JUST BRUTAL

Despite watching part of the exciting Michigan upset over Ohio State Saturday and most Super Bowls---for the party and trays of food, of course---I haven't been able to stomach this brutal sport for years. Just saw a clip of Jaguars QB Trevor Lawrence knocked unconscious by an unnecessary hit from Houston Texans linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair. The irony is not lost on me that he was escorted away from the brawl by his teammate Derek Stingley. If that name resonates with my peers, it's because his grandfather was the late New England Patriots wide receiver Darryl Stingley who was paralyzed in August 1978 after a vicious preseason hit by Oakland Raiders Jack Tatum. Remembering Darryl Stingley Tatum later wrote in his memoir that he intended “an intimidating hit” and “I like to believe that my best hits border on felonious assault.”

Just two years ago Damar Hamlin of the Buffalo Bills went into cardiac interest upon making what some described as a routine tackle at midfield. The right shoulder of the Bengals wide receiver careened into Hamlin’s left side and he collapsed immediately.

There are no routine tackles in football.

Hamlin has made an inspirational recovery and two years after the incident is once again starring for the Buffalo Bills. Stingley was a quadriplegic from that fateful summer day until his death at 55 years old in 2007. Both men credited God, for recovery and survival respectively.

The debates over the violence in American football (and boxing and mixed martial arts) have been going on for years. No need to review both sides now. You’re better off revisiting Will Smith’s fine 2015 film Concussion for starters.

I know NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and so many others making billions off the sport will talk statistics and perhaps posit that getting in your car to go to the market is more dangerous. Query whether those proponents have ever been hit by a 275-pound lineman who runs a 4.9 40-yard dash. That’s Godspeed, right there.

I’ve got many other beautiful individual and team sports to engage with. So should you.

This coming February 9, wherever I am, hopefully I’ll pay more attention to Puppy Bowl XXI than Super Bowl LIX.

THAT'S MY LINE

You can find something beautiful every day and, if you stop looking so often, the beautiful may actually find you. It found me Saturday afternoon. At discounter Marshall’s in West Palm Beach. On a line. A really long line that stretched around the store and lasted for one hour and forty-five minutes. No pot of gold at the end of that marathon, no Bruce Springsteen tickets, no extra discount. Nothing but the hundred dollars of fungible household goods we had come for and could presumably have obtained with less difficulty a few days later.

Of course, I surveyed the line at the outset and looked over at my wife. We’re out of here, right?

I have never liked a long line. Who would? Known as queue in England or file on the way in or out of the middle school assembly, it is the quintessential time waster. The longtime symbol of government inefficiency ala every town’s motor vehicle department. The endless wait for 1930s soup and the bank run reminders of what happens when an economy crashes to earth. The virtual wait on hold to get something done via the telephone almost as old as the device itself.

I have passed by many lines in my time, be they lines of sadness at the unemployment office or lines of anticipation and joy outside Madison Square Garden or lines of false pride at Studio 54. I have always passed them by, with sympathy, with derision, with gratitude for not being on them.

That all changed Saturday. At Marshalls, the off-price family apparel and home fashion retailer that’s been around since 1956 and is now (along with sister companies Home Goods and T.J. Maxx) a part of the The TJX Companies, Inc. public company empire valued at 140 billion dollars. Millions of shares of TJX trade every day of the week as traders wonder just how many pairs of Calvin Klein underwear and Christmas tree ornaments its thousands of stores will be able to push out the door in the months to come. Like its competitors, it will seek to reward its chief executive officer with 15 million dollars a year, give or take, for leading that charge and will keep its shareholders interested with 1 or 2 percent annual dividend payments and returns on investment of 20 percent more annually. It will pay its employees so little with ever disappearing medical benefits, job security and retirement contributions that will make it forever difficult to retain good people. And maybe, just maybe, that is why only 3 cash registers of the 13 at the store I visited Saturday had employees on duty the entire time I was there. When we finally arrived at the promised land, I turned around and took note that the line was as long as it had been when we embarked on our checkout mission so long ago. I believe they call that a business model.

The model’s no longer working, is it? No matter how much George W. Bush and our leaders who followed hope that people will keep spending more than they can possibly afford to. Marshalls and its fellow entities depend on the government to keep the roads to the store maintained. They depend on the government to train soldiers and police to keep the free enterprise machine greased and oiled, to make the world, especially the mall parking lots, safe and secure. They depend on the government to educate their workers and customers, to keep them reasonably healthy and secure in youth and retirement. And they depend on the government to backstop the banks and other lenders so the money keeps flowing. Just don’t ask them where this government money should come from because I believe the next four years may provide some regrettable answers.

