Weekly Mail January 22, 2023

 

Madison Square Garden-January 16, 2023

Hey:

So for Christmas, we got Timmy tickets to see the Knicks play on Martin Luther King Day. It was almost perfect symmetry. 

My freshman year in high school, I went to the Knicks game on MLK Day. I went after practice with my teammates Gary Siano and Tom (TC) Kelly. Rick Pitino was in his first year coaching. I think we paid 12 bucks and we bought the tickets that day. 

35 years later, the tickets were more than a bit more expensive and we had to buy them well in advance, but I have to say it was a lot of fun. We were sitting right behind the camera guys, so that should give you an idea of where we were in relation to the court. I mean we were about 30 rows up, but right at the half court. 

The only problem is that the seats were really cramped. I realize part of that is that I'm not as svelte as I was back in the day, but still I felt like I was in a sardine can. We spent the entire third quarter out in the corridor having our snacks and drinks. 

This game happened to go into OT, which was necessitated when Tim's favorite player, RJ Barrett, went coast to coast and dunked the ball at the buzzer, sending the Garden into a frenzy. They probably could have done the same thing to put the game into double OT, but Jalen Brunson hoisted up a wing and a prayer that bounced off the rim. 

More Basketball: On Sunday, I went  into Queens to see my niece and goddaughter, Rachel, play for Our Lady of Hope 3rd grade team. That was a riot. The ref wasn’t sure whether to call violations or let them play through, at that age, they pretty much walk and double dribble on every play. But watching them give it their all even if they’re not quite sure what they are doing is a lot of fun. I miss those CYO days, I really do. 

Rachie pulled down a couple nice rebounds. She also runs the floor well. Just a fun way to spend a Sunday afternoon. 

THE END: For the Giants

Was the Giants 38-7 trouncing at the hands of the Eagles a case of the Eagles being a far superior team, or of a Giants team not showing up. It’s hard for me to answer, since I’m not a die-hard Giants fan, but from where I was sitting, it just seems like the Eagles just played an unbelievable game on both sides of the ball. 

I thought the game would be more competitive, and I kept holding out hope that the Giants would figure out a way to stop Philly while getting their offense on track, but that just never happened. Still the Giants fans that I talked to on Sunday, while disappointed, were still on the whole, happy for the season they had. And trust me, with my team now playoff-less for a dirty dozen years, I’m glad the Giants fans can appreciate what they accomplished this year. 

The Bills finally winning the Super Bowl this year would have been an amazing feel good story in light of what happened to Damar Hamlin. But I learned a long time ago the NFL isn’t about feel good stories. That’s why weasels like Bill Belichick are the ones who win the Super Bowls. I’m not surprised the Bengals won today. Just hope Patrick Mahomes legs hold out so that at least the AFC Championship game will be competitive. 

This is a quick one this week. Really not much going on. 

Hope you are all having a good 2023 so far.

Stay Safe

and Have a Great Week

Weekly Mail January 15, 2023

 

Hey Everyone:

                                                                   Gallagher

Oceanside

5:11.67 

Sunday morning, I headed back into the city. Timmy was running at the Amory on 168th Street. 

They were re-doing the Amory when I was in high school, so I never got to run or jump there. My father ran there back in the 60's when it really was an old armory. "Just an old wooden floor we could run on" is how he described it.

Now?

Now I had to by a ticket and have an usher show me to my seat. I really felt like I was in a smaller version of Madison Square Garden. There's a jumbotron in the middle of the ceiling and scoreboards all over the place. They could have helped us old folks by installing an escalator or two. I had to climb four steep flights of stairs to get to my seat, which I realize complaining about that while watching kids having to run miles is a bit rich. Getting old sux. 

As for Tim, he ran the 1600 in 5 minutes 11.67 seconds. That was good for 56th out of 91, but 3rd out of 11 freshmen. (and 2nd in his heat)  It was also a new personal record (PR) for him. 

He was more excited to be on the jumbotron than he was getting his new PR. 

Tim finishing the 1600 with the Jumbotron in the background

Thank you for indulging in my Dad Brag. Now onto the week that was..

