What It Takes, Part 2 -- My (Verbal) Tennis Match With John McEnroe

You know, having a conversation is a lot like playing tennis.  A statement is made from one person to another, then it's responded to, tossed around, back and forth, each person trying to make his or her "point", each trying to "score".  This can be obvious, as in a debate, or it can be subtle, as in a friendly dialogue.  To some people, even saying "hello" can be an attempt at making a score before your opponent does.  That's how it was in the evening of March 13, 1984, when I looked in my rearview mirror and found that John McEnroe was sitting in the back seat of my cab.  

It was the doorman of his high-rise on East End Avenue who'd hailed me and opened the door for him but since I'd been looking down at my trip sheet, filling in the required information, I hadn't yet noticed who my new passenger was.  I simply called out my usual "hello" and awaited the response.  Would this one be friendly, in a big rush, arrogant, a drunk, a serial killer, or what?  McEnroe's response was a hard, direct shot, you might say, to my forehand.

"The Garden," he said.

Now, what was most important here was what wasn't said.  He didn't say "hello" back to me.  He didn't say "please".  He didn't say "Madison Square".  Just "the Garden", as if I automatically knew who he was and which garden he was talking about. It was more of an order than a request and at the same time it tested the ability of the recipient (me) to respond in kind.  An excellent opening -- I didn't yet know who he was, but he'd already scored.  Point, McEnroe.

I looked straight into the rearview mirror, wondering who would be speaking to me this way.  I recognized him immediately and shot back my own gut response:

"McEnroe," I blurted out, showing surprise but no great enthusiasm.

I give myself a point here because: a) I returned his sharp opening with one of my own.  If he had intended to be blunt with no mincing of words, he got the same from me.  b) I didn't show any false respect or false adulation or false friendliness. It was just "McEnroe", not "Mr. McEnroe", or "Oh, John McEnroe!"  Basically I was conveying an attitude that said, Okay, I know who you are, but you're not on a tennis court, buddy, you're sitting in my cab, so don't start up with any of those shenanigans you're famous for.  I can hit your serve.  Point, Salomon.

His return caught me off guard.  "Yes, it's me," he said, more to himself than to me and barely loud enough to be heard.

Now this was a switch, a complete change of style.  His words could be interpreted as "Yes, the Great One is in your presence," but his tone was self-deprecating.  Here was John McEnroe in person poking fun at John McEnroe the celebrity, actually satirizing himself.  It was an impressive display of flexibility as a conversationalist. Point, McEnroe.

We volleyed as we headed south on East End Avenue.

"Are you playing tonight?" I asked, thinking maybe there was a tennis match at the Garden.  No, he said, he was going to a Knicks game.

"Take the Drive?" I asked.  (Meaning the FDR Drive, the highway that runs along the east side of Manhattan.)

"Yeah, please."

"Who are the Knicks playing tonight?"

"The Suns."

A couple more easy lobs were exchanged with no points scored.

Then, fearing the conversation might peter out for lack of fuel, I changed tempo by employing a technique I've used on other celebrities.  I express my regrets that I'm not all that familiar with their area of expertise (even if I am) because here would be a great opportunity for me to learn something from someone so renown in that field.  Celebrities live lives of annoyance from mundane questions posed by strangers and this may cause them to be reluctant to engage.  So by pleading ignorance (or even pretending you don't recognize them) it has the effect of putting them at ease.

"Too bad I don't really know that much about tennis," I kind-of-lied as I made a left on 79th Street and approached the entrance to the Drive,  "or I might be able to hold down an intelligent conversation here.  I mean, I play a little, but I don't really know the fine points of the game."

Looking in the mirror, I watched his facial expression loosen up just a notch.  I edged into the opening I had created.  "Funny," I said, "I seem to keep getting professional tennis players in my cab."

McEnroe was interested.  "Really?  Who?"

I could feel a big score coming up.  Here was the famous John McEnroe showing an interest in the not-famous me.  To hell with modesty, a surge of what let's call self-importance was rising from within and it felt good.

I told him about a couple of fares I'd had with tennis players whose names I didn't remember.  After talking for half a minute, however, I realized I was getting too chatty and that McEnroe's interest was waning.  So I served him up my big story ("What It Takes, Part 1") about how the previous summer I'd driven Mike Estep, Martina Navratilova's coach, out to a private club in Queens to practice with her; how Mike was such a great guy; how he'd asked me if I'd like to watch them practice; how I'd always wondered if I could return the serve of a pro, so I asked Mike if he'd hit me a few balls when we got there; and how -- isn't this great? -- he did.

McEnroe was all ears.  Not to brag but, really, I had the guy in the palm of my hand.

"Could you hit it?" he asked.

John McEnroe, the number one tennis player in the world, wants to know about my tennis game.  Yes!  Point, Salomon!

"Yeah," I said and, not trying to disguise my pride, I told him how I'd actually been able to get my racquet -- actually, Martina's racquet, ha-ha -- on the ball.  Not with any authority, mind you, but still, after a few serves I was getting my timing down and I could hit it.  Not bad for an amateur, huh?

McEnroe moved forward, a concerned look on his face.

"Who was that again?"

"Mike Estep," said I.

"Oh," he said, and he moved comfortably back in his seat again.  "Well, you know, Mike's never been known for his serve."

Ping!

The little bubble I'd been sitting in for the last seven months came bursting apart and evaporated into the atmosphere.

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

With one quick stroke I'd been reduced to the pathetic little tennis wannabe I actually was.

Point, set, match -- McEnroe.  

Damn!

I made a right and got on the FDR Drive.  Having been so profoundly reduced in stature, I found I could think of nothing to say to McEnroe so I just reverted to my job description as a New York City taxi driver and stepped on the gas.  Soon we were barreling along at 50 miles per hour in the middle lane, and for the next half a minute there continued to be no conversation between us, McEnroe no doubt quietly savoring the conquest of my dignity.  Understandably my mood began taking a turn toward the Dark Side.  What good was living, anyway?  There's always some venomous creature waiting to put its fangs into you just when life seems all zippity-do-dah.  Why continue slogging on with it?  

The idea of an end-it-all-with-a-glorious-bang entered my mind.  I could unfasten my seat belt, pick up speed to about 100 miles per hour, and crash into the stone wall that runs alongside the highway. McEnroe hadn't fastened his own seat belt so he'd probably go flying into the East River. This concept had an element of poetic justice to it which I found very appealing.  Mike's never been known for his serve, huh? We'll see about that.  I moved the cab over into the right lane and started looking for a good place in the wall to crash the cab.

But then, wait.  I reconsidered.

All right, one way of looking at it would be that I had been demolished, even humiliated, by McEnroe. But let's take a step back and delve into this a bit, shall we?  Here's a guy who is ranked NUMBER ONE in the WORLD.  There are MILLIONS of tennis players, ALL OVER THE WORLD.  They play this sport in schools, in colleges, in leagues, in private clubs, or just with friends.  If you're GREAT at it you may actually become a professional and make some kind of a living at it.  But then you're up against all the other players from ALL OVER THE WORLD who are also GREAT. Nevertheless you may become an elite player, rise high in the rankings, and become famous, respected, and wealthy.  But if you're the GREATEST OF THE GREAT -- if you are ranked NUMBER ONE IN THE WORLD -- you will have earned the AWE of both the general public and your own colleagues because NO ONE IN THE WORLD CAN BEAT YOU!  NO ONE!

