What It Takes, Part 3 -- Epilogue: McEnroe Returns

Note: Best to read Parts 1 and 2 below before reading this one. 

Epilogue (noun) --  a section or speech at the end of a book or a play that serves as a comment on or a conclusion to what has happened. (the Apple dictionary)

I love epilogues, especially when one occurs in real life, as if life itself were a story. In the context of a ride in a taxi in a big city like New York, epilogues are rare indeed because in most cases you will never meet your passenger again.  So whatever you may have found to be interesting, or quirky, or disturbing about your passenger -- whatever the circumstance was --  it will remain unresolved in your mind.  You may occasionally find yourself wondering, "whatever became of so-and-so?"   You wish you could meet that person again just to find out or so you could satisfactorily end the story yourself.

I had an epilogue in my cab last year on April 22nd, a sunny Sunday with birds chirping and happy trees serenading the city with a concerto in the key of delicate green.

As I was waiting at a red light on Central Park West a bit before 4 p.m., the right rear door opened and a passenger jumped in.  Before I could say "hello" he barked, "59th and York and make it fly!"   Apparently he was in a big rush.

This kind of request is usually made in the form of a polite question, not a blunt command.  I looked in the rearview mirror to evaluate the situation.  In other words, why should I drive any faster than I  normally do?  Is this really an emergency?  I had one of those Nissan minivan cabs that day

which has a partition running the entire width of the cab.  One of the few things I like about this vehicle is that it allows the driver to fully view the passengers in the rear.  It also has an intercom that actually works, enabling the driver and passenger to hear each other.  So I was able to take a good look at this guy.

Hey, wait a minute -- he looked familiar.

Oh my God, it was McEnroe.  Again.  Much older.  After thirty-four years he has returned to me, the prodigal passenger.

"Mister McEnroe!" I exclaimed.

Big mistake.

If you recall from the second story in this series, the correct way to address John McEnroe is by referring to him by his last name only.  I should have remembered this and I immediately suffered the consequences of my blunder.

"WE DON'T HAVE TO TALK!" he screamed.

Now if this had been virtually anyone else in the world I would have tossed the guy out of my cab.  It's a dignity issue.  You can't allow people to talk to you that way unless, of course, they are drunk and much bigger than you.  But this was McEnroe. Actually, it was kind of charming.  I smiled as if he'd said, "Hello there, how are you?", which in his own way is sort of what he did.

I stepped lightly on the gas and we began moving downtown on Central Park West. His destination required me to make an almost immediate left turn onto the transverse which runs through the park at 65th Street.  It's the fastest route to the East Side.  But the transverse was closed due to a parade on 5th Avenue that day, so we had to cut over to Broadway, a detour.  McEnroe didn't take this lying down and began venting his rage at Mayor de Blasio, the tyrant who had no doubt orchestrated this outrage.  Ridiculous to get so upset, you say, but think about it. This is McEnroe.  Everyone knows how McEnroe feels about referees and mayors are pretty much the same as referees.  Right?

I realized there was no point in continuing on in that vein.  Instead, I said:

"Hey, do you remember what you were doing in the evening of March 13th, 1984?"

This non sequitur caught his attention.  He perked up and forgot about the mayor.

"I have no idea."

"You were in my cab.  I picked you up from your place on East End Avenue and took you to the Garden to a Knicks game.  We talked about sports.  I told you about the time I hit some balls with Martina Navratilova's coach."  

McEnroe's face lit up.  "I think I remember that ride!"

Well, that handled his don't-talk-to-me and his I'm-in-a-big-rush state of mind. Suddenly McEnroe was friendly, conversational, and in no particular hurry.  We began a rambling conversation about various subjects, one thing leading to another, as often happens in a lively exchange.  My long tenure as a taxi driver interested him and he asked me some questions about my more memorable rides.  One that I mentioned was the ride with a couple of Mafia hit men to Newark Airport.  That led to him telling me about a book he'd been reading at the time, I Hear You Paint Houses, which led to how much money Netflix was reportedly paying Martin Scorsese to direct the movie version.  And so on.

By the time we were about halfway to 59th and York I suddenly realized that I had the rarest of rare opportunities at hand.  And that this was really going to be fun.

Let me explain: in the last 34 years I have told the stories in Parts 1 and 2 of this series to countless passengers in my cab.  If the subject of tennis comes up, or if anything to do with what it takes to be the champion in a sport comes up, if time permits I will tell my passengers those two stories together.  First the story about how pleased I was with myself that I was able to hit the serve of Mike Estep, Martina Navratilova's coach.  Then the story about what McEnroe's response to me was, seven  months later, when I told him how pleased I was with myself that I could hit Mike Estep's serve:

"Well, Mike's never been known for his serve," McEnroe had said.

It burst my little bubble.

This always gets a laugh.  Then to make my point I really dig into McEnroe, putting emphasis on certain words.  I'll say: "here's a guy who is number ONE... in the WORLD!  NO ONE can beat him!  In the WORLD!  NO ONE!  But he's just a little concerned that maybe his TAXI DRIVER can hit his serve.  But then, oh, wait, it's okay.  It was only Mike Estep.  I'm safe."  

After a brief pause for more laughter I'll put the finishing touches on my speech:

"What we're looking at here is compulsive competitiveness of a magnitude that is borderline insane!  This guy is asylum bait.  He's surrounded by assassins.  Even his taxi driver, for God's sake, is a potential threat to his dominance in the world of tennis."

And the point I make is that this is what it takes to be Number One.

So -- the rarest of rare opportunities at hand was this: due to the high level of affinity that had been created between us by our free-flowing conversation, I knew I could now tell McEnroe the story I'd been telling passengers for 34 years about him to him.  Just the way I tell it.  In life this just never happens.

So I set him up.

As we hit some traffic on 57th Street, I asked him if he remembered what he'd said to me in 1984 about my tennis session with Martina's coach.  Of course he did not, so the door was open.  I started at the beginning with Mike Estep hailing me on 6th Avenue in August of 1983, how friendly he was, how he was telling me things about the men's tour he probably shouldn't be telling anyone, about how he always beats Martina in a real match, and so on, leading up to his invitation to come out onto the court so I could see what it's like to try to hit the serve of a pro, and then later observing the ferocity of Martina when she played him in a practice game for real.

Watching McEnroe in the mirror, it was clear that he was enjoying the story and I was in safe territory when the story became about him.  So I brought it on...

"...so it's seven months later, March 13th, 1984 to be exact..."

"...you're going to the Garden, you're in my cab, we're on the FDR Drive..."

