John Delach

May 2016, Revised May 2025

Last week’s piece jogged my memory about another incident that also took place at the Greenbrier Resort in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. My company had a rough spell in the early 80s that limited the destination for two of our meetings to the nearby Arrowood Conference Center in Rye brook, NY. In a word, modest, at best, Arrowood was a sad excuse for a resort.

Happily, my company’s fortunes vastly improved in the mid-1980s and the big brains decided to reward our Managing Directors with a conference at the Greenbrier.

We realized this meeting would be special. It seemed the firm had money to burn. The first night, before dinner, we followed a high-stepping college band from the hotel to the train station. What followed was a cocktail hour on a train trip to nowhere that consisted of vintage coaches and dome cars. Even the name tags we wore were totally upscale.

From 1987 until 2000, we attended eleven conferences at this swell facility. Most years, the event began on Monday morning and ended on Friday. Our firm was enlightened enough to make Thursday afternoons free time allowing the great majority of MDs to golf on one of The Greenbrier’s three exquisite 18-hole courses.

Being a miserable duffer, I didn’t need to suffer the embarrassment that would surely accompany any attempt I made to challenge these links. Tennis, too was out of the question. Instead, I made an appointment for the spa. Without question my favorite part of the treatment was the massage that concluded the spa experience. The Sulphur baths were the low point as they were just plain smelly and did nothing to enhance my mood or physical well-being.

Naturally, different masseuses brought their own talents and approaches to their craft and over the years I received superb treatment by both men and women that left me loose, relaxed and at as much at peace as was humanly possible.

Then there was 1993. Fortune introduced me to a short fellow with powerful arms and hands who introduced himself as Chet. We made small talk as Chet went to work. I learned he was a Mountaineer, a native-born West Virginian and true to his size and rough appearance, had once been a coal miner. I mentioned that I was from New York; the conversation went on – then from out of nowhere – he noted, “I worked on the Giants’ coach last year. That’s right, he was at the hotel and I worked on him.”

“Really,” I replied. “Do you remember his name? Was it Ray Hanley?” – The Giants previous the head coach.

“No, I don’t think so.” He paused, thought about it then floored me as he continued. “No, he just said he was the coach but that’s not his name. I remember him though because he stiffed me. I paid him back though. I’m part Cherokee and I put a curse on him and the team. They will not have success as long as the curse is on them.”

My head spun because of what I just heard. Chet couldn’t know how long I had been a season ticket holder, that the Giants had finished with a 6-10 record in 1992 and that Hanley and his staff had all been fired.

Instinctively, I wanted to ask him how much he’d want to lift the curse but I sensed that this would only make the situation worse. I had to be more nimble in my approach.

The massage ended and after I dressed, Chet returned with his personal log hand-written in a copy book. He pointed to a name revealing the culprit to be Rod Rust. Rod Rust, I thought to myself, not only did his “read and react” defense suck, he screwed all of us by being a cheapskate.

I put a good tip on the spa bill, standard practice at The Greenbrier, hustled to an ATM and withdrew a like amount in cash. I sealed it in an envelope and returned to the spa, asked for Chet and waited for him.

When he reached reception, I walked over, gave him the envelope while I looked him directly in the eye and said, “Chet, this is to make up for the shabby treatment you received.” I shook his hand and walked away.

It took awhile but the Giants went on to play in three more Super Bowls winning two.

The curse had been lifted.       

When you joke about serious subjects, there is always the chance that what you say in jest can come back to bite you in the ass. It may not happen as soon as you say it, it may not happen tomorrow, or it may not happen until years later. The tragedy is it can happen.

During the 1980s and 1990s my old firm, Marsh &McLennan, had annual meetings for their Managing Directors (MD’s) at the Greenbrier Resort in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. This is a luxury resort where golf is king, but if golf is not to your liking, other activities include tennis, horseback riding, hiking, their world class Sulphur Baths, massages and a world class regiment of beauty treatments.

For anyone who is fascinated by the secrets and intrigue of our Federal Government, the Greenbrier is home to a decommissioned Congressional fall-out shelter that is located beneath one of the hotel wings that is now open for tours.