And yet John McEnroe, the best tennis player in the world, and, some might say, the best tennis player of all time, is concerned that maybe his taxi driver can hit his serve.  But then, oh, it's okay.  It was only Mike Estep.  I'm safe.

Ladies and gentlemen, what we're looking at here is compulsive competitiveness of asylum magnitude and I suppose we're also looking at what it takes to be Number One in tennis and some other sports.  He is surrounded by assassins.  Everyone is a threat.  This is a guy who is one referee's bad call away from being surrounded by men in white coats and whisked off to the happy farm.

No, I decided, I would not crash the cab into the stone wall that runs alongside the FDR Drive.  In an act of considerable magnanimity,  I would let McEnroe live.  I realized he hadn't won the match, he'd only won a set.  So the game was still on.  But what I needed to do here was to clarify for myself what the object of the game we were playing actually was.  

I thought about it.   For him, I realized, it was to shape me into a dutiful listener so he could hear himself pontificate.  But for me, the game, in the time-honored tradition of taxi-driving, was to set my passenger up for giving me a big tip.

I awarded myself a point for this brilliant insight and the match continued.

Easing up on the pedal, I steered the cab back into the center lane.  Our conversation resumed, turning to sports in general -- football, baseball, hockey, basketball.  I began to notice that he'd listen carefully to whatever I had to say, wait just a moment, and then correct me.  My strategy was to listen carefully to him as well, but not to correct him.  For example, when at one point he interjected into the conversation that tennis is the greatest sport that ever was, I didn't contradict him even though everybody knows that baseball is the greatest sport that ever was.  Agreement creates affinity and affinity is crucial in the tipping phase of the ride.  So it could have appeared to an observer that McEnroe was scoring all the points here, but in reality I was holding even with him.

We exited the FDR at 34th Street.  The conversation had turned to boxing and McEnroe was telling me that Larry Holmes, who was then the undefeated heavyweight champion, would soon lose.

"Who'll beat him?" I asked.

"He'll beat himself," McEnroe snapped back.  A return with some real zing to it, especially considering that the person giving it was himself was the champion of the tennis world at that time, and McEnroe received a point for style.

We moved along on 34th Street and as we approached 2nd Avenue McEnroe committed a breach of taxicab etiquette by telling me to turn left and take 31st Street to the Garden.   The offense here is giving simple directions to a professional driver, as if I don't know how to get to Madison Square Garden.  But in this case I let the faux pas pass without comment as it suited my game plan.  The street he chose is actually the slowest way to get to the Garden from the East Side because you'll get a red light at every intersection.  He was adding three minutes to the ride. That's good for the meter but what I liked most was that it was giving me more time to work him for the tip.  Advantage, Salomon.

As we began our crosstown trek on 31st Street McEnroe, perhaps realizing that the end of the ride was approaching, suddenly seized complete control of the conversation and began to preach in earnest about his issues with tennis.  This was good news.  I could be getting taxi-driver-as-therapist money here.

First he hit on the officiating.  His complaint, he said, was that the officials aren't professional officials.  He pointed out that in baseball and football the players get to know the officials on a first-name basis.  In a close call their decisions are respected because the players know they are competent.  But in tennis, he said, you see new faces in every tournament, officials you've never met before.  Trust in their competence isn't given a chance to develop. 

I thought, wow, you know, he makes a good point here, and I awarded him one.  I'd never heard that argument expressed before and it made perfect sense -- of course, a lack of trust in the professionalism of the officials would create problems with the players.  But a few moments later I realized, wait, this is McEnroe's justification for why it's okay to berate officials during a match, as he was so famous for doing.  I took the point away for faking himself out.

Next, he took on the fans.  "New York fans are the worst," he squawked, recalling when he'd played against Vitas Gerulaitis, who was from Queens, in the finals of the U.S. Open in 1979.  What are the odds, he asked, of two guys who are both from Queens ever making it to the finals of the U.S. Open, played in Queens, in the same year?  And the fans?

"They booed both of us!"

Now here McEnroe was clearly committing a foul.  It would be one thing if he had it out for one particular fan or for even a certain type of fan.  But all New York fans? Come on.  I had no choice but to deduct a point for unsportsmanlike conduct.

We arrived at the Garden.  I pulled up to a special side entrance on 31st Street where McEnroe wanted to be dropped off, stopped the cab, and started tallying up the points.  With the penalty point deducted from his score it appeared to be a dead heat.  So... this match was going to be decided by the tip.  The fare on the meter was $5.20.  (This was in 1984. Today that ride would cost around $15.)  A cheap or -- considering it's a celebrity -- even an average tip would force me to conclude that my efforts had been in vain and I would have to concede the match to my opponent.  It would have to be a definitive, excessively generous gratuity to win.

With tension mounting, McEnroe opened his door and stepped out onto the street. He reached into the pocket of his coat and, stepping halfway back into the cab, handed me two bills: a five and a single.  It was going to be an eighty-cent tip, slightly less than average for a $5.20 fare.  I would have to interpret this as a snub, a cheapskate's ace, and give the final point and the match to McEnroe.

But wait!

McEnroe reached into his pocket again.  Out came several more bills which he handed to me with an almost apologetic look on his face.  He closed the door, waved goodbye, and walked toward the Garden, smiling.  I counted the bills.  There were six singles.  So McEnroe had tipped me $6.80 on a $5.20 fare, better than double the meter.  It was the best tip I'd ever received from a celebrity, a record that stood for twelve years.

Point, set, match -- Salomon!

********

Notes:

1. This is the second in a three-part series, "What It Takes".  Stay tuned for Part 3, "McEnroe Returns".

2. I am able to recall the details of a ride taken 34 years ago is because a) it was particularly memorable, and b) I've always kept journals of my most interesting rides.

3. There's a documentary recently released about McEnroe's year, 1984 (the same year he was in my cab), in which he won an incredible 82 out of 85 matches.  To see a clip from In The Realm Of Perfection click below:

4. Click on this one to see a taxi nearly running over McEnroe (from the movie Mr. Deeds):

What It Takes -- Part 1, Martina and Mike

For most of us today, sports are a part of our lives.  As toddlers we are already playing catch and kicking balls around.  As children we play in games with our friends and idolize the grown-ups who play the same games we do (and they wear uniforms!).  Getting a bit older we may participate in organized leagues and start to take our games more seriously.  Such a person may begin to think:

I wonder if I could play this sport professionally myself?

As time goes on it becomes clear that some people have been blessed with skills which set them apart from their peers.  He or she may become the star of one (or more than one) of their school teams.  They may receive a scholarship from a college which is interested in their athletic ability.  Scouts for professional teams might even be watching them and offer them a contract.

So a selection process is at work here.  Let's say you're one of these people who've progressed this far.  You're a professional athlete at some level.  You're finding the competition now is really fierce.  You most likely will be thinking:

I wonder if I can continue to compete successfully in my sport for years to come? How long can this go on?

Okay, let's say it does go on.  You're an established professional who's beaten the odds and you are still playing at the highest level.  But being somewhat famous and making a lot of money are not enough, you find.  The selection process is still at work for you.  Now you are no longer asking -- no, actually you are telling yourself:

I am the best who ever was.  No person, no obstacle, can stop me.  I choose this for my destiny: I am Number One, I am the greatest player to have ever played this damned sport, the champion of the ages, that's who I am.  I will not be, I cannot be, defeated. 

People like this are rare.  You have probably never met one.

Driving a taxi in New York City for all these years, I've met two of them.  From those rides I was able to gain an insight about what it takes to stand alone on top of the mountain.  Here are the stories, in chronological order....