This was to be an essay about finding beauty, wasn’t it? Time I got around to that part of the story. The beauty was that line, a few hundred individuals of every race, religion and presumably political bent sharing a random Saturday afternoon. No politics, no religion, no cutting in line, no screaming, no ranting, no vocal complaints whatsoever. Laughing, smiling folks from seven to seventy, shuffling in place, looking at their phones, talking to their family members and to the total strangers around them. It just might be a Florida thing, being bored with the 75 degrees, no humidity and cloudless sky just outside the store doors, and willing to wait so patiently. It might be resignation, it might be a lot of things. What it was for me was beautiful, so much so that when my wife reasonably suggested 20 minutes in that we might put our goods on hold and come back later that night, I was adamant about staying.

Where else would I meet a wonderful young Canadian mother, working so hard to make it in Florida, so many years into the green card process of lawyers and necessary business purchases, wondering if she might have to go home or to Europe after all this effort to make America her home? Did I know that Canada has 1/9 the population of the US but has only slightly less lawful permanent residents, approximately 8 million versus 13 million? No, I did not. And that the system, if you try to do it legally like my newfound friend, can sometimes take 20 years or more? I had heard that part. We should have secure borders, definitely. But maybe be a little more generous in the numbers and far more expedited in the legal immigration part of the equation and I’m sure we’ll achieve another way to cut down on the illegal part. I do know that my new friend would be a credit to this country and has been struggling for years to try to make that happen.

Then there was my new Brooklyn transplant friend and her brilliant and vivacious preteen daughter who never once whined or complained about being there. We talked about restaurants and how they couldn’t take their elderly Italian patriarch out to an American Italian restaurant because it never measured up and he wasn’t shy about saying so aloud. I told her an introduction to my wife’s Italian mother who was always the same way might be a great idea. And somehow, when the subject of college came up, my new friend expressed near tears of joy upon recognizing my wife as the best and most inspirational professor of her life, no surprise to me.

Something about that line and that feeling of afternoon haplessness opened everyone up, to conversation, to camaraderie, to connections, to genuine affection. Don’t ask me how it happened, it just did, so much so that our little group discussed a reunion every year at Marshalls and I’m thinking that might just happen.

We are all in a hurry in this country because that’s what we do best and are always encouraged to do. Hustle, earn, stress, and repeat. Some of my fondest memories came during an epic 1978 snowstorm when everything shut down in Boston for a week. Other nations have siestas, sabbaticals, shorter work weeks. And now, in my mind, we have the possibility of the line. I’ll keep my eyes out and my mind open for the next one.

Come On America

Come on America,
We’re better than this, so much better,
Our foundation was, is and always will be
Hope,
So often, in the darkest days of our world,
We have helped others believe,
We have been a beacon.

Come on America,
Learn from our mistakes, listen,
We ignored women, we ignored our people of color,
We ignored history, we ignored our ideals,
Life is short, hate is long,
We are better than this.

Come on America,
We don’t need to be perfect, not great again,
We just need to be good,
Righteous need not be God-fearing, or God-smearing, or loud,
Just good, really good.

Come on America,
Debate is good, deflate is not,
We don’t need to tell the world we’re the best,
We just need to be better tomorrow than yesterday.

Come on America,
Divided we have fallen, together we’ll rise,
Come on America,
We got this.

IT’S TOO LATE

“The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit educational institution, dedicated to preserving history, honoring excellence and connecting generations. Core to the fulfillment of our mission is the ability to preserve and share our library, archives and museum collections. This treasure trove of items bring to life the history of our National Pastime and the inspiring stories of the Hall of Famers, for a global audience. More than 18 million visits have been made to the Museum in Cooperstown, NY since our doors opened June 12, 1939.”

— National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum Mission Statement

“I’m the one that screwed up and if Manfred and MLB ever decide to give me a second chance, I’d be with open arms understanding. Baseball has made up their mind on me. I could tell them I’m going to die tomorrow and they wouldn’t change their mind. I’ve been suspended over 30 years. That’s a long time to be suspended for betting on your own team to win. And I was wrong. But that mistake was made. Time usually heals everything. It seems like it does in baseball, except when you talk about the Pete Rose case.”

— Pete Rose – February 2023

“And it’s too late, baby, now it’s too late, though we really did try to make it, something inside has died and I can’t hide and I just can’t fake it, oh, no, no, no, no.”

