Save us from Eliot Spitzer’s charitable impulses

When a politician falls from grace, it’s hardly a surprise that he or she tries to rebuild his public image. A recent story in The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/28/nyregion/28spitzer.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=Spitzer&st=cse&oref=slogin) tells about how former New York governor Eliot Spitzer is considering ways to undo the damage he has done.

The story reports:

“Now, in interviews with friends and former aides, and through e-mail messages obtained through a Freedom of Information request by The New York Times, a picture emerges of Mr. Spitzer trying to focus on the future and his family, with the threat of criminal charges still hanging over him. He is working at his father’s real estate firm, and has discussed with friends whether to undertake charity, environmental or free legal work to try to rehabilitate his image.”

 Later:

“His close friends remain in touch and have encouraged him to rehabilitate himself through some charitable work, though he is more focused for the moment on building on his father’s already estimable wealth.”

It is hardly a surprise that Spitzer’s “Richie Rich” friends are advising him to get into “charity” work since that’s the way the society types try to undo the messes they have created. “Vanity charity” is all the rage as times get tougher and the illusory “help” benefits few except those who are the “exec dir” or “exec VP” of some organization that raises money and then distributes it – to its high-paid, high-status staff. Charities that truly set out to help the unfortunate are the ones that are not located in nice buildings in the good part of town, and don’t employ “names and faces” who are looking to clean up a fraud or a DUI.

It’s akin to a recent episode of “The Office,” where the once-high-flying Ryan reappears after his arrest for fraud involving Dunder-Mifflin’s Web site and paper sales, and announces that he has reformed and is “giving back to the community” through volunteer work. Jim points out that, in fact, the “giving back” is not really “giving back” because it was ordered by a judge and is, in fact, community service.

That’s how Spitzer and his ilk see charity work: as a way to serve what should be a prison sentence.

The person I feel most sorry for is his wife. She should have broken his head with something big and heavy for what he pulled, and instead she has to suffer in silence.

I guess the upshot of this rant is simple: Keep that philandering, low-life, slime bag away from any charity, and especially those charities that really work to help people, as opposed to the fake charities that are run by the rich and famous. Eliot Spitzer is, and always will be, a person with no values, ethics, morality or respect for others or others’ feelings.

Let him fade into well-deserved obscurity and keep him away from the needy. His ilk need the needy to make themselves look good, and don’t care about them or their struggles.

The Marlins announcer’s lament

It’s Sunday afternoon, and the New York Mets are playing the Florida Marlins in the final game of the regular season. It’s a game that means nothing to the Marlins and everything to the Mets. A win means the Mets will play another day in Shea; a loss — if the Milwaukee Brewers win – means it’s all over at Shea.

Shea was pretty crowded Saturday and on TV it looks full on Sunday. The fans are loud and engaged, rooting for the Mets to stay alive and make it into the postseason. Such an event will put off the day when Shea Stadium no longer is the Mets’ home.

Near the end of the New York Mets’ 2-0 win over the Florida Marlins on Saturday, an announcer made an interesting observation that brings up what I wrote in a previous post.

He was commenting on the fan support for the Mets and said that “this is the way it’s supposed to be.”

He meant a team being fully supported in its stadium, as the Mets are at Shea and as they will be at Citi Field. By comparison, when the Marlins play the Mets in Florida, the stadium is usually half-empty, and the fans are usually divided between Mets fans and Marlins fans, with loud cheers for the visiting team.

The frustration of the announcers, players and team ownership is understandable. A team that is merely a means of bringing in other teams and the fans of those teams for home games has a very hard time developing its own fan base.

My comparison of the Mets in the mid- to late-60s is not totally accurate. Then, it was harder to be a fan of a team outside one’s marketing area. The local newspapers that covered the Dodgers and Giants were difficult to get unless you waited a few days, there was no ESPN to offer shows like “Baseball Tonight,” and unless the Dodgers or Giants were on national television, there was no way to see them.

So their arrival at Shea Stadium to play the Mets was the only time holdover fans could see them. As I wrote, it seemed that there was a lot of excitement when the two teams came to New York.

Today, it is very possible to sustain an interest in a far-off team, what with cable and satellite TV packages that offer far-off teams, the Web and its instant access to far-off newspapers’ sports sections and streaming audio and video of games on the Web.

New Yorkers are hardly the only ones who may have left the Big Apple but maintained loyalty to the Mets and Yankees. When the Red Sox play the Tampa Bay Rays, the Trop is usually full, too. And let’s not forget that the Rays had an amazing year themselves, and drew a lot of fans in their own right.

