Everywhere else, children pop out of the womb craving a driver's license. Kids in New York never feel the need. When we were old enough, we hauled knapsacks half our size to the bus stop and held on for dear life as the thing careened through Central Park and threw us out in front of the pale yellow Woolworth's on 79th Street and Broadway.

Later on, we became tall and obnoxious and ruled the morning bus food chain. We shouted and banged our way through the brief morning commute. My parents condemned me to a school bereft of chicks. It was hard to impress them with a bus pass. On weekends, my friends and I slugged beers at McSherry's and in each other's apartments. In our last year of high school, we discovered a semicircular bench just inside Central Park. We carried in our bags of six-packs and anchored for the evening.

When I visit friends outside the city, my options are simple: wait in their houses until they drive home or get dropped off in a mall for hours while they go to work.

I've considered spending the afternoon in the trunk.

It's midweek, early afternoon, and he is virtually alone on the road. Checking his two blind spots, he signals and shifts into the left lane. He's headed for the seven lakes in Harriman State Park.

Flash back three months, when he was in the car with Bert Gibbs: "I go there on Sundays mostly," said Mr. Gibbs. "After working six days a week, you just want to stay home and sleep, but I go there fishing on Sundays once in a while. I met a couple of people, mostly females, teaching them how to drive and we go fishing on a … a what do you call it, a platonic basis. You go out with an idea of catching fish, but if you don't catch fish, it's O.K. You see, it's more you go out with an idea for a day's pleasure, a picnic, an outing."

Mr. Gibbs, 67, was my driving instructor. For 20 years, he has been sitting on a small pillow in his car. It helps with the accumulated soreness of hour upon seated hour. A rumpled driving school T-shirt and jeans were his work clothes. He steered around the city, past pizza parlors and Wall Street firms.

"There are a lot of people who do this for a few months and then find something else. They just sit on the side and say, 'Turn here, turn there.' But it's a job to me. It's not like I have anywhere else to go. I'm out on the street, not locked up in an office. I don't get fired. I'm a loner to begin with, otherwise I wouldn't be able to do this. I'm not a hermit, but I'm a loner in a crowd of people. I don't really associate with people. Once in a while on the road test line I'll say hi to someone, but that's it."

He had been reading John O'Hara. A copy of A Rage to Live was on the next seat. Where he last put it down, the Tates are near divorce. Grace Tate has been caught screwing Roger Bannon, an Irish contractor. She and the kids board a train to Cape May for the weekend. Sidney Tate, her husband, a bit of a lost soul, gets in the Mercer and motors out of Fort Penn with no destination in mind. Unlike our hero, Sidney enjoys an overnight stay at a cathouse.

My friend had suggested Xanax. My shrink left a message offering to call in a prescription for a "gentle sedative." At the very least, it would make for an interesting road test.

I had already failed the thing twice, both times in Red Hook, Brooklyn, once for a stop sign problem, the other for pulling out of my parking space without watching for traffic. Either the testers commuted or Red Hook itself is rich in stubby, unpleasant women.

Upon my second effort I was once again ambushed by a Red Hook special. It was a nice day and I was leaning against an iron fence watching a crowd of children in lemon colored T-shirts playing on a grass patch of a park. My mind went back to a day months earlier in the D.M.V. office. I was waiting on an endless line to take the written test, my eye caught by school kids playing an impromptu game of softball in the afternoon sun. The fellow behind me tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Ah, to be young again."

And that's when I saw her coming toward me: a Jell-O-y creature in D.M.V.-issue sky blue shirtsleeves, a clipboard between her sausagey fingers. Of course, sitting in a car eight hours a day for years is hardly great for one's figure, so I fear in this case it may come with the territory.

We rolled over the quiet streets. Her responses to polite small talk were gruntlike; as minimalist were her movements: a stab at the air indicates right, another stab indicates left. As I drove, I guessed that over the years, something odd had occurred: a kind of tactile vocabulary had supplanted her oral skills. Indeed, as I floundered down the street, she made another, similar stab, which I thankfully took to signify "parallel park." Pulling out of the space was, however, where I made my own tactile error, neglecting to signal and narrowly missing a miniature old lady struggling to haul several shopping bags across the street. It was then that the test was over, for she instructed me verbally to return to the line and Bert.