Food and drink are plentiful and varied from BBQs to five course extravaganzas. Before I first saw the Greenbrier, I was at another MD Conference held at the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach. Over drinks, one of my friends said, “You know, John, nice as this is, I hope to get to the Greenbrier one day and have our firm pay for it.” He got his wish.

One of the interesting oddities about the resort is they have a number of cabins along the road leading up to the main building each that could accommodate six people. One trip, I found myself walking up this road late in the afternoon past the cabin where six chaps from Canada were staying. I knew it was their cabin; a Maple leaf flag gave their presence away.

A loud voice stopped me in my tracks. Anthony Tomkinson, their unofficial leader took me on. ”You know, Delach, the trouble with you F-en Yanks is that you think that Canada is the 51^st F-en State.”

“No, Anthony, Canada is not the 51^st F-en State, Israel is the 51^st F-en State. Canada is the 52^nd F-en state.”

Needless to say, I had a beer with them before heading back to my room to get ready for dinner. I had made a good point or so I thought with no harm done.

More than twenty-five years later, my words came home to roost. Here was the second coming of Donald J. Trump seemingly at war with anybody and everybody; friend or foe to correct all real or imagined things others had done to him. Canada was one of them.

The only good news was Tomkinson had passed several years ago, not because of lots of booze, but rather because of lots of his brand of unfiltered cigarettes. Still, I felt badly and wanted to make it up to Anthony and his mates.

I found my answer in a sports story about a fan being ejected from a Toronto Blue Jays game for wearing a baseball cap that read: “Canada Is Not For Sale.” (Fortunately, the Blue Jays backed off and invited this chap to attend another game while wearing his hat.)

I ordered my hat via Amazon and I was told I had to pay a surcharge of $2.75 to pay any possible tariff. For other reasons that I don’t understand,  Amazon advised me that I might not receive my new hat until May, but it actually arrived on April 13^th.

I have worn my hat in public several times without receiving a single comment. This is not a good thing. I am sorry to say the lack of comments is not due to agreement with my message. Rather, it is due to our lack of interest as to how Trump’s tariffs will affect Canada. I am not surprised by this. Americans tend to ignore Canada and Canadiens and take them for granted. Sad, but true.  

Oy vey, Trump’s brave new world is quite confusing and self-serving. Sorry, Mr. President, this old Goldwater conservative has decided that you are a self-serving egoist with the concentration of a flea. And yet, you are the forty-seventh President of the United States of America.

May God have mercy on us all:   

I am an old man named after my father,

My wife is another child who’s grown old,

If dreams were thunder and lightning was desire,

This old place would have burned down a long time ago.

 Make me an angel that flies from Montgomery,

Make me a portrait of an old rodeo,

Just give me something that I can hold onto,

To believe in this living is such a hard way to go.

With thanks to John Prine

January 2005. Amended April 2025

I first caught sight of him out of the corner of my eye. It was the color of his skin that drew me to look at him. Copper, not quite as bright as a recently minted penny, but just as shiny.

He stood on line waiting patiently to use the restroom in an Arco convenience store in Gardano, Arizona. I knew that I would be embarrassed if he caught me staring at him, but I couldn’t turn away. He was a compact, wiry man with a chiseled face, a square jaw, high cheek bones, a narrow, pointed nose and black eyes set deeply into his face. I guessed his age to be about 75, but he could easily have been 60 or 85.

White hair draped down the back of his neck from under a blocked cowboy hat. His clothes suggested that he was on his way to some place special. A crisp starched white shirt with red trim, black bolo tie fastened with a silver clip and tan pants, newly creased  without a wrinkle. His pants were hemmed at mid-ankle revealing highly polished boots. A leather belt joined together by a large oval brass buckle completed his outfit.

I forced myself to look away before he saw me. I could not remember what I wanted to buy so I settled on a Diet Coke and walked back to my car.

As I thought about him, I remembered an incident I read about long ago. A New York State Trooper pulled over one of the Hemingway girls for speeding on an upstate parkway. Once he had her license and registration, he returned to his cruiser, wrote out the ticket and gave it to her without saying a word. When asked why he hadn’t talked to her, he replied, “I couldn’t, her perfect beauty overwhelmed me.”