Ultimately, what can be done about loyalty that remains with a far-off team? Barring anything out of the ordinary, probably nothing. I know that while I dallied with the Marlins, I find myself coming back to the Mets. It’s how I was raised, I have so many wonderful memories of going to Mets games with my late father and with friends, and even at the distance from New York City to Ellenton, Fla., my heart and my hopes are still with the Mets.

Going overboard on housing

I was reading an article recently about a family’s misadventure with a rented mansion in the New Orleans area, and thinking that it was a good thing they rented it and did not buy it.

It has become a staple of magazines nowadays: The story of how buying a house by using a mortgage turned into a catastrophe. Invariably, the story details the purchase of the house, the two or more mortgages floated and signed for on unfavorable terms, maybe there’s a home equity loan in there, and then the unforeseen circumstance that wrecks it all. What follows is foreclosure and worse.

I can relate to some of the above, as I bought a bit too much house and its payments were doable while I was still employed. Now that I have joined the unwilling ranks of the career changed, I only have about eight months at this writing before I am one of those who has to leave his house.

I have some very unfair advantages, though. I suspected a possible endgame at work, and began saving money. I’m single with no children (thanks to a spectacular inability to connect with women) and while I have used my credit cards, I haven’t carried a balance in nearly five years. With severance and savings, I can take a low-wage job and survive, and keep my castle.

In a past job at an outfit called Bankrate.com, I learned about the wonders and dangers of home equity loans. Not accessing that equity meant that I could sell my houses and realize large profits. The new house I moved into in February 2006 was more a nice place to live than an investment, and I sank a lot of cash into a down payment, but I would have been better off not buying this place. Still, I’ll work myself to death to stay here.

But the price is living in a house with aged furniture, some of which has been clawed by cats, and rooms that have little furniture at all, save for computers and desks. So my sense of interior design sucks. Sue me.

Reading one article about those who go a little nuts on home improvement got me to thinking about August 2002, when I moved into a new house in Vero Beach. A married couple across the street, around my age, moved in soon after me, and I noticed that after they had moved in that a lot of work was being done on the house. These were all new houses, but the wife was having all the cabinets removed and closets stripped to be redone the way she wanted. I kind of felt bad for the construction workers who had labored in the heat of the summer to install all that stuff, and now it was landing in the trash. I’m sure the new stuff wasn’t cheap.

As for me, everything was fine and I was happy in the house. I only sold the place and moved because I got a job on the other side of Florida.

So I bought a place in Sarasota, Fla., and was the second owner of a nice place. Like I said, I should have stayed there but thought I could do better.

In that place, I paid about $900 for blinds, and in my current home, I’ve made no modifications.

Like I said, I like this house fine but worry that with a recession or depression job to survive, I may not be able to afford it and will have to surrender it to the bank. That’s a frightening proposition.

Until that time comes, though, I guess I’ll just keep looking for work and hope for the best. And you can bet that I won’t be doing renovations at all.

Robert Caro’s study of Lyndon Johnson

Since being laid off from the newspaper, I have changed some habits, and one of them is to no longer make those raids to the bookstore in which I would walk out with some of the latest tomes and take them home for my reading pleasure, then put them into my personal library.

Local public libraries are being slashed and burned by budget cuts in Manatee County, Fla., but I have decided that I will just have to avail myself of their services until I land employment that allows for more luxuries again.

Books are so important in my life. In my moves in the past few years, the biggest part of the household goods being transported were the 30 boxes of books and the bookshelves. Even then, I still have some books packed away in the garage.

In this category, “Vinny’s Book Club,” I’ll be writing about some of the books I own and what they meant to me.

This time around, we’ll start with three books, Robert Caro’s three-volume (so far) work: “The Years of Lyndon Johnson.”

The first volume, “The Path to Power” (1982), documents LBJ’s life and that of his parents from the arrival of the family in the Texas Hill Country, through Johnson’s childhood, adolescence, college and post-college years, to his service for a member of Congress, then getting elected to Congress himself, and finally his unsuccessful 1941 campaign for the U.S. Senate in the special election held after one of Texas’ senators died.

We see the young LBJ working like few people have worked since, coming up from his family’s poverty and riding the Democratic wave of the Depression years. We also see his ruthlessness, his ambition, his use of others to get what he wants.

But Johnson soon decides that even being a member of the House of Representatives is not enough, and he starts angling for a seat in the U.S. Senate. His chance seems to arrive when a senator from Texas dies, and he runs in a special election but loses to the sitting governor of Texas, who special interests wanted out of the way.