MARTINA AND MIKE

On a sunny, mid-August day in 1983 I saw my next fare waving at me at the corner of 56th Street and 6th Avenue in Manhattan.  He was a 30-something guy, white shorts, a polo shirt, and in the hand that wasn't up in the air he was carrying about half a dozen tennis racquets.  Placing them carefully on the back seat as he got in (I noticed) he told me his destination was a certain country club out in Douglaston, Queens, about a thirty-minute ride.  

Well, I'm always sizing up my passengers as they get in, mainly to ascertain whether or not they're conversational.  This often means picking out something to comment on in the environment, saying something about it, and noting their response.  In this case, it was easy: 

"So what's with all the tennis racquets?" 

"You know who Martina Navratilova is, the tennis player?"

"Oh, sure."

Although I don't really follow the sport as a fan (I'm a casual player), it would have been difficult in 1983 not to know who Martina Navratilova was.  She was the number one female tennis player in the world at the time and she was very famous.  

"I'm her coach," my passenger said cheerfully, "and these are her racquets.  I'm going out to Queens now to practice with her."

"Oh, right, the U.S. Open," I said.  "When does it start?"

"It starts tomorrow for the qualification rounds, but Martina isn't playing until Monday."

Just from the pleasant tone of his voice, I knew I had a real conversationalist here. And clearly there could be plenty to talk about.  I became (once again) the interviewer of my own talk show and he, my special guest. 

His name was Mike Estep.  He was a professional tennis player himself, he told me, ranked 250th on the men's tour.  By the end of the ride, however, he would be ranked Number One in a unique category of my own invention: The Friendliest Passenger In My Cab Of All Time.  

Mike was totally happy to answer any questions I threw at him, and then some. Things like:

"How long have you been Martina's coach?"

"I just recently came on board.  You know, she's never won the U.S. Open.  I think I can help her do that."

"How so?"

"Well, the main thing is she's got to charge the net more.  Be more aggressive."

"Oh."

I knew nothing about tennis strategy but appreciated his candor.  I realized a door had been opened for me here.  I could ask this guy anything about anything.

"When you practice, do you ever play a game for real?"

"Sure."

"Who wins?"

"Oh, I beat her every time," he said -- not bragging, just matter-of-factly.

Interesting.  The number 250 male can beat the number one female.  Every time. Or so he says.  I wondered if this could really be true.  Hmmm...

I let the conversation flow around a bit and Mike told me some of his stories about being on the tour.  About how he'd once played an exhibition match in India against that country's top tennis player and, although he lost the match, he was happy to have lost because it caused the people who'd come to see them compete (the Indian locals) go home smiling.  Another story had to do with a time a couple of years earlier when he'd been playing at Wimbledon.  They have a parlay betting method in the U.K. in which a bettor can choose the winners of several consecutive matches on a card and if all his picks win, the bettor can walk away with quite a bit of money.  Mike learned later that there had been a gambler who had a card in which he'd correctly picked the winners of several matches and needed just one more correct pick on his card to win a small fortune.  That match had been a match that Mike had played in and won, but the gambler had picked his opponent to win it, so he wound up winning nothing.  "The other guy is higher ranked than me," Mike said, "but what he [the bettor] didn't know is that I always beat him."  He felt bad for the gambler, adding that he had no illusions about his own chances of going much further in the tournament.  "It's not like I'm going to win Wimbledon," he said.  

Our thirty-minute ride went by very quickly, which is a phenomenon that can happen in a taxicab when there's no lull in the conversation.  As we were about to enter the parking lot of the private country club in Douglaston where Martina was staying, Mike surprised me:

"Would you like to come over and watch us practice?"

Every once in a while I answer a question correctly.  Dismissing immediate thoughts of "needing to get back to work" I replied:

"Sure!"

What an extraordinary invitation!  So I parked the cab right there in the parking lot and the two of us got out and began walking toward the tennis court, about a hundred yards away down a path to our right.  A thought came to mind: as a fan of baseball and, as mentioned, as a casual tennis player, I've often wondered what it would be like to try to hit a ball thrown by a Major League baseball player or to hit the serve of a professional tennis player.  Is it really that hard to hit it?  Would I even see it as it went zipping by me?  I realized I had an opportunity at hand and seized the moment.  I said to Mike:

"You know, I've always wondered what it would be like to try to return the serve of a professional tennis player.  Do you think you could hit me a few?"

Now, keep in mind, I'm not an imposing kind of person andI would never have asked this question unless I was sure it was appropriate.  But Mike had already shown that he was such a friendly guy that there was no question in my mind that he'd be glad to accommodate me if he could.

"Well," he said, "if Martina's not out there yet... sure."

We arrived at the court.  About a dozen people were gathered around, waiting to see Martina.  But instead what they saw was her coach and a guy wearing jeans with a big smile on his face go out onto the court.  Martina had not yet arrived.

How surreal was this?  Thirty-five minutes ago I was driving my cab up 6th Avenue looking for a fare.  Now I am standing on a tennis court with one of Martina Navratilova's racquets in my hand, waiting for her coach to start hitting me serves.  I am eagerly awaiting being humiliated in a nice way by my own inability to play the game, and in view of a bunch of spectators.  Bring it on!

Mike raised his racquet in the air and pumped one at me.

To my surprise I reacted in time to hit the ball.  It didn't go anywhere near the net, but it didn't go past me, either.  I was pleased.  Mike hit me another one.  I hit it again, a little better this time.  On the next serve (and now I'm starting to bounce back and forth in imitation of how tennis players awaiting serves put their bodies in motion just before the ball is hit to them) I hit the ball over the net.  Out of bounds, but over the net.  Mike hit me another one, and a few more.  On each serve, as I was getting my timing down, I was hitting better shots.

I'm starting to think, damn, maybe I'm better at this sport than I've given myself credit for.  Maybe I should take this game more seriously, get into a league myself, take lessons.  I could be a contender.

Suddenly out onto the court steps Martina Navratilova.  She sees her coach playing tennis with some guy holding one of her racquets in his hand.

Martina, in her Czechoslovakian accent, looking at Mike: "Who's dis?"

Mike, nonchalantly: "Oh, it's my taxi driver."

Martina: "Oh!...  Okay!"

And with that she sits down, her back against the fencing that surrounds the court, to watch us play.

Oh my god, now I am playing tennis with not only a bunch of spectators gawking at me, but under the gaze of the best female tennis player in the world, as well.  And I'm playing with her racquet!  Pressure!  Mike serves me again, and this time I hit the ball over his head, again out of bounds but at least I'm getting the center of the racquet on the ball.  I'm beginning to wonder if I'm too old to turn pro.

On his next serve, Mike puts some "English" on the ball, causing it to spin sharply off to one side as it hits the surface and making it completely impossible for me to hit it back.  This was great fun, a bit of well-deserved showing off on his part, and after one more of these, thinking it better not to overstay my welcome, I returned Martina's racquet to its rightful owner, thanking her and Mike profusely for their hospitality, so to speak.  I walked behind the fence and found a solitary position (not among the other spectators) from which to watch their practice session.

Martina stepped out onto the court and it began.

They had what appeared to be a set regimen of drills.  In one of them they stood only about ten feet apart from each other on opposite sides of the net and volleyed back and forth, machine-gun-rat-a-tat-tat style, a marvelous display of reflexes and coordination.  These were professional, conditioned athletes doing their homework, you might say, although with their grace and precision it seemed to me they could just as well have been ballet dancers or circus acrobats.   There was also a physicality about them, Martina especially, that was striking.  She exuded strength, the musculature in her arms and thighs sculpted like a statue of an Amazon warrior.

