The amazing thing, when you think about it, is how often these speeches really do stick with us, how often they really are memorable, and not just as storehouses of nostalgia and wistfulness. Think about the task before them: 50,000 people hanging on every word, listening to every syllable.
These are not often men who work such rooms with their voices. They are not politicians, trained to use their words as their weapons of choice. And in the greater good, no, there is nothing a baseball player or a basketball player can say, or do, that has larger meaning than “Ask not what your country can do,” or “Four score and seven years,” or “Give me liberty or give me death.”
But we do remember the words every bit as much, every bit as long.
Only time will tell if Joe Torre’s words Saturday at Yankee Stadium, when the team retired his No. 6 and unveiled his monument, will belong in that particular pantheon, although the way he closed it was pretty terrific: “It’s a short distance from the old stadium to here and a long way to the Monument Park. I was blessed to make that journey on the shoulders of some very special players.”
Not bad. Not bad at all.
The gold standard for all such speeches, of course, was the Lou Gehrig farewell that was celebrated as it should have been last month, on July 4, the 75th anniversary of his farewell. His was that rare speech that actually contained two unforgettable passages.
At the start, of course, in one of the most famous and elegant phrases in all of American letters: “Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.” And at the end: “I may have been given a bad break. But I’ve got an awful lot to live for.”
Babe Ruth, who made a memorable cameo that afternoon at the Stadium, hugging his old running mate and ending a cold patch between them, wouldn’t have a moment as unforgettable as that, but in an appropriate reflection of his larger-than-life life, he did have two separate iconic farewells. One was a picture, taken weeks before his death in August 1948, the last time he put on a Yankees uniform, the photograph taken from behind, showing his
No. 3, the great man leaning on his bat for balance.
The other, a year earlier, Babe Ruth Day, April 1947, came as he was dressed in street clothes, as he leaned into a microphone, his voice already battered by the throat cancer that would kill him.
“The only real game in the world, I think, is baseball,” Ruth said that day.
These men knew they were dying. So did Jimmy Valvano, many years later, as he stood before a captive crowd and a rapt television audience and uttered the catch phrase that forever will stand guard for those with cancer and a will to beat it: “Don’t give up. Don’t ever give up.”
These aren’t always the products of grim diagnoses, but because of the nature of goodbye — to youth, if not to life — there always will be a sadness that tinges the words. So we forever remember Willie Mays, cloaked in a Mets jacket against the autumn chill, bidding farewell to the game and to a generation of American kids who knew they were no longer kids if Willie was retiring:
“I look at these kids over there, the way they are playing, and the way they are fighting for themselves, and it tells me one thing: Willie, say goodbye to America.”
The men do say goodbye. More often than you would think, the words stick around. Sometimes forever.
Whack Back at Vac
Michael Stack: I’m not a Bills fan but you are so right: We all need a story like Jim Kelly’s to lift our spirits. Given the crazy situation in Gaza to Manziel to Ukraine to Lance Armstrong, a story like this goes to show there are good people fighting hard to be good people in the face of adversity and doing it the right way.
Vac: Rare is the story where everyone has the same rooting interest, but I’d say this one definitely qualifies.
Steven Schafler: At this rate, Sandy Alderson’s Mets should reach their projected 90 wins by May 2015. Unless we all misunderstood and he was counting spring training games, then they should be right on track for 90.
Vac: I’m pretty sure if this were a golf course, Sandy would be taking a breakfast ball on that one.
@rangersreport: What would George do with this team? He would lose like he did every year from ’81-’94 when he didn’t have that once-in-a-lifetime core.
@MikeVacc: It always is useful to remember that the Boss didn’t exactly spend most of his time in New York being confused with John J. McGraw.
Rocco Labbato: Many managers either over-manage or mismanage. Where does Terry Collins fit? I can’t say. But he definitely isn’t the key for the Mets to go forward.
Vac: I think he actually does both, so I guess the best word is “mismanage.”
Vac’s Whacks
We all realize how ridiculous the “Snoopy Bowl” trophy is, right? I can’t possibly be all alone on an island with that, right?
It’s part of the war baseball always will fight, that if October gives us a Pirates-Royals World Series, it will prove its business model really does work to achieve competitive balance … and about 16 people will watch.
One of the fine traditions that has sprung up quietly over the years is that every Sunday, both ballparks, at some point before the game, you’re going to hear the great Bobby Darin sing “Sunday in New York.”
It was hard not to love every word Dave Belisle, the coach of the Rhode Island team at the Little League World Series, had for his kids after they lost the other night, urging them to keep what they had done in perspective. And also hard not to trip over the irony that we know every word because he was wired for sound for a national broadcast of a game involving 12-year-olds.