— Carole King & Toni Stern – April 1971

I so wish this were an essay about that Carole King breakup song released in April 1971 on her all-time great Tapestry album. It’s not. It’s about all-time great Pete Rose who died two weeks ago.

That April of 1971 Pete was beginning his 9th season with the Cincinnati Reds in a Hall of Fame career that culminated in baseball career records in games played, plate appearances, base hits, singles, seasons with 200 or more hits, and three World Series rings. Wait, did I say Hall of Fame career? We know that didn’t happen, no matter how much Pete wanted it, no matter how often he apologized.

So yes, baseball, it’s too late, baby.

Pete asked often for a second chance that never came. KTLA 2024-9-30 Surely he had no doubt he would be remembered, that he would have a lasting legacy, for generations to come. He said so himself nine days before his death in comments about his grandson PJ Rose, currently an infielder on the Lasalle University team. “Couldn’t be more proud of my grandson @pjrose14 for being featured in the @PhillyInquirer. Keep hustling with La Salle baseball. The #Rose legacy lives on.”  Heavy 2024-10-1 

Legacy was one thing, but not enough.  To quote Mike Tyson on legacy: “I think legacy really, to my perspective, legacy is ego. Who gives a f*** how people think about them when they are gone? I'm dead. I can't value off what somebody might think about me when I'm dead, so it means nothing to me." The Mirror UK Edition 2024-10-13 The belatedly contrite Pete Rose wanted that one more thing while he was still living. The Hall meant a little respect, some kindness and a good deal of forgiveness. And baseball afforded him none of these.

I wrote this two months ago while Pete was still very much alive. I hesitated to put it out there because Pete Rose and his record are nothing if not complicated. Exactly what did he do and what did he not do? The controversies and debates are front and center, accompanied by decades of lies from Pete and whispers about Pete. Have a look at HBO’s 2024 four-part documentary series. HBO Pete Rose Documentary 2024 Read all the books, the interviews, the exposés.

Well-meaning, well-researched baseball lovers young and old lined up on both sides of the debate, writing eloquently with sobering weight while Pete was still with us and now after. Ithaca Times 2024-10-11 The pros talk about what he accomplished on the field, that he had paid enough of a price for actions that weren’t so terrible and the passage of time. The cons focused on law and order, the gambling, tax evasion and rumors of underage sexual dalliances, and what they believe the Hall of Fame is supposed to be about. It was not, and never will be, an easy one.

At the end of the day, for me, the decider was my non-baseball-fan wife who weighed all the evidence shown her and declared that Number 14, warts and all, belonged. She believed forgiveness was the ultimate answer and even came up with a pretty good albeit somewhat long title.

For Pete’s Sake
He Did A Lot For The Game,
He Was A Fabulous Player,
Enough Already

Don’t get me wrong. I never liked Pete Rose.

Not when I was 8 years old in 1963 and he joined a National League team that wasn’t my Mets. Not when I was 15 in 1970 and he shockingly dropped a devastating shoulder into Cleveland catcher Ray Fosse with the winning run in the 12th inning of the theretofore gentlemanly All Star Game. Not three years later in the playoffs at Shea when he brawled with Buddy Harrelson at the second base bag. Not in 1989 when he accepted a lifetime baseball ban from Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti for betting on the sport and then lying about it. Not in 1990 when he spent five months for income tax evasion in the United States Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois and sat with fellow inmates to watch the Reds team he had managed the year before sweep the Athletics in October. And certainly not this year when he appeared on HBO and proclaimed more times than I could handle that winning is the only thing.

You see, I like losers. I have to. Because I like people. And most of us are losers. Sports are structured that way, many competitors and a scant few gold medalists. Capitalism is structured that way, many citizens and a precious few gold amassers. It may not be fair, but then again life is structured that way, and no one escapes the ultimate loss with gold medals or gold coins. Attention must be paid, thank you Willy Loman, to the average joe, to the lovable loser. To long ago inducted Hall of Famer Casey Stengel’s ‘62 Mets and their recently broken record 120 losses (thank you, 2024 Chicago White Sox) morphing into posthumously inducted Hall of Famer Gil Hodges’s ’69 Mets of 100 wins and the upset of all upsets that October against Baltimore. To the fans of Chicago and Boston who never stopped loving the Cubs and Red Sox delivery of so much joy in the midst of a century of heartache. In books, in movies, in music, it’s the timeless story arc, losers rising up or trying to anyway, from the Bible to the Jamaican bobsled team.