This is not to minimize Mike. At one point during a break in their routine, he walked over to me and asked me what I thought.

"It's hard for me to believe there are 249 guys better than you," I replied.  He was that good.

Returning to the court, they began to practice by playing a game for real, to win. Immediately I remembered what Mike had said in the cab:

"Oh, I beat her every time."

Now I could get to see for myself if this were really true.  They played for about twenty minutes, and they played hard.  Did he beat her?  Yes, in fact, he did.  And this is what gave me my first insight about what it takes to be the one standing alone on top of the mountain.

It was Martina's ferocity in missing a point in a practice session.  Ferocity at herself. It was a little scary to witness.  I was glad I was standing behind a fence!

Now you may be recalling how upset you may have become in some game you had once been trying to win, but did not.  You may be thinking that that's how Martina must have felt as she failed to anticipate what the trajectory of Mike's next shot would be and watched helplessly as the ball went whizzing by her.  I'm going to make an assumption here that you are underestimating what Martina's actual response was.  "Upset" is not the word.  Nor would "dismayed", "agitated", "unnerved", "angered", "disturbed", or "flustered" be the words.

I believe the more accurate description would be MORALLY OUTRAGED.

No, this was not just a return she'd failed to make.  This was an INJUSTICE.  This was an IDIOCY that was UNACCEPTABLE.  This was failure to store grain in anticipation of a harsh winter.  This was not properly securing your fishing boat to the pier before the big storm hit.  This was putting twenty grand on a horse named Alvoc because Jack, the local bookie, says he has inside information.

After failure, the mindset becomes akin to a hard knuckles fistfight in a VIRTUOUS WAR to do WHATEVER IT TAKES to RIGHT THE WRONG THAT HAS BEEN DONE.

That, along with all the skills, is what it takes to become Number One.

Mike Estep, the friendliest passenger who ever rode in my cab and a tennis virtuoso, had what it takes to rise to the middle rankings on the men's tour.  But he didn't have that.

Martina did.

And a couple of weeks later, for the first time, she won the U.S. Open.

                   

*****

This is the first in a three-part series, "What It Takes".  Stay tuned for Part 2, "My (Verbal) Tennis Match With John McEnroe".

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.

Mister Hess

Well, speaking of the Hess Station at 45th and 10th, here's one from the vault. I've written a couple of times about one of the unique aspects of driving a cab in New York City, the phenomenon of finding yourself suddenly mingling with various strata of the human race with whom you otherwise would probably never have had the opportunity to be in contact.
(See "Running The Gamut". And "Running The Gamut, Part 2" .)

That's what happened during the rush hour one evening in December of 1990. I picked up three men in business attire - suits and overcoats - on the west side of Midtown who wanted to go to a restaurant across town, a ten to fifteen minute haul, depending on traffic. Two of them got in the back and the other, a somewhat older gentleman, perhaps in his '70s, sat up front with me. I owned my own cab in those days and it had no partition (I hate them), so it made for a more comfortable fit for the three of them to seat themselves this way. The two in the rear could move around easily and the lack of a Plexiglas obstruction made conversation from front to back no problem for all three of them.

As the ride got under way, they continued a conversation which had already been in progress before entering the cab. I, a professional fly on the wall, took note that what they were talking about was how the situation in Iraq was affecting the price of oil. Clouds of war were in the air in those days. Sadaam had already invaded Kuwait, the international coalition had been formed, and a deadline for withdrawal had been sanctioned by the U.N. In retrospect I wish I'd paid more attention to exactly what they were saying, but at the moment I thought they were just three businessmen discussing what was currently in the news. I tuned them out and put my attention back on the observation of the particles in perpetual motion on the streets and sidewalks of New York City.

After a couple of minutes, however, my contemplation was interrupted by the gentleman to my right.

"Hey, driver," he said, "what kind of gasoline do you put in your cab?"

"Amoco, usually," I replied.

"Do you ever use Hess?"

"Sometimes."

"Do you know that station on 45th and 10th?"

"Sure."

"Are you happy with the service you get over there?"

"Yeah, I guess."

"Tell me something - are the bathrooms clean?"

I noticed in the mirror that the two fellows in the back had big grins on their faces and were suppressing laughter. I knew something was up and needed no further prompting to turn the tables on them.

"All right," I said with a smile of my own, "that's it... which one of you guys is Leon Hess?"

The older gentleman sitting beside me reached over and shook my hand. He was, in fact, Leon Hess, the founder and owner of Hess Oil and, no less impressive, the owner of the New York Jets football team. It was understandable that I hadn't recognized him. Unlike some owners of professional sports teams, Leon Hess never gave interviews and was quite low profile when it came to the media. You never saw a picture of him in the papers.

Having had his identity revealed, which was no doubt his intention, the subject turned immediately to the Jets. I admitted to Mr. Hess right away that wasn't much of a football fan, that baseball was my sport, but that didn't deter him. I think I became for him "The Fan", at least for the moment, and he went into a digression about the current situation in Jets World. The team had been particularly horrible that year and although there were still a couple of weeks left in the regular season, they were already out of contention for making the playoffs. Mr. Hess told me with some anguish that he'd just fired the coach.

"I hated to do it," he exclaimed, "he's a good man. But it's my responsibility to do whatever I can to put a winning team on the field."

He told me he'd been at Giants Stadium the previous Sunday to watch the other New York football team, the Giants, play the Dallas Cowboys in below-freezing temperatures. Although the weather was brutal, he said the stadium had been full. He contrasted that with the fact that his own team had only been filling half the seats in the same stadium for the last few home games due to their losing ways.

"It's not the fans' fault," he said, "Jets fans are the best in the world. It's up to me not to let them down."

I wished I'd been more of a football fan so I could have held my own in conversation with him and I kind of apologized for being so much on the periphery of the sport. It was too bad my friend Harry wasn't here, I told him, because Harry was a guy who probably knows as much about the Jets as he did. Harry was a sports fanatic who could tell you the names of every position player on the team for the last ten years.

"Say hello to Harry for me," Mr. Hess said with a smile as he and his friends got out at a swanky-looking restaurant.

He paid me double the meter, something I appreciated more for its acknowledgement implication than its monetary value. And I noticed that he had not fastened his seat belt even though he was sitting up front seat with me. A sign of trust, I thought, that I also appreciated.

I've had many years to reflect on that ride. It left me with a first-hand experience with, as mentioned, a type of person with whom I might otherwise have never come into contact. Here was Leon Hess, a lion of American business, probably a billionaire, giving me fifteen minutes to form an impression of how someone in his station in life might be. And the impression was quite a favorable one.

Was he aloof?

No, to the contrary.

Was he friendly and conversational?

Quite so.

Did he show any of the social class snobbery, the "I'm over here and you're over there" attitude of people who feel cab drivers are beneath them?

Not at all.

Did he, in fact, demonstrate that most admirable of characteristics, caring?

In a big way, not only when he spoke of his football team and its fans, but when he spoke of his oil company and its customers.

You know, there's no data better than first-hand data. When you've seen something with your own eyes, it doesn't much matter what you read in the papers or hear other people say about that with which you've had personal contact. You know. I can't say that because Mr. Hess made a favorable impression on me that all people at the pinnacle of Big Business are nice guys. But because of this ride I also can't fall into the easy assumption that you've got to be a rat to rise to the top.

And that's one of those little nuggets of wisdom one picks up along the way.

