When I was younger, I used to go to New York quite often.

My father's side of the family lived in Brooklyn, and would usually visit them every summer. My grandfather owned a small neighborhood grocery store and my father had grown up a few blocks from there.

I saw some of my first baseball games at Yankee Stadium, and later saw Tom Seaver pitch at Shea Stadium. I spent a week there in 1979 -- the last year of my first marriage -- with my wife attending three or four Broadway shows, back when they were still affordable.

But once my newspaper career started and I began moving west, New York wasn't on my radar. Other than a trip to Manhattan in the mid '90s for my sister's wedding, I never made it back until yesterday.

[caption id="attachment_970" align="alignright" width="300" caption="The Unisphere"]<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/windowslivewriterunisphere-14d08map54f4bc82944f.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-970" title="windowslivewriterunisphere-14d08map54f4bc82944f" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/windowslivewriterunisphere-14d08map54f4bc82944f-300x219.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="219" /></a>[/caption]

I'm still not sure I was actually there. It all happened so fast there was sort of a dreamlike quality to it. I got out of bed at 5 a.m. to make it to Atlanta for a 7:40 flight to LaGuardia. I got into New York at about 9:30 and was picked up and driven to an undisclosed (not really) location for a fantasy baseball draft.

We were finished by about 3 p.m. and I got a ride back to the airport for a 5 p.m. flight home. Despite a couple of delays for thunderstorms in Atlanta, I was back home shortly after 9 p.m.

The time I spent on the ground didn't look much like NYC, but the sights I saw flying into LaGuardia definitely did. When we were circling for our turn into our landing pattern, I saw the Unisphere from the 1964-65 World's Fair and the new Mets ballpark, Citi Field.

New York truly is unique.

I'm gonna have to go back someday.