Wednesday, September 18, 2013

 

NY Post front page, 'To honor Mo, NYC should change River Ave. to RIVERA Ave.' Update-Mayor Bloomberg says up to City Council

.





















"Sign the petition: https://www.change.org/petitions/new-york-city-change-river-avenue-to-rivera-avenue-2"
 
Wed., 9/18/13, NY Post front page.

9/18/13, "How NYC should honor Mariano Rivera," Mike Vaccaro, NY Post

"Tom Ferrara was standing in the shadow of the big ball-yard in The Bronx, waiting for his son-in-law, squinting away the sun, when the epiphany hit him. This was Thursday, Sept. 5, and the Yankees would soon play the Red Sox, and Ferrara’s eyes suddenly fastened on the street sign in front of him.

River Ave.

“And it hit me,” said Ferrara, the CEO of Future Value Associates in Pound Ridge. “But for two letters, that could be a wonderfully appropriate street name.”

But for two letters — an “A” at the end of the first word, an “S” at the start of the second — and for all time the street that has forever been linked to Yankee Stadium, all the way back to the breaking of the foundation in the spring of 1922, would read thus: Rivera Save.

All it takes is one to make it an idea worthy of a mayor’s attention:

Rivera Avenue.

“Other than a few Red Sox fans,” Ferrara said, “have you ever heard anyone say even one negative word about Mariano Rivera?”

This is an idea too good to ignore, and so now we put the ball in the city’s hands, the way Joe Torre and Joe Girardi have placed baseballs in Rivera’s hands since 1996. It is worth noting Ferrara isn’t the only one who has been hit by the inspiration; a Yankees fan named Dan Salogub created a Twitter account (@161stRIVERAve) promoting the same idea: adding an A, renaming the street.

There is really no good reason not to do this.

Well, actually, there is one good reason.

This from the City Council: “Proposed honorees must be individuals who are deceased and of significant importance to New York City.”

There is little denying the second part of that sentence. And while we keep talking about how “old” Rivera is, and Rivera himself has taken quite nicely to the persona of the elder statesman taking one last victory lap around the sport he has long dominated, he’s still only 43 years old. With any luck at all, he’s only halfway home in fulfilling the first prerequisite.

Look, we understand re-naming city blocks is not something to be taken lightly. Many streets in all five boroughs have been renamed in honor of fallen first-responders to the 9/11 horrors; surviving first responders who were just as heroic won’t be eligible for the same honor until after they die — hopefully decades from now. Nobody is likening game-saving to life-saving.

Besides, exceptions have been made before. In July, two blocks’ worth of St. Nicholas Place and an eight-block stretch of the Harlem River Drive were named in honor of Willie Mays, who became an icon not far from those spots at the old Polo Grounds. And former Mayor Ed Koch lived long enough to see the Queensborough Bridge named after him, too.

As much as anything, the honor would be a nod to a significant quirk of geography and city planning, to the fact that for 72 years before Rivera even showed up for work the Yankees played alongside a modest stretch of The Bronx connecting the intersection of Gerard Avenue and E. 140th Street running parallel north along the Harlem River past 161st Street, past the new Stadium, past the site of the Old Stadium, until it runs into Jerome Avenue just north of 168th Street. It started its life as a country thoroughfare. Now it’s a 28-block bustling city artery.

River Avenue.

It’s actually quite remarkable that the Yankees — a team that would sooner have opened their new ballpark without a home plate than without Monument Park — don’t have any other official civic benchmarks near their stadium, as other iconic organizations do. No Babe Ruth Boulevard. No Gehrig Place. No Munson Drive. In Green Bay, Lambeau Field is strangled by customized street markers: Favre Pass and Holmgren Way and Lombardi Avenue.

In Arlington, Texas, the Rangers play their games on Nolan Ryan Expressway, which honors a man alive, well, and presently fretting over his free-falling baseball team. There is a wonderful street corner in Shreveport, La., where Jesse Owens Street and Willie Mays Street connect.

And yes: Naming streets after athletes may sound like something you would sooner do in Mayberry, RFD, than Bronx, NYC. But the Yankees do have the unique power of turning New York City into the biggest small town in the world, Tuscaloosa North, when they play important games in October. Besides, when circumstances dictate, even our big-city brethren have bent a rule here and there.

Take Chicago, for instance, which has no street named after Michael Jordan, no avenue named after Dick Butkus, no boulevard named for Ernie Banks. But does have Kenny Lofton Lane, a cul-de-sac on the city’s east side which the city renamed in 1994 after Lofton built the grandmother who raised him a four-bedroom split-level home there.

Rosie Person explained why the next year, when her grandson (a future Rivera teammate) was playing in the World Series for the Indians.

“They took old Butler Street and changed the name to my grandson’s,” she told the San Francisco Chronicle. “They usually don’t do that until after someone has passed on, but they figured it’d be nice to do it when the guy’s still living and movin’ around.”

The rest of baseball has stuffed Rivera’s house with enough memorabilia and bric-a-brac to honor six careers. The Mets let him throw out the first pitch of a Subway Series game at Citi Field. Jim Leyland nearly had a nervous breakdown trying to plot the perfect way to honor him at the All-Star Game (and pulled it off), and while the Red Sox offered a humorous, heart-felt farewell Sunday night, perhaps the most stirring Boston moment this year came on a Saturday in July, when Rivera jogged in to save a game and the Fenway faithful stood and gave him an unprompted, unscripted standing ovation.

Yes. Boston did that.

New York can do this. We are not asking City Hall to change any of the streets whose names are familiar, even if the people who lent their names for them are not (raise your hand if you knew Andrew Bleecker was a lawyer, poet, and friend of Washington Irving; or James Delancey was a farm owner. Do you suppose when Maj. William Francis Deegan served under Gen. George Goethals in the Army Corps of Engineers they could have possibly dreamed of a day when one would be a bridge and the other an expressway?).

We are asking them to change a street named after a body of water. It is unlikely the Harlem River will object; if it suddenly reverses its flow, then we can talk. What it takes is the realization that in a time when we objectify athletes and when they, in turn, regularly disappoint us, there once was a man — and, perfect for the melting-pot city, an immigrant from Panama — who played the game at an unparalleled height, and behaved as we would ask our sons to behave: with grace, humanity, sportsmanship.

One of the men most recently honored with the standard posthumous honorific with the Triboro Bridge, Robert F. Kennedy, was eulogized by his brother by remembering his favorite quote: “There are those who look at things the way they are and ask why? I dream of things that never were and ask why not?”

We already know why River Avenue can’t become Rivera Avenue: It’s in the rule book, same as three strikes, four balls, nine innings. But why can’t we ask why not? It takes three simple steps: the City Council to propose a street naming bill; the Council discussing it; and the Mayor signing it.

Who would object to this?” Tom Ferrara asked.

I can’t think of anyone. Can you, Mr. Bloomberg?

Sign the petition: https://www.change.org/petitions/new-york-city-change-river-avenue-to-rivera-avenue-2 "

=======================

9/18/13, "Bloomberg hails 'phenomenal' Rivera," but leaves street naming to City Council

.

Comments: Post a Comment



<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?