Day 10...New York

As I mentioned in a previous post, four years after my grandfather passed away, my grandmother remarried. Her new husband, Jim, was actually an old friend from her youth, at the time living in White Plains, New York. As a result, when they wed, she moved back to New York with him.

This all made White Plains the perfect spot to stay in the New York area. Our first afternoon there, Eric and I headed to the little lake a few blocks from where my grandparents lived. It was a private beach, but we were able to visit as my grandparents' guests. Not only did we enjoy our time in the water and on the beach, there was also a tennis court that we took advantage of by playing wiffle ball on it.

Our first night in New York, we didn't have any MLB games to take in, but we did get to go to a ballgame. Jim's son Tim played in a softball league, so we went and saw him play. I don't have much recollection of what happened at the game, but afterward we went out with him and two of his teammates, Ike and Albert. Ike was a fellow postman with Tim and Albert worked for the town of Harrison.

Anyway, they told us a great story about how they often played basketball at the YMCA with former Yankee and Red Sox pitcher Mike Torrez. On one such occasion, Torrez had his young son with him. As Torrez was getting dressed afterward, they convinced his son to ask him the following question: "Hey Daddy, who's Bucky Dent?" If you're not laughing already, perhaps you'll be helped by the video below of the diminutive Dent famously facing Torrez in the 1978 one-game playoff between the Yankees and the Red Sox.

That night, as we hung out with Tim, Ike and Albert in New York, the Yankees were still in Boston, where they would lose a third straight one-run game at the hands of their arch-rivals. But they'll always have Bucky Dent.

Miles Driven Today: 224

Total Miles Driven: 2,320

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Days 5 & 6...Buffalo

My paternal grandfather (after whom I'm named) passed away when he was still in his fifties, and four years later my grandmother remarried. Not only was it a wonderful thing for her to be able to spend the next couple decades with the man we referred to back then as "Grandpa Jim," we also got the benefit of adding more people to our family, as Jim had four children of his own. Included among these was his daughter Kathy who lived in the Buffalo area with her husband and three children, who in June of 1992 ranged in age from 10 to 14.

So it was that Buffalo served as a nice mid-trip rest stop for us. It was good to have a chance to kind of catch our breath. While there, we were treated to wonderful hospitality and a family Wiffle ball game in the back yard. If we couldn't watch baseball, we'd play it!

Later Friday night, we took in game 5 of the NBA Finals. With the series tied at two games apiece, a certain future minor league baseball player led the Chicago Bulls to a 119-106 victory over the Portland Trail Blazers.

After Friday night's fun, we spent a good portion of Saturday, sitting out back of their house, playing Strat-o-Matic. We had a little portable TV out with us, on which we watched the NBC Game of the Week. The Red Sox were still in Toronto and it was fun to follow the action as we had just seen these two teams play each other a couple days earlier, and had a heightened level of familiarity with them.

What made it even more interesting was the fact that when Boston won by a score of 5-3, Jeff Reardon picked up the save (the 341st of his career) tying him with  Rollie Fingers for the all-time Major League record. After a visit to the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, our next stop on the trip was going to be Boston, so there was a chance looming in the not too distant future that we'd get to see Reardon become the all-time MLB saves king.

Well, if we were going to be ready for a full day Sunday at the Hall, that meant we needed to get to Cooperstown Saturday night. So we loaded up the car and headed east late Saturday afternoon, arriving about four hours later at Glimmerglass State Park, just across Otsego Lake from the Baseball Hall of Fame. We set up camp there and prepared for our visit the next day. 

Miles Driven Today: 236
Total Miles Driven: 1,431

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