********

Along with this, of course: click here for Pictures From A Taxi.

Running The Gamut, Number Two

I wrote in a previous post (Running The Gamut) that one of the spectacular things about driving a cab in New York City is that on any given night it is possible to encounter passengers from the very top of the social spectrum all the way down to the very bottom. People - who can be so different from one another that they might as well be from other planets - make their entrances and exits in what could be described as a microcosmic parade of the human condition. It's vaudeville on wheels, and it can be quite a show.

Not long ago I had one of those nights that tap danced on the treetops and then slopped around in a puddle of mud. It dined at le Cirque, only to stretch its arm into a garbage can to scoop out a half-eaten slice of Ray's pizza. It was a warm bed in the Waldorf, then a cardboard box on the steps of the 5th Avenue Presbyterian Church.

You get the idea.

Let's start at the top.

On the evening of May 4th, a Tuesday, I found out that Time Magazine puts out an issue every year in which they announce the "100 Most Influential People In The World".

They divide their 100 into four categories:

1) Leaders

2) Artists

3) Thinkers

4) Heroes.

An essay is written about each person by another prominent person to make it even more interesting. The article about Bill Clinton, for example, was written by Bono. The one about Prince was written by Usher. The one about Oprah Winfrey was written by Phil Donohue.

I'm not particularly a reader of Time Magazine, so the reason I found out about this issue at all was a unique one. It turns out they have a big event to go along with the annual publication which is held, appropriately enough, in the Time Warner Building at Columbus Circle. It's a red carpet affair, of course, and guess where the red carpet ends? In a taxi stand right in the middle of the circle, that's where.

So when I was brought into the area by a passenger at 11:40 p.m., I noticed there was something going on and quickly secured a position on the taxi cue. Paparazzi were milling about, always a good sign, and a contingent of onlookers held their ground on both sides of velvet ropes that extended all the way from the curb to the entrance of the building, a distance of about thirty yards. What or whom these people were waiting to see I did not yet know, but my interest in the event itself was secondary. What interested me most was the extra business I could get at a time of the night when passengers start to become less plentiful. This was going to be money found, kind of like discovering a five-dollar bill smiling up at you from the sidewalk.

The taxi line moved quickly. Within five minutes I welcomed my next fare aboard - two gentlemen wearing tuxedos, one of whom sat up front with me, and two ladies all decked out in evening gowns. Obviously they were coming from this event, whatever it was, and, just as obviously, they were in great spirits. As we began driving toward their first destination, 40th and 9th, my curiosity kicked in and I slipped in some questions during slight pauses in their own conversations. It went something like this...

"So, what's going on at the Time Warner Building?" I asked the man sitting next to me.
He told me about Time's 100 Most Influential thing. I was impressed.

"Wow! There must have been a lot of celebrities, huh? I saw the paparazzi outside the building."

"Oh, lots of them," he replied.

"Any big names?"

"Elton John."

"Wow!"

"Sarah Palin."

"Wow!"

"Bill Clinton."

"Wow, Bill Clinton's in there? How's he looking?"

"He looks good! And he gave a great speech."

"You know, say what you will about Bill Clinton's politics or his personal life, but no one can deny he's one of the great orators of our time."

"He is, it's true."

"So what was your end of the deal?"

"Well, the gentleman in the back, and myself, were two of the people being honored."

"You mean, you are two of the most influential people in the world?"

"Well, I don't know about that, but that's what Time Magazine seems to think."

I was stunned. I would have thought that anyone who could be given such an honor would either be so famous that they'd be instantly recognizable or would be driven around in a luxurious private car with their own chauffeur. The four people in my taxi, I had assumed, were probably involved with the production of the event in some way, or perhaps had been invited guests.
My next question was the obvious one:

"So... who are you?"

The gentleman on my right introduced himself as Dr. Douglas Schwartzentruber and the gentleman in the back seat, he told me, was Chetan Bhagat. The ladies were their wives. The reason Time Magazine chose them was because Dr. Schwartzentruber is a pioneer in developing a vaccine that can treat certain types of cancers and Chetan Bhagat is India's most popular author.

As a taxi driver in New York City I'm sure I often have passengers in my cab who are truly Very Important People within their own spheres of influence, but it is rare that I actually get to know who they are. And it is never that I get them at a time when they've just been bestowed with an acknowledgment on so grand a scale. So I was aware of how special this moment was not only for them, but for me as well.

We drove down 9th Avenue in a taxi full of happy chatter. The afterglow of their evening was filling the cab with an energy that was rubbing off on me. It was that floating feeling you get sometimes during a perfect ride.

The organizers of the event had given the attendees souvenirs of several copies each of that issue of Time Magazine. Dr. Schwartzentruber gave me one to keep. After thanking him for this gift, I asked him and Mr. Bhagat to sign it for me. In all my 32 years of taxi-driving, and after having had well over a hundred celebrities in my cab, it was only the second time I had ever requested an autograph. The other time had been back in the '90s when I had Tori Spelling, then starring in the hit TV show Beverly Hills 90210, in the back seat, and the only reason I'd asked her was to impress Suzy, my teen aged daughter (who failed to be impressed - of course).




What's funny here is that Dr. Schwartzentruber, in order to help me find him in the magazine, wrote "heroes" after his name, but after looking him up I discovered that they had actually put him in the category of "thinkers". Not that it matters, of course - no doubt he's a hero as well. Chetan Bhagat's signature came out kind of illegibly (maybe he should be a doctor!), so he kindly printed his name under it, again so I'd be able to find him in the magazine.

As we arrived at 40th and 9th, the location of the Bhagats' hotel, it was interesting to overhear their conversation as they parted ways. Mr. Bhagat handed his card to the Schwartzentrubers and invited them to stay at his home in Mumbai if they were ever in that part of the world. And then he said this:

"I don't belong on the same stage with you."

I repeat this not in any way to diminish the work of Mr. Bhagat. In fact, as a writer myself, I find having someone of his stature in my cab to be a bit intimidating. I repeat this because I think he was correctly sizing up the magnitudes of importance here. Writers - whether they be writers of novels, screenplays, stage plays, or songs - are very important, indeed. We all know this. But the man sitting on my right - well, let's put it this way...

What if you, or someone you care for very much, had been diagnosed with a cancer and you were confronting the prospect of undergoing chemo and radiation therapies? But now, because of this man, that cancer could be treated, and very possibly defeated, with a vaccine. How would you regard the man who had spared you from this ordeal and perhaps had saved your life? It would be how the human race regarded the man who defeated polio in the '50s, Dr. Jonas Salk.

Kind of like God.

So as we proceeded toward the Schwartzentruber's hotel on 6th and 39th, a three-minute ride, I would have to admit to feeling honored and even humbled just to be in his presence. They say we are all born equal, and that is true in a legal sense, but we surely don't wind up being equal in terms of our worth to other people. Some of us are giants. This man had a value to the world that was beyond measurement. The thought occurred to me, as mundane as it was, that I should drive extra carefully with this precious cargo in my taxi. What if a mistake on my part caused him to be injured or killed? There could be no amount of taxi insurance that could ever cover the loss.

So we drove across 38th Street at about half my normal speed. I crossed the intersections of 8th and 7th Avenues only after being absolutely certain that no vehicle was about to run a red light and crash into us. And when we arrived at their hotel I scrutinized the oncoming traffic in my rear view mirror to make sure Dr. Schwartzentruber was not struck by an approaching car as he opened his door. He was damn well not going to die on my watch!