"...I'm telling you how happy I was with myself that I was able to hit his serve..."

"...you move forward in your seat, a look of concern on your face..."

"...what was his name again? you ask..."

"...Mike Estep..."

"...you move back in your seat, all relieved..."

"...well, you know," you say, "Mike's never been known for his serve"...

I check in the mirror to see how McEnroe's responding.  He's loving it.  I continue, with emphasis:

"...it's 1984.  You're the Number ONE tennis player in the WORLD!  NO ONE can beat you!  In the WORLD!  NO ONE!  But you're just a little concerned that maybe your TAXI DRIVER can hit your serve!  But then, wait, it's okay, it's only Mike Estep.  I'm safe."

Looking again at McEnroe, I see he's just about doubled-over in laughter.  I move in for the kill.  In  mock exasperation, squealing:

"Mike's never been known for his serve?"

And then, the coup de grace, both middle fingers raised high in extended triumph:

"FUCK YOU!  FU-U-U-CK YO-U-U-U McENROE!"

Now he is doubled-over in laughter.  

I tell my passenger to go fuck himself and he loves it.  A great accomplishment for me, but I knew it wouldn't offend him.  Self-deprecation has always been one of McEnroe's sterling qualities -- his saving grace, actually.

A feeling of calm set in as the laughter subsided.  We rode in silence for half a minute or so, then  traffic for the 59th Street Bridge brought us to a complete stop at Park Avenue.  I told McEnroe I knew a cab driver trick to get around it and proceeded to turn one block south to 56th Street, which is always completely empty.  As we began to zip along at a decent pace, I remembered that in our previous ride back in '84 I had kind of set him up for giving me a big tip.  We now had only a couple of minutes before we'd arrive at his destination, but I realized it could be done again.

"You know, for many years you held the record for being the best celebrity tipper in my cab," I said.    

"Really!  Who broke it?"

"Leonardo di Caprio.  Back in 1997.  He wanted to know who was the best celebrity tipper I'd ever had in my cab and I said, 'believe it or not it was John McEnroe, who gave me double the meter.'  Then he said, 'well I'm gonna give you triple the meter.' And he did.  Pretty impressive, considering he was really just a kid at the time."

Looking at him in the mirror, I could see a certain look of concern appearing on his face which I'd seen before.  Remember, this is a man who suffers from Obsessive Competitive Syndrome.  

I continued:

"That record stood for 17 years until it was broken by Derek Jeter.  Jeter gave me quadruple the meter."

McEnroe was indeed concerned.  "What was Jeter like?" he asked.  "I've never met him."

I told him Jeter was as advertised -- friendly, funny, easy to talk to, unpretentious. 

We arrived at his destination, the Sutton East Tennis Club (of course!) at 59th and York.  The fare was $19.30 and  I could almost see the wheels turning in his mind -- "should I give this guy quintuple the meter?"  That would be almost $100.  Could he do it?  The title of Best Celebrity Tipper Of All Time was within his grasp -- again! -- and the tension was almost palpable. 

McEnroe, like most people these days, was paying with a credit card.  As the passenger is touching a screen in the back to enter the tip, the driver can watch on his own screen in the front to see what's happening.  McEnroe began tapping.  If this had been taking place in a stadium, the crowd would be hushed in nail-biting anticipation.  

Could he do it?

The numbers began coming up on my screen, ever so slowly, one digit at a time...  a five, then a zero, then a period and two more zeroes.  Fifty dollars.  A valiant effort, ladies and gentlemen, but, alas, not enough.  He had come up short.  So sad, really, to see Father Time catching up with them.  Even the great ones must fall eventually to his relentless pursuit.  

But wait!

Number of times what's on the meter is only one way of determining the winner. Simple quantity would be another, more accurate, means of awarding the trophy. Di Caprio's ride in 1997 had been a short one and triple the meter came to about fifteen dollars.  And Jeter's ride was also a short one, around $8 on the meter and he gave me two twenties.  A $32 tip.    

So actually McEnroe had done it!  After 34 years he had come back to reclaim his title -- the Best Celebrity Tipper of All Time In My Cab. 

Without question the greatest comeback in taxi history!

I immediately decided he should receive a trophy -- my book.  I always keep a copy handy on the dashboard should the need arise to show it to passengers and this was just such an occasion.  

Thanking him for his tip, I announced that I had something for him -- "because you're special!"  And I held it up for him to see.  I couldn't hand it to him because the partition in these Nissans is solid with no window, so I told him to come around to me to receive his prize.  While he was on his way I wrote an inscription: "To John McEnroe, Thanks for that double the meter in 1984!  Best wishes, Eugene Salomon."  

I handed him the book, we shook hands, and by the big smile on his face it seemed to me that he was as happy to receive it as he was when he'd been handed one of his many trophies for winning the U.S. Open.  

Although that could be something of an overstatement on my part. 

*********

I found myself basking in the afterglow of that ride as my day continued on.  While taking a break at one of the many Starbucks around the city I reviewed mentally what had transpired earlier.  By confronting and skillfully communicating with an angry passenger I had turned the ride into a pleasant experience for the both of us.  I had transformed "we don't have to talk" into a fifty dollar tip.  I had explained to the passenger the route I was taking and expertly navigated the city streets to get him there in the shortest possible time.  I was so able to get myself on his wavelength to the point that even saying "fuck you" to him was completely appropriate and appreciated.  And I had given him a book written by his own taxi driver, something that is not likely to happen to a passenger even once in a lifetime. Putting all modesty aside, that is what it takes to rise to the very top echelon of a subset of our culture called "taxi driver".

The Fan Strikes Back

Baseball.

It's the one sport I am really a fan of, and I have suffered much because of it.

As a kid I was raised as a fan of the New York Giants baseball team by my father, himself a lifelong devotee of that franchise, and I worshipped the players. Then, when I was nine years old, they packed up their bats and balls and moved to San Francisco, taking my Willie Mays with them.  What a slap in the face to an innocent child who'd done nothing but love them!

It was the first in a long series of betrayals that were yet to come.

There followed four years of abandonment and bitterness.  The only baseball team left in town was the Yankees, but switching to them at that time was not an option, as I'd been thoroughly indoctrinated to see them as The Enemy.  So I trudged through empty days in some kind of baseball purgatory, left on my own to play second base for my Carvel 91 Little League team without a role model to emulate nor a guide to show me the way.