My third and final test took me to Staten Island, where a nice man let me pass.

Driving alone for the first time, he pulls into Harriman State Park and cuts the motor. Unsuitably dressed-jeans, T-shirt, sneakers-he walks past women at a picnic table spinning a cage of bingo balls, down some steps onto the beach. Teenagers man the grill. He grabs a burger. The sand slopes way down to the water. The kids swim and run back up to their parents, who lay baking on beach towels.

Carrying his shoes, he walks to the water line, past the lifeguard chair. The swimming area is circumscribed by blue and white styrofoam blocks strung together. The remainder of his walk is unobscured, just the mustard sand and the occasional pointy shell to watch for. He has reached the end of the beach, not so much the tip of a crescent, as in postcards from the Caribbean, but the beginning of the woods.

Bert, Zen master of driving, and his band of lady ex-students must have thumped through the growth to one of the boulders around the lake's circumference. Maybe it wasn't so platonic after all.

Doing 60 on the way back down Palisades Parkway, the radio blasting "Crazy Train," he rests his elbow on the lip of the window. He eases down to 30 as the blinking arrow signals "right lane closed 100 yards." Ten minutes later, idle in a single lane, he swears, sticks his head out the window, sees the endless snake of cars, no doubt other cursing drivers at the wheel. A traffic jam! He stretches an arm over the passenger seat and happily whines.

As it happened, Mr. Hershiser wondered aloud that if ballplayers had to dress up to sell tickets, why even play?

My question was, is baseball's late commissioner, A. Bartlett Giamatti, spinning like a rotisserie chicken?

On Sunday, Aug. 8, the uniforms were back to normal, but Shea as theme park continued. This afternoon it was Jewish Heritage Day, part of the Mets' International Week. Having struck the set from Irish Night, the team now welcomed the Jews. Jews go to the ball park: a year's worth of material for Pat Cooper. It was a gray afternoon in Queens. Not the crisp, cut-grass feel of a George F. Will day at the park. Still, kids ran ahead of their dads, mitt in hand, Met cap on top.

And yes, there were Jews, set off by the yarmulke. All kinds of Jews. Jews in dragging khakis and white T-shirts. Jews in full Met wear. Jews sporting blue and orange skullcaps.

Lesley Cohen and Daniel Werber loitered, buying cheap tickets as they do every day. This was Mr. Cohen's 122nd game (Yankees and Mets).

Mr. Cohen (wistfully): "Ever heard of a non-Jewish Cohen?"

Mr. Werber: "Friday night, we were here. Saturday night, we were here. Tomorrow night, we'll be here. What is it? African-American night?"

Mr. Cohen: "Dunno. You should put his picture in the paper and underneath write, 'He hates everyone.'"

Mr. Werber's Star of David hung low, peering out from the folds of his plaid shirt. He used to wear a chai , but recently found this chain under a pile of shirts.

Still, this day at Shea was hardly an Israeli Day parade. The yarmulkes came by in drips and drabs, like the rain, which plunked down for a few innings. Up and down went the umbrellas.

In the deep workings of the engine room of spaceship Met, however, it was a different story. Jewish Day, like others in the International Week constellation, was a major production.

"I hate to be rude to ya, Phil, but I got a million things to do. Irish Night, Jewish, African-American … I gotta go," said Chris Granozio, assistant video director of the Mets' video productions department. That was Thursday. He did, however, put me in touch with Simon Spiro, who would be singing the national anthem Sunday.

Saturday evening, Mr. Spiro phoned.

"I played the Concord Resort Hotel for 3 years until they closed last year. It was great fun," he said in a sprightly British accent, referring to the Catskills resort. "Have you seen The Jazz Singer , with Neil Diamond playing the cantor, a pop singer trapped in a synagogue? That was me. At 22, I was a fully trained cantor in the top synagogue in St. John's Wood in London. One of the top cantorial jobs in the world, really. I won't work on Fridays, so I missed playing Charles and Diana's pre-wedding ball in '81."

