Hey There:
Friday marked the 10th anniversary of when I brought Weekly Mail out of retirement and started posting it in blog form on Facebook. A month ago, I was on the fence about bringing it back at all, and certainly not right on the 2nd Sunday of September. I'm still not sure how consistent I'm going to be with it.
But some things have been going on since I went on hiatus. Namely Charlie Kirk being killed.
So that is where we will start.
CHARLIE KIRK KILLED
I'd like to say that this should go without saying, but in this world we live in, what's obvious is that there is no such thing as going without saying. So I'll say it.
What happened to Charlie Kirk should never happen. To anyone.
No, I didn't agree with most of what Charlie Kirk said or stood for. A few times something he posted would show up on my feed, on Facebook, it was usually someone re-posting. On X, it was on that For You part where to be honest, it's stuff I don't want to read from people I don't care for. Sometimes I read it just to see how the other half lives. Most times, I scroll past and get on with what constitutes my life.
Not that I have anywhere close to the following that he had, but I also know that I may write things here that people don't agree with. I guarantee you I'm going to write some things here this week that many of you won't agree with. What is supposed to make this nation great is that we can do so without fearing for our lives. There were some things he said that were downright despicable, (and we'll get to some of those things) but to get killed over it? That is not what we are supposed to be about.
People are saying that they don't know how we got here or how we can prevent it. Well, I'm by no means a genius, but there are a couple of things that immediately come to mind as we ponder what can we do to make sure things of this nature stop happening. And I'm also not breaking any new ground here, or suggesting something I haven't already mentioned hundreds of times before, but, well, here goes.
First, we really really REALLY need some common sense gun control here in Murica. While Kirk was being shot at in Utah, two kids were being shot at a Colorado high school. This time, the only person to die from this latest shooting was the shooter, who killed himself after putting one fellow student in critical condition. Colorado is the same state that gave us Columbine and the movie theater shooting in Aurora. If you think Charlie Kirk shouldn't have gotten killed for giving a speech, how do you feel about a kid who got killed just for going to school? Or to the movies?
I'm sorry folks, I find school shootings a lot more heartbreaking. Neither of those should happen, but they do. After Kirk was killed, some of the people I'm hooked up to on Facebook actually suggested they were going to either get a gun, or stockpile even more guns than they already have.
More guns is not the fucking answer here. Talk about things that should go without saying!
And some other people on my friends list pointed out that Kirk himself said the following..
"I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights. " April 5, 2023 per factcheck.org.
I'd rather have the kids from Columbine back, or the kids from Ulvalde back, or especially the kids from Sandy Hook. Were those the gun deaths Charlie thinks we needed to protect the 2nd amendment?
And look, I again am not saying to repeal the 2nd amendment. I'm saying let's come up with a plan where it's harder to get a gun in this country than it is to get a cheeseburger at McDonalds.
The other thing we need to do, (and I'll admit this is the much much harder factor) is to lower the temperature around here. I'll admit I'm not totally blameless here (though I really do try to limit my political comments to this blog, my FB Feed is almost free of political memes)
But I'm sorry people, if you voted for Captain Orange the last time around, you clearly did not want to cool things off.
It cracks me up anytime someone posts something about Joe Biden or Barack Obama or Bill Clinton losing their cool. Like they are trying to prove that those guys were anywhere near as unhinged as the convicted felon is. Almost every day, CFCO tweets out insults and threats against people who disagree with him. He ran again for two reasons, to stay out of jail and to avenge his enemies, real or perceived. He had no intention of uniting the country.
And yeah, there are people on the left who I don't think want to unite us either. The so called squad fits that category (IMO). And also there are a few Republicans who I still hold out hope that they could at least calm things down, even if I don't agree with their policies. Nikki Haley might have been someone who could have made things a little less divisive.
But we went for the guy who thrives on division. And we keep doing absolutely nothing about gun proliferation. Charlie Kirk said the quiet part out loud. I suppose that's why people loved him so much. On the other hand, seriously?
Charlie Kirk should not be dead today. But that doesn't mean I'm going to shed any tears for him.
And if that makes me some sort of asshole, so be it. But ask yourself this..
Did you shed tears when Nancy Pelosi's husband was attacked?
Did you shed tears when Melissa Hortman, John Hoffman and their spouses were shot in Minnesota? Both were Democratic politicians. Hortman, her husband and the family dog were killed. Hoffman and his wife were critically injured.
Did you shed tears when Josh Shapiro's house was set ablaze? He's the governor of Pennsylvania, and a Democrat.
Did you?
I didn't either truth be told. But I didn't mock them either like some people did.
I'm not mocking Charlie Kirk either.
I'm just saving my tears for the next kid who gets gunned down for committing the mortal sin of going to school.
Just hope it's not my kid.
Or yours.
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I'm almost thinking I should make this a stand alone blog, it feels weird going from shootings to the rest of what I want to discuss today. But we will press on here.
Two people in the sports world died last week.
DAVEY JOHNSON- That the Mets will most likely miss the playoffs this year due to the fact that they have been one of the worst teams in baseball since Father's Day, makes what Davey Johnson accomplished here almost 40 years ago all the more remarkable.