Strange thoughts of retribution began to creep into my universe.  I would find myself sitting in class in elementary school with my attention drifting to mental scenarios of Horace Stoneham, the owner of the Giants at that time, showing up at my front door and begging me for forgiveness.  I would insist that he move our Giants back to New York City and come to my school to make the announcement with me at  his side.  He'd give me a bunch of tickets to games.  He'd send Willie Mays over to my house to give me tips on hitting.  My friends would see me hanging with Willie and would be jealous.  Billy O'Reilly would offer to be my best friend if he could just get to spend time with Willie, too.  Of course I would not allow it.

Not surprisingly, my grades began to suffer.

But in 1962 it looked like things might be starting to turn around. The New York Mets were created as a new National League expansion team, and, although they were awful in terms of winning games, they served as an adequate replacement for the Giants.  Things went along smoothly until 1969 when they made the mistake of winning the World Series.  With their fans now expecting them to play like winners, they immediately began to implode.  Nolan Ryan, a rising star who went on to become one of the best players in baseball history (and today has thousands of kids named after him) was traded away.  Tom Seaver, who had earned the nickname "The Franchise", was let go in a silly contract dispute.  Mets management thought it would be a good idea to decorate Shea Stadium with gigantic neon stick figures of baseball players and to have a huge plaster apple rise from a huge plaster hat whenever a Met hit a home run.

I felt my intelligence was being insulted.  Hey, Mets, I'm an educated baseball fan.  I don't need flashing lights and electric apples to keep my attention on the game. Still, I followed the team and rooted for them even though they quickly descended into mediocrity and worse.

Then in 1975 free agency arrived, thus planting the seed of the fan's moral dilemma.  From a human rights point of view players of course should be able to be paid what the market will bear.  Who are the owners to prevent players from offering their services to the highest bidder?  Slaveholders?  It was actually heartwarming, for a while, to see the big stars making big money.

But things soon got out of hand.  Apparently what the market would bear, what with all the TV revenue, ticket sales, concession sales, trademark income, and so on, was more than anyone could have imagined.  The average annual salaries of Major League baseball players ballooned from $113,000 in 1979 to over $3,000,000 in 2006.   And that was the average!  The big names were making tens of millions per year with guaranteed contracts that paid them that money even if they had bad years or sat half the season on the bench.

The average working person began to have a hard time relating to this.  A teacher or a cop makes barely enough to keep food on the table and maybe not even enough to take the family to a baseball game, but some guy who can run a little faster, throw a ball a little harder, and hit a ball a little better can make... what?  Tens of millions of dollars for playing baseball for just a single season?  Some began to question the values of our culture -- a disconnect was setting in.

You would think that when some guy is making millions of dollars a year for playing a game that he'd be happy with what he's got, perhaps even thanking his lucky stars every day for his good fortune.  But no. In 1981 the players and their union thought they should get more.  So they went on strike, canceling 713 games.  In 1994 there was a lockout (this time the owners wouldn't agree to the players' demands) which abruptly ended the season in August and cancelled the entire post-season, including the World Series.

Then, to make matters even worse, in the late '90s we found out that many of the star players were actually cheaters.  Some guy whose name was on your kid's t-shirt was actually jacked up on "performance-enhancing drugs".  Aside from the betrayal of trust that it loudly proclaims, this even tore away at the history of the game. Now when a new record is being approached (such as the number of home runs hit in a season or in a career) the question invariably arises as to whether or not the new record should count in the record books if the player had ever been found to have been taking PEDs.

You know, with all of the perfectly valid things to become cynical about in this world, baseball should not have been one of them.  But it was.  I myself had become so disenchanted about the way things were going that I decided I was a "free agent" as a fan in 1985.  My loyalty was no longer a given -- it had to be earned. I had to wonder why I was even bothering to pay attention to these overpaid, pill-popping cheaters.  After some soul-searching I realized what it was.

It was the game itself.

Baseball.

It's the most intriguing, most theatrical, most balanced, and most intellectual sport ever invented.  Consider this:

In baseball...

--- there's no clock.  A game could theoretically go on forever.  There's no possibility of a tie.  I love that.

--- it's a game in which a contest between two individuals (the pitcher versus the hitter) immediately shifts into a game between multiple team players the moment the ball is hit.

--- it's a game of likelihoods, represented as statistics, which keep you thinking as the game continues, not just watching.

--- you don't have to have a huge body to play it at its highest level.  In fact this year a player on the Houston Astros, Jose Altuve, who stands at just 5 feet, 6 inches, won the Most Valuable Player award in the American League.  A player on the Yankees, Aaron Judge, who is 6 feet, 7 inches, came in second in the voting.

--- it's like a symphony, with diminuendos (moving slowly) building into huge crescendos (increasingly unbearable tension with every pitch).

--- you can get to know the players as individuals.  They're not hidden behind masks, like in American football.  They're not in constant motion, as in many sports.  Each player on a team comes to bat four or five times in an average game.  This gives the fan opportunities to become familiar with them as personalities, similarly as you would come to know a character in a drama.

And then there's this, as aspect of the game I find especially endearing:

Baseball is the only sport in which a fan in the stands can, in certain specific circumstances, become an active and legal participant in the game itself.  When a batter hits a ball in the air that is heading for the stands, once the trajectory of the ball crosses the point that separates the stands from the playing field, the rule book states that the fan in the stands has as much right to catch the ball as the player on the field who is also trying to catch it.  If that player is on your team, you should get out of his way and let him catch it.  But if he's on the opposing team, the fan should try to catch or deflect the ball himself before the player can get to it.  For that specific moment the fan in the stands is actually a player on the team!  

Every once in a while this magnificent aspect of baseball actually determines the outcome of a game.  October 9th, 1996, was one of those times.  The New York Yankees were playing the Baltimore Orioles in the first game of the American League Championship Series.  Late in the game Derek Jeter hit a long fly ball to right field that was descending close to the fence.  A twelve-year old kid named Jeffrey Maier reached over and scooped the ball into the stands.  It should have been ruled fan interference but the umpire called it a home run and a great controversy ensued.  Nevertheless, the call stood (this was before they used videotape replays to decide close plays) and the kid became instantly famous.  He was dubbed the "angel in the outfield" by the New York media and appeared on talk shows.  Not only that, but he went down in baseball history and to this day any good Yankee fan or serious fan of the sport knows his name.

Here's the video of the incident:

And this is what aired on The Today Show the next day:

Okay, all of the above is to set you up for what occurred in my taxi in the early morning hours of August 30, 2002.  Here is a story from "the vault", one I have told to many passengers in my cab but never before gotten around to writing -- a tale of retribution by a fan who just couldn't take it anymore...


