An ode to Brooklyn on the night
the Nets first played
by rick
olivares pic by nba/getty images
Certain places will always impose
their own particular empire on their surroundings, sport their immemorial
insignia in the middle of a park just as they would have done far from any
human intervention. — Marcel Proust,
Swann’s Way
With the jumpshot at the
11:41 mark of the first quarter, Deron Williams scored the first basket for the
Brooklyn Nets and a huge cheer went up across the Barclays Center.
Two hours and 24 minutes
later, Williams hit two free throws after a foul by the Toronto Raptors’ Alan
Anderson for the marginal score of 107-100. And another huge cheer went up
across the new building along Atlantic Avenue even if it was close to 10pm. But
what a day. What a day.
Professional sports made a
huge resounding splash back in Brooklyn with the debut of the Nets. The
Brooklyn Cyclones have tried to hold the fort for sports in this second most
populous borough of New York (after Manhattan) but they are a minor league
squad (affiliated with the New York Mets) but it wasn’t enough to ease the pain
of the departure of the Dodgers.
When the Dodgers left in 1957
for San Francisco, it was like the hearts of Brooklynites and Dodgers fans everywhere were ripped out. Surely,
Seattle Supersonics fans can empathize. The Lords of Flatbush were gone. And in
their place remained memories. Fast fading ones.
While working on one of those
“See New York” tours in the early years if the new millennium, we had what we
called our “Sports History Tour” and that meant taking first-time Gothamites to
places like the site of the old Hilltop Stadium where the Yankees first played
(now Columbian-Presbyterian Hospital), Rucker Park (in Harlem), the “Canyon of
Heroes” where the ticker tape parades were held for New York’s sports champion
teams, and the old Ebbets Field where the Dodgers once played (now the Ebbets
Field Apartments).
I drew up that tour with a
Tibetan friend of mine named Sirene who was trying to earn money for his
schooling at NYU (while I was trying to make a million bucks). Being a history
buff made it easy that when talking about these spots to our clients, I got
emotional at times. One time, this elderly tourist asked me how could a young
buck like me know so much about the place. I spoke of my grandfather who passed
down to me my love for sports and how through those ageing issues of Life
magazine, Jackie Robinson, the Babe, Iron Horse, and Roy Campanella among many
others lived. By the time I moved to the Empire State, I knew the histories of
the various New York sports teams as much as my own Philippine history. “Not so
bad for a Yankee fan,” he said as he patted by shoulder. He introduced himself
as a former Dodger employee. I forget the name but it was a thrill.
While working in a pre-school
in Brooklyn, a relative of the headmistress went in with a well-worn baseball
cap that had the old English “B” stitched on it. “Dodgers,” I said by way of
starting conversation. “There’s only one,” he
emphatically joined. “Dem Bums.”
Generations had passed and
New Yorkers generally either rooted for the Yankees or the Mets, the Rangers or
the Islanders, the Giants or the Jets, the Knicks or the Nets. It seemed that
save for the older ones no one really remembered or even cared that the Dodgers
once played in Brooklyn.
Yet even if the Yankees owned
New York, baseball isn’t the king. If there is any indigenous sound that is to
New York it isn’t just the sound of a yellow cab honking its annoyance, the
endless chatter of over a hundred languages spoke in the ultimate melting pot,
or the subway trains whizzing on those ancient tracks that snake all over the
city. It’s the sound of leather on concrete, asphalt, wood, or just about
anywhere one can bounce a basketball.
Basketball is synonymous with
New York. Are there any more famous arenas and playgrounds anywhere else?
I remember about a decade ago
when Williamsburg began to be a fashionable place. Where the artists, indie
musicians, and actors retreated to across the bridge and away from SoHo and
Greenwich Village. Then the came the Atlantic Yards project by developer Bruce
Ratner. That was soon followed by the construction of the Barclays Center and
the courtship of the New Jersey Nets and eventually, the New York Islanders who
are just about done with Long Island. It will also be a venue to concerts and
other shows.
 |
| Hello to the Brooklyn Knight! |
And just like that, the
excitement is back in Brooklyn whose image has begun to take off.
My first time to alight off
the subway in Flatbush (I was working in a pre-school along Nostrand Avenue
where they shot a scene from the Sean Penn film, The Interpreter), the first
thought that came to my mind was, “Somehow, Toto, it feels like we’re not in
Kansas anymore.” Only it wasn’t funny. I then thought: “I’m gonna get jumped” as a
lump in my throat developed. It was graffiti coated tenements, a decaying shell
of what was once a car, and junkies walking in a daze. Other than getting off
Nostrand Avenue, the only time I went anywhere in Brooklyn was in Coney Island.
But it’s different now. Real
estate prices surrounding the area are skyrocketing. It means further
development of the nearby Park Slope, Prospect Heights, Clinton Hill, Fort
Greene, and Boerum Hill neighborhoods (I briefly worked for a real estate agency in Manhattan and I helped sell or rented out apartments in Brooklyn).
And now, like the Yankees and
the Mets, the Giants and the Jets, the Rangers and the Isles, there’ll be a
real rivalry now between the Knicks and the Nets. It’s not like the Dodgers
will be back but who knows what history will be written by the Nets and the
Islanders; perennially underachieving sports teams whose glory years like the
Dodgers before are reserved for the spots in the cabinet along with old betamax
tapes of Slap Shot, Julius Erving, and that picture of a smiling Jackie
Robinson.
It’s time to create new
memories.
Again the
traffic lights that skim thy swift unfractioned idiom, immaculate sigh of
stars,
beading thy path-condense eternity:
and we have seen night lifted in
thine arms. --- Harold Hart Crane, To Brooklyn Bridge
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