The election was stolen, and Johnson assuaged his anger with the knowledge that the seat would come up again in the 1942 election cycle, and he’d have a shot at it.

But Pearl Harbor intervened, and we see in volume two, “Means of Ascent” (1990), that these are frustrating years for LBJ as he cannot run for Senate. The story of his Silver Star is recounted and his other experience as an officer in the Navy is told.

Johnson is shown as a remarkably ineffective member of Congress, with few records of him speaking or writing bills. He works during the war years and after to build a personal fortune, and Caro tells of the maneuvers that enabled LBJ to buy a radio station and parlay it into an empire via his personal influence on Capitol Hill.

Volume two ends with the bitter campaign for the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination against legendary Texan Coke Stevenson, and the court fight over ballots that ended with Johnson winning by less than 100 votes. (In Texas elections then, the Republican Party and general election were anti-climactic; the primaries were the main battlegrounds)

The third volume is “Master of the Senate” (2002), in which Caro gives a history lesson of the U.S. Senate and how Johnson masters the body.

He starts as “Landslide Lyndon,” as he jokingly tells everyone, and ends up as Majority Leader, the man who started out the defender of the Jim Crow South but eventually pushes a civil rights bill to passage.

At the end, he is vice president of the U.S.

Caro is working on a fourth volume, about LBJ as president. It is tentatively titled “The Presidency.” I have no idea when it might come out.

My impressions of the series are that it presents the good, the bad, the ugly and the really ugly of Lyndon Baines Johnson. All politicians that attain great power are complex people, and LBJ was, I think an idealist at first but someone who believed that attaining power would benefit many others in the long run. He made deals, had an election stolen from him, stole one himself, assassinated the characters of his opponents and fought for real change in the lives of people, black and white.

His escalation of the war in Vietnam and the result overshadowed so much good that he did.

It takes many years to really decide how history will view a president. Some have even started to rehabilitate Lyndon Johnson. Me, I’m too young to have an opinion beyond what I’ve read since he left the White House when I was 8 years old.

I highly recommend this series to anyone who is interested in political biography and history.

In praise of an ordinary university

I didn’t go to a “name” college, a term I use for institutions of higher learning that can charge insane sums of money for education, requiring either that parents or their progeny go very deeply into debt so the president can drive a Mercedes.

No, I went to a community college, and then a university that is little known not only outside Florida, but within it as well. It has the usual assortment of sports teams, and several years ago it even acquired a football team, but on Thanksgiving or New Year’s Day, you won’t see it in the bowl games.

The college is called Florida Atlantic University, and its main campus is in Boca Raton, Fla. It has other campuses on the east coast, but my main experience was with the main place in Boca Raton.

During World War II, the site was part of an Army Air Forces training field, and on some of the streets you can see the old, faded markings of the field. The oldest dorms (mostly gone now, and not lamented) were once enlisted barracks. The college is next to Boca Raton Airport, where the corporate jets of the rich and well-connected plant rubber on its single runway.

Unlike the University of Florida and Florida State University, Florida Atlantic University, known as FAU, lacks the sense of history other college have. Indeed, FAU was often derided as a “commuter college,” where that breed known as “commuter students” drove on campus before or after their full-time jobs, took courses, maybe even graduated, and moved on in their lives and careers. Even when I was there, in the early to mid-1990s, the “traditional-age” students were chafing at the presence of so many “older” (read: mid-20s and up) students on campus and in classrooms.

“These are supposed to be the best years of my life, and I don’t want to spend them surrounded by old people,” one student complained to me one day during a debate over the presence of the Lifelong Learning Society in the Student Center. Retired folks from the community came on the campus for lectures by professors, and some students resented what they saw as the intrusion.

“They don’t belong here!” one student declared. “They should go back to Century Village, where they belong, instead of ruining my life.”

Maybe it was the reminder of their inevitable fate. Me, I liked having diversity on campus in terms of age, and the professors liked it, too.

One professor said he liked that the students from my generation showed up at class on time, ready to learn and eager to participate. When he talked, we stopped talking while a few of the just-out-of-high school students continued a low murmur of conversation in the lecture hall.

Like I said, FAU was not famous, and it was not an old college compared to many others. Its first buildings opened in 1964, and one of those at the opening was Lady Bird Johnson. One time, going through an old desk, I found a letter from her to a school official. That was a thrill.

In fact, walking around FAU you could tell which buildings were the original ones because they were paneled on the outside with shells embedded in concrete. Those old buildings, though, were falling apart by the mid- to late-1990s due to poor maintenance. People like to give money to colleges for new buildings, not to maintain old buildings.

