The 50th Annual Turkey Bowl

Good morning. It is Wednesday. Today we’ll learn about a Thanksgiving ritual: a football game in the Bronx entering its 50th year. We also get details about a city program to give homeowners up to $400,000 if they build an apartment in their attic, backyard or basement.

Thanksgiving is about ritual: Turkey, or “turkie,” as the colonists in Massachusetts spelled it. Watching as floats pass by. And in front of two dozen high school friends from the Bronx, scrimmaging, as they have done every Thanksgiving weekend since 1974.

They will take the field for the 50th time on Saturday, grayer, heavier and slower perhaps, but still as determined as they were as teenagers. “We still have the drive to do this,” says Nathan Schlanger, a 66-year-old accountant – even though “our football skills are weaker.” They call their annual showdown the Turkey Bowl.

Off the field, they have survived marriages, divorces, moves abroad, career changes and, lately, retirements. One now lives in Minneapolis. Others are spread across New York and New Jersey. Two of the original players have passed away.

On the ground, says Gerry Gartenberg, a former television consumer reporter and now psychotherapist, competition is “in line with our hormone levels” – it was more pronounced in the 70s, 80s and 90s. Now, he said, the game is “a constant reminder of friendship, its fantasticness and its fragility.”

Sometimes the game also reminds us of physical vulnerability. Jon Asher, a retired marketing researcher, said injuries over the years included a broken collarbone, a broken finger, a broken leg, a broken nose, a broken rib and some torn cartilage.

“If you think about it, there aren’t many injuries,” Asher said, “but it’s a two-handed touch. If you think about it, there really shouldn’t be any injuries.”

The broken nose was his, after a collision several years ago with the then boyfriend of Schlanger’s daughter, who had participated in the game.

“It’s not even like they were on different teams,” Schlanger said. “They were on the same team.” Now the nosebreaker, Garrett Frank, is Schlanger’s son-in-law – he married Marcie Schlanger last week. The past is gone: Asher attended the wedding.

At least one player will enter Saturday’s match with soreness. Douglas Simon, who has participated in 43 Turkey Bowls, said he suffered a foot injury playing pickleball. He said he would put on a boot and make at least one set of plays. “That’s my hope anyway,” he said.

The original players were teenagers who had attended DeWitt Clinton High School or the Bronx High School of Science. Some went on to study at the State University of New York at Binghamton (which now uses the name Binghamton University), while others attended one of the campuses of the City University of New York. They divided themselves into SUNY and CUNY teams for the first game. Later they invited friends to join the game – and later still, children and grandchildren started playing with them.

One of their classmates at DeWitt Clinton was Butch Lee, who was named Associated Press college basketball player of the year in 1978 and later played for the Atlanta Hawks, the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Los Angeles Lakers. Asher said the Turkey Bowl players were never on his level. “None of us would play for a high school team or a college team,” he said, “but you could feel like you were a good athlete” when you played with friends.

A few things have changed at the Turkey Bowl: Schlanger no longer sends cheerleaders (they were employees of a store he owned until 2007). Some players now require hot baths after the match.

The Turkey Bowl isn’t the only long-running game of its kind. The Swine Bowl — a post-Thanksgiving game that began the way the Turkey Bowl began, with high school friends gathering as freshmen — was played for 64 years. But when the players gathered in Central Park in 2018, they said it was their last game.

Schlanger said there was no question of canceling the Turkey Bowl now that they are in their 60s.

“We keep doing it because it makes us feel youthful,” says Schlanger. “I look at these guys and I see them as they were 20 years ago, 30 years ago. They look the same to me. We have changed dramatically. But when we play the game and do all these crazy things, we feel youthful.

Weather

Prepare early for gusty winds and more rain, with temperatures dropping from the low 60s to mid 40s overnight.

ALTERNATE PARKING

Effective today. Suspended tomorrow (Thanksgiving Day).

The latest Metro news

Fifteen New Yorkers with single-family homes could get nearly $400,000 to put apartments in their garages, attics or backyards.

My colleague Mihir Zaveri writes that it is a way to tackle a major problem – the housing shortage in New York – with a relatively small-scale project.

Recipients will be limited by income – the ceiling for a family of four will be $232,980, with priority given to lower incomes – and those interested can apply on the city’s website. Rents for the new apartments would also be capped, such as around $2,600 for a one-bedroom apartment. The program will focus on areas where current codes allow homeowners to add another unit.

Making it easier to build basements, cottages and other additional units has become an attractive way to spur development in other places where housing costs are high. Proponents say the model helps homeowners make money and could be great for older people trying to find affordable places near their families. That is why the apartments are often called ‘granny flats’.

But municipal regulations make building and maintaining them expensive — at least legally, says Howard Slatkin, executive director of the nonprofit Citizens Housing and Planning Council. An estimated 100,000 New Yorkers live in illegal basements that are vulnerable to flooding and fires.

Efforts to encourage such units based on rules that would make them safer have largely failed. Suburban lawmakers this year helped thwart Gov. Kathy Hochul’s attempt to ease some restrictions.

A pilot city program that began under Mayor Bill de Blasio aimed to convert basements into safe and legal apartments. To date, only one basement has been renovated through the program.

METROPOLITAN diary

Storm in late summer

Dear Diary:

It was almost 6pm on a drizzly September afternoon. The wind picked up—a sign of even heavier rain—and many people on the streets of the Upper East Side hurried home.

I stood under an awning waiting for the worst of the rain to pass. I watched an older man in a suit look up from his phone and see a toddler making funny faces at passersby through the window of a yellow taxi stopped at a traffic light.

The man put the phone in his shirt pocket, stuck out his tongue and crossed his eyes to match the child’s funny face.

The child grinned through the window and waved at the man as the taxi drove away.

The man smiled and giggled before crossing the street.

I heard a clap of thunder and the beginning of a flood at the end of summer. The streets were now empty.

–Olivia Bensimon