Now I understood how he felt.  

Bob Sylvester was a gossip columnist for many years with the Daily News including when I was growing up. From time to time, he would write that day’s column about changes in our lives and the things that surround us that he titled: “You know that you are getting old when you remember when airliners had propellers…etc, etc.”

My personal introduction to this concept came in 1962 when I was only eighteen-years-old. That February, I turned eighteen, then the legal age allowing me to enter a bar and grill and have a beer, or two or three. Back then, the cost for a glass of beer at a typical bar in Ridgewood, Queens was 15 cents and the bar tender bought back every fourth beer.  All I needed was proof of age. At that time in my life, a driver’s license was only a dream, but the Selective Service gladly accommodated this need by issuing me a draft card.

All was well until September 22, 1962 when a seventeen-year-old-wunderkind baseball player made his debut appearance with the New York Mets after making his way through three levels of the Mets minor league system with a combined baseball average of .301.

Edward Emil Kranepool III was born on November 8, 1944 in the Bronx. Kranepool attended James Monroe High School where he played baseball and basketball. Mets’ scout, Bubber Jonnard signed Kranepool in 1962 as an amateur free agent.

He made his major league debut on September 22^nd as a late inning defensive replacement for Gil Hodges at first base. He made his first start the next day playing first base and going one for four with a double.

More importantly, Kranepool was the first major league player who I knew of who was younger than me. OMG, you know you are getting old when newbie players arrive at the big show who are younger than you.

Kranepool had an up and down career with the Mets making several trips to the Mets triple A top ranked minor league clubs only to be called back up to the big show , the Major League Mets. Originally, he wore number 21 whenever he was back playing at Shea Stadium, but in 1965, the Mets acquired future Hall of Fame pitcher, the aging Warren Spahn from the Milwaukee Braves. Kranepool gave up his number 21 to Spahn and began wearing number 7 for the rest of his career.

He was a strong part of the 1969 Miracle Mets and contributed to an 11-game winning streak in late June that put the team in second place in their division, seven games behind the Chicago Cubs.

“On July 8, Kranpool hit a fifth-inning home run off Fergunson Jenkins to give the Mets a 1-0 lead over the Cubs. By the time the Mets batted in the ninth inning, however, the first place Cubs had taken a 3-1 lead. The Mets scored three runs in the ninth to win the game, with Cleon Jones scoring on Kranpool’s single to center.

“The Mets completed their remarkable ‘Miracle’ 1969 season, in which the team backed by Kranepool, Tom Seaver and Jerry Koosman, won their first World Series title against the Baltimore Orioles. Kranepool hit a home run in game three of the series, a 5-0 win for the Mets.”

1970 was an off season for Kranepool who was only batting .118 by June when he was demoted to the Mets then triple A affiliate, the Norfolk, VA based Tidewater Tides where he batted .310 in 47 games. He bounced back in 1971 when he batted .280 with 14 home runs and 58 RBIs.

By 1974, this fan favorite’s role had been reduced to that of a pinch hitter. However, he made the most of his opportunities and from 1974 until 1978, he hit .396. After the Mets traded Jerry Koosman at the end of 1978, Kranepool became the last of the 1969 Miracle Mets.

He retired after the 1979 season at age 34, the all-time Mets leader in eight offensive categories. He still holds the mark of most games played with the Mets at 1,853.

In retirement, he became a lasting hero to the Mets-centric Long Island community making an endless number of appearances at many functions. In 1990 he was inducted into the New York Mets Hall of Fame. He did develop diabetes soon after retirement and by 2017, both his kidneys were failing. His fame came to his aide and in 2019, he received a new kidney from a living donor at Stony Brook University Hospital extending his life to 2024. Kranepool died in Boca Raton, FL on September 8, 2024.

The Mets announced shortly before the 2025 baseball season started that they would honor the late Ed Kranepool by wearing a uniform patch featuring his iconic Number 7 on the sleeves of all Mets jerseys.

“Of all the stats and records Ed accomplished throughout his career, the thing he was most proud of was that he spent his entire Major League career in a Mets uniform.” Fellow 1969 Miracle Met, Art Shamsky said in a statement. “Ed would be touched that the team will be wearing his number seven on that uniform all year long.”                    