Along the way I tried to ask him some semi-intelligent questions about his work and he answered in layman's terms. I noted that he had no condescension in his manner and gave me no feeling of being "lesser than". And that's the way it always is with the great ones, isn't it?

After dropping off the Schwartzentrubers, my night went on. I went back to the Time Warner Building and picked up another fare. This time my passengers, a young man and a young woman, indeed were a part of the team that produced the event. After some pleasant chit-chat and a drop-off in the Gramercy Park section of Manhattan, business slowed down considerably, as it normally does on a Tuesday night after the witching hour. I took my post-midnight, fifteen-minute break and resumed cruising the streets of the city in search of business.

One of the great misconceptions about taxi-driving in New York is that many people assume we are always busy. Nothing could be further from the truth. After midnight on a weekday it is brutally competitive amongst cabbies trying to gain better position on the avenues so they will be the first to get to any passenger who may be somewhere down the road looking for a taxi. It's like a horse race, really.

In the next two and a half hours, I got only four rides and was feeling the stress that comes from working hard and having little to show for it. As it turned out, it was time for the bottom to show up.

Bottom appeared in the form of a potential passenger, a thirty-something male, hailing me on Amsterdam Avenue between 74th and 75th. I could tell from the way he was waving that this guy was in an undefined state of inebriation and stopping for him at all was not necessarily a good idea. When I say "undefined" I mean I knew he was drunk but I wasn't sure how drunk. Most stoned people are still viable passengers. This fellow was iffy. Nevertheless, I was desperate, so...
I pulled over and stopped.

As he approached the cab, he did the semi-coherent shuffle - one foot forward, one foot to the left, one foot forward, one foot to the right - but still he was able to get into the back seat without too much trouble. It looked like he might be okay, but that turned out to be wishful thinking.

"Hi, there," said I.

"How-you," he replied after a few vacant seconds.

"So where are you heading?"

"Yeah."

"Where you wanna go?"

A long pause, and then: "No wan go dere no go wan go."

I knew it was hopeless but for two minutes I kept trying to get a destination out of him, anyway. Finally I accepted defeat and left him standing in the same place where he'd been before he hailed me. I drove up Amsterdam, made a right on 81st, another right on Columbus, and headed downtown to a part of town where I'd be more likely to find a passenger at 3 a.m.

The thought later occurred to me that within three hours I'd had two passengers in my cab whose influence spans the globe and affects millions of people and then, sitting in the same seat, I'd had someone whose sphere of influence was so microscopic that he couldn't get his own memory banks to tell him where he lived.

I'd run the gamut.

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And you can have gamuts galore by clicking here for Pictures From A Taxi. What a deal!

Mission To Haiti

One of the little side-benefits of driving a cab in New York City is that you occasionally have a window presented to you through which to gain an insight into major world events. For example, to go way, way back, I once had a military man in full uniform get in my cab who was en route to New York's Sloan-Kettering Hospital. It turned out he was a general in the army of the overthrown Iranian government who was going to visit "His Excellency" in the hospital. "His Excellency" was the Shah of Iran who had been overthrown by the Islamic revolution and was at that time receiving treatment for cancer at the hospital (from which he died shortly thereafter). I didn't have a conversation of any substance with this military man, but his seriousness, his stiffness, his continuing to wear the uniform of an army that no longer existed as a show of respect for the deposed Shah, and his use of the term "His Excellency" have remained with me all these years. An abstraction had been given some mass, a face. Whenever the Iranian situation was mentioned after that I could think back on this ride and get a feeling for the way it was, just based on the way this general in my cab carried himself.

I had a ride like that a few days ago.

I picked up a young man in Manhattan who was headed for Kennedy Airport, and from there he would be flying home to London. New York was a stopover in his journey from his original point of departure - Haiti, a place that, of course, is very much in the news these days. He told me he is a photographer and had donated his services to record some of the relief effort that is in progress on the devastated island.

Getting a report about something from someone who was actually on the scene makes a deeper impression on me than just seeing it on the television or hearing about it on the radio. And the stories he told me were inspirational:

- volunteers who in the morning would have recoiled at the sight of someone receiving an injection were taught how to do it and by night's end had administered hundreds of inoculations to Haitians at risk of disease,

- a volunteer took half a day to teach himself to identify all the instruments used in surgery so he could then serve as an assistant and thus free up a doctor to perform surgery who otherwise would have been doing the job of handing instruments to surgeons himself,

- volunteers were sleeping in tents, eating food packets provided by the military, using makeshift latrines as bathrooms, and taking showers from water coming down from elevated buckets,

-people were experiencing the exhilaration of knowing that they were actually saving other people's lives and knowing as well that their reach was expanding and that they would never be the same again.

It occurred to me later that changes for the better often go unnoticed and unacknowledged. Here is a country literally being invaded by people who have come to help. Some of them are specialists, some of them are there to just help in any way they are needed. Soldiers arrive in huge planes and are deployed to distribute food. These kinds of things have not been the normal way the history of the human race has been written.

It brings to mind the dream of a brave new world and it's enough to make an optimist out of you.

The name of my passenger was Felix Kunze.

You can see his photography at felixkunze.com.

Man Bites Dog

Way back on June 3rd I received an email from Antoinette, a researcher at a Dutch television program called Man Bijt Hond (Man Bites Dog), asking if I might be interested in participating in some broadcasts they were planning to do in New York in early September. I was told that Man Bites Dog is a long-running show that's on the air five nights a week in the Netherlands and that they'd be coming to the city to commemorate the discovery of New York by the explorer Henry Hudson 400 years ago. Someone had the idea of including a segment about a real New York cab driver as an unusual angle for a story and they found me right here at this blog. Filming would take place during the first week of September for shows that would be on the air in Holland from Sept. 7th through the 11th.

You get five minutes of fame, right? I realized I've only used up about a minute of it when I was interviewed on BBC Breakfast back in November and so I still have about four minutes left on my account! I said "yes".

Thus began a long series of emails between myself and Antoinette that culminated in a plan: I would show up at the crew's hotel in the Flatiron District in a taxi for three consecutive nights; the cab would be outfitted with special lights, sound equipment, and cameras, and I myself would have a microphone attached under my shirt; I would meet with Cas, the interviewer and cameraman, and Pepijn, the sound man; and the three of us would cruise around Manhattan for three hours each night in search of material that could later be edited for the show.


And so I became part of a real television production.

Pictures:

Antoinette

One of the crew setting up a camera angle on the big star of the show

Cas, the cameraman and interviewer, with the hand-held

Crew member setting up the back seat camera

Passengers shared the back seat with sound man Pepijn

On the second night Cas set up this camera on the hood of the cab

Cas, "NYC Gene", and Pepijn

Video clips from the show:

http://www.manbijthond.nl/fragmenten/net-talkshow

http://www.manbijthond.nl/fragmenten/taxichauffeur-schrijver

So how did it go? Mostly it was great fun. And quite flattering that such attention was being paid to me. I will admit to feeling a bit of vindication in the sense that taxi driving is normally a relatively anonymous occupation without any group support. Many things happen that you wish could be witnessed or acknowledged by others. So it was gratifying to finally have that happen in such a big way. They told me close to a million people watch this show every night.

It was also a learning experience. We accumulated more than 7 hours of footage. From that only about 8 minutes of material were actually used. So I learned something about the power of editing. Unless the person being interviewed has some kind of agreement that he has approval rights over the final cut, how he is portrayed is very much in the hands of the editor, or the director via the editor. In this case, I didn't think the material about my personal life was relevant or particularly interesting and I thought the bits at the end of the segments were pretty lame. I wouldn't have included them.