Underdogs forever. Underdogs usually lose. Pete Rose was no underdog and no loser.

He played in more games, took more turns at bat and had more base hits than anyone before or since. He passed Honus Wagner, Tris Speaker, Stan Musial, Hank Aaron, and Ty Cobb on his way to 4,256 hits and no one’s come close since. Charlie Hustle was his fitting moniker then and the title of that HBO documentary now. He ran out every play, including a sizable number of the 1,566 walks he accumulated. He was never warm and fuzzy, never politically correct on the field or in the clubhouse. But the people of Cincinnati loved him and not just because he was a large cog in The Big Red Machine that brought home World Series rings in 1975 and 1976. He was born in Cincinnati, went to school there, starred there, and, were it not for Reds ownership frugality in 1978, never would have left.

He was the team leader, a very loud team leader. If you had anything to do with the Reds, you either loved him or hated him, no middle ground. But not the Reds fans. He loved them, loved those Crosley Field and Riverfront Stadium cheers, and as their winner, their homegrown winner, they loved him right back. No one was happy when he took that $3.2 million four-year free agency cash from the Phillies and acquired his third World Series ring in 1980. Or four years later on Opening Day in his new Montreal Expos uniform when he went opposite field on Phillies pitcher and former Mets great Jerry Koosman for his 4,000th hit, exactly 21 years to the day since his first.

The Reds weren’t very good in the 1980s, certainly not compared to the dynasty that ruled the National League in the 1970s. So car dealer turned new owner Marge Schott made the deal to bring back Pete in August of 1984, as the last player-manager that Major League Baseball would have.

1989 would prove devastating to Cincinnati and their favorite son. It was then that outgoing Commissioner Peter Ueberroth and incoming Giamatti were investigating him for allegedly gambling a lot of money on baseball and a whole lot more. If you’ve got the time, you can read about that Dowd Report somewhere and learn all the details including the 52 games in 1987 he allegedly bet on his Reds, the very team he was managing, almost definitely not to lose, but most definitely to win. Pete would begin admitting as much in his 2004 tell-some autobiography My Prison Without Bars. The gambling and investigation were all Giamatti needed to force the lifetime ban agreement. Two years later an informal consequential ban from the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown was codified and Pete became that purposefully shamed prisoner on the outside trying to get in.

Just two seasons later, reports of horrific racist, anti-Semitic, anti-Asian, anti-homosexual comments from Reds owner Schott were met with only a one-season suspension and $250,000 fine, enabling her to come back and publicly praise Hitler for a second time in 1996 as someone “everybody knows [he] was good at the beginning, but he just went too far.”  LA Times 1996-5-12 Schott was given years of leeway before she was forced out of the game in 1999. Her own legacy since her 2004 death has been her charitable foundation’s largesse being overrun by the lasting sting of her hateful rhetoric.  Cincinnati Local 12 2020-6-12 

The facts are that Pete Rose was wrong, very wrong, that Pete Rose had a gambling addiction, a very bad gambling addiction. But facts aren’t everything, not in the very strange world we live in, unless your name is Sergeant Joe Friday and you show up every week on Dragnet in some victim’s living room for just the facts, ma’am. Not when Pete Rose was 83 years old, thinking every day about joining his fellow greats in Cooperstown while he was still alive. And now he’s not. It’s too late, baby.

No, Pete Rose didn’t care one whit that a prime initial incentive for the Hall’s 1930s founding by a Singer Sewing Machine heir was as tourist attraction for a small village still reeling from the Great Depression and Prohibition. He just wanted in and who could blame him for that? Pete was always a good interview, the less the filter the better the copy, and that never changed. If you can tune out the lies and the ego and the cringeworthy---detailed discussion about the length of teammate Tony Perez’s excrement and that 1970 photo of the two of them on the toilet at the just opened Riverfront Stadium come to mind Redeg Nation 2024-5-8---he really knew more about baseball than pretty much anyone else. Ever.

Major League Baseball and its Hall of Fame take their Rs very seriously. There are a lot of rules and a healthy demand for respect and when you screw those up you had better be ready to show remorse and rehabilitation. Not Pete Rose strengths. But Major League Baseball and its Cooperstown shrine, now chaired by the granddaughter of that Singer Sewing Machine founder, have always managed to show some healthy disrespect and some unclean hands. If morality were really the thing, downsizing in Cooperstown would be nothing if not impressive.

