Blog Archives

After the past two days (here and here) and 60 records,  I can’t believe we missed this one.

Duck, Alert.

Mark the 45 King y’all.

Brian Cashman on the corner infield market.

Plus more from Chad Jennings.

[Photo Via Peanut Butter Fingers]

Teixeira out 8-10 weeks tweets Jack Curry. Shaping into one of those years and it hasn’t even begun yet.

[Photo Credit: Elsa/Getty Images]

Thanks to Kottke for pointing out the dope Tumblr site: NYC Past.

Another sure shot column from our man Dexter. It originally appeared in the Philly Daily News on Monday April 14, 1980 and is featured here with the author’s permission.

“Of Life and Death”

By Pete Dexter

A fog had settled on the lake the night Hobbles died. Behind it you could just see the outline of the moon. Markey called to tell me it had happened. I went out to the water then, trying not to think anything until I had a chance to get used to it. At the dock I looked back and couldn’t see the lights from the house. The only noises were the frogs, then a dog, barking from across the lake.

Thomas (Hobbles) Haggerty had taken 20 days to die. That’s how long he had been lying in a coma at Methodist Hospital, first in the coronary unit, then in intensive care. He was 30 years old, and right up until the Sunday night in mid-March when he came downstairs and told his mother she better call an ambulance, he’d thought he had the flu.

By then his pancreas was already bleeding. His neck was swollen, his temperature was 106, and he’d lost his vision. In the hour before that, he’d come down from his room enough times to drink half-a-gallon of water and at least a quart of soda. The last time he came down he walked into a wall.

That’s how fast it was happening.

His sister Peggy called a friend and they drove him to the hospital. It was 10 o’clock at night, and Hobbles got himself into the car. Five minutes later he had to be carried out. That’s how fast it was happening too.

By early morning, he had slipped into a coma, and at 4 o’clock his heart stopped. The doctors brought it back with electric shock. About 6 in the morning the hospital called the Haggerty home on Newkirk St. and spoke to one of his two sisters. They said the family should come right away.

For the next 20 days his family stayed at the hospital. In the first week the doctors told his friends to talk to him, they said that sometimes a familiar voice would bring somebody in a coma back.

The friends were there all week. They recorded whole nights at the Downtowner club–where Hobbles bartended–and left him listening to the tapes through ear phones when the nurses threw them out.

After a week, the doctors moved him from the coronary unit to intensive care and told the family all there was left was miracles.

And there were none of those. Two weeks later his heart stopped again. Sometimes it’s hard to say why you like somebody. That kind of thing has never lent itself much to words with me anyway – I just do or I don’t, and assume there’s a reason. But on the night Hobbles died, I stood out by the lake figuring it out. It was either that or wonder why it was he had to die, and I’ve been up that alley enough times to count the bricks at the dead end. What it came down to finally was all tied to the neighborhood. To Tasker. Row houses and broken glass, sometimes the smell of the oil refineries across the expressway. Everybody’s got knife scars on their stomach.

The first time I saw the place, I thought it looked like some kind of accident that was still happening. The people there told me it was beautiful. That was the word they used, and it took a long time for me to see what they were talking about.

And that was themselves. Whatever Tasker was, that was what they were. And they liked that enough to fight for it, and sometimes die for it. And gradually it came to me, that was human dignity.

And Hobbles had as much of that as anybody. And I cared about that kid, he would stand up.

I don’t know what else to tell you. He liked to drink beer and go to the shore and bet football. He had a lot of jobs, but nothing you would confuse with ambition.

His brother Paul said, “He seemed to stay young,” and that was the truth. In 1968, an off-duty cop shot him in the chest during a racial altercation in the street, and he almost died then. Paul said, “Before they took him into the operating room, he thought he was gonna die. He called my mother over and told her he loved her and he was sorry.”

Four years ago he got hepatitis and developed liver disease. His doctor told him to quit drinking, and he didn’t.