On the other hand, I thought my comments about taxi driving and the interactions with the passengers were presented very well. We had to get the know-how down about getting people to come into the cab, by the way. We found that passengers hailing us from the street didn't want to get into a cab with two guys in the front and another guy with odd machinery in the back. So what we eventually learned was that it was best to park the taxi in a busy night-life area and then Cas would go out on the sidewalk and solicit volunteers. Plus offering a free ride didn't hurt.

My favorite sequence with the passengers was the one with the screaming actress. I should point out that the video she had been in earlier that day was a spoof of Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video. I think an impression may have been given that she had been in the original, which was not the case. Also the decibel level of her scream was not given justice in that shot. It was much louder! Unfortunately, my comment of "I think you broke my windshield!" was not included. She nearly did! Her name, by the way, is Mika Henderson and she can be contacted at www.myspace.com/sugarnspikes should anyone reading this be in the market for a superb screamer.

Another thing that was left out was that the girl who was with the guy who was so enthusiastic about the celebrities I've had in my cab surprised us, when she learned that the show we were doing was from Holland, by speaking Dutch fluently! It turned out she is from Suriname, a former Dutch colony in South America. I thought that was pretty amazing.

So there it is. Cabs Are For Kissing takes to the airwaves. Hope it brings some smiles.

Angels And Demons

It has oft been said that there's both good and evil in everyone. Another way of saying it is that things are never totally black nor totally white, but in reality are a shade of grey. So it's of great interest to me when I get a passenger in my cab who does not appear to have any shade of grey at all but seems, rather, to be either an undiluted evil or an undiluted good. Characters like this really grab your attention. They've been populating newspapers and novels since observations began appearing in print.

I've had a few lately, and here is my report.

First, the evil...

A few weeks ago I worked a Saturday night shift, something I rarely do anymore even though it's the best money night. I'm just sick of the drunks and, of course, Saturday night is "Drunk Night". I'd much prefer to take a sober business person home from work on a Monday or a Tuesday than to have to endure the party people. But I did work this one Saturday shift and it was a reminder of what a truly wild place New York City is on that night of the week. And it provided me with both of these tales from the dark side.

Marriage Without the "Love" Part

When you drive a cab, especially with passengers who are less than sober, you have an enormous fly-on-the-wall opportunity. There is a definite tendency for people to carry on with each other as if you're not there, and so you have this unique window from which to observe them in an unvarnished state. Some of these people, of course, are married couples.

Now, if you are the survivor of a bad marriage, or if you are currently married and are experiencing some turbulence in your own voyage, you may think you know something about what it's like to be in a destructive relationship. Well, let me tell you something, Charlie or Charlotte, I would bet you dimes for dollars that whatever mess you've been involved in would pale in comparison to the two maniacs I had in my cab on this particular Saturday night.

They were well-dressed forty-somethings who had emerged from a restaurant on the East Side and, from what I overheard of their conversation - which was their entire conversation - they were coming from a dinner party that had been attended by people who were business associates of the woman. So it was one of those situations where "business" is combined with "pleasure", which is often a recipe for "stress". The man abruptly barked their destination - the Upper West Side - at me as they sat down in the back seat without saying the word "please", an indication in itself that I wasn't viewed as being a person of any importance to them, if, in fact, I was viewed as being a person at all. Lack of manners is something I unfortunately am quite accustomed to, so it slid off my back and I started driving up First Avenue toward 66th Street, the road that goes straight through Central Park to the West Side.

Their conversation began with a few back-and-forths about the party in a civil tone. And then the man, who had been walking on a tightrope he wasn't unaware of, made a comment that sent him tumbling toward the pavement far below. He mentioned to his wife that he thought they should have stayed at the party a little longer so she could could chat it up with a particular business associate whom he thought could be a potential ally in some future business scenario.

This one statement was all it took to make the volcano explode. She jumped on him like a lion on an antelope. (Or a lioness in this case.) Her facade of civility disappeared completely and was replaced with a hostility that would have rippled even Jack the Ripper. Not only was he completely wrong in his opinion, she roared, it was utterly, deeply, and unforgivably insulting to her that he should imply that she didn't thoroughly know what she was doing at the party.

He tried to apologize, but his attempts to placate her only seemed to fuel the fire.

Here, she wailed, was yet another attempt to undermine her confidence by someone who was a complete failure in anything he attempted to do. What had he ever done in life? What had he ever accomplished? How dare he suggest that she wasn't adequately skillful in a social situation? Leave the party too soon? All the guests were leaving! Clearly, to try to engage the person he had mentioned in conversation at that time would have been a mistake. You idiot! You idiot! You brainless, thoughtless, trip-over-your-own-shoes idiot!

Like an insect that's caught in a spider's web, he continued to try to wiggle free. Well, he replied, he was just saying. It was just a comment. But she would have none of it. Shark-like, she moved in for more.

"That was your fatal mistake," she snarled. "I'm cutting you out! You're getting nothing!"

I came to understand, as her damnations continued, that she controlled the purse strings in their relationship - she was the one with the money. This conclusion was supported by his complete lack of retaliation to her rantings. Glancing at him in the mirror, he resembled a boxer who had fallen to one knee and was about to receive a salvo of new punches which he realized he was helpless to prevent.

And on they came.

"There will be no third child!" she proclaimed.

"What do you mean?" he said in a kind of stunned apathy.

"I'm getting rid of it," she stated coolly. I noticed a particular perversity in the way she put this forward. There was no sadness or regret in her voice. Rather, there was a hint of the sublime.
He was on his back on the canvas and offered no response. The remaining five minutes of the ride took place in an atmosphere in which the tension could not have been cut with a knife. You would have needed a chainsaw to do the job.

I thought how funny it would be (to me) if I suddenly broke out into the song, I Get A Kick Out Of You. But of course I kept my mouth shut and just kept driving.

After I'd dropped them off, it took me three fares to shake off the effects of the ride. By "three fares" I mean the next three passengers in my cab served as my own personal therapists for downloading on them the emotional strain I'd just been subjected to. Fortunately, they were all good listeners and I felt much better as a result. But I came away with some thoughts.

Firstly, just the amazement at how bad it can get. How evil intentions, dishonesty, cowardice, and propitiation feed off each other until both parties are utterly entrapped by their own personality flaws.

Secondly, I haven't been able to get the thought out of my mind that someday he's going to murder her.

And thirdly, and this is a personal note if you will indulge me, I had the odd realization about a week later that many years ago I had imagined these two people. I wrote a stage play in the early '80s about a married couple who were just like these two. The funny thing is, I'd never actually met anyone like them in real life. I had based my play loosely on the characters in the play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and figured there must be people like that out there. Which just goes to show that if you drive a cab in New York long enough, everybody eventually shows up - even people who had previously existed only in your mind.

Now, it often happens during the course of a shift that you find yourself pulling in the same kind of thing that you'd just gotten rid of in a kind of karmic reverberation. And it happened that night. Just as I had regained my aplomb, I encountered Mr. and Mrs. Insane Number Two in Tribeca.

Mobbed Up

I was driving up Hudson Street at around 1 a.m. looking for my next fare when I was hailed by a young guy who turned out to be a doorman for a small hotel about a block and a half away on Greenwich Street. He had been sent by patrons of the hotel to fetch a cab because Greenwich Street at that hour of the night is relatively deserted whereas Hudson Street is full of taxis en route from lower Manhattan to the passenger-rich Soho and Greenwich Village sections of the city.

