Weekly Mail September 30, 2018

Howdy:

I know I promised you guys a more light hearted blogpost this week. Unfortunately, I'm still working on the project I'd hoped to have done for his week, but hopefully next week I can get that out to all of you. For now, let's look back at the week that was.



POLITICS: Supreme Court Mess


I had just gotten in my car after work in the middle of Senator Lindsey Graham's tirade, one in which I thought we might lose the poor guy. But the real bizarre part was coming up.


You know, I was a freshman in college during the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill hearings, and I really thought that we couldn't get much lower than the "Long Dong Silver/There's a pubic hair on your Coke" quotations that ended up in those transcripts.

But alas we did.

I nearly drove off the road when I heard Senator Whitehouse ask Brett Kavanaugh what "ralphing" referred to.  I was like Horshack from Welcome Back Kotter on that one..."oooh oooh ooooh, I know!"  That means to throw up.


And when Whitehouse asked about boofing, and the devils triangle, I have to admit I took Judge Kavanaugh's word for it that they referred to farting and a drinking game respectively. The fact that I didn't realize these were sex related terms has more to do with my obvious lack of wisdom when it comes to all things sexual and not a reflection of any perceived support I have for Judge Kavanaugh.

There was a drinking game I played once called Three-Man, which I thought could have been called Devil's Triangle (I can't remember how that game was played either, which means I probably lost badly the one time I played it) and when Kavanaugh compared it to Quarters, it brought me back to the most intense game of Quarters I ever witnessed between two of my colleagues from the Post who will go nameless.

All this, in the hopes of seating a person on the highest court in the land.

Again, I have to ask, no matter what side of the aisle you are on, there isn't anybody else out there with less baggage than this guy? Another judge who won't act as if the Democrats are like the zombies from a horror movie coming to eat his brain?

Revenge for the Clintons? I detest Hillary Clinton, and even I called bull$hit on that one when he said it. The last person who accused the other side of a vast conspiracy? You guessed it. Hillary Clinton. If you thought she was full of beans when she said that, you have to think this guy is nuts too.

I don't know if Brett Kavanaugh was the lush in high school he was made out to be. All I know is, after watching replays of that hearing on Thursday, I needed a few stiff belts myself.




BASEBALL: Farewell to our captain

I was in Metro 53 one night, at the conclusion of the 2006 baseball season, talking to a couple of Yankee fans about "Who would you rather have, Jeter and A-Rod, or Reyes and Wright."

I of course said Jose Reyes and David Wright. Of course they thought I was crazy.

And they ended up being correct about that.

But go back to 2006 and look at the numbers Wright and Reyes put up. And then consider that they were both 23 years old that year. And that Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez were 32 and 31.

Not as ridiculous as it now seems right?

Reggie Jackson said of Jeter back in 1996, I'd trade my past for his future. That's what I was thinking when comparing the two NY infields.

But the fact that it didn't come to pass shouldn't take anything away from what David Wright meant to the Mets organization over the 15 years he was part of it. Forget the fact that when he was good, he was very good, and he was very good when he was healthy.

He was a Met. He WANTED to be Met, even when being a Met meant losing 90 games a year, playing on a team owned by a couple of brainless crooks named Wilpon.

He could have gone cross town, maybe won a World Series or two, made a few more bucks. He didn't. He bled orange and blue.

And we all know that he did.

Which is why the outpouring he got on Saturday night felt so real.

I wish he could have stayed healthy. I wish he would have carried us across the finish line in 2007 and 2008. The fact that he didn't wasn't his fault. There was never a time I thought he was dogging it. He's about the only one who wasn't back then.

To say he got to go out on is terms would be a stretch, but he got to go out as close as he physically could to his terms, letting his daughters see him play. Giving Met fans a chance to say good bye.

And for him to say good bye to us.

You hear the term, "they don't make them like that anymore" a lot. It's an over used term. In the case of David Wright, it's the truth. We won't see the likes of him for a long time. That sucks.

But thank goodness we got to see him when we could.


BTW: Some of the nicest tributes I saw on line to David Wright came from Yankee fans. To that end I wish my Bomber fan friends the best of luck on Wednesday against Oakland. But remember, the season means squat if you don't win that game. No pressure.

I also heard somewhere that the Mets had the best record in he National League after July 1. They also stared the season 11-1.  That stretch from late April till July 1st was the worst I had ever seen them play. I stand by that.