BASEBALL: Carlos Correa, we hardly knew ya!

I made the mistake on Monday night/Tuesday morning of checking my FB newsfeed. There were two stories, one right after the other. The first was a Post story saying that Carlos Correa was in serious discussions with the Twins. Right underneath, was a post from The 7 Line, perhaps the best organized Met fan page on the web, posting a tweet from someone named John Moncone, who said that the Mets and Correa had come to terms. 

By lunchtime on Tuesday, Correa was a Twin. a 6 year $200 million deal, which, while far from chump change, was a huge drop from where the Giants, and then the Mets had been. 

Moncone ended up with Carton and Roberts on Tuesday evening, of course not revealing where he got his bad intel, and he was getting roasted on Twitter. Again, I have no idea who he is even, but we once again saw the "get it first" rather than the "get it right" monster rear it's ugly head again. 

As for the actual deal itself, I'm coming at this in two ways: The first way is to think this through rationally..... A 13 year contract for anyone over the age of 25 is just begging for trouble. At best, you are looking at 5 years of a player on the downside. I suppose if you win a title or two while he's in his prime, you can ride those years out, but still, that's a lot of dead money.  Also, the deal he ended up signing was at half the years and almost half the money he was first getting. That has to raise at least a couple of red flags does it not? There is definitely a very strong case to be made that this could end up being one of those, "best deals are the ones you don't make" kind of things. 

But then there is the raw emotion of it. That visceral feeling of anger that I'll admit I felt when I heard that Correa wasn't coming to the Mets. The best way to describe it was pure embarrassment. 

I think that comes from the way that this all went down. 4 days before Christmas, we thought the Giants trash was going to be our treasure. There was no way someone as smart and successful as Steve Cohen would go out and pledge that kind of $$$ on a player he didn't believe was 100% right? 

Then on Christmas Eve came word that the Mets were having the same issue with Correa's ankle that the Giants did. But we were all assured that the Mets would work this out, probably before the New Year. 

New Year's Day came and still no deal. Correa's agent, Scott Boras would work this out we were told. He had worked out deals with injury language for some of his other players. And it was in both Boras and Cohen's best interests to stay in each other's good graces. So there would definitely be a deal, right?

Right?

As the days went on and still no deal, the frustration was starting to build, especially when we kept hearing how a deal was immanent. So that when we finally heard that the Mets deal fell through and all the Mets could do was release a one sentence statement, I just lost it. 

I told (Razor) Ray McGarvey and Karl (the Ace) Ludwig that I thought that these days were behind us.  That this crap was supposed to end the day Cohen took over the team from the Wilpons right? 

It just felt embarrassing. 

Not to mention that I feel we are no better off than we were at the end of the season, and the Phillies and Braves have both improved. All the moves we made were in relation to players we let go of. We still need another bat. 

Like maybe Carlos Correa? 

We still have a month till pitchers and catchers and its a long season. And again, this could turn out to be a good thing, if Correa's ankle really isn't right. 

It just had a very Same Old Mets vibe to it. And I hate that. 

POLITICS: Biden's Classified Documents

As I was getting ready to add my $0.02 to this story, there was another report of another classified document that President Biden had that he wasn't supposed to. 

Classified files were found in an office he was using as head of the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, a think-tank founded by the University of Pennsylvania. Biden's lawyers came across the documents while they were packing up the office. They immediately turned the documents over the the National Archives. 

Another set of documents were discovered in the garage at the President's Wilmington, DE home. And then another single document was found at the house. 

Here's the bottom line from where I am sitting, until it is discovered that Biden isn't cooperating with the National Archives, hasn't returned any documents that he isn't supposed to have, or has passed information off somewhere he isn't supposed to, then all the carping from the right wing is moot. Kevin McCarthy, the puppet like Speaker of the House saying that this is a double standard. 

Really?

Captain Orange had 15 boxes with a total of 184 documents, 25 of them were labeled Top Secret. It was the National Archives that discovered the documents were missing and requested their return, only to rebuffed by Trump, who made the cockamamie argument that he (and he alone) could de-classify documents. Hence the FBI raid on Mar-A-Lago. 

