Bennett

Below is the last unpublished piece for the Florida Weekly. I had actually written it and sent it in before hearing that we were closing up shop. Like most things I write, some of it's really good and some really bad. And I'll be back around this way a lot more as the days move along: it's still the Long Sunset. 

(p.s. everything written about Tony Bennett in this piece actually underrates how incredible his God Bless America was that night. I mean it, Tony.

(p.p.s and by the way, the whole concept in the article is something I could expand on at great length. And may still.)

            Tony Bennett is god damn pro. I watched as he sang “God Bless America” in San Francisco for Game One of Major League Baseball’s conference championship. The camera cut to him looking shaky, all bundled up, with yellow-tinted glasses on that must serve some specific function, but what exactly, is hard to say. It looked cold and blustery; a typical damp mid-October night in The City by the Bay.

            He had a slight grin about him, but to me he looked deeply concerned. As the PA announcer listed his accomplishments (and this went on for what felt like minutes, because Tony Bennett has won everything, apparently), he blew into some little device to check his voice. I searched online for what the round mechanism is called and couldn’t figure it out, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen another major singer use it before a performance, and if nothing else, it hardened my view that he was worried.

            And I was worried for him. Tony is eight-six years old (86!), and with the cold weather and the strange intensity of the crowd, it looked to me through the television that he might be in too deep. I’ve never enjoyed watching people struggle under the spotlight, it’s always uncomfortable. And “God Bless America” is a difficult song to sing: it seems to require a powerful voice and a high range.

            After the introduction, the crowd cheered for Tony and then went silent. He waved. Then he blew into his little device again. At this point, I had my hands over my face and could only watch the train crash through my fingers. Poor Tony, this was how it would all end, standing on a infield in a blistery night struggling through a song  he could have song in his sleep many moons ago on a dusty Vegas evening.

            He started off slowly, trying to gain footing, but the ship looked to be sinking. Then, suddenly, as if Frankie Sinatra himself had landed on his shoulder for guidance, he closed his eyes, put the microphone in between his hands that now formed in prayer, and he sang that song. Tony Bennett sang the hell out of that song. By the last few lines, the entire stadium was singing along with him, and cheering uncontrollably as he boomed out the final word on America. Now that, is a professional Song Man.

            And that, dear readers, is why I love baseball. It’s the only major American sport that is totally and truly weird.

            I discovered baseball my freshmen year of college. I never watched it growing up. It was a lighthouse without a bulb in my house. My Dad hated it, and my brother never showed any real interest. So then did I. And I never played it at all. To this day, I don’t really know what hand to put a mitt on, let alone use it. My only true early introduction to baseball came every summer from my cousin while we visited family in New York. A die-hard Mets fan, his pained but hilarious basement rants and raves unintentionally planted the seed of what would become my adopted team.

            But baseball, to me, isn’t about outs, strikes, bunts, swings and misses. It’s about the splendor of nothing. It was a sport alien to me in those early lonely college years, and my only reaction at the time, and to this day, was one of odd delight.

            The game itself is slow on its own. But with such a long season, games in midsummer’s swoon become almost always meaningless. And because of all this, baseball takes on aura where the external trivialities around the field are more important then anything happening on it. A squirrel running around in the dugout, fans fighting over foul balls, strange (possibly drunken) conversations that announcers have to fill the air while nothing else is going on, coaches that actually wear uniforms as if they’re players, bizarre ritualistic behavior: it adds up to this beautiful long-winded melodrama that just lingers in the air. It’s a poor symphony, but life wouldn’t feel right without it.

            Every other American sport has gotten so serious and filled with vitriol. Baseball, meh, it’s just there. It plays Spring, Summer and Fall. It holds highly crucial playoff games on weekday afternoons when no one can watch, and has scheduled Game 6 of this year’s World Series on Halloween night. It literally doesn’t seem to care if you watch. It’s great.

            Not everything needs a reason, and some things deserve to be for the sake of being. I don’t remember at all who won that game, but I remember Tony Bennett. We live in a very black and white society. There are rules, winners, losers, failures and successes. We seem to have a hard time appreciating things outside of those parameters.

            This Halloween night I’m handing out copies of “Slaughterhouse-Five”, a burned disc of Tony Bennett’s performance, and grape (only) Jolly Ranchers. Every one of them is a treat.