Hey my fellow Jet fans, it looks like we are going to get that 1-15 season we all wanted last year, howboutdah?


Again, I'm hoping to have a Special next week. Still putting that together.


Sorry this is late.


Have a Great Week

Weekly Mail September 23, 2018

Hey Everyone:

Almost done with September. Let's get to it.



POLITICS: Supreme Court Mess

       So let me start this out by saying as clear as I possibly can, if Brett Kavanaugh did what he has been accused of doing, he shouldn't be allowed to judge a pie eating contest, never mind sit on the Supreme Court.

      I'm not going to get into the psychology of why Professor Christine Blasey Ford waited so long to make her accusations public, I believe the answer to that question has been provided by the animals who have been threatening her and her family.

     But I'm sorry, I don't think it makes me anti-woman or anti anything to suggest that the Democrats sat on this information till they thought it could do maximum damage.

Kavanaugh was nominated by President Trump to succeed Justice Anthony Kennedy on July 9. Earlier that month, when Kavanaugh's name appeared on the list of possible names to replace Kennedy, Ford reached out to her congresswoman Anna Eshoo-(D CA).  After Kavanaugh's nomination, but well before the hearings, Ford contacted Dianne Feinstein via a letter, but asked that her name be kept out of it. At one point, she had decided not to pursue the matter, no doubt wanting to protect herself and her family.

But somehow the letter to Feinstein's office leaked, just days after the hearing were supposed to have wrapped up. Coincidence? Sure.

Again, I'm not blaming Christine Blasey Ford here. She did what she thought was right with plenty of soul searching. But as usual, the politicians on both sides turned this into a circus. Someone leaked that letter and did it for no other reason than to derail this nomination. The people who leaked this letter as far as I'm concerned, are the ones playing politics with this woman's pain and suffering.

And look, I'm not by any means a Brett Kavanaugh supporter. Even before all this, I wasn't a fan of his, mainly because I'm afraid he'll help derail the Special Prosecutors investigation of the Russian election meddling.

But this whole thing stinks. And it's not all on Trump either (though as usual, he's not helping) I remember when Clarence Thomas was nominated, and there was so much back and forth, and that was before Anita Hill surfaced. I remember thinking, there has GOT to be someone out there that has less baggage than this guy.

I've gotten to that point here. And I know it will never happen, but I do know a judge that has much less baggage than Brett Kavanaugh, a judge that many Republicans were interested in a few years ago. Someone who has experience and I think would make an excellent Supreme Court justice.



Merrick Garland.



BASEBALL: RIP 2018 Mets

With their loss to the Phillies on Wednesday, the Mets officially guaranteed themselves another sub.500 finish. I'm probably the only one who cares about that. In the grand scheme of things, finishing below .500 or finishing a couple games over doesn't matter if your not in the playoffs.

The bigger dilemma is what to do? The Mets have a playoff caliber starting pitching staff, but a shaky at best bullpen and paper thin hitting. Do they blow the whole thing up? Try to build around the starters? I feel like that's what they did this year to disastrous results. At one point I know I said that this was the worst Mets team I had ever seen, and in my defense, I said that in the midst of their worst month record wise in recent history. Take away that 5-21 month of June, and you have a .500 team

Thank God for Jacob deGrom. Watching him pitch has been a privilege this year. He has one more start this week against the Braves. I'm praying he pitches a complete game shutout and drops his ERA.  I don't know if he'll win the Cy Young Award with a .500 record, but he was clearly the best pitcher in baseball this year.


FOOTBALL: Same Old Jets


And I'm sticking to my vow not to sacrifice Sunday afternoons with the family to watch football, but I did watch the Jets on Thursday night, and they should have lost that game by 4 touchdowns rather than 4 points. Sam Darnold threw two picks and two more than should have been picked off. I saw at least three times where Browns QB Baker Mayfield threw passes right into the numbers of his wide receivers and they dropped the pass. The Browns didn't win as much as they did just a little less to lose than our Gang Green did.


Next week we'll have a special blogpost that I promise will be much more fun. Sorry this one was so dour.

Have a Great Week

Weekly Mail Season Premiere

Hello Again Friends:

I hope everyone here is doing well. I missed writing to you and I'm glad to be back.



Since we've been gone........



RIP:John McCain

The outpouring of sympathy upon the death of the longtime Arizona senator was remarkable. And even those, like me, who always held him in high regard, found the week long funeral to be a tad excessive.

