Weekly Mail Saturday Night Special

Hi Everybody:

Sending this out tonight so that I can do a more light-hearted blog for my annual Super Bowl Halftime post.




What I wrote last Sunday about the death of Kobe Bryant dealt more with what was going through my mind than actual reporting. I realize that besides Kobe and his daughter, 7 other people died in that horrible crash.

Ara Zobayan was the pilot and by all accounts an experienced and well respected one at that.  The helicopter was taking Kobe's daughter Gianna to her basketball game, and two of her teammates died with her. Alyssa Altobelli and her parents, college baseball coach John Altobelli and his wife Keri. Another teammate Payton Chester also died with her mom Sarah.
Christina Mauser was a coach at Gianna's school.

5 families torn apart. In an instant.

That's the thing isn't it? Just how quickly a routine day can turn tragic. Three girls on their way to play a basketball game on a Sunday afternoon. Of course because one of the people who died was one of the greatest players in the history of basketball, it becomes worldwide news.

But whether you are a hard core hoops fan or not, this is still a heartbreaking story. Because we can all relate, especially if you have kids.  We are constantly running our kids to sports, scouts, martial arts, dancing etc. Sure most of us are driving and not taking a helicopter, but still it hits home.

Without knowing who the other victims were, it hit me as a sports fan because I knew how much Kobe Bryant meant to the world of basketball. But reading about the other people on that helicopter, it hit me as a dad, it hit me as someone who lost a niece not much younger than Gigi Bryant and her friends.

It hit me as a human being. That's how it hit us all.



Another issue that has come up since last Sunday was how to broach the rape allegation against Kobe Bryant from 2003. I deliberately didn't mention it on Sunday, I felt it was neither the time or place. I stand by that.

I also realize that you can't talk about all the great things Kobe did for his sport and not mention this.

I'm not going to speculate on what happened because we don't know what happened that day in Aspen. At best, he cheated on his wife, which is detestable enough. At worst, he committed a crime that should have sent him to jail.

The fact of the matter is that he wasn't charged, and that he settled with the young woman out of court on her civil lawsuit. That's all we have to go on.

From where I'm sitting, he seemed to reassess his life and rededicate himself to his marriage and his kids. I do believe there is something to be said for that. And that's where I will leave that.



It's funny....as I was watching all the coverage last week, Timmy was asking if we could watch something else. Even when I came home from work on Monday, he was asking, "Are they going to talk about Kobe again?"

As I've mentioned before, that's kind of how I felt in December of 1980, when the Iran Hostage Crisis and the transition between the Carter and Reagan administrations, all went to the back-burner when John Lennon was killed. The shock and the pall that came over everything was eerily similar, as was seeing the impeachment trial, the election, and the Super Bowl all kind of get pushed off the top of the newscast/sportscast.

Now I'm not really sure it's fair to compare John Lennon to Kobe Bryant, but I also learned that you can't tell folks how to feel. I write what I feel, but I know that we all feel differently. Maybe the comparison is unfair, but you look at the outpouring of grief from all over the world, some of the biggest toughest men you'd ever see openly crying, the tributes from basketball arena's to hockey rinks to the Grammy's to the Super bowl. If you watched all that and not realized how much Kobe Bryant transcended his profession, you're not seeing the whole picture.

It's tough to transition from life and death to other things going on in sports, but here we go.....

Jeter to the Hall of Fame- Derek Jeter fell one vote shy of being the second person in history to be unanimously voted into Cooperstown. That didn't seem to bother most people, but I'm sure if I was a Yankee fan it would have bothered me because I let stupid $h-t like that annoy me.

I can tell you that if I was a HOF voter, I would have absolutely put Jeter on my ballot. He is one of the main reasons my Mets didn't win the 2000 World Series. I can still remember standing in the Beach Club on 116th Street in Rockaway that October night in 2001 when he made that play against the A's in the playoffs. (You KNOW the play I'm talking about)  When you needed a big hit, he got it. Maybe more than any player I've ever seen. He was in a word, clutch.

But where would you rank him in terms of all time shortstops? My father in law used to always say, Mariano was the best ever at his position. Think about it, as great as Willie Mays was, you could argue that he wasn't even the best center fielder in New York, with Mickey Mantle across the Harlem River. Was Derek Jeter the best SS of all time? The best of his era? You can make a case for best of his era, but it's not a slam dunk.

Again, he belongs in Cooperstown, only an idiot would say otherwise. But I wouldn't get myself worked up because he didn't get in unanimously. (well I might because that's what I do-I mean normal people).

Speaking of the Hall of Fame...