Years of outsourcing of maintenance showed in buildings that leaked in the rain.

Still, I learned much in my time there. I had to drive 20 miles out of my way, but managed to finish the two-year bachelor’s degree course in three years, then stayed for a little graduate study, but then decided I really needed to work.

FAU’s symbol was the Owl, and while it lacked the cachet of the Gators or the Seminoles, I always believed that it symbolized something beyond cheering a football team or drinking oneself into insensibility and calling it a college memory. Owls are wise, and the commuter students of FAU may not have pledged Greek fraternities or burned down the administration building to protest some offense against a race or creed, but we went out into the community with our degrees and had an impact.

I suppose it’s the difference in experiences. Students just out of high school are just being let out from their parents’ supervision, and are dealing with freedom for the first time, while commuter students are beyond that first experience of freedom. For the commuter, college is a way to find oneself and find one’s way, but not through drinking and group activities but through learning.

My fellow commuter students and I found ourselves viewed differently by not only the younger students, but also the administration. Our presence seemed to be a sign that this was not a typical university and some found that degrading to their college experience.

I discovered so much at FAU and always feel grateful to the college and its professors for helping me to learn; the skills I acquired there, the people I met, the experiences I had have been relevant to me every day of my life.

Going to college in my late 20s and early 30s helped me appreciate the privilege more. Not bankrupting myself or my parents to get that education was a bonus that has repaid itself many times over.

So when someone derides your education because it was not from a “name” college, just remember that your learning and erudition are what counts, not the label.

Talking down to the community college

As someone who came to the college experience later than normal, in my late 20s instead of my late teens, I was always of the view that learning was learning, whether you got it in the Ivy League or at a lesser institution.

Circumstances — such as an insistence that I make my own decisions after graduating from high school – led me to join the Marine Corps at the ripe young age of 17 in 1978, and then my efforts to make my way in the world after my four years of service led me to the Postal Service. It wasn’t until around 1988 and I was beginning to tire of the sameness of life in the Postal Service that I realized that to take my life and career to the next level, I needed to go to college.

And Palm Beach Community College was there. Close to my house, on my way to my job at the post office, and willing to let me drink at their fountain of knowledge. I worked nights at the post office, and was able to take day classes almost like a real and traditional-age college student. Thanks to good pay and benefits at the post office, I was able to pay for the whole thing out of pocket without taking out student loans.

Honestly, I could have gone to Florida Atlantic University first, but I was a little uncertain about whether I could handle college work and wanted to stick a toe in the water, so to speak. I eventually did go to FAU after I graduated from PBCC, but that’s another blog post.

Because I had to attend PBCC part time, it took me three years to finish the two-year course, and in that time I became more than just someone with a bunch of credits, but a more educated and cultured man. I still had a lot to learn, but I was on my way.

So when I read things about community colleges that tend to dismiss them as inferior places of learning, I get kind of defensive. It hurts more when someone acts as if attending a community college is a sign of failure that will have to be explained in a job interview.

When a community college tries to rise above and be a major player, it seems like there is an attitude that the leaders of the place should recognize their inferiority and remember their place in the educational pecking order.

That hurts. I learned so much from the instructors at Palm Beach Community College, and received encouragement to do more than just attend college. At PBCC, I worked on the newspaper, took courses whose lessons remain with me to this day, and have a cup running over of memories. Maybe I never pledged an “Animal House”-like fraternity or engaged in hi-jinks, but that was because I was paying the freight on my education and needed to focus on that. I was active on the newspaper and in the PTK chapter as much as I could.

Indeed the same folks who run down community colleges also tend to run down adult students such as I was, and throw words around like “career student.” I changed in a lot of ways during my time in both community college and at the university, and sometimes that upset people at the post office. Suddenly, I was studying on my breaks or doing homework. After work, I’d go home instead of going to a local bar to whine about management. Often, I had to get up the next morning for class after working late. Believe me, it wasn’t the easiest path, but it was one I willingly took.

Community colleges labor in obscurity and their successes are not immediately apparent, but those who have a negative view of them are wrong. The people attending them are intent on success and determined to get ahead in this world. Sure, that’s a threat to some people, but the students just want a better life, and are willing to invest their time, money and effort into it.

For that reason alone, community colleges should be cheered, not dismissed, and their staffs should be honored, not belittled.