An incomplete and stingy obituary for Mike Battle appeared in the March 13 edition of Newsday. Originally written by the Los Angeles Times, it mostly paid attention to his college career at USC with the only reference to his short pro career as follows: “He was chosen in the 12^th round of the 1969 NFL Draft by the Jets and played for two seasons in 1969 and ’70.”

Battle’s only professional claim to fame was entirely omitted  by in this obituary.

This story is an excerpt from my book: “17 Lost Seasons” published in 2009.

The Giants and Jets agreed to meet in an exhibition game at Yale Bowl on Sunday, August 17, 1969. Tickets were at a premium, but, my cousin,  Bill Christman, my brother-in-law, Tom Donlon and I were able to grab three. We left early that Sunday morning. Tom drove and Bill practically came directly from the hospital where his wife, Del, had given birth to their second son, Tom, earlier that morning.

The atmosphere building up for the game ,0was tense. Norm Miller set the tone in the Daily News:

The Jets and the Giants stage their Fun City Bowl today for the championship of the five boroughs, and never has so much fuss been made over a happening meant to be only a trial run in the town of New Haven, Conn. The Jets, champions of all football, were four-point favorites over the Giants in the clash that has whipped up more fan enthusiasm in Our Town than anything since the old-time Giant-Dodgers baseball rivalries. More than 70,000 of the “in’ crowd will buck the terrible traffic jam and the inevitable heat to sit in Yale Bowl (game time 2 p.m.) Millions will listen to the live radio broadcasts on WNEW and WABC and millions more will watch the two taped TV replays, the first at midnight tonight on CBS-TV (Ch. 2) and the second at 8:30 tomorrow night on WOR-TV (CH. 9).

Miller was right about the traffic. We left early enough to beat most of it on the way to New Haven, but leaving post-game was impossible. We settled in to play touch football with other stranded fans. The game lasted until a chap who thought of himself as a jock punted my football onto the roof of a Yale field house. It was the perfect ending for a miserable day. The Daily News’ sports headline reinforced the pain that Giant fans felt:

Jets 37, Giants 14

Broadway Joe, 14-for-16 Hurls

3 TD Passes

Norm Miller was angry with Giants and gave them no quarter. “With all the prestige of the championship of the city as table stakes, Joe Namath cleaned out the Giants and left ‘em for broke.”

The Jets took a 17-0 lead when they again stopped the Giants offense forcing Big Blue to punt.

Jets rookie, Mike Battle, became an unlikely hero as he sealed Big Blue’s fate.  Battle, here-to-fore best known for his strange ability to chew, eat and swallow glass stunned the crowd with an 85-yard punt return with 1:45 left in the second quarter. Increasing the J.E.T.S. – Jets – JETS  JETS lead to 24-0 and crushing the Giants and their fans. Battle’s superb moment came when he vaulted over a would-be Giants tackler on his touchdown run. (This play would ensure that the Jets would retain Battle for the next two years of his otherwise uneventful NFL career.)

Giants head coach, Allie Sherman fared much worse. The Giants preseason record dropped to 0-4 and Dave Klein wrote, “Well Mara reacted to the Jets loss as though someone close to him had died. Mara missed a whole week of training camp for the first and only time since the war. Gene Ward wrote a column on Thursday where he tried to balance Sherman successes and failures, but he did acknowledge that …the Sam Huff trade being a goof which the fans will never forgive.

The last exhibition game against the Pittsburg Steelers on Thursday night played in Montreal, Canada decided Sherman’s fate. The Giants  lost to Pittsburg by a score of 17-13 while the sparse crowd sang “Good Bye Allie, we hate to see you go over and over again French and English.

The Giants locker room was in disarray and certain columists  were starting to report that the team was becoming unglued and subject to player feuds and dissatisfaction.

Alex Webster was appointed Sherman’s successor. Mara admitted: Of all the assistant coaches, Alex has had the least experience. But he could be an inspiring influence on a ballclub whose morale has ebbed. He loves the game, he loves the team and his popularity will go a long way toward giving everyone a lift.

It didn’t and  the long struggle continued for another ten years.