I know I excerpt from faith and Fear like 5 times a week but it’s just so so so damn good.
This time it’s a letter from Greg Prince to Dana Brand. It was Dana’s idea to have the Hofstra conference. Unfortunately Dana passed away before the conference took place, but Greg and a few others saw it through.
I feel bad that I’ve split two paragraphs here (there was a third fine one in the middle) but my goal in excerpting from Greg is not to steal his readers but to entice you guys to go there.
So here’s two paragraphs from another masterpiece which I hope you’ll go read.
My unacademic conclusion was you get out of your experiences what you get out of them, and I felt enhanced by my three days surrounded by Mets fans (peppered by the occasional unbiased Mets observer). This is the stuff we decide we care about. I was at the same game as that guy when he caught the Kingman ball. As he introduced his story, I could tell that was the game he was headed for. I was excited to hear what happened to him at Shea in 1979; where the ball took him; why the notoriously anti-social Kingman didn’t big-league him and instead tolerated his request for an autograph; how Kingman might have been different from his reputation; what their next interaction entailed when he tracked Kingman down at the end of his last-ditch minor league stint in 1987 and showed him the same ball plus the paper he wrote for high school about catching it and meeting him; what an allegedly cranky old ballplayer was like when confronted by unimpeachable fandom in retirement.
…
You also said plainly enough that “the Hofstra Conference on the New York Mets would be a lot of fun.” Mission accomplished on that count. How could something that included Mr. Met not be fun? I know you wanted the Mets themselves to be involved and that proved tricky, but they did send their literally heaviest hitter to Hofstra (as measured by head weight, of course, though let’s not overlook prominence, either). Mr. Met made no small contribution to the proceedings. To that I can attest.
As for Greg and the others who made Hofstra happen…standing o with the slow clap and my complete respect. Great job fellas. Great job Dana.