Indeed, one of the greatest teachers of English literature worked his magic for decades at Palm Beach Community College, Watson B. Duncan III. You may have heard of him. Once, he encouraged a smart-ass student in the back of the class to try out for a play. You may have heard of that student: Burt Reynolds. See the Wikipedia entry for the full story: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watson_B._Duncan.

Duncan could have taught anywhere, but he seemed happy at PBCC, where more than a hundred eager students would crowd into the Duncan Theater at PBCC to hear him explain the wonders of English literature. I still remember the names of those classes: “English Literature to 1660″ and “English Literature After 1660.” The textbook you had to buy, “The Literature of England,” sits in a bookcase in my house. I should open it more often.

Back before Web-based signups for class, you had to line up and give your proposed or dreamed-of schedule to a clerk, who would check to see if there was room. Those hoping to attend Duncan’s class would line up early, and I know I punched the air when I got into Duncan’s class. His reputation preceded him, and he taught people, their children and even their grandchildren.

Like everyone, I loved his lectures, and loved to kid him. One time, I was sitting in class and he was declaiming on the wonders of the man he called “The greatest writer in the history of the English language: William Shakespeare!” Well, this time, I decided to have some fun, so when he said “… language,” I burst out, “Stephen King!”

He looked mad. I apologized after class, and he accepted it with good humor, noting that his wife, Honey Duncan, read King’s books, but he couldn’t see why they were so popular.

Duncan was a great man, and his passing in 1991, before I graduated, was mourned at PBCC. This long diversion into Duncan was just to show that there’s quality in community colleges, and it’s the people who make it so.

So next time someone says, “Ah, it’s just community college,” reply this way: “It’s way, way better than you think.”

Letter to a lukewarm “fan”

Dear community-hating, biased, anti-social, anti-American, non-person:

I’m talking to you. Yes, you. There’s no one else here, so I must be talking to you.

You’re the reason. You’re the reason the team is losing, playing in a lousy 20-year-old stadium with only 50 skyboxes and thousands of empty seats at every game, and is unable to buy the best players to bring home that championship that will give us civic pride, make us attractive to companies looking to relocate and help companies thinking of leaving our area to see us in a different light.

It’s because of your selfishness and the tight wallets of all you apathetic fans who would rather watch the games on TV or go somewhere or do something else that the team is losing, and threatening to leave for a city where it will be loved and appreciated by the populace enough to actually come out to the game, and approve the bond issue for the $700 million stadium.

And don’t give me that nonsense that you can’t afford the $350 for you, the wife and four kids to go to each game. I mean, there are tickets available for $40 each before each game, and sure they’re in the upper deck and/or beyond the outfield walls, but you get a view of the big picture, almost as good a view as the people in the luxury boxes, so quit complaining.

Look, you work, your wife works, your oldest kid works, and I don’t buy that excuse about it being too expensive. If you can afford a mortgage, two vehicles and gas, insurance for your cars and house, clothes, cable TV and all the other junk you buy — like during the Christmas season — you should be able to afford to come out to at least 10 games to show your support for the team.

You say you’re worried about your job, and whether it will go to China, India or Belarus? A ballgame is the perfect antidote for anxiety, and rooting for the home team will be a break from your worries about ending up on unemployment and food stamps, and having the local “richie riches” throwing galas to benefit you and your fellow economic unfortunates. Just think, a player from the team might even visit your kids’ schools and sign autographs that you can sell on eBay.

Yeah, right, you’re not a fan, you have too much on your mind. Come on, everyone’s a fan of the local team, whether they know it or not. You take civic obligations seriously, right? You think kids today lack civic awareness, right? Well, what kind of example do you set for your kids when you don’t fulfill your duty and attend the ballgame? A bad one. Your kids will never learn the wonders of bonding with a parent at a sports event, and your intransigence will mean that, in the future, lots of kids will be denied key bonding experiences. All because of your selfishness. I hope you’re happy now.

Sports is about being a part of something that’s bigger than yourself. It’s not about the money, it’s about supporting a winning team of players, and an owner or ownership group beloved for being such devoted community benefactors. When the fans don’t come out, the players feel they have nothing to play for, and they lose, and then the team leaves town for another place, and you’re left with nothing. No team to love and root for, no players to cheer on through their recoveries from drugs, alcohol, bad relationships, disabled children, contract negotiations, etc.

See? You’re turning the conversation back to yourself. You’re going on and on about your worries, your fears, your concerns about your economic future. Look, without a team, and not just a team but a winning team playing in a new publicly funded stadium (so the team can devote its resources to buying great players), your employer will probably pull out and go somewhere else, leaving you unemployed. Worse, no employer will ever relocate here since the city is not “world-class,” lacking as it will a sports team. So you are to blame for the economic uncertainty you’re experiencing.