Eli Retires- It sucks that in his last season in the NFL, that Eli Manning was a backup. The good news was he got to play one final game-a win over the Dolphins, in front of an adoring crowd at met Life Stadium.

I believe Eli picked the perfect time to hang them up. Maybe he could have helped another team get to the playoffs, but now he goes out a forever Giant, and an icon here in New York. The only QB we've had to start and win 2 Super Bowls, both against the hated Patriots, including one year where the Pats went into the Super Bowl undefeated.

He'll be elected to the Hall of Fame. But can it be argued he doesn't really deserve it?

Take the two Super Bowl runs away after all, and his career was merely very good. His record as Giants starter was 111-103. especially after Super Bowl 46, there were a bunch of losing seasons in there.

But there's a QB in Canton who had a much worse W-L record than Eli, who threw many more interceptions than touchdowns, and who only won a single Super Bowl.

But that one Super Bowl that Joe Namath won only changed the NFL forever.

And those two Super Bowl's Eli won were two of the most unforgettable upsets in football history, especially the first one.

As much as I believe the Hall of Fame should be reserved only for the greats, I also believe in something Mark Kreigel once said, ironically speaking of Namath.. "It's called the Hall of Fame, not the Hall of Stats."

I always felt Roger Maris should have been in there. He was baseball's all time single season HR leader for 37 years, and still quite possibly the last one to hit 61 HR's without using PED's. When Maris had the record, it was considered the greatest record in sports. That has to count for something.

I also believe that Paul Henderson should be in the Hockey Hall of Fame. He was a very good, not great player. But he scored what many Canadians believe to be the greatest goal in their country's history.. the series winning goal in the 1972 Canada-USSR Summit Series. Statistically, he's nowhere near Grtezky, Lemieux, Howe etc. But he's just about as famous as they are.



Eli's going to Canton. And he deserves it.



Impeachment Hearings- Luckily for me, the trial started at 1 PM EST, coinciding with my lunch hour.  So I got to see some of the shenanigans.

Ken Starr was one of President Trump's defense attorneys, and I actually heard him say that we have become an impeachment nation. yes, he was lamenting that we were having another impeachment, as if it was someone else's report that triggered the last impeachment trial we had here in Merica.

It reminded me of the Denis Leary skit in which he was astounded by the fact that Keith Richards was doing anti-drug commercials. (You did all the drugs Keith-we have to wait till you die and smoke your ashes) Ken Starr thinks we shouldn't have any more impeachment trials. Go Figure

Then there was Alan Dershowitz, who claimed that even if Captain Orange was bribing the Ukraine with taxpayer money to get dirt on the Biden's, it wasn't wrong because Trump figured he was doing us all a favor by getting himself a second term.

"Every public official that I know believes that his election is in the public interest and, mostly, you're right — your election is in the public interest," Dershowitz said. "If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment."

Trump must have done the Ickey Shuffle when he heard that one!    Ickey Shuffle


The question and answer part of the trial was a joke. As CNN described it, it was the equivalent of putting a ball on the tee. I'm sure there were some good questions in there, but the ones I heard produced scripted predictable answers.

I watched as much of the trial as I could on my lunch hour, listened to some of it on my way home from work and watched some of it when I got home. Look, I am by no means defending the Republicans here, but I do understand the argument that we can't make impeachments standard operating procedure.  They need to be held in cases of gross misconduct, criminal or otherwise. I hope upon hope that I don't see another one of these for a long time.

Having said that, bribing another country with aid money that was congressional approved in order to get dirt on a political opponent in my mind is definitely an impeachable offense. And as much as I don't want impeachment trials every four years, I sure as hell don't want politicians using foreign governments as campaign operatives.

Mitt Romney and Susan Collins were the only two Republicans who voted in favor of witnesses. Gotta say something about Mitt: When he ran against Obama, I thought he was a bit out of touch and really only cared about people as wealthy as he. And that still may be the case, but he also said some things during that campaign that made a lot of sense, like for example that Russia was our number one geopolitical enemy. As governor of Massachusetts he had a health care system that was similar to Obamacare. (Even as he ran as an opponent of Obamacare) I'm not saying he should have replaced a 2nd Obama term, but I don't think he would have been a bad President. He sure as shit would have been better than who we have now.

So now it looks like this all wraps up Wednesday afternoon at 4 PM, with a final Senate vote. I'm just glad it will be after the State of the Union address. We don't need to hear Trump use the night he updates the nation on where we stand to crow about how he got over on everybody.



Here are the links to my breakdown of the Democratic race for President and the Primary/Caucus Calendar, which I will update as necessary.

pointers-and-predictions-2020



2020 Schedule and Results


Tomorrow night, we'll have our Super Bowl Halftime Edition.


Have a Good Night.