I'd started my shift late that night and that, along with a few lousy rides, had dampened my mood.  Plus there was something else going on that night which was really bothering me  -- the deadline of yet another threatened baseball strike was set for midnight.  If an agreement wasn't reached by that time, the season would come to a halt -- there would be no baseball the next day and, who knows, maybe not for the remainder of the season.

I'd been following this on the radio, of course.  Just after the midnight hour an announcement came over the air that the deadline had been extended -- the negotiations between the owners and the baseball union were continuing on into the night. This was hopeful, but it was still maddening to me as well.  Just the idea of millionaires thinking their working conditions could warrant a strike...  it was infuriating.  This strike thing was really getting under my skin.

The night went on.  Business was slow.  According to my trip sheet, at 2:09 I picked up a guy and a girl coming from a bar on 47th Street between Broadway and 8th Avenue and took them to 26th and 6th.  After dropping them off I headed back to 47th Street and at 2:24 picked up another fare, two young ladies, and took them to 89th and 2nd.  I then drove downtown to see if I could catch a fare at a club on 56th Street between Park and Lexington Avenues.  It was a good move.  At exactly 2:51 four people came out of the club and entered my cab.

Three of them were beautiful young women, well-tanned and well-cleavaged, wearing skin-tight party dresses.  They squeezed together in the back seat.  The fourth passenger was a guy who might be called a "cool dude".  He had on an expensive-looking suit and wore his hair in abbreviated dreadlocks -- not the full-length kind that would go down below the shoulders, but a shorter version that ended in mid-neck.  It was an unusual look that caught my attention.

As he sat down next to me in the front seat, he immediately took control of his new environment.  "Hey, man," he said, "let's get something else on the radio." Then, without bothering to ask me if that was okay, he reached over and changed the station from the one I had on ("oldies" rock and roll) to one he preferred (hip-hop). He then turned around in his seat and started carrying on with the girls.

It was a severe breach of taxicab etiquette.  Passengers in party mode often want some kind of dance music to keep them in the groove, and requests are always honored.  But to reach over and change the station without even asking... well, that's beyond rude.  It's belittling to the driver, as if he's not there, not really a person.  And, although it is a mode of public transportation, it's still my car you're in, buddy.

Nevertheless, I choose not to make an issue of behavior like this.  My thinking in these situations is, okay, this passenger is acting badly, but he will be out of my life in ten or fifteen minutes.  Most people are relatively polite and there are always a few who are too full of themselves to notice, or care, how their behavior affects others. That's how it is.  I can tolerate this.  There's no need to take a stand.

I pulled out from the curb and drove east on 56th.

"So where are you heading?" I asked, since no one had yet given me a destination.

"Just go downtown, man, we're gonna find another club," the cool dude said, then he turned around again and continued chatting it up with the ladies.

I made a right on Lex, which goes downtown.  The party was continuing as we drove along, the music loud, the laughter loud, and the driver not enjoying the experience. As we approached 34th Street I was told by the cool dude to pull over and stop beside an all-night deli.

"Just getting some cigarettes," he said, "back in a minute."  He got out of the cab and was joined on the street by one of the girls from the back seat.

As I watched him open the door to the deli, it suddenly hit me -- I realized who this guy was!  This was Tony Tarasco, a baseball player currently on the Mets, an outfielder, who had once played for the Baltimore Orioles.  Earlier in the season I'd read an article in the newspaper about him, about how he'd been in a gang in Los Angeles when he was a teenager and was able to leave that behind to become a big-league baseball player.  It showed a picture of him with this hair style, the abbreviated dreadlocks, which was why I recognized him.  And if you watched the above video you would already know that it was Tony Tarasco in right field in Yankee Stadium on October 9th, 1996, who was trying to catch the ball that was deflected into the stands by the young fan.

Well, wasn't this interesting!  Here it was, nearly three in the morning, a baseball strike pending, and I've got a baseball player in my cab who at the moment was buying cigarettes and was not yet done partying.  I looked at the two girls in the mirror -- beautiful, so well put-together, all that cleavage, a couple of 

Jayne Mansfields. They were making small talk between themselves. One of them, apparently, was from Sweden.

All these bits of information began to whirl around in my mind... my long-lost Giants, the hapless Mets, millionaire athletes living in bubbles, the steroids, the strikes, the magnificence of the game itself, soaring ticket prices, radios, the magnificence of the game itself, night clubs, cigarettes, the magnificence of the game itself, cleavage...

I was starting to feel emboldened.  I reached over to the radio dial and turned it back to my own station.  That was more like it.

The door opened.  Tony Tarasco and the other girl got back in the cab.  Right away he noticed the station had been changed.

"Hey, man, what happened to my music?"

"Oh, the girls didn't like it.  I turned it back."

A complete lie, but at the moment it seemed like the right thing to say.

There was a hesitation.  And then, in what can only be attributed to divine intervention, at that very instant a bulletin came on over the radio with the latest news about the baseball strike. Both of us stopped talking and, listening intently, we learned that the negotiations were still continuing on into the night.  Then, just as the report ended, I seized the moment.  Turning to my station-changing passenger, I went into a loud and angry mock tirade that went pretty much like this:

"If those MOTHERFUCKERS DARE go on strike, we're NEVER coming back!  NEVER! FUCK these over-paid millionaires! FUCK THEM!  Less than a year after 9-11 and THIS is what these MOTHERFUCKERS want to do?  Go on STRIKE?  Oh, boo-hoo, you poor little baseball babies, you only made three million dollars last year!  Are you KIDDING?  Go on STRIKE?   FUCK THEM!  I'm telling you, man, if they go on strike, we fans are NEVER coming back!  NEVER!"

He seemed to have enjoyed the rant.  With a big smile he said:

"Oh, man, you don't know who I am!"

There followed what in the theater is called a "pregnant pause".  If life were a novel, this would have been the moment of climax, when the hero knows that his war has been won, his journey done, his object of desire attained.  All that remained was procedural.

Savoring the moment, I flipped my own demeanor to cheerfulness and, with a big smile, I said:

"Oh, yes, I know who you are.  You're Tony Tarasco.  And I've got two words for you, Tony..."

He was stunned, truly, as if he'd been caught by a right hook to the chin.

"What?"

I went for the knock-out:

"Jeffrey Maier!  That kid's more famous than you are!"

His bravado flying out the window, he seemed to have descended into an introspective spin and was at a loss for words.  Finally, he said:

"Well, I don't know about that..."

It took a few moments for Tony to regain his composure.  Then we had a civil back and forth about the pros and cons of the looming baseball strike.  My point of view was, among other things, that it was less than a year after the Twin Towers came down and thousands lost their lives.  Millionaire athletes going on strike in times like these would be the epitome of greed and disrespect.  His argument was that it's a short career and players need to be thinking about their grandchildren.