One of his friends was a heroin addict then. “When I finally got off the shit after all those years,” he said, “everybody says to me, ‘It’s about time you straightened out.’Hobbles was the only one who told me he was glad I’d beat it. He was the only one that understood I had just done the best thing in my life. He was proud of me. ”

I thought about some of that the night Hobbles died. I thought about it and tried to fit it with words. It was a waste, it was a tragedy, it was human. The words don’t come close. All I can tell you is that a fog settled over the lake that night, so thick that for a while I couldn’t see the lights from my own house.

And somewhere in it Hobbles was missing. And when it lifted I had finally understood he would never be back.

[Images Via: Treeline; Amelia Thellen]

Painting by hooooook.

We can’t get enough of a good thing around here so why not jern the Carbonara Party over at Food 52?

You don’t have to be from out-of-town to look up at the buildings in Manhattan. I do it all the time. Like last night on 57th Street and 8th Avenue.

Mark Teixeira will not play in the WBC after all, and more Yankee notes from the intrepid Chad Jennings.

[Photo Credit: AP]

Picking up on yesterday’s Beat of the Day thread where Bluenatic and Chyll Will listed their 20 favorite Hip Hop albums, I figured I’d pick 20 more, careful not to repeat any of their selections. They already took many of my favorites records: from Slick Rick and EPMD–damn you Will for making it a tie!–Tribe, Pharcyde, Nas, Common Sense.

So, with all due respect to killer records by Biz, P.E., Ice T, Dr. Dre, Uncle L, Snoop, 3rd Base, Leaders of the New, Black Sheep, Ultramag, Jay Z, MC Lyte, Ice Cube, Artifacts, Quasimoto, Nice and Smooth, Kurious, and J-Live, here’s my 20:

“Any Any Means Necessary” BDP

“Straight Out the Jungle” The Jungle Brothers

“Unfinished Business” EPMD

“The Sun Rises in the East” Jeru the Damaja

“Three Feet High and Rising” De La Soul

“Funky Technition” Lord Finesse

“Stunts, Blunts and Hip Hop” Diamond D

“Daily Operation” Gang Starr

“Life of a Kid in the Ghetto” Ed O.G. and the Bulldogs

“Breaking Atoms” Main Source

“Muddy Waters” Redman

“The Beatnuts” Beatnuts

“It’s a Big Daddy Thing” Big Daddy Kane

“Straight Outta Compton” N.W.A.

“21 and Over” Tha Alkaholiks

“Enter the Wu Tang (36 Chambers)” Wu Tang

“People’s Instinctive Travels and Paths of Rhythm” A Tribe Called Quest

“The Infamous” Mobb Deep

“Enter Da Stage” Black Moon

“Runaway Slave” Showbiz and AG

“Word Life” O.C.

Sunset Gun salutes the great John Garfield.

Everybody Must…

[Image Via: Ghost in the Machine]

Spoon Fork Bacon gives Grilled Fennel Tarts.

Here’s a rumor for you. Hey, if you’re going to put out a rumor, make it a doozie, right?

A quick reminder to keep diggin‘.

It’s getting late early in Philadelphia. Here’s Jonah Keri on the Phillies:

They’ve already turned over more than half the lineup, handing starting roles to much younger players. But none of those players are premium prospects. Moreover, the team’s trio of infield stars, the ones who’ve been the face of Phillies baseball for nearly a decade, are still around, fighting injuries and Father Time as they desperately try to keep the Phillies relevant in a division that’s left them behind. Then you’ve got the starting rotation’s three aces and the fire-breathing closer, all making big bucks, all hugely attractive gets for many other teams were they to become available. Four months from now, if Philly appears on its way to another mediocre season, should the team cash in their biggest trade chips for younger players who could help build a winning team for 2014 and beyond?

Maybe the bigger question is this: If the Phillies do reach that point, could they go through with it — tearing down the most dominant collection of players the team has seen in 30-plus years?

I wanna go.

Moebius.

Steven Brooks’ America…found at Kateoplis.