It's not unusual for a doorman to provide this service. He hails the cab himself as if he were the next passenger and rides in the cab the short distance back to his hotel. Since he is seated in the taxi, the driver instinctively turns the meter on as the trip begins, which is what I did in this instance.

We pulled up in front of the hotel and waiting there were a man and a woman who I would say were in their mid-fifties. He was about five-foot-eight with about 70 pounds more than he needed and with a salt and peppered full head of hair, and she stood out in a party dress and a puffed-out top of bright red.The doorman exited the back seat as we pulled up to the place, and held the door open for his patrons. The meter had already clicked once, up to $3.40 from its initial drop of $3.00. But the couple did not enter the cab. Instead, the woman came up to me and asked, in an accent heavy with a lifetime in Brooklyn, if I knew any good diners.

I told her I did.

"Do you know one close to here?"

"Yeah, we could go to Greenwich Village. I know a couple of coffee shops there."

"Do they have fried clams?"

"They probably do. They all do."

"What about shrimps?" And then, without waiting for an answer, she turned to the man. "Honey, I can't decide if I want clams or shrimps."

He looked at her with an expression on his face that seemed to say that he was the godfather to women who can't decide between clams or shrimps and that all would be well for her if she just continued never to have an intelligent thought of her own. In short, he was the sugar daddy in this relationship, she was Daddy's little girl. This was apparent to me just from this quick exchange.

"Ewwww," she whined, little-girl-like, "what should we do?"

He murmured something to her I could not hear, and then they did a remarkable thing - they started to walk away.

The doorman and I simultaneously glanced at each other with puzzled looks on our faces. I told him there was now $3.80 on the meter, and that I was owed this, which he understood. Although he was just a kid and had been put in an awkward situation, he nevertheless summoned up his courage and approached the man, telling him the meter had been started when he'd gotten the cab.

The man just looked at him as if he was a bug, gave him a sarcastic little laugh, and continued walking away with his parasite.

And that was it.

Now, this may not seem like such a big deal. One could say it was just two rude people being rude. But let me tell you something - in thirty-one years of taxi-driving, with probably a couple of hundred doormen getting in my cab as this one had, this had never happened before.

It was a first. And firsts are rare after all these years, so it made me examine the incident carefully in my mind. Certainly no huge incident of destruction had occurred. There had been no violence nor bizarre dramatization as had happened earlier in the evening. But still this little episode really stuck in my craw.

I asked myself, who would do something like this? Have a doorman walk a block to get a cab, then not take the cab he'd gotten without a "sorry" or an offer to pay what was on the meter? And then just walk away with a sinister laugh? I couldn't imagine myself nor anyone I know ever doing such a thing under any circumstances. What sequence of events would it have taken to have acquired an attitude like that?

I concluded that it would take someone who was utterly at ease with committing harmful acts upon others. Someone who was a professional at it. Someone who, if he ever thought about it at all, would consider the idea of other people having rights as just an ememy's attempt to stop him from getting what he wants. Someone who, at his core, was evil. And when I say "evil" I mean the continuous intention to do harm to others when there is no need to do harm to others.

So it wasn't what he'd done to me and the doorman that had stopped me in my tracks. It was my perception that this was a person who was capable of an enormous quantity of evil. And the only context I have for such a person are the movies and television dramas I've seen about the Mob, particularly Goodfellas and The Sopranos. The characters in these shows are portrayed as having just these kinds of anti-social traits, and this guy, both in his actions and appearance, fit right into that odd slot.

So I said to the doorman something that I thought might add to his education, or at least make the incident permanently memorable for him. "That guy's in the Mob," I said.

And I drove off looking for my next therapist. I mean, passenger.

The Angels Among Us

I sometimes wonder if there may in fact be such a thing as Intelligent Design when I consider the amazing balancing act between good and evil that exists in the human race. How can there be a species which has among its members ones like the above and others like these...

Several months ago, in the dead of winter, I picked up a middle-aged woman at 3 a.m. in Midtown who was en route to her apartment in lower Manhattan but wanted to make a stop on 23rd Street between 5th and 6th Avenues. It turned out she was a lawyer.

Now, I am as cynical as the next person about lawyers but this one was of a different mold, if in fact there is a mold at all. The first thing I noticed about her was that her manners were totally "in". I said "hello" to her as she entered my cab, as I do with everyone. She said "hello" back. She told me her destination and asked me if it would be okay with me if we made a stop. I told her that of course that would be no problem and I noted the fact that she had asked me this even though she didn't have to. So here was a person who just by her nature was considerate of the feelings and the rights of others. In short, a "social personality".

Not surprisingly, she was an easy converstionalist and I soon learned why she wanted to make a stop in the middle of the night. There was a church on that block, she said, which shelters homeless people. This particular church was not licensed by the city to be a homeless shelter, but did what it could, anyway. (She told me something I didn't know, which was that if a shelter isn't so licensed they cannot provide beds to people. So what this church did was provide chairs to people so they could attempt to sleep in a sitting position in a place where at least it was warm.) The reason she was making a stop here was to deliver paperwork she had been preparing to benefit one of the homeless people in the church, a woman from the suburbs of Connecticut who had lost her job and had subsequently lost her home. The paperwork had to do with red tape hurdles that needed to be cleared in order to situate this woman in affordable housing.

We continued the ride to her apartment building in Tribeca, a nice building in a nice part of town. I learned that in these tough economic times there were more and more people who are truly "homeless" - people who have literally lost their homes and have at least temporarily no place to live, as opposed to people who are also classified as "homeless" who are actually substance abuse cases or outright hustlers. I also learned that she does this legal work pro bono (for free) as a matter of conscience.

At the end of the ride she thanked me again for making a stop in the middle of the ride, as if I had done something extraordinary. She paid me the fare and gave me a way-above-average tip, which I accepted but later felt a little guilty about for having done so.

And I realized as I drove away that this was a person who was also looking out for me. She showed kindness and concern when she didn't have to, traits that came naturally from within. I perceived no grey here. She was all good.

Then, a few weeks ago, I had a fare who was almost a duplicate of this woman in character and deed. I picked her up on the Upper West Side near Riverside Drive a bit after midnight. She needed to place several large boxes in the trunk of the taxi, which I helped her to do. Her destination was a city-run shelter on 108th Street in Harlem and, like the previous ride, she asked me if I would be willing to wait for her while she made a delivery and then bring her to her own apartment building on 97th Street.

I noticed the smell of salami as I loaded one of the boxes into the trunk, and this was a clue as to what she was doing. She told me that she regularly takes excess food from a school to this shelter. She does it out of conscience, I surmised, out of feeling a need to take some responsibility for the welfare of others less fortunate than herself. And, like her predecessor, her kind nature wasn't limited to an exclusive charity, but included me. Aside from a friendly conversation and providing me with an example I could write about, she also gave me an exorbitantly high tip. Which I also accepted but again felt a little guilty about, thinking this was a person to whom I really should be offering a free ride.

In looking back at these four fares, I believe the entire human condition on the broadest of scales could be demonstrated by them.

I believe most people are basically good, but are hindered by forces internally and externally that they have difficulty controlling. And I believe a small percentage of people are actively, continuously perpetuating harm. And thus the story line of the human race is the same one you see in movies all the time, good versus evil.

Why this is so and what should be done about it are the subjects of philosophies, psychologies, and religions. I would not attempt to try to explain it.

I would say, though, that as a member of the grey team, I am grateful for the angels among us.

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