I propped my feet up onto the desk, the pixie Brit-speak racing through the phone.

"I toured with Sheena Easton for three years. It was in the early 80's. Now she's home taking care of the kids. I do a lot of backup for Duran Duran, Kenny Rogers, Leo Sayer-you know, Xanadu . I sang backup for the Spandau Ballet compilation album, which should be out soon. The Mets called me last Friday and I started writing the arrangement.

"My Jewish liturgical arrangements are more friendly-like the Carpenters. I don't do the old Germanic shit. For the Mets game, I'll start with a Jewish medley, a lovely little bit about Ellis Island. Very pretty, very pretty. I'm tremendously excited to do it. Whitney Houston kind of sucked at the Super Bowl; a bit over the top. I model myself after Luther Vandross and George Benson. I've heard lots of national anthems-in fact, I sang 'God Save the Queen' at Wembley Stadium before a football game. But it kind of sucks as an anthem. It's only 31 seconds long! The Canadian one is O.K., but a bit morbid. 'The Star-Spangled Banner' is wonderful. Usually, it's in three parts. I've made it four. It has this simplistic beginning, then the middle gets this really agitated excitement and at the end there's this huge blast of adrenaline. I added these great tubular bells … very bloody big!"

He put me on hold.

"Sorry, that was a pal, a cantor, he's covering for me at Beaver Lake in the Catskills. It's the Three Tenors show, you know, Pavarotti and such."

The next afternoon, I took my loge-level seat, third-base side, and, lo and behold, there was Simon on the Diamond Vision screen. He had chosen a snappy black suit accessorized by a thin bow tie and high polka-dotted waistcoat. And he was singing "Livin' la Vida Loca" in Yiddish, shimmying around home plate.

By anthem time, Shea was mostly full, despite the close weather, and Simon belted out the two anthems-Israeli and American-in a nice tone. He stayed in key and avoided Whitney Houston syndrome. The finale-four rousing "Americas"-came out as well as can be expected before an amphitheater of 30,000 fans.

By the fifth inning, the Dodgers were up 6-1, beating up on Masato Yoshii.

The guy behind me, neatly settled, his tummy forming a kind of proud crown, pondered aloud: "Would they yank him if this was Asian night?

He was so strange-looking, gaunt, almost simian. A kind of man-monkey. Stuey Ungar was a poker genius who had thrice won the Binion's Horseshoe $10,000, no-limit Texas hold-'em tournament. He took the first prize of $1 million in cash.

But nothing lasts. They found him sprawled dead atop the covers in his room at the Oasis Motel, a fleabag joint in Las Vegas. He was 45, victim of a heart attack brought on, the coroner said, by years of drug abuse.

He died with $800 in his pocket. The obit mentioned that Ungar had figured in A. Alvarez's The Biggest Game in Town , a chronicle of the Binion's tournament of 1980.

That afternoon, I hunkered down in a carrel at the New York Society Library. There he was, in the Alvarez book. Stuey, at 25, came out of nowhere to win the million, beating legends Doyle (Tex Dolly) Brunson, Puggy Pearson and Chip Reese, and formidable amateurs like Gabe Kaplan (better known as TV's Mr. Kotter).

Some months later, I checked Las Vegas information for Ungars and got Stuey's wife, Madeline. I asked if I could meet with her sometime. She was suspicious, but said O.K.

I booked a flight from La Guardia to Las Vegas.

The Union Plaza is an old joint at the head of Fremont Street, the strip of the original Vegas places, with names like the Golden Gate, the Lady Luck, Fitzgerald's, the El Cortez, the Girls of Glitter Gulch and, of course, Benny Binion's Horseshoe.

My room overlooked an arch of light bulbs stretched over the street. The look was of a covered wagon gone mad.

The view was spectacular, but the sliding door to the little terrace wouldn't open. On and off for a few hours, I had been doing battle with the handleless steel bracket, like a seal pounding the underside of an ice floe, desperate for air.

I called down to the front desk.

"Uh, could you send someone up? My sliding door won't open and I need some air."

