Like the Lord, baseball works in mysterious way.
One minute, Mark Lazarus was just a humble season-ticket holder from Flatbush. The next, he’s “The Seed Man,” the mysterious do-gooder who drops off sunflower seeds for the Cyclones players before each home game.
It all started a month ago, when Lazarus (aka the “Mayor of Section 14”), a guy who likes to yell on occasion, was perturbed by the lethargy of his fellow fans.
“The Cyclones were down and the crowd was just dead,” Lazarus said. Given his last name, Lazarus took it upon himself to bring the crowd back from the hereafter. He went to the concession stand, bought $147 worth of popcorn, peanuts and Cracker Jacks and started tossing them around.
“Next thing you know, the crowd was going wild — and the Cyclones came back and won!” said Lazarus, who is now known as “the Mayor of Section 14.”
Lazarus then extended his largesse to Cyclones players. “I started thinking that ballplayers are known for only two things: scratching their crotches and eating seeds,” he said.
Since the Cyclone crotches were, apparently, well taken care of, Lazarus decided he’d focus on the seeds. Since then, he’s been dropping off 24 bags before every home game.
“It’s just a nice gesture,” he said. “The players are nice to me and tolerate me being abusive to the other team. I’m kinda loud.”
So loud, in fact, that a guy in Sec. 14 once complained to an usher about Lazarus’s antics. But when Lazarus bought the guy a beer, the man stopped complaining — proving that it’s still pretty easy for mayors to buy votes in Brooklyn.
Vlad misses lunch
Writer Ed Shakespeare was initially a little peeved at Cyclones infielder Vladimir Hernandez when he realized that Hernandez had stood him up after agreeing to meet him for lunch during last week’s road trip in Niles, Ohio.
But Shakespeare quickly forgave the Cuban defector: It turned out that Hernandez, who made headlines earlier this month when he quit the team and then had second thoughts, had been promoted to the Mets’ Class-A team in Columbia, S.C. Without so much as a short goodbye, Hernandez was spirited out of Ohio before dawn so he could join his new team for that night’s game.
“At first, when I called his room, his roommate told me he’d gone to Columbia — so I just assumed that he’d left the team again and gone to Colombia,” said Shakespeare, a distant relative of some English playwright. “But after a while, I realized he’d been sent up.”
The missed lunch was bad luck for Hernandez, whose reputation for frugality was almost as well-known as his brilliant smile. He would’ve loved the $4.99 all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet.
Kill the mascot!
An ugly incident took place at the Cyclones’ recent game against the Pittsfield Astros. Another bench-clearing brawl on the field? A fight in the stands? A lack of hot dogs at the concession stands? No, mascot abuse, pure and simple.
The Cyclones’ beloved (albeit smelly) mascot, Sandy the Seagull, is no stranger to the hostile environment of the visiting dugout. Sure, he’s endured taunts and barbs (hey, let’s face it, seagulls DO eat garbage), but never the kind of treatment dealt out by the Pittsfield players, who wrapped the heroic gull in Ace bandages and threw him onto the field, where he writhed like a beached whale (how inappropriate).
“I was appalled to see it,” said Rick Johnson, an actor who occasionally speaks for Sandy. “It was mascot abuse. It’s not right. I hope the league is reviewing the tapes for possible suspensions.”
Pittsfield catcher Kendall Jones said the attack was justified. “We warned him not to come into our dugout,” Jones said, adding that if Sandy was complaining, he should remember that Pittsfield’s mascot — an indefinable quasi-animal named Boomer — had to spend the night in a hospital after being battered by 10 fans during a game.
For Johnson, that explanation didn’t wash (and neither has Sandy’s uniform all season). “It’s their dugout, but this is Sandy’s house,” Johnson said.
Officials with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals could not be reached by presstime.
Ease his pain
When the Brooklyn Dodgers abandoned the borough in 1957, most fans got mad.
Irwin Brandon got even.
Brandon, who worked as a ticket-taker at Ebbet’s Field from 1946-’48 and saw almost every home game during Jackie Robinson’s illustrious debut season, decided on that day in 1957 that if the Dodgers were going to rip out his heart and stomp on it, he’d rip baseball out of his life.
So, for 44 years Brandon simply ended his relationship with professional baseball. While all his friends from James Madison High School found other teams to support, Brandon avoided pro baseball stadiums like they were toxic waste dumps. He did not attend (OR WATCH) a baseball game since.
“It was pure outrage,” he said from a box seat at Keyspan Park the other night, as he took in his first baseball game in 44 years. “I was so furious at the evil [Dodgers owner] Walter O’Malley that I said that professional baseball will not take a dime of my money ever again.”
When you go to a lot of Cyclones games, you meet plenty of Brandon’s peers, guys who said they died on the day that the Dodgers left. But few went to Brandon’s extreme. “I guess I was just angrier,” said Brandon, who started going to games when he was at the perfect baseball age (8) in the perfect baseball year (1940). “Going to Dodgers games was like going to the grocery store. It was part of the fabric of your life. I’m the last angry man.”
He was finally coaxed back into a pro baseball stadium (albeit minor-league) thanks to his friendship with a Cyclones co-owner, who promised him that a night at Keyspan Park would take him back to his glory days.
“I do like this stadium,” said Brandon, who is a headhunter on Wall Street by day (and, considering the stock market nowadays, the old Brooklyn cry, “Wait ’til next year!” comes to mind). “This park is very intimate, just like Ebbet’s Field. But I don’t think I can go back to a major-league game yet.
“Unless,” he said, smiling, “they bring pro baseball back to Brooklyn.”
Getting suited up
First baseman Jay Caligiuri took advantage of the rare Cyclones day off this week to take advantage of the largesse of one of Keyspan Park’s most conspicuous advertisers, Garage Clothing — the company with the “Hit Sign, Win Suit” advertisement on the left-centerfield wall.
Caligiuri is the only Cyclone to hit the sign this year, so Wednesday found him — and a female friend — at Louis Bisaquino’s clothing store in Bensonhurst picking out shiny new duds.
“I’m bringing my friend along because you should always have a girl with you when you’re picking out clothing,” Caligiuri said.
“But I’m thinking of a fancy, double-breasted Italian job.” (Here’s hoping that the friend steered him back into sanity.)
Magic is back
Now that the Cyclones have secured a playoff spot, clinched with Tuesday’s win, all that’s left is locking up the New York-Penn League’s McNamara Division from the second-place Staten Island Yankees.
The magic number is three, meaning that any combination of Cyclone wins or Yankee defeats totaling three brings the division pennant to Brooklyn — the borough’s first since the Dodgers won the National League in 1956.
The Yankees lead the pesky Pittsfield Astros by three games with seven left to play. Stay tuned.
Coach Franco
While John Franco said he’d happily take a coaching job when he retires from the Mets, he would prefer it to be with the Mets — and not his hometown Brooklyn Cyclones.
“I’ve thought about it, and it’s something I’d like to get into,” he said.
“But I’d have 20 years in the bigs. With all that experience, the big leagues would be nice.”
Franco added that he approved of his likeness on the free bobblehead doll given out at the game in his honor last week.
“It’s pretty close,” he said.
Transactions
Vladimir Hernandez was promoted to the Mets’ Class-A team in South Carolina to replace former Cyclone David Garcia, who broke his hand. Infielder Sean Pittman, who was hitting .320 at Kingsport, and righty pitcher David Mattox (5-1, 2.40 ERA) have joined the team.
September 3, 2001 Issue