There was a part of me that wondered, would there have been the wall to wall coverage of McCain's funeral, if he had died, lets say, a year or two after he had lost the election to President Obama? Is part of the reason people took his death so hard was because he represented a large thorn in the side of President Trump?

Because let's face it, when Sarah Palin talked about John McCain as a maverick, it had started to ring somewhat hollow. Yeah, he was a maverick back during his first run for President in 2000, giving front runner and eventual party nominee George W. Bush everything he could handle.

But when he became the GOP torchbearer in 2008, he seemed to toe the party line, something Obama and Joe Biden took great pains to point out throughout the election cycle. And after his defeat, he continued to vote in lockstep with his party. Even on things like veterans benefits. Things had he still been the maverick, he would have bucked the trend to support.

But with the election of Donald Trump in 2016, the maverick seemed to start making a comeback. This even after he was diagnosed with brain cancer.

His vote to reject a plan to overturn Obamacare was classic McCain. He was no fan of Obamacare, but he knew the plan before the Senate was a disaster and he let the world know it.

And I believe that, as much as anything else is the reason his long goodbye was, well, long.

But also, I think more people can relate to him. Let's face it, in life, we all lose more than we win, don't we? At least most of us do. Life is a struggle. The victories are fleeting, the losses are many.

But as CBS' Bob Schieffer asked, how many people lost more publicly than John McCain? His two losses while running for President, and of course the losses he suffered in Vietnam. It was those losses that made him who he was, and his overcoming of those losses, that made him a winner.

I listened to the eulogies delivered by Presidents Bush and Obama, Vice President Biden and Meghan McCain. Meghan's might have been the most powerful eulogy I had heard since the one Princess Diana's brother gave for her at Westminster Abbey.  She was criticized for shots at the President, but she never mentioned him by name. And even if she had, as far as I'm concerned, she had every right to, $hit, she had the obligation to.

For if anyone had ever questioned MY father's service to our country the way Trump questioned her father's, I wouldn't have been as classy.

Did he deserve a week long farewell? I don't know, but on the other hand, it's not like he ran out of folks looking to pay their respects. Again, you didn't have to agree with everything he did because I didn't. I still think he would have been a good President.  I'm sorry I didn't get to see him in the Oval Office.

And I'm sorry to see him go.


TENNIS: Bad Behavior:

I admit, I was one of those people who got caught up on the Jimmy Connors bandwagon during his 1991 run at the US Open. He was a pisser.

During one of his matches, right as he was about to serve and the place was quiet, some idiot yelled "Jimmy!" at the top of his lungs, Connors turned around and yelled WHAAAT?" at the top of his.

My dad and I were at a Met game during one of his matches that year, and maybe it's my old age playing tricks on me, but I can swear that I heard the crowd at Louis Armstrong Stadium from my seat at Shea. It helped that the Mets were a zillion games out of first place and playing in front of 40,000 empty seats.

On Labor Day, which happened to be Jimbo's 39th birthday, he faced young Aaron Krickstein. When a call went against him, Connors went bat$h-t.

"You're a bum!" he screamed at the chair umpire, "I'm out here, busting my butt at 39 years old and you're calling that?" When the umpire told him  it was clearly out, Connors yelled back "Very clear my butt!" He called the same official "an abortion" which to me went way over the line. he should have been docked points right there. But even at that, I have to admit, the man put on a show.

So maybe Serena Williams has a point when she says there's a double standard for women mouthing off at the officials. Maybe Connors, and John McEnroe and the rest of those guys should have been punished for acting like jacka$$es. I confess, I don't watch much tennis nowadays, so I don't know if Roger Federer or Rafael Nadal pop off that much.

Problem is, I can't feel too bad for Serena. To me, she's no victim. Far from it.

She's acted like a brat before, once threatening to shove a ball down the f-cking throat of an official. That official was a female BTW. Another time she blasted an official at the 2011 US Open Finals calling him a hater.

And where were the calls for women's lib when her a$$hole father, Richard was insulting Martina Hingis and Lindsay Davenport amongst others.

I have no problem with the higher ups in tennis coming down on these obnoxious crybabies, on both the men's and women's side. But Serena Williams trying to turn her bad behavior into a racist/sexist victimization thing is an example of someone pissing on you and telling you it's raining.

TECHNOLOGY: There's an App for that?