I looked in my mirror at the three curvy ladies in the back seat.  It was hard to imagine them as grandmothers.

By the time we arrived at the new club, any hard feelings that may have arisen from my sneak attack had dissolved.  Tony turned out to be a good sport.  At one point he showed me an electronic device he had attached to his belt with which he would vote either "yes" or "no" to whatever agreement might be reached in the negotiations.  I thought that was cool and pretended I was going to try to yank it away from him.  He enjoyed that, which I appreciated.   It showed me he was a guy who could be kidded around with.

"Vote 'yes'," I demanded as we reached their destination, a new club.  With a smile and a wave goodbye (and an excellent tip, I must say) he and the girls were gone.

The next day the news was that an agreement had been reached and the players had voted to accept it.  There would be no strike.

Later I learned that Tony had been quite correct about one thing he'd said to me -- it is indeed a short career, at least for most players.  Two days after he was in my cab, he played in his last game in the Major Leagues.  His career as a player was over, although he has remained in the game as a coach.

But I was correct about another thing.  I have told this story to scores of passengers in my cab, each of them describing him or herself as a baseball fan. I ask them all if they remember the name of the kid who deflected the ball into the stands.  The great majority of them do -- "Jeffrey Maier"!  But only one passenger so far (who turned out to be from Baltimore) remembered the name of the player who was trying to catch that ball.

So you can go to a baseball game, try to catch a ball that is heading right toward you and, if Fate decrees it, you can wind up being better remembered in baseball lore than many, if not most, of the players who actually played the game.

Baseball -- the magnificence of the game itself.

Well Worth The Eighteen Bucks

There are certain rides which you suspect will be trouble, but then it turns out there is none. For example, the passenger looks drunk, acts drunk, is drunk, and you’ve got a feeling that any second now this son of a bitch is going to puke in the back seat. But he does not. And that is good. 

But then there are others for which your suspicion is justified - you could see it coming, and indeed it arrives. But at least you can say, “I saw it coming” and give yourself credit for possessing a certain amount of wisdom, even if your wisdom wasn’t of sufficient quantity to have been able to avoid the damned thing in the first place.

Such was the case with a ride I had a couple of months ago, on a frigid Wednesday evening in February. I had taken a fare from Manhattan to Williamsburg, in Brooklyn, at 6:20 - not something a cabbie wants to do at that hour because it likely means going back to “the city” (Manhattan) without a passenger and that is money lost. And although the mantra of the veteran New York City cab driver is supposedly “I don’t go to Brooklyn”, I took the guy without even a hint of complaint - a sign that I may be softening up in my old age.

It was the next ride that was the trouble. Before I could turn around and head back to the Williamsburg Bridge I was hailed at McCarren Park by three teenage boys, dressed in outfits typical of the so-called “inner city”, each about 15, maybe 16 years old. Now here’s a little truism a cabbie learns, usually the hard way, about teenagers and taxicabs in New York City - there are only two situations in which kids between the ages of 13 and 17 ever take taxis without an adult accompanying them. 1) They are “rich kids” from the Park Avenue or 5th Avenue parts of town. 2) It is a Friday or Saturday night and the teenagers are a boy and a girl who are out on a date. The reason: money. Cabs are too expensive for teenagers unless you’re a rich kid or it’s a very special occasion.

Now, I know this, but as mentioned maybe I’m getting soft in my old age, or maybe it’s just that it’s been so long since I’ve had any teenagers in my cab who didn’t fit into one of those two categories that I’ve let my guard down. Whatever the reason, I stopped and let them in, all three in the back seat. Immediately there was this sinking feeling a cabbie gets when he knows he’d made a mistake. I had gone against my instinct, thinking I was doing the right thing by stopping for whomever wanted my services, as per the rules, but now I had a problem on my hands. As soon as they were in my immediate space, danger signals went off on my taxi driver radar. These were not your normal taxi passenger particles, so to speak. They weren’t passing through the filter.

What I do in a situation like this, as I’ve described elsewhere in this blog, I call my “Three Strikes And You're Out System”. Strike One: from your outward characteristics you look to me like potential trouble of one kind or another. I don’t feel comfortable with you in my cab. Strike Two: I also don’t feel comfortable with where in the city you want me to go and the time of day (like late at night) you want me to go there. Well, these three fellows by appearance, age, and demeanor brought me to Strike Two immediately, and when I asked them where they were going the one directly behind the partition next to the right-side door barked out:

“Ridgewood, yo.”

Ouch.

This was further bad news because not only did they want to take me for a long ride in the opposite direction from Manhattan, but Ridgewood is a low-income, not-gentrified part of the city which I don’t really know very well due to the fact that I get so few fares out there. This ride was going to be something like fifteen to twenty dollars on the meter. Three inner-city teenagers paying that much money for a cab ride when they could have taken the subway? Noooo… this particle was definitely not making it through the filter. Still, the procedure of my system is that when you have a Strike Two, what you do is communicate, or try to. Often what looks like something ominous turns out to be not that way at all upon further observation. So I went at it.

“So what street do you want in Ridgewood?” I asked.

“Huh?” the kid on the right-rear grunted.

“Where are you going? What street?”

There was a brief conversation among them. And then, “We don’t know yet,” replied the same kid, who seemed to be a spokesman for the group. “Get on Metropolitan.”

This was a further bad indicator. They’re taking an expensive ride and they’re not sure where they’re going? Two possibilities enter the mind of the taxi driver: maybe they aren’t concerned about spending money on a ride to a vague destination because they have no intention to pay for it. Or, worse, maybe they want to get to a general area and then find a street where it would be a good place to hold you up. I knew I had to determine which possibility it was before we got to Ridgewood - my life could be at stake here. If I decided what they had in mind was just to beat the fare, I would take them. If I was right, all I would lose, really, would be some time. But if I wasn’t sure, I would have to abruptly end the ride in a busy area with lots of people around (hopefully right behind a police car, if I could find one) and through overt or covert means, get them out of the cab. (That’s Strike Three.) So I had a plan. But first I had to continue with my attempt at communication.

The kid in the middle, who I could easily see in the rear-view mirror, was wearing a Yankee cap. I thought this was a good way to start a conversation, so I looked at him in the mirror and asked him if he was a Yankee fan. He seemed surprised that he was being asked a question. After thinking about it for a few seconds he replied, rather flatly, “Yeah.”

“How do you think they’re looking for the new season? Think they’ll make the playoffs?”

