Curtis Granderson is a Met? I'm the kind of fan who has to get reacclimated each April. It's not like when as a boy walking out of Metropolitan Stadium with my dad that stentorian voice would come over the P.A. system to announce, "THE TOTALS ON THE BOARD ARE CORRECT. NEXT HOME GAMES, FRIDAY NIGHT, SATURDAY AND SUNDAY AFTERNOONS, JUNE 14, 15 AND 16, CARL YASTRZEMSKI AND THE BOSTON RED SOX, HERE AT THE STADIUM."
I remember thinking it odd that we had to be told where the Twins' home games would be played, as if there was some other possibility than "here, at the stadium." But what seems odd now, a relic from the receding past, is the way one player was shorthand for the franchise. Kaline meant the Tigers, and Colavito meant the Indians, almost in the way that "Hollywood" is a stand-in for the U.S. motion picture industry. When players went into the Hall of Fame, if they went into the Hall of Fame, it wasn't necessary to discuss which team's cap they'd wear in the picture for the plaque.
I'm steaming toward 60 and think, naturally, that it was better back then. That is the way with those of us who aren't in the advertisers' target demographic any more.
