Hi Everyone:
Friday marked one month since we lost Mom.
What has struck me about these past 4 weeks is how fast the time has seem to have gone. If I could equivocate life to the workings of your classic VCR, the part of life where my son was born was like pressing the fast forward button*. These past 17 years with Timmy have flown by.
But this past month has been something else.
I was off on September 24 for an unrelated reason, and Mom passed that evening. I was home the next two days (Thursday and Friday) and off from the Post on Saturday. The wake was Sunday and the funeral Monday morning, the 29th. Those 5 days were a blur. I went back to work that Wednesday, and Mom was already gone one week.
And it hasn't slowed down, even as things return to "normal" or whatever normal is.
I don't know if anyone else who lost a parent has that same feeling, that time, already flying, by started flying a whole lot faster.
And that be where I'm at.
Before we head into the rest of what is on my mind this week, just a programming note: I'm going to forego having an Election Day preview next week. I believe at this point you all have an idea of who I am going to vote for or support. If not, I'll put it this way, nothing has changed with me since 2021. My litmus test for candidates is still the same. So on Sunday, November 9th (or thereabouts) we'll have our election wrap-up, where we'll discuss the $hitShow NYC Mayor's race, the NJ Governors race, and maybe a race or two on Long Island. Hopefully by then, I'll be ready to jump back into the fight.
For now, we have other matters to discuss.
THE NBA GAMBLING SCANDAL:
On Thursday morning former Knick player and current (for the time being) Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups, Terry Rozier of the Miami Heat were arrested. Rozier and former player Damon Jones were charged along with four others for (per the NY Times..)
using insider information about injuries and starting lineups to make fraudulent bets. Prosecutors say they encouraged others to make fraudulent bets, and laundered their winnings in multiple instances between December 2022 and March 2024. Mr. Rozier was also charged with rigging the outcome of a bet.
Billups was charged with running an illegal poker ring with apparent mafia ties. Per Yahoo.sports.com..
The individuals allegedly involved in running the illegal poker games — some of which include members of the Bonanno, Gambino and Genovese crime families — are accused of rigging contests in their favor. Individuals reportedly used secret cameras, contacts that could read marked cards and X-ray tables, among other methods, to cheat other players out of millions.
Billups' presence at those games was meant to legitimize them and make "victims believe that they were sitting at a fair table," New York City police commissioner Jessica Tisch said Thursday. Billups was reportedly aware of the scam, per U.S. Attorney Joe Nocella.
Billups wasn't charged in the sports betting indictment and Rozier wasn't indicted in the poker scheme, but others who were arrested were involved in both.
While I'm by no means underplaying the issue facing Billups, the case against Rozier is especially disturbing if you are an NBA fan in particular or a sports fan in general.
On March 23, 2023, Rozier was playing for the Charlotte Hornets, and came out of that night's game against the New Orleans Pelicans with an apparent foot injury. Before the game someone bet $14.000 that Rozier would finish under the number on a bunch of stats. The indictment indicated that Rozier tipped off a friend of his that he was going to pull himself from the game and that friend sold the info for $100,000.
The investigation into Rozier has been going on for quite some time apparently. In April of 2024, Toronto Raptor Jorday Porter was banned from the NBA for life after an investigation found that Porter had no only given inside information to known gamblers, but also placed his own bets on NBA games, including three parlay bets involving the Raptors.
I was going to do a whole thing about Porter, Shohei Ohtani and Pete Rose, but it became a behemoth to write about, especially the Ohtani stuff. I still hope one day to deep dive into that situation.
But now with Rozier indicted by the Feds, a very ugly monster has reared its head. On WFAN Friday morning, Greg Gianotti was saying something to the effect of, "people actually think this (Rozier/Billips situation) is because we are reading ads for Fan Duel". Well, maybe not, but you'd have to be more than a bit naive to think that not only having easy access to gambling on your phone, as well as all the major sports league all in bed with the gambling apps, would be a huge temptation for athletes to partake.
This problem is going to get a lot worse before it gets better, if it gets better at all. (no pun intended). Wayne Gretzky, who doesn't exactly need the money, does ads for BetMGM. When I was a kid, Wille Mays and Mickey Mantle were banned from baseball for a few years because they took jobs as goodwill ambassadors for Atlantic City casinos. Both were long retired from playing and both were already enshrined in Cooperstown. Both were also reinstated in 1985 by Peter Ueberroth. Nowadays, Wille, Mickey and (for that matter) the Duke (Snider) would probably each have their own commercial deal with one of the betting apps.
And I really don't have a good answer for any of it.
WOODY JOHNSON'S BIG MOUTH
The Jets beat the Bengals on Sunday 39-38. A miracle of sorts, being that according to their owner, the team didn’t have an NFL ready quarterback.
Coming out of the NFL Fall Owners Meetings in Manhattan last Tuesday, Jets owner/knucklehead Woody Johnson was asked if he thought coach Aaron Glenn could turn the team around.
Johnson replied that he felt Glenn had turned the defense around, and if he had left it at that, we could all go on our merry way. Instead, he kept talking..
"It's hard when you have a QB with the rating that he's got. I mean he has the ability, but something is just not jiving. But if you look at any head coach with a QB like that, your going to see similar results across the league. You have to play consistently at that position, and that's what we're going to try to do for the rest of the season."
The "he" Woody was referring to was Justin Fields. And as bad as that was, Woody wasn't done. (Unfortunately)
"If we could just complete a pass, it would look good. ...You can't run the ball if you can't pass the ball. That's football 101."
Well thank goodness we have a football savant like Robert Wood Johnson IV, to explain to us peons what Football 101 is.