The kid pondered this concept - Yankees… playoffs… and finally responded. “Maybe,” was all he said. He wasn’t saying much, but he said something. I took this as a hopeful sign and continued.

“Hey, you know who I had in my cab last summer? Derek Jeter!”

Now for any Yankee fan, or even any baseball fan, this statement should result in a “Wow!” of one sort or another. Derek Jeter, the recently retired superstar of the Yankees, has been the most admired sports figure in New York for the last twenty years. But all it got out of the kid was an even-voiced, “That’s cool.” And nothing more. This was not good.

I was beginning to think I was going to have to get rid of these guys for my own safety when there was an oddly positive development in the ride. They started goofing off with each other. One of them accused another of farting. Then the one who’d been accused yelled up to me, “Hey cab driver, did you fart?” which brought some laughter in the back seat. It was juvenile and disrespectful, but it gave me something with which to calculate their intentions.

In my understanding of human behavior I could not see three teenagers joking around with each other if what was in the back of their minds was to pull out a weapon and rob me. If that had been their intention, they would have been serious, silent, and mean-spirited. I could see that these kids were basically just wiseass teenagers. Still, something was up and I was pretty sure at this point that what was up was that they were going to try to beat the fare. That suspicion wasn’t enough to kick them out of the cab, however, so we continued on.

When we’d gone a couple of miles down Metropolitan Avenue some disagreement arose among them as to where they wanted to go. One kid said turn left, the other said no, turn right, and then there was a whispered conference among them - a development I didn’t like one bit. What was it they didn’t want me to hear? It was a little after seven in the evening and although it was dark there were still plenty of cars and people on the streets, so I still didn’t think they intended to hold me up. But now I wasn’t so sure. I decided that if they directed me to turn into an alley or a dead-end street I would quickly close the partition window on them, lock it, and order them out of the cab. The Plexiglas partition is bullet-proof (it had better be!) and as long as I had an open road in front of me I could take off the moment they stepped out of the cab and be safe, hopefully. To hell with the money.

If, however, they were simply going to try to leave without paying, as I expected, well, I had another plan…

We took a few lefts and rights and wound up on a one-way, residential street. Halfway down the block the kid in the rear-right says, “Okay, stop here.” As I brought the cab slowly to a halt, I noted that the street in front of me was devoid of other vehicles, a good thing. Stopping the cab, I left it in “Drive” with my foot on the brake.

“You’re getting out here?” I asked the group, noticing that there was $18.30 on the meter.

But there was no answer, as such. Instead there was a sudden, loud, rebel yell from both sides of the compartment as the rear doors flew open simultaneously. With grins of joyous complicity on their faces, the two kids who had been sitting next to their own doors jumped out of the cab and began to run away the moment their feet touched ground. Seeing this, I put my own plan into action. Instead of just sitting there and watching them run, I stepped on the gas, hard, while at the same time reaching back, slamming the partition window shut, and locking it. The sudden forward thrust of the cab caused the two rear doors to close on their own. But I wasn’t driving down the street alone. The kid in the Yankee hat who had been sitting between his friends hadn’t been able to get out in time. In an instantaneous reversal of fortune, he was suddenly a prisoner in a moving vehicle.

“Like I didn’t see that coming,” I called back to him while bringing the speed up to about 25 miles per hour. The look of shock on the kid’s face was priceless. I wish I could have taken a picture of it.

“So,” I said in sarcastic cheerfulness as we continued down the street, “let’s find a cop.”

There was panic and confusion in the kid’s eyes. Perhaps he saw his future melting away due to being arrested. Perhaps he could see how he would lose the respect of certain people in his life whom he admired. Or perhaps he could just see himself being picked up at the precinct by his momma, who would give him more than a piece of her mind when she got him home. Whatever it was, he kept it to himself. He didn’t say a word to me.

For my part, I knew I had to keep the taxi moving while looking for a cop. If I brought it to a stop, the kid would certainly bolt. I continued driving down the street for another block with still no other cars in front of me, but then slowed down a bit to make a left turn at an approaching intersection. As I went into the turn, the speed of the cab going down to about fifteen miles per hour, the kid suddenly pushed open the right-rear door and jumped out, rolling over a couple of times onto the pavement just like in a scene from an action movie. Looking back at him through the mirror, I could see him rising to his feet, apparently uninjured. There was an accumulation of snow on the street which may have cushioned his fall.

I kept driving, satisfied that I had won the game. Actually, just the look on the kid’s face was worth the eighteen bucks. In these fare-beating scenarios, it’s not really about the money, anyway. It’s about pride, not letting someone make a jackass out of you. Also it’s about teaching the person a lesson, if possible. Hopefully this kid had a realization along the lines of there being consequences to stupid behavior. Of course in this particular instance, he may have had a realization of a different kind...

...like that he may have a future as a stuntman!

Running The Gamut, Number Three

One of the great things about driving a taxi in New York City - perhaps the greatest thing - is that on any given day you may run the gamut: that is, you may pick up people who are able representatives of both the top and the bottom of the social spectrum. Your first passenger may be a nun who works for God and your second a street hooker who works for Jake the Snake, her pimp; your third an assistant district attorney and the fourth the guy he’s sending to prison. And so it goes - the parade of humanity enters and exits through your doors. It’s magnificent, really.

(Note: I’ve written two other posts on this subject, “Running The Gamut”, and “Running the Gamut, Number Two”. If you’d like to read them please click here and here.)

So, in this episode of Running the Gamut, we’re going to zero in on a specialized zone of activity in New York City, the world of baseball. For those of you who may live in a part of the planet where baseball is not played, let me fill you in on the basics:

- baseball is the number one sport in the United States. It is played on many levels, but the ultimate goal of any player is to make it to the top level, which is called the Major League.

- the first Major League game was played in 1871.

- there are thirty teams in the Major League, spanning across the country in most of our principal cities. The season goes from April until the end of September, with the three-tiered playoff games continuing until the end of October. The regular season consists of 162 games for each team.

- in New York City there are two baseball teams, the Yankees and the Mets. The Yankees came into existence in 1903 and have long been the premiere team of the sport. Many of baseball’s iconic players (such as Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, and Mickey Mantle) were Yankees. They have won 27 championships, far more than any other franchise. Their home is Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. The Mets have been around since 1962. They have won two championships in their 52 years. They play in Citi Field in Queens.

On August 7th, a Thursday, I started my shift at 5:30 pm, as I normally do. My first passengers were two ladies - one middle-aged, the other a twenty-something - going from Columbus Circle down to Penn Station. They were both wearing the pinstriped jerseys of the Yankees - the familiar, interlocking “NY” on the front and, I noticed, the number 2 on the backs of both of them. The Yankees had played a game that afternoon so I knew without even needing to ask where they were coming from. A conversation began.