I’m thinking about Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis. He was the Ohio-born, Indiana-raised federal judge who became Major League Baseball’s very first Commissioner in 1920, charged with cleaning up the game after Shoeless Joe Jackson’s Chicago Black Sox dirtied it up, throwing the 1919 World Series to---who else?---the Cincinnati Reds. There was money in it, gambling money, and baseball was quickly plummeting below apple pie as American metaphor. It was Judge Landis who came up with Major League Baseball Rule 21 - Misconduct to govern in vivid detail the bad behavior of the men who played a kid’s game for a living. It runs two pages and is posted prominently today in every major league clubhouse.

Among other things, Rule 21 makes clear that “any player or person connected with a Club who shall promise or agree to lose, or to attempt to lose, or to fail to give his best efforts towards the winning of any baseball game with which he is or may be in any way concerned, or who shall intentionally lose or attempt to lose, or intentionally fail to give his best efforts towards the winning of any such baseball game, or who shall solicit or attempt to induce any player or person connected with a Club to lose or attempt to lose, or to fail to give his best efforts towards the winning of any baseball game with which such other player or person is or may be in any way concerned, or who, being solicited by any person, shall fail to inform the Commissioner immediately of such solicitation, and of all facts and circumstances connected therewith, shall be declared permanently ineligible.” And later that “any player, umpire, or Club or League official or employee, who shall bet any sum whatsoever upon any baseball game in connection with which the bettor has a duty to perform, shall be declared permanently ineligible.”

That’s pretty all-encompassing and, at least as far as best efforts go, pretty subject to interpretation. I can almost see the bronze plaques coming off the walls and beginning their exits from the Hallowed Hall as I write. My all-time favorite ballplayer Mickey Mantle who blasted 536 home runs and still leads in World Series career home runs with 18 was an alcoholic during most of his career. Number 7 lamented on Later with Bob Costas in October 1991 that "one time Bobby Layne, the old quarterback in Detroit, of the Detroit Lions, he was in town, in Detroit, one time. He took me out one night. And we drank way too much that night. And the next day, I went up to hit – and I didn’t take batting practice, or infield, or anything. And I could have hurt the team that day. But the first time up, I took the first pitch right down the middle, and I yelled at the umpire – I know you remember, I didn’t usually argue with umpires. And I just made him kick me out of that game, because I had no business in that game.” Later with Bob Costas 1991-10-20

No one’s best efforts, and not the first game lacking, or the last for The Mick.

And what about the Hall’s mission to honor excellence and connect generations, to bring to life the inspiring stories of the Hall of Famers, for a global audience?

Would that include Hall of Famer Cap Anson, king of the dead ball era who played 27 seasons in the 19th century, mostly in Chicago with the predecessor team to the Cubs, batted a career .334 and is thought to be the first to 3,000 hits? He was also almost single-handedly responsible for preventing Black men from playing Major League baseball, threatening to leave the field in 1883 if catcher Moses Fleetwood Walker played for the opposition Toledo Blue Stockings, then following through in 1884 and causing Walker to be released. It would be 1947 before a Black man, Jackie Robinson, would step onto a Major League baseball field again. And by the way, Cap Anson was also routinely betting on baseball back in those days.

How about Hall of Fame Yankee Whitey Ford rumored to doctor baseballs or Hall of Fame Giant Gaylord Perry who went so far as to write the 1974 book Me and the Spitter after his retirement?

Inspirational?

Or Hall of Fame Tiger Ty Cobb, implicated in a 1919 game-fixing scheme with Hall of Fame Boston American and Cleveland Indian Tris Speaker? Ty Cobb, he of the inconclusive but certainly not inspirational relationship with African Americans, including once being charged with attempted murder? As Robert W. Cohen wrote in 2009’s Baseball Hall of Fame — or Hall of Shame?  Baseball Hall of Fame or Hall of Shame “In theory, when it comes to these kinds of votes, it’s true that character should matter, but once you’ve already let in Ty Cobb, how can you exclude anyone else?”

I know, no one’s perfect. And rules are rules. But rules are always changing.

