“It is a community activity. You need all nine people helping one another. I love bunt plays. I love the idea of the bunt. I love the idea of the sacrifice. Even the word is good. Giving yourself up for the good of the whole. That’s Jeremiah. That’s thousands of years of wisdom. You find your own good in the good of the whole. You find your own individual fulfillment in the success of the community — the Bible tried to do that and didn’t teach you. Baseball did.”–Mario Cuomo
Not long ago I looked through some old stuff and found a Mondale/Ferrero bumper sticker. I was in 8th grade when they ran and lost. I kept the sticker. Four years later I campaigned for Dukakis who also got his ass kicked. These were the years when it seemed like there’d never be a Democrat in the White House again, a time when our Governor Mario Cuomo seemed like our best hope, an improbable hope. The second coming of Adlai Stevenson. I remember a friend of mine was obsessed with Cuomo; had posters of the man on his bedroom wall.
I thought about all of that last night when I heard that Cuomo died at the age of 82.
Here’s Ken Auletta in the New Yorker…
[Photo Credit: Richard Kalvar]
Mario Cuomo was synonymous with New York the way Ed Koch was with the City during his time (the only time I will mention the two in the same sentence). My uncle had dealings with him as the president of his advocacy organization and always talked about how personable he was and how he was a dynamic speaker. In college my public speaking professor used him as an example. A man floating way over the milquetoast.