What a difference a decade makes. I remember being back in NY for a two-week vacation in the summer of 1998. One afternoon, while wandering around Little Italy, I saw the following sign, handwritten in marker on a piece of brown cardboard carton, taped to a ground-floor window on Mulberry Street:
I remember being struck by three things about that sign. First, that someone, having learned of something they felt was newsworthy inan age of instantaneous telecommunications and round-the-clock media,had nonetheless fabricated a sign and taped it to their window in orderto spread the news.
Second, that this person felt a perfect game at Yankee Stadium — thrown by a Yankee hurler — qualified as newsworthy. (No argument here.)
Third, that in an age of instantaneous telecommunications and round-the-clockmedia, I’d learned the news from a sign, handwritten in marker on apiece of brown cardboard carton, taped to a ground-floor window onMulberry Street.
Fast forward 11 years, to an age of even more pervasive and ubiquitous instantaneous telecommunications and round-the-clock media, and I just learned the news of Mark Buehrle’s perfect game from a sign, typewritten in pixels and posted on Spencer Ackerman’s blog. (YouTube video of Dewayne Wise’s ninth-inning, perfection-saving catch here, for the moment.)
It ain’t a Yankee, and it ain’t in Yankee Stadium. But I think you can tell who dreamed of what as a kid by whether or not they get butterflies in their stomach at the mere mention of a perfect game. Wow.