Biden has not nearly the amount that Orange had, self-reported that he had the documents. and returned them promptly. It's not the same thing, it's not even close. 

Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed a special counsel to investigate this matter. Let's see how soon President Biden tells Garland, "You're supposed to be working for me." 

OBITUARIES

Adam Rich- (1968-2023) This happened after I had mostly had last week's blogpost done, but as the week wore on and I read more, the worse I felt about this. 

Eight in Enough ran from 1977-1981, but I mostly caught in in reruns on Channel 11 back in the late 80's. Even as a kid, I felt like all the Bradford's did were argue. The Brady's always wrapped up their dirty laundry in 30 minutes and got to eat dessert put together by Alice the housekeeper.

Rich played Nicholas, the youngest (by far) child of Tom and Joan Bradford's 8 kids. The "change of life" baby as it were. As is often the case when you are a child actor, especially playing someone so young, you get typecast and it gets harder to get roles as an adult. Some may say that Rich's issues with drugs and booze kept him from regular work, others will say that his inability to get work led to his struggles with substance abuse. 

It seems now that more is being done nowadays to protect child actors from falling into these issues. Still it always saddens me when kids that I grew up watching struggle like this. 

And what's even sadder in Rich's case, is that he still had that baby face didn't he? I mean even looking at the recent pictures of him, with less hair and a graying goatee, I still felt like he was like everyone's little brother, even though he was 5 years older than me. 

Lisa Marie Presley: (1968-2023) When I heard Lisa Marie had died after going into cardiac arrest at age 54, my first reaction was that it was the end of a short sad life. 

Nobdoy should ever have to bury their child, which Lisa Marie did 2 years ago when her 27 year old son committed suicide. That's pain that will never go away.

But to have that happen after losing your father at age 9, and then to have to live in his memory and shadow for the rest of your life? That could not have been easy. 

I remember around the 10 year anniversary of Elvis Presley's death, there was all this talk about Elvis actually still being alive. There was a picture going around of Elvis actually watching his own funeral procession in Memphis. I always shook my head at that crap, but also thought what must his poor daughter think of all these people? 

I know there are people who will answer that question by suggesting that she laughed and/or cried all the way to the bank. Elvis' estate raked in over $100 million in 2022. Thousands of people make a pilgrimage to Graceland every year. Elvis makes a lot more money dead than he ever did alive. 

Still I'd like to think she'd give that all back to have her father watch her grow up, and all that and then some to have her son back. I just couldn't help but think she died of a broken heart. And that really is the worst way to go. 

It was touching to see the outpouring of love for Lisa Marie this week. She deserved the love. I just hope she felt it when she was alive too. 

RIP

TRIVIA QUESTION: Can you name all 8 Bradford kids? I only got 5 of them myself and had to look the other three up. If you can name them all, congrats. If you can name them in age order, I'll be doubly impressed. I'll also suggest you should probably get out more.  Answer Below

NFL PLAYOFFS: Big Win for Big Blue:

I listen to Boomer and Gio in the morning on the FAN, and Gio (Gregg Giannotti) is a big Vikings fan who has been saying ever since it was assumed the Giants and Vikings would meet in the opening round of the playoffs that the Giants would win. He roots for the Vikings like I root for my teams.... hoping to win, while realizing we're probably going to lose. 

And it pretty much played out the way he thought it would. Minnesota's defense doing little, and the offense not doing enough. Daniel Jones, who many Giants fans were looking to run out of town before the season started, played a solid game. 

Next game is against the Eagles on Saturday in Philly. We've seen this movie before folks, I know the names are different, but Seinfeld used to say, the laundry is the same. 

That's all I got folks.

Stay Safe

and Have a Great Week 

Trivia Answer: David, Mary, Joanie, Susan, Nancy, Elizabeth, Tommy, and Nicholas

For the record, I got all the boys plus Mary and Joanie. 