Yes, they told me, they’d been at the game, adding that there was some kind of delay on the subway, which was why they were in my cab - and they had only twenty minutes to catch a train to New Jersey. Could we make it? I told them to relax, I’d get them to Penn Station on time. And we were on our way.

I soon discovered that they were mother and daughter, both big Yankee fans, that they go to at least one Yankee game together every year (“it’s a tradition”), that the game they’d just attended was the only game for them this year, and that, hooray, the Yankees had won. Still, the mother said, they were “greatly disappointed”.

“Why?” I asked (of course). I mean, the Yankees won, you’re supposed to be happy.

“Because Jeter didn’t play!” they both answered, almost in unison.

“Oh, gee, that’s too bad,” I said, completely understanding their dismay.

Again, for the benefit of those readers who may not know baseball, allow me to tell you why this fellow named Jeter not playing in that game would be such a letdown to my passengers. Derek Jeter has been a star player - the captain of the team, actually - for the Yankees for the last twenty years. During his tenure the Yankees have won five championships and gone to the playoffs 17 times. On a personal level he has broken so many statistical records that they seem endless. He ranks sixth on the all-time hits list. (That means that, going back to 1871, only five players have had more hits than he.) And off the field he has been the very epitome of what we would hope a star athlete to be. Hard-working, generous, respectful, always upbeat, never involved in a controversy, never a bad word said against him - he is truly a role model not only for America’s youth, but for everybody. All around the country he is regarded as the “face of baseball”. People are naming their children (and their pets) after him. And now, at the age of 40, he has announced that this season will be his last. Fans of opposing teams are crowding into their own stadiums to get one last look at him when the Yankees come to town and are giving him standing ovations when he comes to bat. He is the superstar of the world of baseball.

So this was why my passengers were so disappointed even though the Yankees won the game. Being devoted Yankee fans and fans of Jeter in particular - the number 2 on their jerseys is his number - they, too, had wanted to see him play one last time. But, alas, he’d been given the day off, something that happens from time to time during the course of the long, long season.

Nevertheless, my passengers were in good spirits as we approached the entrance to Penn Station at 34th Street and 7th Avenue, despite the presence above us of a gigantic Nike billboard featuring a thirty-foot image of Derek Jeter acknowledging the adoration of his fans.

“Re2pect” was the only text accompanying the image.

As mother and daughter left my cab with smiles on their faces and five minutes to spare, my eyes wandered to the shop directly on my right. It was a Modell’s Sporting Goods store, one of many in the city, where they sell mostly apparel for fans. The entire window displayed t-shirts, jerseys, hats, buttons, and every other imaginable form of commemoration featuring, guess who?

Yes, it has been a Derek Jeter year in New York City, if not the entire country. “We need our heroes,” I thought, as I pulled out into the quagmire of traffic on 7th Avenue. And indeed we do. In this age of super-cynicism, is it not something of importance to have a counterbalance to the liars, the cheats, the pretenders, and the thieves who show up for a free meal at every opportunity? It is important. Let the good guys win every once in a while.

I slogged along in the evening rush for the next few hours. At 6:50 three out-of-towners went from 77th and York down to the Astor Place Theatre in the East Village to see Blue Man Group, a nice twenty-dollar run on the FDR Drive. Then there was a short ride over to Alphabet City. On my next one, from the Bowery down to the intersection of Allen and Chrystie, I found myself sitting in a bumper to bumper jam-up on 2nd Avenue. Looking around at the environment, I noticed one of those gigantic double-decker tourist buses just to the left of me which was decorated with - well, will you look who’s here again? - fifteen-foot-high Derek Jeter action images on all sides. “Jesus,” I thought, “this guy is everywhere.”

The next few fares took me to the West Village, up again to the Upper East Side, down to 60th and 5th, and then, at 8:30, to 22nd and 8th in Chelsea. 8:30 is around the time for my ritualistic coffee break, so I parked at 6th Avenue, went into the Starbucks at the corner, got my tall Pike (no room for milk), returned to the cab, dug through my bag to retrieve my carrot muffin sliced into bite-sized pieces the night before, and began munching away in happiness. Ah, that feeling of the hot coffee meeting the muffin… bliss.

Okay, back to work. My next fare was a chatty fellow going from the popular Eataly restaurant and market on 23rd and 5th all the way up to 157th and St. Nicholas Avenue in Harlem - $28.50 on the meter and a $5 tip - a great ride. After that it was 73rd and Columbus down to 15th and 5th, followed by 14th and 4th down to Gold Street in the Financial District. The night was wearing on, and I was doing pretty well, both in spirit and in money.

At 11:12 a twenty-something woman beat out another twenty-something woman in a rush to get to my cab at 27th and Park - it can get quite busy in certain sections of Manhattan at around that time on a Thursday night - and directed me to drive to LaGuardia Place and Houston Street on the southern boundary of Greenwich Village. When I arrived there eight minutes later I pulled over on Houston at the intersection but had to wait a bit for her to swipe her credit card - it took several swipes to register - and then to gather her stuff together and open the door. As she did so a particularly attractive young lady standing a short distance away noticed that my cab was becoming available and began moving quickly toward me with her hand in the air. Seeing the hail, I remained at the curb instead of pulling out onto the street. She hustled up, opened the door, got in, and said, “Someone else is coming”, with a concerned look on her face. About five seconds went by until the person we were waiting for came jogging toward the cab, being pursued by three or four shouting females who were basically begging him to pose for a picture with them. He stopped at the opened door of my taxi and stood with the girls for a few moments, flashing a very familiar smile while they snapped away and thanked him profusely.

And then Derek Jeter got into my cab.

“It’s number 2,” I said, sort of half to myself and half to them, and a bit in shock.

“Hiya buddy,” said Derek Jeter.

“I can’t get away from you!” I exclaimed (in jest).

“I’m following you, buddy!” Derek replied, smiling.

Their destination was a street in the West Village, so this was to be a short ride, only five minutes or so. Immediately I knew I had a problem, and a sort of panic set in. Derek Jeter has descended upon my cab from outer space and is all mine for five minutes. I knew from his friendliness upon entering that he would be open to conversation - but what should I talk to him about? One thing I’ve learned about major celebrities is that you try not to talk to them about the thing for which they’re famous. When I had Paul Simon in my cab, for instance, did I speak a word to him about his music? No. We had a memorable conversation about baseball, actually. (That story is in my book, by the way.) So here was the Crown Prince of Baseball sitting in my cab. If not baseball, what should the topic be? The answer hit me with the impact of a Randy Johnson fastball.

