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Putting the Negro Leagues in Play

By STUART MILLER

The Strat-O-Matic Game Company, an old warhorse in an age of computer-driven fantasy leagues and high-tech video games, usually relies on detailed statistics to create ratings and tendencies for hitters and pitchers. But in creating a new 103-card Negro leagues set for its board game, Strat-O-Matic found that the data was not easy to come by.

Coverage of Negro leagues games was spotty, especially because many black newspapers were weeklies. Although stories abound about Josh Gibson’s prowess or Satchel Paige’s wizardry, much of what has been handed down borders on folklore.

Yet Hal Richman, who founded Strat-O-Matic in 1961, was determined.

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Strat-O-Matic

After years of research and statistical interpretation, Strat-O-Matic has a new 103-card Negro leagues set.

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Bellevue Natural-Birth Center, Haven for Poor Women, Closes

By A. G. SULZBERGER and NICK PINTO

The Bellevue Birth Center was celebrated as a landmark achievement for the natural-birth movement in New York City when it opened in 1998. The luxurious natural-birth center, designed to feel more like a home than a hospital, was the only one of its kind dedicated not to Manhattan’s trend-conscious set, but to poor, mostly immigrant women on Medicaid.

But last month, as Carolina Palmgren prepared to give birth to her first child there, she learned from a midwife that the center at Bellevue, a city hospital, had been quietly closed. “The upsetting thing is that there was no notice,” said Ms. Palmgren, 31.

The closing has provoked complaints about a lack of public notice that it was being considered, as well as about the declining number of natural-birth options in the city.

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Art D’Lugoff, Village Gate Impresario, Dies at 85

By MARGALIT FOX

Art D’Lugoff, who was widely regarded as the dean of New York nightclub impresarios and whose storied spot, the Village Gate, was for more than 30 years home to performers as celebrated, and diverse, as Duke Ellington, Allen Ginsberg and John Belushi, died on Wednesday in Manhattan. He was 85 and lived in the Riverdale section of the Bronx.

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Fred Conrad/The New York Times

Art D'Lugoff, who ran the Village Gate nightclub, in 1993.

The cause has not been determined, said Mr. D’Lugoff’s brother, Burt, a medical doctor and frequent silent partner in his joyously noisy endeavors. Mr. D’Lugoff died at the Allen Hospital of New York-Presbyterian Hospital, where he had been taken on Wednesday after experiencing shortness of breath.

Opened in 1958, the Village Gate was on the corner of Bleecker and Thompson Streets.

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A Celebration, Washington Heights Style

By John Branch

As Champagne celebrations go, the best one after the Yankees won the World Series might have been the one on the sidewalk of 191st Street in Washington Heights.

Washington Heights is a huge enclave of baseball-crazy Dominican immigrants near the northern tip of Manhattan — and just about two miles from Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. It is hard to imagine any New York neighborhood as passionate about baseball in general, and about the Yankees in particular.

Dozens of people had converged on the O.N.F. — the nickname residents on the block conferred for the “One-Nine-First” — to watch Game 6 on a small flat-screen television set up on a broken-down stand. With the Yankees holding a lead over the Phillies throughout the brisk evening, the numbers grew. Money was pooled together. A couple in the group, mostly teenage and 20-something men, left to buy toilet paper and Champagne.

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Minorities Are The New Majority In City Council

For the first time ever, black, Latino, and Asian politicians will outnumber white politicians in the City Council. In last night's election, minority candidates secured 28 seats while white candidates won 23, according to the Daily News. Currently in the Council, white politicians outnumber minorities 26 to 25.

In historic wins last night, Margaret Chin became the first-ever Asian-American to represent Manhattan's Chinatown, while two Queens men became the first gay candidates to win a city office outside of Manhattan. Democrats Daniel Dromm in Jackson Heights and Jimmy Van Bramer in Sunnyside both won easily, effectively doubling the size of the council's gay and lesbian caucus.

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To Some, Winner Is Not American Enough

Henny Ray Abrams/Associated Press

Meb Keflezighi, the winner of the New York City Marathon, at the Empire State Building on Monday. An American citizen, he immigrated at age 12 from Eritrea.

By GINA KOLATA

As soon as Mebrahtom Keflezighi, better known as Meb, won the New York City Marathon on Sunday, an uncommon sports dispute erupted online, fraught with racial and nationalistic components: Should Keflezighi’s triumph count as an American victory?

He was widely celebrated as the first American to win the New York race since 1982. Having immigrated to the United States at age 12, he is an American citizen and a product of American distance running programs at the youth, college and professional levels.

But, some said, because he was born in Eritrea, he is not really an American runner.

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Half a million pounds of beef recalled on E.coli fears

Meat producer Fairbank Farms says ground beef may be contaminated with a potentially lethal bacteria.

NEW YORK (CNN) -- A voluntary recall was announced Monday for more than half a million pounds of ground beef because it may be contaminated with bacteria linked to at least two deaths, officials said.

Fairbank Farms of Ashville, New York, said the recall was issued Saturday for approximately 545,699 pounds of ground beef produced between September 14 and September 16 after the meat was "possibly linked" to E. coli O157:H7.

"Any customers from northeastern or mid-Atlantic states who have identified recalled ground beef products should remove the product from their freezers and return it to their stores for full reimbursement," the company said.

Retail outlets include: ACME, BJ's, Ford Brothers, Giant Food Stores, Price Chopper, Shaw's, and Trader Joe's. The products affected are listed on the USDA Web site.

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The 83rd Annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade(R) Is Set to Debut New Giant Character Balloons, Amazing Floats and New Parade Route This November

New Giant Character Balloons Include Pillsbury Doughboy(R), Ronald McDonald(R), Sailor Mickey and Spider-Man(R)
New Floats Include Local Heroes Helping Everyday, There's A Party In My City and Santa's Sleigh
2009 Parade Route to Bypass Broadway for the First time and Travel Down 7th and 6th Avenues to Macy's Herald Square

NEW YORK, Nov. 2 /PRNewswire/ -- The magical procession returns to the Big Apple this November as the 83rd Annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade kicks off the holiday season. On Thursday, November 26, 2009 at 9:00am at the sound of Let's Have a Parade, America's favorite holiday spectacular will step off with its signature giant helium balloons, floats of fantasy, marching bands, clowns, celebrity and large performance groups, and the one-and-only Santa Claus.

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Low vitamin D levels explains most ESRD risk in African-Americans

October 29, 2009

Low levels of vitamin D may account for nearly 60 percent of the elevated risk of end-stage renal disease (ESRD) in African Americans, according to a report in the December Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN). "Our study adds to previous evidence linking vitamin D deficiency to the progression of kidney disease and the need for dialysis," comments Michal L. Melamed, MD, of Albert Einstein College of Medicine (Bronx, NY). "It also explains a fair amount of the increased risk of ESRD in African Americans." Vitamin D is obtained from sun exposure, food and food supplements.

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Riders to begin suffering through new taxi tax

Heather Haddon

Taxis will soon have a new tax.

Starting Sunday, cab passengers will be forced to pay a 50-cent fee on top of the base fare of $2.50.