 

Susan, Elizabeth, David, Tommy, Mary

Joanie, Tom, Nicholas, Abby, Nancy

Weekly Mail January 8, 2023

 

And we're back.....

Happy New Year all. I hope your holidays were fun and relaxing. 

Also hope you enjoyed our Christmas Eve special, which I really enjoyed putting together, and also interacting with many of you about it. 

I tried to put together a year end special for last week, but I really kind of half-a$$ed it, and looking over it, I really didn't think it was that good. So I put it in the virtual circular file. 

But I will say this looking back on 2022.... as hard as life could be, as much as the name calling and finger pointing can bring one down, as we New Yorkers marched through another year in sports where not one of our teams made it past the conference finals of their sports (though 2 of them did*), it was, for me personally a very satisfying year. I got to watch 2 of my nieces and one of my nephews make 1st communion, I got to return to my old high school and catch up with former coaches and teammates for the first time in years, I spent two consecutive weekends in December celebrating birthdays of two of my longest dearest friends. Tara and I spent an awesome Sunday afternoon in July on a Tiki-Bar boat with her sisters and cousins, that felt like a getaway to the Caribbean. 

And  most importantly, I got to celebrate Timmy, watching him grow as a track runner, then watching him graduate from middle school, and now seeing him in his first year of high school, and doing an amazing job so far. To watch him become the person he is becoming is just a privilege. Sorry for the dad brag, but I'm sure you all feel the same way about watching your kids growling up too.   

And now the calendar has turned to 2023, which means a whole bunch of us (since many of you are people I went to school with) will sometime this year be reaching the half century mark. Last week I saw the Knicks were playing in San Antonio, and there was a big 50 at half-court of AT& T Center, commemorating the Spurs 5oth anniversary of moving from Dallas. In the corner of the 50, 1973 was written in smaller numbers. I'm sorry, when someone says 50 years ago, I'm still thinking Kennedy assassination (either one), or the British Invasion, or something like that. I'm still not used to 50 years ago being in the 1970's. 

But here we are. And hopefully it will be fun. 

So as grateful as I am for all the blessings I have in my life right now, we'll get back to doing what we do best here at Weekly Mail...

Complaining.

You know, I was getting to the point where I thought the Jets would win a playoff game before House Republicans selected a Speaker. 

We'll start there…..

POLITICS- The Battle for the Speaker

And it was a battle, almost literally a physical battle. 

We'll start from the beginning..... On Tuesday, 434 members of the new House of Representatives met in the House chamber to elect the new Speaker of the House, the second person in line of succession to the Presidency (after the Vice President). 

 Since he was the minority leader when the Democrats controlled the House, it was assumed that Kevin McCarthy of California would succeed Nancy Pelosi as House Speaker. 

However, because of these crazy times we live in, there was a group of about 20 Republicans who didn't want McCarthy to be the Speaker. And while I wasn't thrilled at the prospect of him being Speaker either, I took one look at the list of Republicans opposing him and began to think he was perhaps, the lesser of two evils. 

Republicans often talk about "the squad." 4 Democrats, all women, all minorities. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez- NY, Ilhan Omar-MN, Rashida Tlaib-MN, and Ayanna Pressley-MA. (According to Wikipedia, the squad has two more members, their first male member Jamal Bowman-NY and Cori Bush-MO.) 

I've had my issues with AOC and Omar, but there are 6 House GOP members I consider much more  despicable.... Matt Gaetz-FL, Lauren Bloebert-CO, Paul Gosar-AZ, Jim Jordan-OH,  Scott Perry-PA, and the congresswoman from the 14th congressional district of GA. 4 of the 6, were considered Never McCarthy voters. Jordan voted for McCarthy, and pleaded with the others to do the same, even when Jordan himself had been put in for nomination. 

And GA-14 was solidly behind McCarthy, which I'm guessing was less about her finding religion all of the sudden and more because he promised her a choice of plum committee assignments. 

And I imagine that's what this whole shebang was really all about. These 20 clowns not getting what they want. Never mind what was good for the country. 

I watched the first couple of votes on Tuesday, and the second vote on Wednesday. By Thursday, it was like watching the same episode of a bad show. 

