Folks that know me know that while I do gloat upon any misfortune that may fall upon the Minnesota Vikings or the Oakland Raiders,the bulk of my sports venom is directed towards the New York Yankees. Unfortunately through the years,I haven't had much opportunity to gloat in Yankee misfortune. I still have fond memories of the 1966 Yankees however..the first Yankee team to finish in last place since 1912. Horace Clarke anyone?
The mid to late 1970's were a tough time if you hated the Yankees. It was the heyday of the Steinbrenner run teams..The Bronx Zoo,Billy Martin,Reggie Jackson,Thurman Munson,Bucky Dent. High Drama and pennants.You couldn't even go into a store without seeing the Reggie Bar on display. A Reggie Bar was a Snickers type candy bar named after Yankee slugger Reggie Jackson.
What made things even worse was that I was living in New York City during this era. Some of the time was spent in Brooklyn,I also lived in Queens for a time. I moved to New York from Alaska in October of 1976. The first baseball game I saw as a resident of New York was within weeks of moving to New York. I saw Game 4 of the '76 Series between the Yankees and the Cincinnati (Big Red Machine) Reds.
I wasn't going to turn down a chance to go to a World Series game,but being the Yankee hater I am,it's hard to acknowledge that my first World Series game involved the Yankees.
Yankees lost and got swept in that Series,but to openly gloat over Yankee misfortune at Yankee Stadium would be akin to asking for a bloody face. I also knew within a month of living in the Big Apple that I was going to hate it.
Adding insult to injury was the fact that my favorite baseball team,the New York Mets, were in the midst of the worst era in the history of the franchise. Most of the heroes of the 1969 "Miracle Mets" or the '73 "You Gotta Believe" team were either gone or past their prime. M. Donald Grant was the worst GM in Mets history,and was the architect of what was known as the "Saturday Night Massacre" when the Mets in one day traded the cornerstone of the franchise Tom Seaver,and slugger Dave Kingman.
Yankee fans are among the most arrogant in sports and to be in the midst of them was almost unbearable. There wasn't much a Mets fan could do in the midst of it..or was there??
In New York in the seventies,I worked at a place called New Life Vinyl Repair. We would go to various car dealerships in Manhattan,Brooklyn,Queens,and Long Island to repair torn vinyl and leather in cars.
This was not a job for me.I had the amazing knack of taking what should have a simple repair and turning it into a major operation. I often created more damage than what I started out with. Dealerships would often call the New Life office telling the office manager to never send me to that dealership again. New York car dealers are not nice when they're pissed. I dreaded and hated virtually every day at work.
Under most circumstances,I would have been fired or allowed to quit,however New Life was not some normal job. It was owned and operated by the church group I belonged to called Gospel Outreach Ministries. Gospel Outreach Ministries was part of the "Jesus Movement" which sprouted up in the 1970's amongst the counterculture set. Gospel Outreach at its inception preached "discipleship" Its definition being giving up your old friends,in some cases your family,and material possessions to live communally,place one's life under the "authority" of church "elders" who by in large were pretty young (mid 20's and 30's) and to work for the church owned businesses.
Instead of being fired or allowed to quit,being incompetent on the job was viewed as a church matter,and the managers of New Life Vinyl Repair happened to be the church elders. Instead of being fired,facing failure every day was supposed to be looked upon as either some sort of character building exercise or as a means of rooting out sin. Failures on the job gave the church leaders an opportunity to "minister" to me. One elder told me that working for New Life was "saving me from a life as a Bohemian writer,who would hang at coffeeshops listening to poetry."
The ministering wasn't working though and with more and more dealerships complaining,something was going to have to happen and soon..
What was decided was I was to be teamed up with another who was undergoing the same struggles and we were going to either sink or swim. I was teamed up with a guy named Michael Lanzillotta from Long Island. Michael was a talented pianist and songwriter. Repairing car seats was not anymore his thing than it was mine,but in Michael's case,the chemicals we used for repair would create rashes on his hands.
For awhile the experiment worked.We were getting the work done,and there were no complaints. Michael and I enjoyed working together as for us part of the workday would include listening to "forbidden"music,doing Bee Gees impersonations as well as working out various acting routines.
Then came the big test.We were being sent to a Mercedes dealership in Manhattan to repair a leather seat. Leather was much tougher to repair than vinyl,and generally New Life would only send its best repairmen to a Mercedes dealer.
The seat had a tiny scratch on it.Supposedly,this was the type of repair that should have taken no longer than a half hour to do. Started out as if was going to be a quick and easy repair,Michael and I would have proven ourselves and we could maybe be like the rest of the repairmen..Then problems arose..The paint we had sprayed over the repair didn't quite match the seat. With an old used car, we would have been close enough to let it go,but this was a new Mercedes and things had to be exact. We had to strip off the paint. Leather seats tended to be very sensitive to the chemicals we'd use,and now a larger part of the seat is beginning to peel. In attempting to straighten out that mess,some of the chemicals splashed onto the plastic rear windows many Mercedes had back then.
I cant remember if it was the rubbing alcohol or the methyl ethel ketone we applied to the window to clean it up,but whatever it was,we placed a permanent fog on the window and ruined it. We didn't do much better with the car seat either.
The next day Michael and I heard about of the thousands of dollars worth of damage we did to the Mercedes. We heard about the yelling our manager received from the dealership. Like I said before..a pissed off New York car dealer is not very nice. As it turned out the dealership had to make a few maneuvers in order to keep Yankee outfielder Reggie Jackson from learning his Mercedes had been ruined. I think the dealership manager was a Yankees fan too. And we had just destroyed the car of the one,who according to his own words was the "straw that stirred the drink" of those Yankee teams.
I guess on one level Michael and I were lucky that the damages didn't come out of our pockets,but I look at it this way. We were taught that good things can come out of disasters and if I was going to wreck a car,what car was going to be better to wreck than one of a New York Yankee! Praise the Lord!
Next: the story of how Bucky Dent's homer in 1978 got me in big trouble.
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