Hi Everyone:
So yes, Blogger.com is saying that this is our 400th blogpost on Facebook since we re-launched back in 2015. When I started doing this again, I just took it week by week, not sure if I'd have the desire or the discipline to produce one every week. And while some weeks it's tough to put one together, when I do manage to get one published, it feels like an accomplishment. My hope here is still to make you smile, maybe make you think and even if I piss you off every once in a while, that's not the worst thing in the world.
This will be one of those weeks where I may do all three, since there is a lot going on. Some good, some bad and some sad.
GOOD:
Admittedly, I didn't follow this case gavel to gavel, nor did I immerse myself in the details of the case. Even with the evidence seemingly overwhelmingly against him, many felt he would figure out a way to beat the rap.
And of course, when the verdict came down and Captain Orange was convicted on all 34 counts against him, the case was rigged, it was Joe Biden's fault, (a criminal trial in NY was because of Biden's DOJ-when in doubt always blame Joe...or Hunter), the judge was corrupt and if they had moved the trial out of New York and into Mississippi or Alabama, then he would have gotten a fair trial.
Right.
I got a kick out of Trump bitching about the judge while reports were coming out that a Supreme Court Justice was flying an upside down American flag outside his home, and another flag associated with the January 6th terrorists was flown outside said justice's New Jersey summer home. Not to mention another Supreme Court justice's wife who actively interfered in the certification of the 2020 election. Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas are compromised judges. Judge Juan Merchan? Not so much.
The folks who are dying to put Orange back in office because he's the law-and-order President, now sound like the same folks who want to put him back in because Jesus sent him here to save us. The one thing I agree with Trump on was that Mother Teresa couldn't beat this rap.
No, if Mother Teresa f-cked a porn star and then paid her money not to not blab about it so that Mother Teresa's wife, who just gave birth to Mother Theresa's son, wouldn't find out about it, and also so that it wouldn't hurt Mother Teresa's chances of being elected President, and falsified documents to that effect, I don't think she would have beaten those charges.
And with all that, these Christian Conservatives believe that Trump was sent down from the Almighty.
And now the law-and-order crowd can't wait to try to put a convicted felon back in the White House.
You can't make it up.
BAD: Rangers Choke Job
I was considering waiting till next week after I had a chance to cool off and get over the embarrassment I'm feeling of having watched my hockey team lay down, but I can't imagine I'll feel any differently about it next week, so I may as well get it out of the way.
In his Sunday NY Post column, Post Ranger expert Larry Brooks wrote the following:
There's no shame to it. this wasn't last year's no show defeat to the devils. They left everything they had on the ice....
and
It's not everything, but it's not nothing, either.
Alas, Brooksie and I must have been watching different games. Game 1 was a clear no-show. Game 5 was a choke job, and Game 6, with their season on the line, they simply quit. How do you show up for an elimination game and practically get shut out?
For the second time in three years, the team's big 3, Artemi Panarin, Chris Kreider and Mika Zibanejad either wouldn't or couldn't, but definitely didn't produce when we needed them. Panarin scored a late goal on Saturday which I'm sure several of you are going to point to and say "See, he didn't give up"
Baloney, where was he for the first 59:00 minutes?
Mika has to go. He's a one trick pony. Once team's figure out that his only play is to shoot that one-timer from the left circle, he gets shut down. It happened during the Tampa series two years ago and it happened again against the Panthers. His giveaway in Game 4 led to the Blake Wheeler penalty in OT that led to the game winning power play goal for Florida. And there were even times during the regular season when he disappeared. That's forgivable if you show up in the playoffs. He didn't. Time to send him packing.
Panarin had a monster regular season, the fact that he didn't finish in the top 3 for the Hart Trophy was an injustice in itself, but once again he was nowhere to be found after the first round of the playoffs. For the money he is getting, that's inexcusable. I wanted him traded last year. He needs to go now.
Kreider has been here a long time, he’s given us a ton of great games and memories. His performance in Game 6 of the Hurricanes series would have been remembered as an all timer. Now it won’t be remembered at all. Another conference final in which he disappeared. There is a part of me that would love to see him finish his career here, but another part of me says we’ll never win with him here. He folded like a cheap suit again. It’s getting harder to root for him.
Jacob Trouba has been a bust. The Panthers pushed the Rangers around, and Trouba was supposed to be the guy to prevent that from happening. Instead he took a bunch of stupid penalties, tripping, hooking etc. You take a penalty because you gave a guy a hard hit, that’s one thing. But he took lazy penalties. Really just a waste of a player. At the very least, he can’t be the captain anymore.
The list of guys I would keep is shorter than the ones I want to get rid of. Igor obviously as he was the reason we didn’t get swept. Vincent Trocheck’s job was to win face-offs and provide secondary scoring. He did his job. Alexis Lafrenire keeps getting better and better and is fulfilling his billing as a number one draft pick. Adam Fox played hurt, Braden Schneider tried, Barclay Goodrow and Ryan Lindgren are warriors.
The rest of them? Time to go.
5 goals in the last 3 games. Two of them were last minute meaningless goals. Losing Game 5 on home ice, then throwing in the towel for Game 6? That’s a disgrace.
It’s not everything, but it’s not nothing either.
Bullshit.
The President’s Trophy is the most useless award in sports. It means nothing. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a fool.