And let's face it (and this was pointed out in several media takes on this) Woody isn't factually incorrect either. Before Sunday, Fields has either been unwilling or unable to throw the ball downfield, at least not since Week 1 against the Steelers. It truly is a sad state of affairs that when Tyrod Taylor came into the game in the second half against the Panthers last Sunday and proceeded to throw two picks, I said to Timmy, "At least they were deep passes that got intercepted." I mean do we see how low the f-ck-g bar has dropped around here?
But the bigger point to me is that Woody's got some set of ba!!s going after Justin Fields. What the hell does he know about what makes a good quarterback? He's owned this team for 25 years and he's either had good quarterbacks he inherited (Chad Pennington) once great quarterbacks who were past their prime (Brett Favre, Aaron Rodgers) quarterbacks who weren't developed right by coaches Woody hired (Mark Sanchez, Geno Smith Sam Darnold,) and too many has-beens, never were's or never would be's to mention.
I know there are people out there who are going to say that it's Woody's team and it’s his right to call them out if he's the one signing the checks. George Steinbrenner used to say that shit all the time. By the time he got himself kicked out of baseball (for the second time) in 1990, the Yanks had gone 12 years without a World Championship and 9 years without a playoff appearance. Maybe we can set Woody up with a Fan Duel account. Hopefully he laid the points and took the Bengals today.
Look, just because he can badmouth his QB doesn't mean he should. Especially since the main reason he took his shots at Fields were to defend the coach he hired. It's such a mess. Convicted Felon Captain Orange couldn't have made him Ambassador to Antarctica or something? SMH.
THE GIANTS CHOKE JOB
Was curious to see how Jaxon Dart would do against the Broncos top rated defense. And truth be told, he looked good. Unlike my Jets, the Giants may actually have themselves their QB of the future.
Unfortunately, their defense of the present forgot that NFL games go four quarters.
It was the first time in 108 NFL games that a team leading by 19 points going into the 4th quarter lost the game, the first time in 1,602 NFL games that a team lost when leading by 18 or more points with six minutes or less to go in the game.
They lost 33-32, and with all that, they would have still found a way to hang on, but that their kicker missed a pair of PAT's. They waited till Wednesday to cut him. I would have made him Uber back to New Jersey.
And if you are a Giants fan reading this and thinking that you are being trolled by a Jets fan, please don't. I was rooting for the Giants, I certainly have no love for the Broncos. We need some good news in football around here. I want to see Dart and the Giants turn it around. But that was tough. The Jets never really had a shot against the Panthers, the Giants had that game in the bag. It was tough to watch.
They were calling it the worst loss ever. (At least that was the back page headline in Monday's Post.) I remember the Giants blowing a big lead against the 49ers in a January 2003 playoff game. (The one and only time I ever saw my brother in law Steve blow his stack-he handles losses a lot better than his wife's brother does). I still think that was worse. But this one was right up there.
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DIANE KEATON- 1946-2025
Diane Keaton's acting resume pretty much speaks for itself. Nominated for 4 Oscars, winning Best Actress for Annie Hall in 1978, 2 Golden Globe awards, Annie Hall and Something's Gotta Give. A multitude of iconic roles, including Kay Adams in the Godfather Trilogy.
But as the outpouring of love came out upon the news of her death on October 11th, what struck me were the high profile relationships she had. She and Woody Allen worked together on several movies and were an item for a while. Her and Godfather husband Al Pacino dated on and off for years, finally breaking it off for good when Pacino wouldn't marry her. She also was in a relationship with Warren Beatty in the late 70's. And though there were rumors that she and Jack Nicholson got together after making Something's Got to Give, it turns out they were just good friends.
And with all of those relationships the term good friends popped up an awful lot as I read her obits. Good friends till she passed with Beatty, good friends till she passed with Allen, throughout all his trials and tribulations. Good friends with Pacino, who would say more than once these past few years he regretted not popping the question to Keaton. And Nicholson worked with Keaton on Somethings Gotta Give while he was dating much younger Lara Flynn Boyle and Kate Moss.
In other words, in addition to being a phenomenal actress, she was a person anyone that anyone who knew her seemed to love her too. And in this day and age, when almost everyone in Hollywood had some sort of baggage or skeletons in the closet, Keaton had none. She was just a good, down to earth person, who happened to be very very good at what she did. Which of course makes it even sadder that she's gone.
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Upon purusing the Billboard Hot 100 Chart for the week ending October 18, 2025, the future Mrs. Travis Kelce herself, Taylor Swift** held the top 12 spots on the chart. Her latest album The Life of a Showgirl, became the first album to take all the top spots uninterrupted. The Fate of Ophelia gave Swift her 13th Billboard number one, only the Beatles, Mariah Carey, and Rhianna, are ahead of her. (She's tied with Drake and Michael Jackson, and one ahead of Madonna and the Supremes)***
Sirrius/XM 70's Channel plays reruns of American Top 40 with Casey Kasem every weekend, and on a few of those shows, Casey talks about how on the chart ending April 5, 1964, the Beatles had the top 5 singles on the Billboard Top 100. He usually added that he didn't expect to ever see that again. The rules and technology of course were much different back then. But still.
OK, that’s all he wrote.
Stay Safe,
and Have a Great Week
*Or nowadays, your DVR.
**More like Kelece is the future Mr. Taylor Swift if we are being totally honest here.
***Somewhere along the line, they moved the official start of the modern day Billboard Hot 100 to August 17, 1958. The very first Billboard Book of Number 1 songs I had started in 1955 with Bill Haley and his Comets Rock Around the Clock as the first offiical Number One Song of the Rock Era. I bring this up because by moving the date up, that knocked a truckload of Elvis Presley number one songs off the record books. Far as I’m concerned, it’s the Beatles, Elvis and Mariah at 1,2,3 in the record books.
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