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.
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.
Joanie, Tom, Nicholas, Abby, Nancy
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