ON A 68-DEGREE Saturday in late October, Art Shamsky left his apartment to see a friend. He grabbed a baseball and an old glove, and took the subway to a deserted train car on the Long Island Rail Road. New York was still skittish, and Shamsky had been too. He'd never been so vulnerable in his life. But he wasn't thinking about the pandemic, or himself. One thought kept floating through his head: "What if he doesn't recognize me?"
Shamsky had just turned 79 years old, but there was a constant whir about him; always someplace to go and something to do.