You’re the only one thinking about money here. All the players care about is being part of the team and winning, and bringing home that trophy. They didn’t get into the game for the money (they wouldn’t lie to the reporters; the players all have God on their side and are incapable of telling falsehoods), but to win, win, win! And here you are bloviating over a few million here or there, and making irrelevant points about the team being able to afford a $22 million pitcher who hasn’t thrown a pitch in a regulation game in three months (left clavicle hurts) while demanding an $800 million stadium. It’s people like you who are the reason America is losing its leadership in the world. Sports is the only way to regain it, and how can we regain it when idiots like you are against everything?

Right, babble on about parks and roads and libraries and schools. Without a sports team, the city will close up shop and die as people leave to live in a real city and businesses go to a real city. Don’t worry about how your tax money is spent or if you local officials are being bought and paid for, just focus on the team and its intense desire to win, and you’ll forget those minor issues that only matter to eggheads and nitpickers at the dying newspapers.

The team, your team, is on the verge of greatness, but that stadium is holding the team back. You can ensure a future for sports in the city, if you’d only stop being so selfish.

(Note: The above is obviously tongue-in-cheek, but it’s the attitude I detect in those who want a new stadium while the old one is perfectly fine.)

Third inning at the stadium game

Sports team owners today are adept at playing the stadium game with local elected officials, and know that it’s the threat of the “nuclear option” that can cause the leaders of even economically stressed communities to pay whatever it takes and build whatever has to be built to get a team to commit to come or commit to stay.

I sometimes get the feeling that team owners figure that Florida public officials are not that bright, and thus the owners can get away with more. Let’s be realistic here, spring training does bring in money and tourists, but only for a few months. True, some teams use the stadium complexes for player development and Class A teams from when the major league teams leave until September, and some complexes are used for amateur baseball, but many in Florida question the use of taxpayer money for funding the sports dreams of people who are worth millions or billions.

I have always said that the rustic character of spring training and less-inviting facilities have a purpose, which is to motivate players to do better and thus get a shot at the higher-level minor leagues and “The Show.” Yet teams seem intent on having super-luxurious facilities in Florida, especially when they can gull city and county commissioners into footing the bill.

There is also the advantage of renting the facility instead of owning it, as the Dodgers did in Vero Beach until the city of Vero Beach and Indian River County took it off their hands. The team that rents finds it is that it’s easier to pack up and leave if city officials refuse to play ball and approve even more subsidies — or another city comes along with a better deal.

That ability to make a rapid dash for greener pastures may leave local officials in a lurch, and also stuck with a giant white elephant of a stadium that has few uses, and none that can recoup even some sales tax revenue. True, local officials are at least savvy enough to ensure that teams will guarantee the bonds floated to buy or build a complex, but even if the locality is made whole, what then? The only option is to try to steal a team from another locality in Florida, and believe me that can be pretty costly.

That is what is happening now in Sarasota, Fla., where the Cincinnati Reds have announced that 2009 will be the last year of their spring training in the city, and they will go to Goodyear, Ariz., for 2010. It’s never a good idea to hurt the feelings of rich people, and the ownership of the Reds had to be feeling pretty down after voters rejected attempts to pick their pockets for a new facility for the Reds.

The Reds play at Ed Smith Stadium, near downtown. I went to a late spring training game there with my brother Robert, my first time there in the four years I have been in the area, and it is not that bad a place. I attended a number of Florida State League games at Holman Stadium in Vero Beach, and a couple of games at the Mets complex in Port St. Lucie, and I was expecting a real hole when I went to Ed Smith. I was surprised and got to see a good split-squad game against the Braves.

But the Reds wanted something new, and they wanted it mostly at taxpayer expense, and they had made noises that a city in Arizona was pretty much willing to do lots to get them to do spring training there. Since team owners only respect the voice of the people when the people say what they want to hear, the vote against a new taxpayer-funded facility for the Reds apparently showed that Sarasota’s people lacked the commitment to baseball.

Actually, what it showed was that the people of Sarasota had common sense. Baseball is not the only game in town in a city that prides itself on the arts. Sarasota is not St. Petersburg, but there is a vibrant arts community and people interested in paying to hear music, see pictures and attend street fairs. A team that could afford to blow millions on .220-hitting players could surely afford to refurbish the stadium they played spring training in.

