Ever since I was a kid, I've been a New York Mets fan. I think it's because I first became aware of the larger world around me and of baseball in 1969 and '70, and the Mets were certainly the talk of my hometown — New York City.
My loyalty to the Mets has never wavered, but for a time during the mid- to late-70s, my attention wandered over a bit to the New York Yankees. At the time, the Mets were pretty wretched — they had traded Tom Seaver, whom I considered the soul of the team, and they seemed to field one awful team after another. It's hard to root for a team whose ace is Craig Swan. Concurrent with the Mets' decline was the ascendancy of the Yankees, who not only were a good team, they were so damned interesting.
The Yankees were a volatile, but winning, mix, whose strong, eccentric, downright crazy personalities ensured plenty of New York Post headlines and just as many wins. Call it creative tension maybe, but the Yankees managed to turn a toxic brew of personalities into a great team. And they were just so much fun to follow. You never knew when Billy Martin was going to e fired again, when Reggie Jackson to touch off another locker room fight, when Goose Gossage would fly off the handle, when Steinbrenner would say something provacative. It was a true baseball soap opera — and endlessly interesting.
And that brings us back to the Brattleboro arts scene. ESPN has seen fit to bring some of the Yankees' Bronx Zoo scene to the screen with a miniseries titled "The Bronx is Burning," which premieres July 9. Guilford actor Bill Forchion, whose resume is one of the most interesting in the world, appears in the series as Yankees coach Elston Howard. The series also stars John Turturro as Billy Martin, Joe Grifazi as Yogi Berra and Oliver Platt as George Steinbrenner.
I plan on catching the series to root for my hometown star Forchion and to relive, at least a little, those crazy, hazy days of my childhood when the Bronx Zoo was always open for business and never dull.