Let’s go back to Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis. He has been in the Hall since immediately after his death in 1944. Among his many talents, he was good at making the rules, good at interpreting the rules and good at enforcing the rules. One of those rules had been the uncodified gospel of the lords of the game in effect since that last Moses Fleetwood Walker game in 1884. Black men were banned for 60 years after that and a significant portion of those years, 24 of them, were under the iron hand of Landis. If baseball historians are still divided over whether he was racist or an active blocker of efforts to change that rule and let the best players take the field, there is no denying that this incredibly strong leader did absolutely nothing to lead in the just direction. He preserved one of this country’s shameful hallmarks of racism and in the process denied opportunities and inspiration to generations of young Black men and women. The wonderful Negro Baseball Leagues grew out of that oppression and Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby and so many others led baseball and the nation in the just direction not long after Landis was dead and buried. Today that so-called “rule” is a shameful part of history that baseball is only now owning up to by honoring the Negro Baseball Leagues and incorporating their player statistics into its own. That’s how Josh Gibson’s career .373 passed Ty Cobb’s .367 this past May, what some might call fitting justice and others might label as the ultimate irony.

I am not making false equivalencies here. Whether Pete Rose is in Cooperstown has none of the gravitas associated with overt racism towards generations of talented young Black men and their families on the field and off. It is just about rules and their malleability. Countless men and women sat in prisons for many years in this country for the most minimal of marijuana offenses, many of them private prisons whose private owners fought tooth and nail against decriminalization and legalization, until Wall Street and some state governments figured out there might even be bigger money in putting pot out there than putting people in there. And betting, for most of the country’s history, the province of shadowy men and Nevada casinos? We all know where that has gone, and is continuing to go, with those same baseball lords and their current Commissioner Rob Manfred ringing the cash register from advertising by DraftKings, FanDuel, MGM, and other public and private companies, the very same companies old Kenesaw Mountain Landis would have adjudicated a cancer on society and baseball both.

Who am I to write this? Just a baseball fan, just an average joe, an 8-year-old boy who grew up and learned how imperfect the world is and how lucky we all are just to go to bat in it. Nothing Pete Rose did on or off the field changed my life, ever, but over the sixty years since he first stepped to the plate at Crosley Field one long ago April day until the day he passed on, I did learn to let some things go.

Mickey Mantle’s mea culpa at 60 years old after forty years of alcoholism was more lasting for me than any of those home runs. The Mick knew just how flawed he was and had always been. In that same 1991 interview with Bob Costas, Mantle lamented the time he heard a fan at a card show declare "son, that's the greatest ballplayer that’s ever lived,” and the little boy looked at me and said, "daddy, he's an old man." The old man died a year later. Superman was just a man after all, and always had been.

In his way, at the end of his life, Pete Rose took a cue from my real childhood hero, and tried to lay it all out there. If he did bet against the Reds, something we’ll likely never know now, that was the red line he shouldn’t have crossed and there would be no redemption and no Hall of Fame. If not, had his health held up, he would have kept apologizing and perhaps taken up signing autographs for free for every 8-year-old he ran into. It wouldn’t have mattered though, would it? Forgiveness was not in the cards. edLINES by Ed Garsten 2020-2-6

Baseball, time to stop taking yourself so seriously. You charge 10 bucks for a hot dog, 35 for a tee-shirt, and 50 for parking, and too often you’re getting we losers to fork over even more money in the form of tax dollars to pay for your stadiums and their routes of ingress and egress. George Steinbrenner’s smart $10 million investment in 1973 is worth north of $7 billion today, thanks largely to we losers who keep paying attention to men like Mickey Mantle and Pete Rose, especially come October. This is not 1963 when heroes were all without flaws as far as we knew, when journalists kept to unwritten codes, when little beyond the playing field was public knowledge. It is not 1963 when young boys and girls had no Internet, no social media, no outside the lines investigative reporting or mea culpa autobiographies. We know now just how flawed your players are, just like us, and we know your owners are probably much worse. As long as Pete did not cross that one understandable red line, no pun intended, and bet against the Reds he was playing for and managing, it was long past time for compassion on your part.

But it’s too late, baby, and you failed.

Turns out that Pete was a loser after all, just like all of us, flawed, strong at times, weak at others, but he did hit ‘em where they ain’t 4,256 times. And that was pretty, pretty good. I know people say you make a distinction between bad actors who affected games, think gamblers and steroids, and less than perfect men generally, think drunks, potheads and sex addicts. Baseball, no one was asking you to give up the ghost, only to do what you do best in your eternal quest to inspire and entertain and make a few shekels while you’re at it. You were supposed to make a deal and open the door. The highest road of grace and forgiveness demanded it.

But it’s too late, baby, and you failed.

And when I say baseball, I mean of course the Board of Directors of the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Commissioner Rob Manfred clarified that in November 2022 when he told reporters “when I dealt with the issue, the last time Rose applied for reinstatement, I made clear that I didn’t think that the function of that baseball permanently ineligible list was the same as the eligibility criteria for the Hall of Fame…I think it’s a conversation that really belongs in the Hall of Fame board. I’m on that board, and it’s just not appropriate for me to get in front of that conversation.”

