Weekly Mail June 5, 2016

Hi!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Remember when I was discussing different kids birthday parties I've attended? Well, I went to a pretty unique on on Saturday.

One of Tim's friends had his birthday at California Pizza Kitchen in Westbury. All the kids got raw personal pizza dough, with a little plastic cup of sauce and some shredded mozzarella cheese. They spread on the sauce, added the cheese and then someone came around and collected the pies and took them to be cooked.  While they were cooking, the kids got a tour of the kitchen and the walk in fridge where they keep all the ingredients. I haven't been in one of those jammies since my Baskin-Robbins days. On the bulletin board near the kitchen's entrance, there was a note from the district manager imploring the staff to get their sales numbers up. Not sure if that was supposed to be part of the tour, but these are the things I find fascinating.

All in all it was pretty cool, but I haven't had pizza at 11 AM since I was in college. Maybe to complete the experience, I should have gone out and tied one on Friday night. Pizza for breakfast with a hangover. Now that was living.

Muhammad Ali  (1942-2016)

           When I was a little kid, Muhammad Ali was one of my favorite celebrities.

Why not? I didn't know anything about sports or politics (some may argue I still don't...but I digress). All I knew was that Muhammad Ali was always on TV, he made a lot of silly faces and said a lot of funny things. He was just a character, like Bugs Bunny or Luke Skywalker.

As I got a little older, I started to understand what he meant to boxing. His upset of Sonny Liston in 1964 gave the sport it's most outgoing champ, much more so than quiet, classy Joe Louis or the brooding menacing Liston. Every sport has it's great athletes. Even fewer of those athletes actually transcend the sport they are in. To me, nobody quite transcended their sport the way Ali did boxing. When ESPN had their list of the greatest athletes of the 20th Century, I felt Ali should have been number 1.* Just because I felt he, of all the athletes was bigger than his sport.

As I got a little older than that, though, I found some things about him bothered me. Forget about whether the US was justified for going to Vietnam, it bugged me that he was considered a hero for not going to fight a war that my father nearly got his legs blown off fighting.  It bugged me that he was a member of the Nation of Islam, an organization that considered white people "the devil" It didn't bother me that he changed his name from Cassius Clay, it did bother me that he referred to Cassius Clay as his "slave name".  It bothered me that he called Joe Frazier an Uncle Tom. I cringed the first time I heard Frazier tell someone that "I did that to him" referring to Ali's Parkinson's disease. After I read some of the things Ali said about Frazier, (especially after I heard some of the things Frazier did for Ali while he was banned from boxing) I couldn't say I blamed him.

But I have to say, I never heard of him turning down an autograph request from a white fan. His friendships with Howard Cosell and other white celebrities was well known. Angelo Dundee was his long time trainer and his cut man the legendary Ferdie Pacheco. He admitted that his trash talk against Frazier was more about selling tickets than any real convictions he had. And even Big Bill didn't hold Ali's refusal to go to Nam against him. **

As with any famous figure, especially one from that turbulent time, he was complex. Perfect? Hardly, but nobody is, athletes especially. But was there a more well known figure, sports or otherwise in the world? I honestly can't think of any. Jordan, the Bambino, Gretzky, Tiger Woods..they dominated their sports. Ali took it to the next level.

Was he larger than life? Yeah, I'd say so.


2016 ELECTION:

Tuesday, for all intents and purposes will be the last day of the primary season of this election cycle. Somewhere along the line, Hillary Clinton will clinch the nomination that day. The only real drama left, is if Bernie Sanders can win California. It won't make a lick of difference in the grand scheme of things, but it would be some sort of moral victory. And it's something nobody would have predicted back when this all started.


SPORTS: The Stanley Cup Finals

There is one thing that is driving me nuts about this Stanley Cup Final, besides the fact that my rangers are not playing in it....  How the hell can the Penguins fit Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Phil Kessel under their salary cap? All I ever hear about the Rangers is that they are up against the salary cap. But the Penguins are always able to land another big gun. I mean we traded Carl Hagelin because we couldn't fit him under our cap....and now he's playing for the Penguins!!! What?

I blame NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman for all this.I can't prove it of course, but I have always felt that he was in cahoots with the Penguins. Mario Lemieux became the teams principal owner, mainly because the Penguins owed him a boatload of cash from his playing days. Bettman wants Lemieux to remain the Pens owner so that the team stays in Pittsburgh. Call me crazy, but that's what I believe.

I think that's all from here peeps.

Have a Great Week!!




*my top 5 were Ali, Babe Ruth, Jim Thorpe, Wayne Gretzky and Michael Jordan. ESPN went with Jordan, Ruth, Ali, Jim Brown and Gretzky. 

**what did piss my dad off about Ali was his fighting style. "He could knock anyone out in the first round if he wanted to, Dad said "But he messed around with that rope-a-dope sh-t." He said this once when we were watching Ali fight Chuck Wepner on Claasic Sports Network. That fight from 1975, inspired Sylvester Stallone to write the script for Rocky.