Joe Beningo asked after the Carolina series, “If not this year, then when?” It’s a great question. A co-worker at the Post said to me “I’ve been a fan since (the early 60’s). Maybe I should just be happy I got the one in 94.”
I guess that’s how I have to look at it too. But I will say this. If I’m going to lose, let me lose with a team that cares, a team with some guts. Not a team of millionaires that don’t give a shit.
That’s what I saw Saturday night. And it was embarrassing.
SAD
RIP: Bill Walton (1952-2024)
I was saddened and to be honest a little surprised at the news of Bill Walton's passing last Monday.
I knew he was battling prostate cancer, but I think there is a part of you that when you see someone who is as full of life as was Walton, you think they can overcome anything.
As I wrote on Facebook this week, so many people who saw him play in college say he was the best they ever saw. I'm not just talking about fellow players, former coaches and the basketball media, I'm talking my dad, my father in law, coaches I played for, really almost anyone of a certain age who saw what he did at UCLA. His performance in the 1973 NCAA Championship Game (21-22 shooting 44 points) is considered one of the best of all time.
I never saw him in his prime, my main memory of him as a player was when he came off the bench for the Celtics in their 1986 championship season.
I hate to quote him because he's become such a buffoon, but Mike Francesa once compared Walton to Joe Namath. Both were great college players who led their respective pro teams to championships but ultimately had their careers derailed by debilitating injuries. Namath had bad knees, Walton was betrayed by bad feet.
They both also transcended their sport. Namath represented the glitz and glamour of the elite athlete. He was the original. Broadway Joe.
Walton was known just as much for his political activism as he was for his on-court heroics. And he was considered almost as much a part of the Grateful Dead as was Jerry Garcia.
I read his autobiography a few years ago. He was honest too. As much as he loved John Wooden, he readily admitted they butted heads and still to this day believed that on some issues he was right and the Wizard of Westwood wasn't. Fortunately their love and respect for each other overcame their differences. (What a concept right?)
I enjoyed him as a color commentator. You couldn't help it even when he seemed to go off into La La Land, he was entertaining. And he knew his stuff.
Anyone who spoke of him this past week no matter if they were basketball people or not, no matter what side of the political spectrum they fell on, or anything else that either defines or divides us, only spoke glowingly of him. He touched many lives , and was so full of life himself, it’s still hard to believe he is gone.
BASEBALL; Darryl Strawberry Number Retired
I've spoken before about my mixed emotions about the Mets retiring numbers. Since Steve Cohen bought the team from the Wilpons, the franchise has retired Keith Hernandez, Willie Mays, Doc Gooden and now Darryl Strawberry.
The trade for Hernandez was the main catalyst for the Mets going from laughingstock after the 1977 Tom Seaver trade to perreinal contenders in the mid to late 80's. Retiring Mays 24 apparently fulfilled a promise made by former owner Joan Payson to the Say Hey Kid when she traded for him in 1972. Better 50 years later than ever I guess.
I was conflicted about Gooden and Strawberry. Gooden's first 2 seasons as a Met were other-wordly. His second season, 1985, is still the greatest season I have ever seen a pitcher have. He went from immortal, to very good to washed out in short order. I hated how his time as a Met ended.
And I'm even more conflicted about Darryl Strawberry.
He had much of the same off the field issues as did Gooden, drugs and booze ruining what could have been a career that ended with a plaque in Cooperstown. We all have our demons. I don't hold that against him.
As much as the end of Gooden's time as a Met ended, the way Straw's time ended hurt me more.
I didn't realize at the time that Frank Cashen the Met GM at the time, really did want to re-sign Strawberry after the 1990 season. All I had heard was that Darryl couldn't wait for the season to end so that he could sign with his hometown Dodgers. The day he left for Los Angeles, and Mike and the Mad Dog opened their show by playing Randy Newman's I Love LA was one of biggest virtual kicks to the groin I can remember.
For years, I couldn't forgive him. When he fell off the wagon and was blasted in the media by Tommy Lasorda (It's a weakness not a sickness*), I felt bad for him, but also felt that for all the complaining he did about Davey Johnson, maybe he had this coming. I felt awful when he fell ill with cancer and prayed for his recovery. But still I thought about how he left the Mets, especially since the franchise fell apart after his departure, much the same way it had when Seaver was dealt to the Reds.
Even (and maybe even especially) when he won a ring with the Yankees, it still stuck in my craw. Like I said, I know Cashen and the Mets didn't offer him nearly what the Dodgers did, but would that have even mattered?
He's come back to the Mets since his retirement a couple of times, and also broke away from them again. Steve Cohen has taken a lot of well deserved heat for how things are going with the Mets these days. But mending fences with the alumni has been one of his strengths, perhaps his biggest strength.
I watched the ceremony on TV, and I mean, if you have half a heart and soul, you had to be moved by the speech he gave. I know the easiest thing to do when you have the crowd chanting your name and your number is raised to the rafters is to say you never should have left. I don’t know if I totally believe him.
I don’t know if I’ve totally forgiven him.
But his journey from beating cancer, from having the tools to keep his addictions at bay, to going to prisons and hospitals to inspire others to overcome their demons, it’s been quite a road that he has traveled since he broke our hearts 34 years ago. He says he’s glad to be back. I guess I’m glad he’s back too.
I'm glad they retired his number.
Sorry we got this out late. Was going back and forth about venting on the Rangers.
Stay Safe
and Have a Great Week
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