The 17-person Board is currently made up of fifteen men and two women; 11 of them are wealthy baseball owners or longtime baseball executives and 6 are Hall of Fame ballplayers including current Vice-Chairman Joe Torre who was a terrific catcher and first baseman, better baseball executive and even better field manager. It’s a group of accomplished individuals who have deep roots in the game. Yet it was 2017 when that Board last voted in favor of keeping in place the 1991 rule that prevents individuals on the permanently ineligible list from being considered by baseball writers for Cooperstown. There was an obvious path King Solomon would have seen clear as day here. For Pete’s sake, you could have kept him on the permanently ineligible list---the 83 year-old in failing health wasn’t going to be owning, general managing, managing, coaching, or suiting up---but made him eligible for proper posterity in Cooperstown.

My close friend Charlie, not Charlie Hustle, just a very dear friend said something to me that hit home. “The Hall of Fame is a museum. It’s a historical record. Baseball needs to stop rewriting history and hiding the historical record. Put it all in there, the betting, the steroids, put them all in there. Let them join the racists and the scalawags. As a part of history with appropriate notation. And start with Pete Rose.” So for what it’s worth, which is absolutely nothing now because it’s too late, baby, I’ve even drafted his Cooperstown plaque.

PETER “PETE” EDWARD ROSE SR.
CINCINNATI N.L., PHILADELPHIA N.L, MONTREAL N.L., 1963-1986
HAD 4,256 CAREER BASE HITS TO BECOME
MAJORS ALL-TIME HIT KING. ALSO SET RECORDS
FOR GAMES PLAYED (3,562), AT BATS (14,053), SINGLES (3,215).
WON N.L. ROOKIE OF THE YEAR IN 1963
AND PACED N.L. IN BATTING THREE TIMES.
WON N.L. MOST VALUABLE PLAYER IN 1973 AND TWO
GOLD GLOVES. WAS N.L. ALL-STAR 17 TIMES
AT 5 DIFFERENT POSITIONS.
***
COMMITTED ONLY 213 ERRORS ON THE FIELD
OF PLAY DURING 24-YEAR CAREER BUT ALMOST
AS MANY OFF THE FIELD IN THE YEARS THAT FOLLOWED.

GOOD SPORTS

There are countless areas where sports and politics intersect. As I watched my hometown Mets 4 to 2 comeback victory in a do or die Game 3 against the Milwaukee Brewers last night, and its aftermath, I was reminded that it is perfectly okay to have partisanship so long as it always accompanied by a healthy dose of sportsmanship.

The very talented and favored team from Milwaukee had taken a seemingly insurmountable 2 to 0 lead in the 7th inning on home runs by Jake Bauers and Sal Frelick. The Mets offense had been missing for most of the series and they had not scored a run since the 2nd inning of Game 2, 15 consecutive scoreless innings. At game’s end, they found themselves facing one of the best closers in the game, Devin Williams, who had so easily dispatched them in the prior Game 2 loss.

The Mets rode a 9th inning one-out walk to Francisco Lindor, a single to right by Brandon Nimmo and an opposite field homer by slumping Pete Alonso to victory.

Moments after Alonso squeezed Lindor’s double play peg for the final out, absolute joy erupted on the field and for Mets fans everywhere. The OMG crew had lived to play another day, a best 3 of 5 series beginning tomorrow against the Phillies to be specific. There were photo ops and champagne and wonderful interviews with victorious stars and a rather eloquent Mets manager in Carlos Mendoza.

The capacity crowd exited with heads shaking what so suddenly had taken on a funereal atmosphere.

I was overjoyed that this Mets team, written off in May after a dismal start, would be moving on.

But what I’m thinking about the day after is what Devin Williams said in his postgame interview.

“We worked all year to get to this point. They got me a two-run lead there in the ninth. That’s how we draw it up. And I couldn’t come through for the boys. No one feels worse than I do. It could have been better, but it wasn’t the worst pitch I’ve ever thrown. I wanted to go away with it, and I got it there, but it was a good piece of hitting. I’m not going to make any excuses. I didn’t get the job done when I needed to. They executed well, and I didn’t.”

Suffice it to say, I’m now a fan. Of Devin Williams.

