I remember that first night in London still feeling the lag of a long flight and time change. It didn’t keep me from going out and having a pint at the local pub. Now, back from my European excursion and heading to New York, I am looking forward to another pint, but this time sharing it with my kids at Rambling House in the Bronx.

My annual birthday trip up to the Bronx capped off by a Yankee game at the  Stadium is how I wanted to celebrate my seventieth birthday….well my sixty-seventh, sixty-eighth, and sixty-ninth birthdays as well.

A short ride from Westchester Airport, and I am back in the Bronx and heading for the pub.

I really don’t think I have a problem.

Tomorrow we are going to the first game against the Rays. It won’t be a Saturday afternoon game like we used to go to back when we lived in East Quogue when I had a Saturday package. But, a Friday night game will do just the trick.

Rambling House is a typical Irish Bar, Bronx style, and sadly everybody knows my name. Well, that’s because Sean, Jeannine, and Bryan are frequent customers, and I am known as Mr. Newell, not exactly Norm or Cliff.

Thursday night is Trivia Night, and there’s hardly a seat to be had. I had my customary Blue Point Summer Ale and a salad…cheeseburger and fries variety,

Once the trivia started, I made my way back to the apartment to babysit Scout and Rudy while the kids played the game.

Climbing up the hills in Woodlawn is not really like scaling Everest, but it is damn close. On more than one occasion, I seriously thought about calling Uber for the four-block trip. Three of the four blocks are nearly vertical, or so it seems.

It seemed that no sooner had I scaled 238th Street and made it to Oneida where another three flights of lighthouse-like stairs awaited me than my children were joining me with the dogs.

The Yankees were playing, and there was a big enough crowd for a Thursday night, so you knew Friday would be a massive crowd to watch the two AL East heavyweights go at it.

That’s baseball Suzan.

That’s the way it should be.

I should be up in the Bronx with my kids.

I should be sitting on the couch with two dogs climbing all over me.

I should be telling the crowd at Rambling House how grand the trip to England and Ireland was,

I should be going to the Yankee game tomorrow.

There’s a lot of things we all should be doing.

But sometimes our dreams don’t come true.

When I was in high school I had a friend who had a habit of boasting that he could get you tickets for some event or other. The dialogue would go something like this:

“Do you want to go to the Super Bowl?”

“Yeah, that would be awesome.”

“You can’t!”

He would tell you why you couldn’t such as he had to give the ticket to my uncle.”

We would laugh like hell every time.

It doesn’t seem very funny now.

I really did want to go to the Bronx.