It’s hardly a surprise that the Reds looked afield and found their new spring home in Goodyear, Ariz., though that city’s officials were not all thrilled at the one-sided deal with the Reds. The team will share the facility with another team, which means that someday they will want their own, and at government expense, no doubt. I’ll bet in five years, either the Reds or the other team will threaten to leave Goodyear unless they get their own facilities.

Experts on stadium deals say that teams always try to avoid referendums on packages of aid for a team because they know the people will never go for it. Sarasota voters have approved higher taxes for school and other desired services (though lately that sentiment has reversed somewhat), but I trust the people — and local elected officials should, too — that most of us can tell when a deal stinks.

In the next inning, the I-75 series: Fort Myers, Sarasota and the Boston Red Sox.

The flight of my life

I don’t know why I was always so interested in airplanes. Maybe it was because the house I grew up in from age 6 was in an approach path for LaGuardia Airport in New York City, and seeing those miracles in metal, commercial airliners, passing overhead on their way to the runways just fascinated me.

Oddly, I never rode in an airplane until I was 17 and on my way to Marine Corps basic training at Parris Island. I never even got close to airplanes until I was assigned to a squadron after electronics training. Still, I was always interested in airplanes, and I blew my allowance every week on model airplanes, and built them in the basement for display in my bedroom.

Airplanes from the World War II era fascinated me. True, I built models of commercial airliners, but the military planes drew me in. I guess because I was born 15 years after World War II ended, to me the planes weren’t lethal, as they were to those whose cities were targeted as well as those who flew in them.

I feel fortunate that there are still a few examples flying around, and Florida with its population of World War II veterans is a popular stop for the planes. I even got to crawl through a B-29, but it’s almost old hat to see a B-17 or B-24, the famous four-engined heavy bombers that are immortalized in countless books and movies.

I had gone through both B-17s and B-24s on static display, but until November 2007 had never flown in one. When I learned that a B-17 was touring Florida and would stop in Sarasota, I knew that if I ever wanted to experience a flight aboard a B-17, that was the time, before it was too late.

I thought at first that I would have to spring for the price, almost $400, for a short ride, but learned that the organization that owned the plane offering a flight for members of the media. I talked to an editor at my paper, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, and got a pass for a free flight on the B-17G Flying Fortress. I wrote a couple of preliminary stories, and was eager to finally not only climb aboard one, but actually see, hear and feel the B-17 in flight.

The Herald-Tribune sent a photographer with me, and other local news media outlets had sent reporters and camera people. The real thrill was meeting two World War II veterans: a man who had flown B-17s into combat over Germany, and a man who had been in training as a radio operator when the war ended, and thus never saw combat and never went overseas. Actually, the latter had some fascinating stories about taking care of those awesome B-17s.

It was amazing to see that plane arrive at the airport and taxi in. I wondered what it must have been like to see an airfield full of B-17s, and even more to see and hear them pass overhead.

The former pilot was in his 80s, but you could see him grow younger as he talked about his missions during the war and told stories to the rapt media people who surrounded him before the flight. One of his sons was there, and he was almost as excited about riding with his father in that beautiful and well-restored B-17.

After a ground briefing, we boarded the plane from the back door on the right side of the aircraft, behind the waist gun position. I had a personal video camera recording everything, and I managed a lame joke about being in seat 6A. Of course, the inside of the plane was tight. Somehow, the B-17’s inside looks bigger in the movies.

We took our seats and buckled ourselves in. This was definitely a warplane, and the crew chief reminded us that after the plane was aloft and we were moving around, to be sure not to grab the control cables if we needed to regain our balance in bumpy air.

Behind me was a transparent wall, and the tailwheel. I read somewhere that the tail gunner entered through his own door behind the tailwheel, and that unless he was small could not get into the main part of the plane.

Finally, the door was closed and the big radial engines were started. The noise was something else, and someone pointed out that there was no OSHA back then. The plane taxied for a while, finally took the active runway and the engines roared as we rolled faster and faster, and finally took to the air. I was flying in a B-17.

As the plane flew, I took video out the windows and some inside the plane. The B-17 pilot was enjoying the flight, his first in a B-17 in 60 years, and the rest of us were bouncing off the interior of the plane and each other. As I said, a B-17 may look huge from the outside, but it’s kind of tight inside.

A ride in one makes you appreciate the service and sacrifice of those astonishingly brave young men who flew into combat in those planes so we could all have a better life.

Looking out the window of the left waist gun position, I noticed that the wing flaps were down. That meant we were near to landing, and the crew chief was making hand signals that translated to sit down and buckle up. I did so, and soon we touched down at the airport in Sarasota, and the plane taxied in.