I have no way of proving this, but I'm thinking that the people who are willing to drop 9 bucks a month for Mike Francesca's new app, are the same folks who shelled out $50.00 to see Charlie Sheen's "Violent Torpedo of Truth Tour" at Radio City Music Hall back in 2011. At least for your 50 clams, you got to see Charlie's two hot "goddesses".

To paraphrase George Costanza, paying for Fatso's app is like paying for parking and sex. Why pay for something when if you apply yourself a little, you can get it for free. In this case, it's a matter of turning on your radio at a certain time.

No, no, no they say, if you have this app, you can get Mike's take on breaking news as soon as it happens. So if "the Pope" happens to be sitting on his Vatican throne when Mickey Calloway gets canned, you can get a report right there from Mike's bathroom.

Sign me up!

I have held to my vow to never listen to him again, I get my news about him from the papers. (I'll admit I kind of went back on my vow not to read the Daily Snooze, I will occasionally read Bob Raissman's Sunday column). I can't imagine anyone paying any amount to listen to that bull$hit artist. But then again, I didn't think anyone would pay to watch Charlie Sheen chain-smoke on stage either.


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It's a sad state of affairs when the most talked about athlete in your sport is a man who hasn't played a minute in your league in over three seasons. That's all I have to say this year about Colin Kapernick.




Then there is Hurricane Florence, or as I like to call it, the 18th annual Storm of the Century.

Last November 3 was the day we buried my father in law, it was 75 degrees.

This past June 3, was Timmy's final lacrosse game of the season. Tara and I froze our a$$es off.

I don't mean to go Al Gore on yo a$$, but is there anyone out there still denying climate change?

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Finally, I want to again thank everybody for their love and support during this horrible time for our family. The outpouring of love has been overwhelming. As of this writing $25,552 has been raised for Reading with Rebecca. Our family is blessed to have such amazing people as friends.

Thank you so much.


and Have a Great Week

Weekly Mail September 11 Special 2018

                                                  September 11, 2018



17 years on, this is what comes to mind as we remember that horrible day....



The call came in a little before 10 that Tuesday night, October 30th, 2001.

7 weeks earlier, the unthinkable had happened. In the weeks that followed that deadly day September 11, there had been much pain and sorrow, but also much pride and patriotism. It was a strange, uneasy time, especially here in New York.

A perfect example of all this had just taken place about an hour before this call I was waiting for. President Bush, before Game 3 of the World Series at Yankee Stadium had thrown out the first pitch. Part of me watched nervously. Nobody ever thought the Twin Towers could be brought down, much less by airplanes, who was to say that someone out of a crowd of almost 60,000 people couldn't take a shot at the President? It seems crazy now, it wasn't back then.

Yet when Bush fired that pitch right down Broadway from the pitching rubber nonetheless, it didn't really matter what you thought of him, that was a moment. Pride and patriotism, yet fear and sorrow, he would have been nowhere near the Bronx that night if not for 9/11.

But the call I got a little before 10 that night, two of my best friends had just welcomed their baby boy to the world.  It was the best news I had gotten since that awful day. A light in a dark time.

Several weeks later, Christmas day in fact, I was standing in back of St. Mary's Church after communion during Christmas morning Mass, when another longtime friend introduced me to his weeks old baby daughter. One of those moments you just don't forget.

These two kids are going to be 17 this year. And in June, they are graduating from high school.

At a time where hope was in limited supply, these two awesome kids came into the world. I know other kids were born at that time, but these are the two that I know.

At times during those first few weeks, I thought it kind of sad that these babies were going to grow up in a world where something like 9/11 was not only possible, but something they'd probably read about in a history book. But there was also hope, that it would be people like these kids, that they could make the world better. (Feel free to cue the Whitney Houston music if you'd like)

After the summer my family and I had, it's tough talking about hope and light. But I find myself looking towards my son, and my nieces and nephew, and the kids of my family and friends and I know that's where hope lies. Politicians can promise hope and change and making the country great again and all that jazz, but lets face it, that story never changes. Just the names.

A whole new downtown skyline has risen from where the Twin Towers stood. Good things have happened since that day.

But to me, the most important thing is that this coming June, a bunch of kids born that year are going to graduate. And are about to make their mark in this world. And there may be rotten apples in the bunch.

But not the ones that I know. They'll make us proud. I'll bet the farm on that.


God Bless those we lost that day, and those they left behind.
God Bless the ones who are going to make things better.
and God Bless America.




Weekly Mail returns on Sunday