ALBANY — The 1962 New York Mets, a team so charmingly inadequate – 40 wins, 120 losses and 60 games out of first place – their play inspired legendary scribesman Jimmy Breslin to pen a book about them, titled “Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game?”
Ira Kaplan, long before he would wed Georgia Hubley and the musical pair formed their seminal band, was born in the borough where the Mets made their marvelous mess when he was five years old. Now as the story goes, despite advance calls of warning to verbally signal “I Got It!” Mets’ fielders Elio Chacon and Richie Ashburn collided into one another so often while chasing fly balls atop the Shea Stadium grass that Ashburn eventually asked his Venezuelan teammate how to say “I Got It!” in his native tongue. “Yo La Tengo!” Chacon reportedly responded and from then on out the call would bellow across that Flushing, Queens field of dreams.
Fast-forward a couple of decades and Yo La Tengo – the musical trio – was born in Hoboken, N.J. More than a dozen studio albums later, the band is making their way across the east coast and will stage a show at Albany’s Lark Hall on Hudson Avenue, Monday, Sept. 26. If you know Yo La Tengo, you know; if you don’t, google their music to learn what you’ve been missing. For show info, go to: https://larkhallalbany.com/.