After the Mets traded Tom Seaver in 1977, the franchise fell apart. For 6 of the next 7 seasons, they lost over 90 games, and it would have been a perfect 7 for 7 if not for the 1981 players strike.
Things were getting better in 1983. They traded for Keith Hernandez and brought up Darryl Strawberry. Their AAA team, won the 1983 championship. Dqvey was the manager of that team. George Bamberger started the 83 season as Mets manager, but skipped out 48 games in. Frank Howard took over but was not getting the job full time.
Davey came up and brougt with him Dwight Gooden. That gave the Mets a bona fide ace, but he also brought up guys like Wally Backman, and Lenny Dykstra. They went from 94 losses in 1983 to 90 wins in 1984, and a pennant race till the middle of September. The next year they were alive till the 2nd to last day of the season.
The year after that was 1986.
And this is my favorite story from that year. I remember reading about it the Post a couple years later. I believe it was Kevin Elster, who had been dealt to the Dodgers by then, who told the story.*
Davey came into the clubhouse before Game 1 of the World Series and held up a bill that he said the team wanted us to pay because we had caused some damage on the plane (back from Houston after winning the NLCS.) Davey asked what we thought we should do about it. He then proceeded to tear the bill up right in front of us.
Now that was a manager with (guts)
Even at my relatively young age, I knew that guts was in parenthesis because he said another word not suitable for the paper. (at least not in the early 90's) Davey Johnson was one of the first managers to use computers to figure out lineups and things like that. Which is ironic because of all the managers I've ever seen, nobody managed on (guts) more than he did.
I mean that was no computer on earth in 1986 that would have had Davey make some of the moves he made in the 1986 playoffs. Howie Rose once joked that after WFAN replayed Game 6 of the 1986 World Series on Christmas night 1989, that he was going to do a Mets Extra just so that "someone could call in and scream about Davey not having HoJo bunt in the 9th inning."
At the time Frank Cashen fired him 42 games into the 1990 season, I was up in arms. All I knew was that the team was awful before he got there and I was afraid they would be awful he left.
And they were.
But looking back, he had also kind of lost the clubhouse by then. Hernandez, Backman, Dykstra and Gary Carter were gone. The swagger that had defined the Mets between 84 and 87 had left with them. They were talented but lacked the fire they had in those years.
Ironically, talking to my co-editor Karl (the Ace) Ludwig the other night, and recalling how he had been calling for Johnson's head since they lost to the Dodgers in the 1988 NLCS, he to had a change of heart, saying that he felt Davey may have figured it out and kept them in contention.
Part of the problem was that in 1989, the Yankees hired Dallas Green as the manager, who if nothing else, gave the writers plenty of good quotes. After George Steinbrenner inevitably fired him with about 50 games left in the season, many of those writers were clamoring for the Mets to hire Green. Instead they hired poor Buddy Harrelson (who was in over his head) and then Jeff Torborg, who would tell Mike and the Mad Dog about line up changes he was making before he told the players about them, earning the nickname Jeff from Flushing. Green eventually managed the Mets from 1993-1996.
But in any event Davey Johnson passed last week at the age of 84.
KEN DRYDEN- Several years ago, I read Al Michaels autobiography You Can't Make This Stuff Up. At the time, I felt Michaels was a pompous ass. After finishing the book, I confirmed that he was one.
But that's not to say that there weren't a few good stories that he told, and my favorite was about his color commentator for the 1980 Olympic Men's Hockey tournament Ken Dryden.
Michaels and Dryden called the Miracle on Ice on Friday, February 22, 1980. The US pulled off what many consider the greatest upset in sports history that evening in Lake Placid against the Soviet Union. Even though Dryden was Canadian, he had to have felt a high that night. 8 years before, he was the goalie in the final game of the 1972 Summit Series, an 8 game exhibition that the Canadians had been expected to dominate, only to have lost 2 of the first four games in Canada. They won Game 2 and tied Game 3.
That series moved to Moscow two weeks later and after dropping the first game, Canada won the next three, including Game 8 on a goal scored with 34 seconds left by Paul Henderson. A tie or a loss would have given the Soviets the series. Dryden started Game 1 of that series at his home arena, the Montreal Forum and had gotten blown out 7-3. The Canadians comeback in that series was as much a source of pride for Canada as the Miracle on Ice would be for us Americans.
The last game the US Played before the Miracle on Ice was against West Germany. According to Michaels, he and Dryden called the game, then Dryden got into a car and was driven across the Canadian border so that he could sit for the Bar Exam! He passed the bar and became a lawyer on his day off from broadcasting the Olympics, then called one of the most memorable games of all time.
Dryden was an award winning author, and also served in Canadian Parlament from 2004-2011. He ran for the leadership of the Liberal party in Canada, which would have put him in position to run for Prime Minister, but he lost on the second ballot. As a player, he won 6 Stanley Cups, including one against my Rangers in 1979. (A little before my fandom started)
RIP.
We will hopefully have an all sports blog next week. Till then,
Stay Safe
and Have a Great Week
Jeff Pearlman’s book about the 1986 Mets, The Bad Guys Won, chronicles this infamous flight in vivid detail in the book’s first chapter.
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