3/16
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| ready for St.Patrick's Day |
While the baseball lockout was still on, spring training games were cancelled until March 18th. When the agreement finally came, they pushed it back to March 17th. Mainly because St.Patrick’s Day has become a thing in baseball. It all began in 1978 when the Cincinatti Reds caused a sensation by wearing green caps and the wonderful cognitive dissonance of jerseys with the word Reds written in green letters.
Since then teams like the Mets joined in and now virtually all MLB reams wear at least green hats on March 17th. It’s also a perch marketing bonanza. In my collection is a Knicks basketball jersey as well.
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| Finally... |
And since training has started, my coffee mug from 2019, the last "normal" year.
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| Guiness and Staten Island |
On the day itself, it's my Guiness soccer jersey and late lamented Staten Island Yankees Irish night hat. Special because the day after breaking five ribs I dragged myself in serious pain to the ferry and across the harbor just to get this hat.
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| Guinness and hamentaschen |
Let us also note this year the rare convergence of the Jewish] holiday Purim and St.Patrick's.
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| East Village |
And one quite odd St.Pat's display...
Perhaps my favorite St.Patrick’s Day was 2012 “Occupy St. Patrick’s Day,” with the Occupy Wall Street march to Wall Street and then to the Irish Famine Memorial to make the point abut the voracious nature of predatory capitalism. My friends Pat and Mandola Joe played music and potatoes were handed out. (https://west-parkpress.blogspot.com/2012/03/twentyfirst-day-of-lent-st-patricks-day.html).
Or perhaps the next night at West Park when we gathered to bring Mexicans and Irish bands together to celebrate El Batalon San Patricio, the St. Patrick’s Battalion of US soldiers who decided they were fighting on the wrong side and went over to the Mexicans, story celebrated in Mexico and buried in the US for more than a century. (http://west-parkpress.blogspot.com/2012/03/fourth-sunday-in-lent-vivan-los-san.html)
And this, from my Facebook post…
OK...the easy thing to do is just go all shamrocks and leprechauns and just say "Happy St.Patrick's Day everybody"...and forget that the first New York St. Patrick's Day parade was a demonstration for respect and dignity by denigrated immigrants...and that the potato famine was not a natural disaster but the results of a nearly genocidal imperialist colonial agriculture policy by Great Britain..and that the refugees were viewed suspiciously....lived side by side by African-Americans in 5 Points and Seneca Village...until they were accepted as white..that they were disproportionately drafted..and sent to Mexico in an imperialist war...West Point's first Irish graduate John Riley took his batallion to the other side where his mainly Catholic immigrant conscripts joined the Mexicans as el batalon san patricio. When captured, they were hung as traitors without the usual court martial trial . Honored as heroes in Mexico. Hidden in history in the US until️ recently. El batalon san patricio presente. And happy St. Patrick's Day!
So today, hats off to the Irish, and people of struggle and resistance everywhere.
