Turtle Out of Water (One Sixty-Two: Day 66)

Writer’s note: One Sixty-Two is a season-long series of blog posts connecting baseball’s major-league players to life’s universal themes. Just as there are 162 games in a season, so there will be 162 posts in this series. Let’s play some ball.

Day Sixty-Six: Andre Ethier, Los Angeles Dodgers

We inched our canoe up to theirs, the two boys calling to us with wild-eyed wonder. Their father seemed pretty excited, too. They were pointing to the back of their canoe, imploring us to take a look. When we’d pulled up next to them, we looked inside and there it was – a beautiful brown turtle, no bigger than a shoe box.

I was out with my wife and girls for a Father’s Day treat at the Cranford Canoe Club, a legendary canoe -rental facility in central Jersey. The club dates back to the days in the early 20th century when canoe clubs were all the rage around here. Cranford, with numerous backyards abutting the Rahway River, was once referred to as the “Venice of New Jersey.”

It was a delightful two hours on the placid Rahway, paddling our way along while dragonflies followed us, fish swam around us, birds chirped at us and a deer glanced over her shoulder while eating on the river bank. But before we get too comfortable, let’s get back to that turtle for a second. When they called us over to their canoe, the boys and their father said they were planning to bring the turtle home as a pet. We nodded our heads and paddled on, knowing that the folks at the canoe club would not be letting these guys walk out of their boat with any pet turtles.

The turtle belonged in the water. Seeing him in some tank in a suburban bedroom would be all wrong. Seeing him trying desperately to climb out of the canoe was bad enough. Sometimes, you need to stay in your native environment.

Watching Joe Torre wearing a Dodgers uniform this weekend felt a little like watching that turtle inside the canoe. Torre looks like a New Yorker, he speaks like a New Yorker, and he did more to bring the Yankees back to prominence than anyone else in the past 15 years. His departure from New York after the 2007 season has been well-documented, and there’s no need to re-hash it here. Joe Girardi has led the Yankees to a world championship as manager, and New York has not fallen apart since Torre left.

Still, some people just don’t look right when they’re away from home. When the Yankees visited the Dodgers this weekend for an interleague series, Torre wore the interlocking “LA” on his cap while the visiting team sported that interlocking “NY.” His team did just fine, going after the Yankees with playoff intensity. Torre has led his club to the postseason each of the past two years, and L.A. is in the thick of another pennant race in 2010. But there are other men on this team who look much more the Southern California type than Torre does.

Take right fielder Andre Ethier, for example. Born in Phoenix, Ethier has that West Coast look – the curly locks dangling from behind his blue cap, the long sideburns, the on-again, off-again beard. Of course, it’s just a look – there’s nothing relaxed about Ethier’s effort on the field, as he’s quickly become the Dodgers’ premier clutch hitter.

But when you watch Ethier suit up for a game on another gorgeous night in Chavez Ravine, he looks like a player who’d be very comfortable hanging out on Venice Beach during an off-day. As for Torre, he looks like a man who’s dying for a decent slice of pizza and a copy of the New York Daily News.

Joe Torre has proven, to anyone who didn’t believe it, that his managerial magic extends beyond the South Bronx. He is holding together a franchise with serious ownership issues and gearing Los Angeles for another run at a division title. I hope he succeeds, and then I hope he gets out of Dodger blue this autumn.

Venice Beach is no more suited to Torre than that canoe was to the turtle we saw last week. Get that turtle back into the Venice of New Jersey; bring Torre back to the City That Never Sleeps. There’s a No. 6 to retire, and a lot of fans who never got to say goodbye.

A Reel Angel

Bill Reel met with me in his backyard. We sat in the summer sun as he read through my clips. Bill shared the advice and experiences of a newspaperman with three decades in his back pocket, yet he never uttered a condescending word. Bill willingly offered to serve as a reference for me as I applied for newspaper jobs, and he eagerly encouraged me to pursue journalism as a career. He even included me in one of his Newsday columns, and with four words he gave a 22-year-old kid immense encouragement. While speaking of me in his column, Bill wrote: “The kid can write.”

As we sat in his yard, Bill expounded on the profession I was entering. “It’s not an art, what we do,” he said. “It’s a craft.”

For 40 years, Bill Reel perfected that craft. He wrote from the soul, telling stories of real people. He wrote about the folks in New York City who are quietly making their town a better place, and also of the individuals who are humbly making their way back from personal struggles. In writing these columns for the Daily News and for Newsday, Bill Reel in turn made his city a better, more human place in which to live. When he died Monday at age 71, Bill left behind a legacy of candor, civility and compassion.

I grew up with Bill’s daughter, Ursula. We attended the same elementary and middle schools, and in time we both made our way into the world of journalism as well. For a while, both Ursula and Bill’s son, John, were colleagues of mine at the Staten Island Advance. It was eminent that Bill had done as good a job in parenting as he had in writing, as Ursula and John are incredible individuals.

I’ve lost touch with both of them, to my regret, and I hadn’t spoken with Bill in several years. We’d all moved on to different places and to different work. But the impact that this man had on me has never dissipated. Even as I wrote for the Advance, Bill continued to offer advice, and even help with stories. When we spoke, it never felt as though I was talking with a legendary New York columnist; instead, it felt more like I was chatting with an angel of some sort, who had reached down to help me find my way in an often-chaotic profession.

We cross so many paths in our lives, and there are countless opportunities in these hectic days to lose our patience and fend off those who ask for our time. I’m a teacher and a writer now – those are my certified professions. But back when I was at the beginning of my road, Bill Reel was teaching and writing in a way I can only aspire to emulate. He was an angel, all right. Certified in every way.