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"  Last week, in New York City. Charlie Pierce, idol-turned-friend, is next to me at a bar called Jimmy&amp;#039;s Corner, a block east of Times Square. It&amp;#039;s owned by a former boxing trainer \u2014 named Jimmy, surprisingly \u2014 and its walls are covered with pictures of dead fighters. There is a sign tacked on the wall, advising patrons not to discuss politics. Elmore James is playing on the jukebox, and Robert Cray is on deck, and Charlie is thrumming the bar like a bass. On the TV, hanging from the ceiling, the Phillies are playing the Reds. Roy Halladay is pitching a no-hitter through seven innings (told you so). Ice-cold bottles of Budweiser are three dollars, and they&amp;#039;re sliding down the bar as though they&amp;#039;re on a conveyer belt. For some reason, Charlie and I start arguing about hockey&amp;#039;s greatest player. He says Bobby Orr. I tell him he&amp;#039;s out of his goddamn mind, it has to be Wayne Gretzky. &amp;quot;Did he redefine the position?&amp;quot; Charlie hollers. &amp;quot;Did he change the game?&amp;quot; And then comes the whiskey. It was, for me, a perfect moment. Nearly all of my non-blood loves were gathered in that room at once. And they could have gathered in such a place, in such a magical combination, only in New York City. When I think of my best nights in bars, I think of the city. Maybe my best night in a bar was at a bar called P.J. Clarke&amp;#039;s on Third Avenue. Every branch of the Toronto sportswriting community was in town: Over a short stretch, the Blue Jays were playing the Yankees; the Maple Leafs were playing the Rangers; the Raptors were playing the Knicks; and Lennox Lewis was fighting Michael Grant at the Garden. We owned that bar, the great happy gang of us \u2014 until a man walked through the door wearing a black cowboy hat and with a golden, bejeweled cigar tube poking out of his shirt pocket. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m Robert DeNiro,&amp;quot; the man kind of growled, extending his hand, and one of the basketball writers laughed and said, &amp;quot;Yeah, and I&amp;#039;m fucking Jake LaMotta!&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Frankie,&amp;quot; I said, choking on my beer. &amp;quot;I think that is Jake LaMotta!&amp;quot; And sure enough, the Raging Bull was soon standing at the bar next to us, and we drank the night into historic levels of oblivion, capped by one of the world&amp;#039;s great cheeseburgers, some onion strings, and stupid drunk talk about each of us being one of the very lucky ones. Last week, I finished drinking with Charlie along with our easy debate. (Did Wayne Gretzky change the game? Ask the 1988 Bruins.) I went to work the next day and submitted a story and then pushed off the island at rush hour, on my way to crumbling, crowded LaGuardia. It took forever, one of a million ants. Then I caught my delayed flight \u2014 Air Traffic Control \u2014 back across to Toronto, where I threw myself into yet more crowds, culminating in a mysterious midnight traffic jam. The first of Port Hope&amp;#039;s two main street red lights didn&amp;#039;t greet my tired eyes until the early morning. Everything fell off me then. I felt as though I was sitting by myself in the middle of a field. Lee and I picked up the boys from school the next day, and we decided to go to the fish ladder to watch the salmon. They&amp;#039;ve been running up the river through town for the last several weeks \u2014 an epic, perhaps record-size suicide pact taken by thousands and thousands of great toothy fish. They&amp;#039;ve been making the river look like the Queensboro Bridge; there have been massive strength-gathering schools of them at the bottom of each rapid, at the edge of every leap. They&amp;#039;re making an incredible journey to return to the very spot where they were born to spawn and then die. Don&amp;#039;t underestimate salmon. They&amp;#039;re a miraculous fucking fish. And at the fish ladder, they face a particular hurdle: a big concrete dam. At the far left side of it, a square about the size of a dishwasher has been cut into the face of it. A waterfall pours out of the hole, dropping maybe three or four feet to the surface of the water. On either side of the hole, protective black rubber mats have been hung. And the crowds gather there, to watch the fish making the biggest jump of their entire run, up and into the fish ladder. The people cheer with each success, groan with each failure. It&amp;#039;s a great evening&amp;#039;s entertainment. It&amp;#039;s the sort of thing that could happen only in a place like Port Hope. I watched those beautiful fish jumping into the hole in the dam, and I found myself wondering, How do they know where to go? READ MORE OF MY SECOND EMPIRE &amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt; PLUS: Follow My Second Empire on Twitter and Your RSS Feed &amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a8694/jake-lamotta-still-alive-101110/>