On Friday, when McCarthy began to get some of the holdouts to flip their votes, he told CNN on the way out for dinner that he was going to elected on the next ballot. 

That was 10 o'clock on Friday night, and TBH, I had really given up on it. I was following the tally on my phone, and when McCarthy once again fell short, I turned on the TV, if for nothing else, I thought it might cure my insomnia. 

Instead what I got was a verbal spat between McCarthy and Gaetz, followed by someone actually needing to restrain Mike Rogers-AL from taking a swing at Gaetz! I should have found that appalling, again, this is our freakin government here, the people supposed to be serving us, representing us and they are pulling this crap? The Vice McMahon-isation of our government continuing right before our eyes.

Instead I kind of found myself laughing. I know, it's terrible, especially on the two year anniversary of the terrorist attack against our Capitol, fueled, if not outright orchestrated by these same members of the House who were preventing McCarthy, who was at first rightfully outraged by the events of 1/6/2021, but did nothing whatsoever to bring anyone responsible to justice, from becoming Speaker. 

They then took a vote to leave for the weekend, which I found myself sitting there rooting for them to vote again. I'm one of those, "lock the door and throw away the key till a deal gets done" kind of guys, especially when it involves Congress, who IMHO are already overpaid and underworked, and that applies to both sides of the aisle. 

At first the vote to adjourn passed 218-216, mostly along party lines (I mean FFS), but then Gaetz and McCarthy were in the aisle, as Larry David would say "making the nice".  Suddenly, McCarthy was running up to the front of the chamber with a red piece of paper like he had a note for the teacher signed Epstein's mother.

And lo and behold they were voting for the 15th time, and this time he got the votes. 

I'm not sure what Gaetz and McCarthy discussed in the aisle, maybe Gaetz was afraid someone else was going to roll up on him, but whatever the case may be, at 1:30 on Saturday morning, Kevin McCarthy was sworn in as the Speaker of the House of Representatives. 

We interrupt the complaints for a message of hope….

FOOTBALL: Damar Hamlin

I wasn't watching game Monday night, but right before I turned in, I saw a couple of cryptic Facebook messages, suggesting something was going on in Cincinnati between the Bills and Bengals. When I tuned in and saw players on both teams walking off the field, I really couldn't imagine what was going on. 

When I finally heard what had happened to Damar Hamlin, my heart went to my stomach. Unfortunately, I don't have to tell anyone here about heart tragedies. 

The ashen looks on the faces of the players, coaches and broadcasters.... just an awful feeling. And props to ESPN for how they handled everything. 

Thankfully Hamlin is awake and responsive and looks like he is going to be OK. God Bless the EMT’s that responded when this first happened and for the doctors and nurses who worked on him. 

And as awful as it was, this can now be said as he is on the mend.. in a week where we had Congresspeople fighting in the aisles of Capitol Hill, where division still rules the day, we had something all of us could really around. Black or White, Democrat or Republican, sports fan or not, there happened, wasn’t a soul in America who wasn’t pulling for this kid to pull through. I wish to God it didn’t take an almost tragedy for us to come together, but we take what we can get.  

 The End: 2022 Jets:

The Jets lost to the Dolphins 11-6 on Sunday. If ever there was a perfect ending to an imperfect season, that final score reflected just that. 

Watching the Jets implode last Sunday against the Seahawks, knocking them out of the playoffs and rendering the Dolphin game meaningless,  was obviously not surprising, but nonetheless a huge disappointment. If you had asked me in the beginning of the season would I be happy with 7 wins, a 3 win improvement from last year, I probably would been cool with it. 

But if you asked me if I would be happy with 7 wins, after starting out 7-4, watching Zach Wilson implode and watching a playoff berth slip away? Yeah, that I wouldn't have signed up for.

Well, that's what we ended up with didn't we. And as I sat there stewing, seeing the graphics about how they still own the longest playoff draught in the NFL, and by a large margin, I started thinking of scapegoats.

But who?