I had heard several months ago what Derek plans to do after he retires from baseball and, when I heard it, it really grabbed my attention. It’s not what you would expect. You’d think it would be broadcasting, managing a baseball team, or even becoming the owner of one. Something along those lines. But no. He plans to publish books. Derek Jeter, book publisher - doesn’t that open up a side to him we never knew existed? Amazing. So our five minutes together were spent primarily discussing books.

Out of respect - or should I say “re2pect” - for the confidentiality of a private conversation, I will not say more than that. But I will say this:

1. One of the fears some people have upon meeting a celebrity they’ve admired from a distance for many years is that the guy or gal will turn out to be a jerk in person. There should be no such fear regarding Derek Jeter. He wears it well, as was said of Jackie Kennedy. Derek Jeter is a nice guy, a caring person. There’s a kind of goodness that radiates from him.

2. Many people, when I tell them I had a certain celebrity in my cab, want to know about the tip. “How much did he tip you?” they ask. Well, I won’t say that, either, but I will say that Derek has surpassed Leonardo di Caprio as the best celebrity tipper I’ve ever had in my cab, a mark that had stood for 18 years. (That story’s in my book, too.) So there’s another record broken by Derek Jeter!

3. He likes to call you “buddy”. Aside from how he greeted me, I’ve heard this as well from a couple of different sources. Apparently everyone is Derek’s buddy. With this in mind, I found a fantasy had elbowed its way into my universe…

Derek Jeter At The Pearly Gates

There had been much excitement when the word spread around Heaven that Derek Jeter would be arriving the next day. Angels, spirits, and souls of all types left their clouds at the break of dawn to ensure they would be there in time to catch a glimpse of the Face of Baseball and give him a warm, heavenly welcome. At the appointed hour, amid a chorus of trumpets and harps, Derek arrived at the Pearly Gates and was greeted with great joy by none other than Saint Peter himself. After the speeches were over and a choir of children sang “Take Me Out To The Ball Game”, Saint Peter pulled Derek over to the side and said, “Come with me, Derek, there’s someone I’d like you to meet.” At once the clouds parted, thunder roared, and Derek found that he was standing alone with his host in some kind of divine baseball field. A bright figure appeared from the dugout and floated toward them. “Derek,” whispered Saint Peter, “I’d like you to meet... God.”

God: “Derek Jeter! What a pleasure to meet you at last!”

Derek: “Hiya buddy, how ya doin'?”

God and Derek exchanged pleasantries for a couple of minutes until an angel suddenly appeared to escort Derek to his next engagement and drove him off in a golf cart.

“Wow,” Saint Peter said to God as they disappeared from sight, “Derek Jeter!”

“Look,” said God, beaming - “I got his autograph!”



And so did I - on my trip sheet…

Back to work, I must admit I was on Cloud Nine. My Derek Jeter experience had elevated my emotional tone up to a steady flow of enthusiasm which carried over to the rest of the passengers in my cab for the remainder of the shift. Each new arrival soon learned that, “Hey, guess who I had in my cab just a little while ago? Derek Jeter!” What amazed me, however - and this is such a New York City phenomenon - was that of the eight more fares who rode with me until I quit at four in the morning, half of them had never heard of him!

A pleasant thirtyish woman in Brooklyn, going from Grand Street in Williamsburg to Dean Street in Crown Heights, was happy that I was happy, but she was from Germany - no baseball. A fellow coming from a gay club in Hell’s Kitchen en route to Astoria thought it was interesting, but he was from Indonesia - no baseball. A kid who was actually wearing a Yankee cap took me from 73rd and 5th Avenue down to the Lower East Side and barely grunted in reaction to my Jeter announcement, but he was from the Twilight Zone - no baseball. And then, to top it off, I had a young lady from Japan, where the entire country is addicted to baseball, admit to me that she didn’t know who Jeter was, although she did know who Matsui and Ichiro are, Japanese stars who have both played on the Yankees.

“I am sorry,” she said, “I’m a street performer and I’m drunk!”

Well, that’s New York City for you. A city so huge and so diverse - bursting at the seams with all kinds of people from every corner of the world - that such a thing could be possible. If a superstar of baseball had played for twenty years on a team in any other city in the country it would be inconceivable that virtually anyone living in that city would not know him well. But in New York this can be so.

So I had run the gamut of the world of baseball, from the adoring mother and daughter who were so disappointed because they didn’t get to see Jeter play, to the object of their affection himself. Imagine if they’d stowed away in the rear compartment of the taxi - merely six hours later they could have met him in person! I wish I knew who they were so I could tell them that! But it was my very last passenger who made me realize that I had also run a gamut of another kind.

I was driving up Amsterdam Avenue just a few minutes before four o’clock, en route to a gas station at Broadway and 130th Street, when I spotted a figure in the shadows about a block ahead at 113th Street who apparently was trying to hail me. As I got closer I could see that he was crouched over a walker, appeared to be in pain or at least in some discomfort, and that the entrance to the emergency room of St. Luke’s Hospital was just down the street. I pulled over and stopped.

He was a gaunt man, quite small, I think Hispanic, and I judged him to be about 40 years old. He thanked me for stopping - there aren’t many taxis around at this hour - and asked if I could help him get into the cab. He was quite frail, barely able to lift his leg high enough to make it into the rear compartment, and was, in fact, coming from St. Luke’s. Taking care that he didn’t slip and fall, I held his arm and guided him in, then placed his walker in the back. As we drove off he told me about his condition, a spinal injury which had left him crippled. I sensed no self-pity or blame, it was just the way it was and he was carrying on. His destination was a mere seven blocks up the road to a project complex at La Salle Street. When we got there he paid me the $5.50 fare in cash, no tip, and asked for a receipt, so he could be reimbursed. He put the receipt in his pocket and we began the reverse process of extricating him from the taxi. That took a minute and then he thanked me for my help and began moving toward his building in his walker, an inch at a time.

I was done for the night and drove a few blocks over to Broadway and the gas station. After filling up, I had some time to reflect on the events of the evening, particularly this last ride. That frail man had sat in the same seat where Derek Jeter had been sitting only a few hours earlier. Both were about the same age. Aside from his fame and charisma, Jeter is a physical specimen, taller and more impressive in person than I had realized. If you had no idea who he was and saw him walking down the street, you might well have thought he could be a professional athlete. My last passenger, by contrast, was at the bottom of that scale.

New York, the City of the Human Condition.

We carry on.