Weekly Mail, October 22, 2018

Hi:

I hope you enjoyed the look back at our trip overseas. If you haven't checked it out yet, I think you will enjoy it.

Anyway time to get back to the important issues of the day.



BASEBALL: Yankees Wrap up and World Series preview.


From the sounds of what I heard after the Yanks four game elimination at the hands of Boston, it was easy to forget that they had won 100 regular season games, and were eliminated by the team with baseball best record. I realize if this happened to the Mets, I'd be just as fired up, but since the Yankees aren't my team, I can be a bit more objective.

There have been whispers that Aaron Boone may not be up for the task of manging the team, and he may not be, but can we give him more than one season? Especially a season in which (I may have mentioned this before) the team won 100 games?

I understand that coming off last season, which was a pleasant surprise for the fans, and having acquired an all world talent like Giancarlo Stanton that expectations were sky high. And they should have been. But did they come up short, or was Boston just a better team?

After watching the Sawx dismiss the defending World Champion Astros in 5 games, I really believe they are just the best team in the game. The Yanks may be second, maybe even closer than what we've seen, but you have to give the devil their due.

And that sucks, because as much as the Yankees and some of their fans (and again you all know who you are) piss me off, the idea of the entire city of Boston strutting around after one of their teams wins yet another title this century, (10 as of this writing 5 by the Patriots, 3 by the Red Sox, one each from the Celtics and Bruins) makes my hair hurt. That can't happen. Not that the Dodgers are the feel good story of the year either. They are loaded with a-holes, the likes of Manny Machado, Yasiel Puig and Justin Turner. Still I gotta pull for them, I feel like I can hear them cheering in Boston already. LA is too far away for me to care.

As for my boys, this may come as a shock, but can you imagine that people are reluctant to want to be the Mets GM? You mean the idea of running a team in a city where they are considered second banana with a couple of meddlesome owners who are clueless about the sport isn't a job guys are banging down the door to get? Nahhh!



INTERNATIONAL MURDER: Journalist Killed in Turkey.

The murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi is a horrible story, really beyond my comprehension.  And there is nothing about it to make fun of. It's scary that something like this can happen in the world.

But some of the BS the Saudi's have been coming out with remind me of that loudmouth during the War in Iraq in 2003, Baghdad Bob they called him, the one who kept reporting that the war was going well for Saddam Hussein as he was being removed from power.

The Saudis say that it was a fistfight gone wrong? Really? I've seen many fistfights, even been in a few, but no fistfight I ever witnesses resulted in limbs being cut off. A black eye? A bloody nose? A fat lip? Check, check, check.

Dismemberment? Not that I can remember.

Just an awful awful story.



CELEBRITY BREAKUPS- Pete Davdison and Ariana Grande

I felt bad when I first heard this news, but to be honest, it's probably for the best.

Back in my single days, couplings like this would give me hope. If a dude that looks like that could date a gal that looks like THAT, maybe the rest of us had some hope.

But I'm not sure these two were built for the long haul anyway. Supposedly, she returned everything he gave her, except for a pet pig names Piggy Smalls. Was the world ready for these two to become 3 or more? I don't know.

But all kidding aside, Grande appears to be dealing with some PTSD from the shooting that took place at her Manchester, England concert in 2017, as well as the recent death of her ex-boyfriend. That's a lot for a young woman that age to deal with.

I thought Davidson had a couple of screws loose, but he has actually been treated for borderline personality disorder, so jumping head first into marriage is probably not in his best interests anyway. If it's any consolation to the SNL funnyman, David Spade, another SNL performer with less than marquee good looks, managed to date the likes of Heather Locklear, Lara Flynn Boyle and Carmen Electra amongst others. So hang in there bro. And keep the jokes coming. Chicks dig a solid sense of humour.


BOOK REVIEW: Greed and Glory: How Doc Gooden, Donald Trump, Lawrence Taylor, George Steinbrenner, Ed Koch, Rudy Giuliani and the Mafia Ruled New York in the 1980's
BY: Sean Deveney

Sean Deveney had written another book I enjoyed immensely: Fun City, which was about the 1969 Mets and Jets, and how their success helped propel Mayor John Lindsay to a re-election he probably didn't deserve.

That book was fun because I learned about things that happened a few years before I was born.
This book was fun because I learned about things that happened while I was alive, and either had forgotten about and/or was too young to understand.

He discussed Paul Castellano's unfortunate trip to Sparks steakhouse. He went into detail about the Parking Violations Bureau scandal that while it ultimately cost Ed Koch a 4th term as mayor, also saw several people jailed, and Queens Borough President Donald Manes commit suicide. Stanley Friedman, Bess Meyerson, all names I hadn't heard in years.

And here is something that I couldn't believe I couldn't remember.

When Leon Hess moved the Jets from Shea Stadium to the Meadowlands, he supposedly gave the city a window to come up with a plan for a new stadium for the Jets. Someone offered to build an 80,000 seat domed stadium right there in Flushing Meadow Park. There were two caveats that ultimately killed the deal. The builder wanted the season ticket holders to pay a lease on their seats. Nobody had ever heard of this practice before, now most football stadiums have them, (they are called PSL's-personal seat licenses). Leon Hess had no interest in doing that. He also had no interest in the dome being named after the builder, which was the other caveat.

No, the Jets were never going to play in the Trumpdome, neither was the team the builder owned, the New Jersey Generals, going to play there, because the city pretty much told Donald Trump to take a hike. That's one of a whole bunch of good stories in this book about the 1980's in New York, particularly in my home borough of Queens. This book was great. Highly recommended.

I think we have our first Auggies Wild book. Yep 5 auggies.

*******************************************************************************


Finally this week: In a year where it seems like there has been nothing but bad news, I got some more on Friday night, when I learned of the sudden death of one of my Post colleagues.

Elizabeth Ruby and I weren't close, I actually only met her a couple of times, but reading some of her Facebook posts, and the couple of conversations I had with her, the one thing she and I had in common was how much of a kick we got out of working at the Post.

It's going to be 15 years for me come November 6, the first day I walked into the Post's newsroom and watched how the paper was run. For those first few weeks, I was star struck. The paper I had been reading since I was a kid was now where I was working. I only got a couple of shifts at first, but I grabbed every shift I could, day or night, not only cuz I needed the $$$, but because I had never worked in a place quite like this. One of the copy editors said to me one time, "Every time I look up, it seems like you're here." He meant it as a compliment (I think)

And why wouldn't I be there as much as I could, it was the greatest show on earth.

The characters that made up the place you could write a book about. I come here once a week now, I've never had another gig like it.

Elizabeth was the same way. I just got the feeling talking to her and reading things she wrote, that she knew this wasn't like any other workplace. The great Zach Haberman once told me, "If working here stops being fun, it's time to go."  Not everybody who comes here understands that.

Elizabeth Ruby did. She died this week. 29 years old.

A shame.

Laura Italiano wrote a nice story in Saturday's paper.

https://nypost.com/2018/10/19/elizabeth-ruby-post-reporter-and-shining-light-dies-at-29/



Everybody please take care,

and Have a Great (rest of the) Week