After we came to a full stop, and the door opened, we who had been aboard emerged and just walked around talking about the flight. I continued to interview people and take notes, and finally had to tear myself away to get to the newspaper and write my story.

For a few hours, I was busy telling the story of a man who was told he was too short and light to fly B-17s, and then how he ended up at a B-17 base, where he became a co-pilot on the planes. There was nothing about me or my joy at flying on the plane. I had planned to write a column but never did. So long as the main story got in, that’s all that mattered.

In the following days, I heard from the son, who was thrilled at my story and the photographer’s pictures. The group that had collected admission, the local Experimental Aircraft Association, was grateful to me because they had a very large crowd despite the plane being there on Tuesday and Wednesday.

A friend who I mentioned in an earlier post had been a navigator on B-24s during World War II, and I wish he were still alive so I could share my tape and experience with him. I bet he would have enjoyed it.

Those old warbirds may soon be permanently earthbound, I fear. The high price of aviation gas and maintenance may mean that the skies may soon no longer hear the throb of big radial engines pulling a piece of history through the air. That will be a terrible shame. And we’re losing World War II veterans, too.

Once, planes like the B-17 ruled the skies and filled the air with noise, and Americans with pride. Time and technology have left them behind, but I hope the day when those awesome planes are permanently grounded is still way off.

Second inning at the stadium game

In July 2001, I moved from Lake Worth, Fla., to Vero Beach, Fla., to take a job with the local newspaper, the Vero Beach Press Journal.

Vero Beach was then known as the site of L.A. Dodgers spring training, and there was a whole complex there that included practice ballfields, the very beautiful Holman Stadium, living spaces for players, a convention center, a golf course and more. After spring training the facilities were still in use because there was a Florida State League team, the Vero Beach Dodgers, that played there.

Dodger fans had been moving to Vero Beach for years to be near their beloved team when they retired, and the people of “Dodgertown” really did bleed “Dodger blue.” There was even an elementary school bearing the Dodgertown name.

But baseball is a business, and the owners of the Dodgers wanted to see some more cash, so they approached the governments in Vero Beach city and Indian River County and made their pitch: Unless the governments floated bonds and bought the baseball complex, they would leave Vero Beach. They wanted to stay, but it was time for the local governments to show their “commitment” to the team, and in return the team would show its commitment to the area — and stay.

Arizona cities were making pitches and had attracted other teams, and the Dodgers were among those that were hearing the call of the Cactus League.

I was getting up to speed on local issues, something important if I was going to be a good copy editor, and the paper’s readers were vehemently for or against it. The opponents were adamant, and referred to the deal as the “DDD,” the “Dumb Dodger Deal.”

Those in favor of the deal worried about the consequences of a Dodger departure from the area. Losing spring training in an area without much other economic development could be a disaster, especially as all of the Internet businesses that arrived in Indian River County had cratered, leaving lots of unemployed people around trying to eke out a life in the low-wage, no benefit jobs that were available in the region.

The Dodgers had warned that if the city and county did not step up to the plate, the convention center would close and the golf course would close, and those workers and more would lose their jobs.

Despite the opposition, the city and county made a deal, floated bonds and bought the Dodger complex. The Dodgers, in the programs sold for games of the Vero Beach Class A team, touted their new-found commitment to Vero Beach and Indian River County now that they were out of the real estate business in the area, and had signed a 20-year deal to stay in the area.

A few months later, after the 9/11 attacks, both the golf course and the convention center closed, and all those workers lost their jobs. Other businesses cut back, too, and some felt that it had all been a big con game played on the local government. All the bad things that were going to happen if the Dodgers didn’t get a deal had happened despite the Dodgers getting a deal.

People might have reassured themselves that at least the area had Dodgers spring training and the Class A Florida State League and Rookie League Gulf Coast League teams, but the Dodgers eventually decided to move their operations out of Vero Beach and to Arizona. The minor league teams left, and then, in 2008, the Dodgers played their last spring training games in Vero Beach. Their very last spring training games were not even played in Vero Beach, a slap in the face to the dedicated fans who had come out to see them through the years.

What happened? What happened was that the Dodgers seem to have always wanted to leave Vero Beach, and selling the complex appeared to be part of the plan. The Dodgers had guaranteed the bonds the city and county floated, and while the owners did try to get out of paying them off, they eventually did.

Today, Vero Beach is trying to recruit another major league team to its baseball complex, and there has been talk of the Baltimore Orioles leaving Fort Lauderdale and moving up there.

And in Sarasota, the pattern is starting again. In the third inning, I’ll talk about the stadium there, and what may be going on.