You want to get rid of Joe Douglas for whiffing on Wilson? OK, what about all the guys who he drafted who look they may be really good? Garrett Wilson, Sauce Gardner, Breece Hall (before he got hurt), those guys didn't draft themselves. He had a few decent picks in 2021 too, Zach Wilson notwithstanding. There's not much I want to thank Adam Gase for, but one thing he did, he put Joe Douglas on the Jets radar, and I still think that has been a net positive. I'm not ready to run him out of town yet. 

Robert Saleh? Yeah he made a few head scratching decisions, and his clock management needs some work, but I think those are things that improve with experience. What I look for is are the players still buying in. And I think these guys are. (Again, I didn't watch much of the game Sunday, so I don't know if they laid down, but I tend to think they didn't.) 

I still think if Mike White had gotten his ribs cracked by the Bills, the Jets would have beaten the Lions and the Jags. He played well enough to beat the Vikings. 

There are some who are saying that they should get rid of offensive coordinator Mike LaFleur.  And while I could live with that, I really think the team should stay the course. 

Something has to be done with Zach Wilson, he may turn out to be a great QB, but I'm not sure he can hack here in NY. The defense at times was lights out, but looked a bit leaky towards the end of the season. If they figure out how to plug those leaks in the offseason, we could finally end our long national playoff nightmare next year. 

We'll see. 

The Giants are in the playoffs, preparing for a rematch with the Vikings, to whom they lost a heartbreaker on Christmas Eve. For my friends and family who are Giants fans, I hope they go on a nice run. However, the thought of the Giants getting another parade down the Canyon of Heroes while I’m still waiting to see the Jets get to a Super Bowl, makes my stomach crawl. 

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

There were three notable deaths between Christmas and New Years.

1) Pele- Post columnist Mike Vaccaro made a Mt. Rushmore of athletes known all over the world. I was talking a couple weeks ago about how the World Cup is such a big deal because it reaches every corner of the planet. Pele was perhaps the most famous soccer player in the world, so it stands to reason that he be considered the most famous athlete in the world. (Vaccaro’s other three were Mohammad Ali, Tiger Woods, and Michael Jordan…. I agree with Ali and Tiger, Jordan’s highly debatable) 

Pele came and played two seasons for the New York Cosmos in the 70’s., and while his impact on the game here may not have been felt right away, we have now hosted a pair of World Cups, with another coming in 4 years, we have a two successful professional soccer leagues, (the MLS and the NWSL) and more kids are playing soccer now than ever before. Would that have happened if Pele hadn’t played those 2 seasons here in NY? A good argument can be made that it wouldn’t have.

2) Barbara Walters-There were tons of tributes for Walters, the pioneer for woman journalists. And the whose who of famous people she interviewed. Presidents, Popes, dictators, despots, and all types of celebrities. 

I think my favorite interview she did was with Jerry Seinfeld. After the usual Walters treatment, where he gave his life story, the happy and the sad, she started talking about some of his routines, like the laundry detergent ads that say they can get blood out your clothes (“Is this the most important thing you are thinking of if you are lying somewhere bleeding?”) and a couple of other lines. Walters looked at the camera and said “My crew here had strict orders not to laugh while this interview was going on, but I can see that this is not going to be possible, so by all means,…” and about 30 people off camera all burst out.  

3) Pope Benedict XVI- Had he not resigned the Papacy in 2013, his reign would have lasted 3 months short of 18 years, which still well short of his predecessor John Paul II 26 year reign, is still pretty impressive. 

I still don’t know why Benedict resigned, I’m sure we may never get a straight answer, but I will say this…I felt when he was elected, that he wouldn’t be as effective as JP II, because he seemed to be more of a policy wonk then a leader. And maybe that was the issue.

But when he came to NY in 2008, he was much more gregarious much more compassionate and quite frankly a lot friendlier than I thought. The  sermon he gave at Ground Zero was poignant and heartfelt. Believe me, I am much happier to have Pope Francis in charge, but Benedict XVI was much more than I thought he was going to be. 

RIP to All.

Happy New Year 

Stay Safe

and Have a Great Week