as an important reminder that the Garden is the loudest of all our buildings, always has been when there’s a reason to be loud. The Knicks had a bunch of intriguing games in the season’s final weeks — the Bulls and the Heat and the Celtics — and in a few days will get a couple of Knicks-Heat playoff games.
Interest is as high as it’s been in years. TV ratings are way up. The teams sold almost every seat this year, and when you consider what a financial investment that has become, it tells you something about just how hungry the fans were to see it get turned this way. And we are reminded again how much New York wants to embrace the athletes who call the Garden home, and how much impact they can have.
Carmelo Anthony hosted the family of Trayvon Martin, and when he greeted the mother of the slain Florida teenager, he said, “We are the New York Knicks, and when your son Trayvon died, our son died as well,” and in that moment he became a little something more than a rich athlete.
The Rangers? They always have tended to the heart of the city. There are so many formerly sick kids who are healthy adults now and still tell heart-rending tales of Adam Graves and Brian Leetch and Rod Gilbert, and through the Garden of Dreams a new generation of ill children are realizing how much heart hockey players have.
And we are remembering just how much heart that old building still has, even as it’s received a facelift, even as it’s starting to look less a product of 1968 and more one of 2012 and beyond. The Garden always has been our most treasured local playpen, even if its prime tenants haven’t collected near the hardware they have at Yankee Stadium or the old Meadowlands facilities.
The Garden always has been as much about possibility as anything else, the sporting Carnegie Hall, a place where athletes aspire to do their best on the best possible stage. It was easy to forget that the past few years. What a gift these past few weeks have been, and the next few promise to be.
Whack Back at Vac
Bob Buscavage: If Metta World Peace had thrown his “warlike” elbow on the streets outside of an arena, he might very well have been charged with assault. If the NBA wants to restore “peace,” Metta should have been suspended for at least the first two rounds of the playoffs, not just for seven games.
Vac: I would argue that as bad as the Palace incident was, he was at the very least provoked toward the indefensible by a smattering of arena bums. All James Harden did to him was be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Seven games is a joke.
Howard Rubin: As a long-suffering Mets fan of 47 years, I can’t tell you how much it meant to finally see just how much I have suffered being a Flushing Faithful for so long. Was wondering how my depths of despair compare to that of the denizens of Wrigley.
Vac: Never fear! In a few weeks I’ll have an all-encompassing list of where every team in the four major sports sits on that list.
@CoachFalk: Watching the Knicks on Channel 9 the other night makes me think I’m going to see a Crazy Eddie or Carvel commercial at any time.
@MikeVacc: If only they could’ve paired up Marv and Cal Ramsey, the night would’ve been complete.
Francis Grammar: Ryan. Seaver. Gooden. . Hideo Nomo. Now Phil Humber. Tell me, Mike: Am I ever going to see a pitcher throw a no-hitter before they actually leave the Mets?
Vac: Nope.
Vac’s Whacks
It’s a testament to just how woeful the Bobcats were this year that the Knicks barely broke a sweat and won by 20 the other night. And it’s a testament just how little they wanted to play for Mike D’Antoni that they were one of the chosen few who actually lost to them this year.
* Godspeed, Pete Fornatale, whose made-for-radio voice and splendid playlists served as the soundtrack of my childhood — or at least that portion of the soundtrack that didn’t belong to Bob Murphy, Marv Albert and John (“IS-LAN-DER GOAL!!!”) Sterling.
* There probably was only one man who could have pulled off a readable yet encyclopedic rendering of the full scope of the Yankees’ history. That man is Marty Appel. And with “Pinstripe Empire,” he has delivered precisely that, a must-have for fans of the Yankees, and baseball, and splendid reading.
* Honestly, Mets fans can’t win with some pundits. If they cheer Jose Reyes, they’re nostalgic saps; if they boo him, they’re ungrateful slugs.