Over the Shoulder and Plant on One
An Irishman's Tribute to Willie Mays
by
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Liam and Johhny Mac work for the New York City Housing Authority as elevator technicians. Their job affords them the opportunity, or some would say the irritation, of visiting any number of City housing projects at any given time. Until you get familiar with a particular unit, be it the Brownsville Houses in Brooklyn or the Ravenswood Houses in Queens, you had to get a feel for it. Sometimes this feeling out process could be draining, and sometimes refreshing or enlightening. Every once in a while, though, you could take an amazing trip down memory lane. Johnny Mac has worked for NYC Housing for almost twenty years, so there is nowhere in the City that he has not been to on any number of occasions. It was only when he got a new partner, like Liam, that the old yarns about a particular site could resurface freshly again. Liam has been on the job for almost as long as Johnny Mac, only for a private company named Glynn-Will, a predominantly Irish outfit whose requirements for employment seem to be a fair amount of proficiency, a propensity to learn and a willingness to play on the company softball team. He had just switched to a City Housing job for no specified reason, though some new co-workers who had crossed paths with him over the years joked that he wasn’t much of a hitter. Like Johnny Mac, Liam had been to virtually every area of the City countless times during his tenure in the private sector, so there were no surprises awaiting him. Of course, when the two veteran elevator repairmen were slated to work as a duo, they would be experiencing the various sites for the first time together. On this day, they would be beginning a week at the Polo Grounds Apartments, the site of the long since leveled ballpark (which was razed following the 1963 expansion N.Y. Mets’ second season) of the longer since departed New York Giants (who left for San Francisco following the 1957 season). The Giants of McGraw and Mathewson, Terry and Ott, Thomson and Mays. The Giants of over 40 years ago. As they drove to this lair of old man’s dreams, Liam, 52, thought back to when he had gone to the horseshoe-shaped yard as a kid in the 50’s. He hadn’t been back to this area in some time, as private companies like his former employer Glynn-Will only did conversion work in the City buildings. Housing took care of the main body of work, that of maintenance and repair. So he hadn’t been to Polo since about 1994, ironically during the baseball strike. Back then, needless to say, he had also thought of his childhood, and when baseball, like life, seemed so innocent. As he drove up, he took a spot he figured was somewhere in the third base vicinity (with his NYC Housing vehicle, he could always pull right up to the front of a unit if there was any heavy equipment to lug, but he didn’t abuse this privilege if he could get a spot). As he parked, he thought of that wonderful year of 1954, when the Giants won it all; when the young Mays first established himself as the best player in the game. Little did he know that Johnny Mac, two years his senior, was thinking about the exact same thing.
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About the Book
Over the Shoulder and Plant on One: An Irishman’s Tribute to Willie Mays
In attempting to relay the feelings of joy and pride that he first knew as a baseball fan in the late 60’s and early 70’s, McDonald, as the "Irishman," deftly doffs his cap in obvious appreciation to those ballplayers he witnessed live, as well as those just before his time when there were three teams in New York, and Willie Mays was a young Giant in more ways than one.
Over the Shoulder and Plant on One: An Irishman’s Tribute to Willie Mays was preceded by An Irishman’s Tribute to the Negro Leagues, which took a breath and a sigh in the name of the men and women who participated in the old Negro Leagues. Hit Sign, Win Suit: An Irishman’s Tribute to Ebbets Field, is a future volume that will celebrate the days of Major League baseball in Brooklyn, which like the Negro Leagues and the days of Willie Mays, the player are long gone in a concrete sense, but not in a spiritual one.
About the Author
Thomas Porky McDonald of Astoria, Queens, is an Irish poet and writer who often used the world of baseball as a backdrop for his diverse verses and characters. A lifelong fan of the New York Mets, he began writing while working in Brooklyn in the mid-1980’s for New York City Transit in 1985. His first published book, An Irishman’s Tribute to the Negro Leagues explored the long lost world of all-black baseball. In this, his second effort, Over the Shoulder and Plant on One: An Irishman’s Tribute to Willie Mays, he touches on heroes that he encountered as a child, with Willie Mays serving as a linchpin between yesterday and today. A prolific writer in the 1990’s, McDonald plans on releasing much of the material he produced in those years in the course of the early 2000’s. Three poem anthologies which span the decade of the 90’s, a third "Irishman’s Tribute" (to Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field), along with a short story collection called Paradise Oval, are among the scheduled releases for the so-called "ramble poet." He still works in Brooklyn, where the writing began and continues to expand through the millennium.