"I'm sorry, sir, they're not supposed to open. We've had problems with jumpers."

Pause.

"Are you kidding?"

"I wouldn't kid about something like that, sir." Possibly realizing this wasn't the best P.R. for the hotel, he backtracked a bit. "We've also had problems with bachelor parties, you know, kids getting drunk and throwing things over the rail."

Eventually, you go to sleep.

And then I was up at 3:30 A.M., my throat raw from a lingering East Coast cold. I went downstairs and was hit with a blast of cigarette smoke. Las Vegas is the land of three things: the wheelchair-bound who can simultaneously eat and tug on a slot machine, the smoker and the retired.

At the craps table, a red-faced man called for a hard eight. A tuft of stuffing from his parka floated to the green felt. A withered lady smoked a thin, dark cigarette under a floppy hat. Jaws was playing mute on the bar TV.

Eight hours a day for years, Stuey Ungar sat down in the poker rooms of Vegas-the Mirage, for one, which is now Steve Wynn's Bellagio. He was older than the new guard of boy poker geniuses-Phil Hellmuth, Johnny Chan, Huck Seed-but he was always "The Kid," with the Ratso Rizzo accent and the little gold pinky ring.

I got a cab for Caesar's Palace, to see Stuey's wife. She worked in the fancy boutique. She was tan and coiffed. We talked a little bit and she said we could meet later on to talk more in depth about Stuey … but it never panned out. She was skittish. She was thinking of maybe trying to get a movie made out of his life.

In recent years, you could tell when Stuey was playing high. He would wear green mirrored John Lennon shades at the table and would chatter through his cottonmouth. Puggy Pearson and Doyle Brunson and the rest refused to loan him any more, because they knew he'd spend it on dope. Puggy and Doyle were his friends, not just guys he played cards with.

Stuey was a bookmaker's son who by 17 had cleaned out the top gin rummy players on the East Coast and once lost $98,000 on a single golf shot.

Stuey could read people or, more importantly in this line of work, he could smell a bluff. In his self-published poker bible, Super/System , Doyle Brunson lists some classic "tells," a visible pulse in the neck being most common. At the Binion's tournament, you'll see some players sitting at the table wearing bandannas and ball caps, like train robbers: disguising the tell.

The pros sit hours on end, year after year, sopping up tells: how a man twirls a chip or pulls on a cigarette. And even a coked-up Stuey Ungar, months before they'd find him in his Oasis motel room, could smell the tell.

Mr. Brunson, in his book, says: "You will be playing mostly against unskilled gamblers. Their minds are not particularly sharp and often they haven't lived life very successfully. They're financially troubled or psychologically battered … you might as well know the truth, sad as it is-they've come to escape the pain."

Not much glamour on the pro circuit. I flew from Vegas to Los Angeles to catch a bit of the L.A. Poker Classic last month. The tournament is played yearly at the Commerce Casino, 15 minutes from downtown, in the Commerce neighborhood. For the professional card player, it's the U.S. Open played over acres of card tables. It lasts a month. By the end, more than $250,000 is shared among the winners.

No one really lives in Commerce, Los Angeles. There are no sidewalks. It's a concrete town of furniture warehouses, steel gate manufacturers and an adult book depot. Inside the casino, small men in aprons wheel around carts laden with deli food for the players-aaah, crinkle-cut fries and hot dogs.

Stuey played the L.A. tournament. This was Stuey's world.

At some point during my trip West, I sat in the library at the University of Las Vegas. I put on a pair of giant deejay headphones and watched a tape of the 1992 Binion's tournament. The camera panned to Stuey Ungar. Man, he looked frail. His fingers were slender and delicate, as if made to handle playing cards.

I pulled off the puffy headphones and returned the tape. Through the window, the sun had set. I wandered the UNLV campus, looking for a way back to the Strip. A woman came up to me. She said she was a kindergarten teacher. She tried to get me to join a cult. There was about to be a big meeting, she said, in the auditorium over there. I said No. I was lost but not that lost.

Evening was falling and it was getting cool. I zipped up. It was good to be outside.