And then there’s Pat Murphy, the 65-year-old Brewers manager who I had never heard of until this week but is a heavy favorite to win National League Manager of the Year. Here’s part of his post-game interview.

“It’s baseball, you got three players that are upper echelon players, Lindor, Nimmo and Alonso, and they did what they do…I want to credit the Mets, that’s what that inning was about, that inning was about the Mets, they were great, those three players are All-Stars, they have long-term contracts for a reason, they’re great players and they’ve been through a hell of a ride here having to play the extra games, all the credit goes to them, goes to the Mets…It was a great script for us. You know Devin’s been as good a closer as there is in baseball for two and a half years that he’s played, you know he was injured most of this year, he’s been unbelievable and I’d give him the ball again tomorrow in the same situation and any other game I’m involved with if we have a lead, I’d give Devin the ball. So again, that’s three really good players. Lindor’s one of the best in the game. Nimmo’s there for a reason, he’s their best hitter right now. And Alonso while maybe quiet this series, that’s a huge swing. Yeah, that’s the way it is.”’

Suffice it to say, I’m now a fan. Of Pat Murphy.

So, in the interest of a future of slightly less partisanship and a whole lot more sportsmanship, I’ve reimagined that postgame manager’s press conference with a certain former manager in mind.

“I’m not about to concede anything. We’ve just filed a formal protest and that won’t be the end of it. My people are investigating while we speak. If I have to, I’ll take this all the way to the Supreme Court. The fix is in, the whole thing is rigged. They had 2 hits, by the same guy, they were stealing signs, anyone could see it, and then they started up, bing, bang, boom. You tell me how that’s possible. You can’t. Because it’s not. Everyone knows that. And I’m not going to stand for it. That Lindor, they gave him a walk, they said it was a check swing. That was fixed, the home plate umpire asked the third base umpire but he sent him the signal for ball at the same time he was asking. Anyone could see it. The pitch was right down the middle anyway, maybe the greatest pitch I’ve ever seen. I played first base you know or else I would have been the best pitcher. You know that I could have been a major league ballplayer for sure but there was no money in it back in the day. I would have had to take a pay cut to play, like I did many years later, because I love this country. Anyway, this guy Lindor, Manaea, Iglesias, even the manager Mendoza, where are these people from? They’re coming in, they’re bringing who knows what?! And Alonso, they say his father fled Spain as a refugee and settled in Queens. I’m from Queens, bet you didn’t know that. So, tell me why the father then left for Ohio, tell me that. Everyone knows. And I’m not so sure about this Nimmo either. They say he’s from Wyoming, show me the proof, everyone knows that. And how about the way that ball jumped off Alonso’s bat. Not natural, and I saw the cork fly out from the lumber with my own two eyes like it was popping out of a bottle of cheap Spanish wine, like a bottle of Sangria. Hey, if you can’t trust baseball, what can you trust? We’re gonna straighten this out, restore confidence, end this chaos and carnage once and for all. My lawyers tell me we can’t lose and no way does this next series get started in Philly tomorrow, that’s for sure. And by the way, you saw that crowd, people couldn’t get in, they were reselling tickets for millions of dollars just to get in, selling their dogs, selling their cats, just to get the money to see me. So I’ll see all of you at the Division Series whenever we allow that to get going.”

PLAYING BALL

Kudos to the fellas in Oakland who have played Monday night pickup together for 50 years and managed to put together EVERY MONDAY NIGHT, a pretty good short film about their hooping and friendship. I was a mere 40 years old when I wrote PLAYING BALL, a short poem about feeling too old to play the way I used to. I kept playing sporadically, with a mix of people my own age and a whole lot younger. To keep going into their 70s and 80s, these West Coast boys had to keep out young men for self-preservation.

PLAYING BALL

Playing ball with 18 year-olds
And I’m feeling slow,
Slower than global warming
Or paycheck days at Chase
Slower than my mother,
Just plain slow.

Hit a few shots,
Now I’m thinking
I can still do this
Yes I can,
Use my guile, use my gut
Use my man
Like a past history slut.

But there he goes,
Who goes?
Where?
My man?
Was that him?
Blowing by me again
On his way to the rim.

TOWARDS OCCASIONAL PRAISE OF THE AWAY TEAM

There is a scene in my novel SNEAKING IN that is pulled from my life. You'll have to read it to get the whole story. I was 6 years old at my first ever baseball game and learned a valuable lesson that day. Sometimes someone on the team you were just booing might become your heroic inspiration. And sign your scorecard, upper right, in pencil. Thank you to the late White Sox pitcher, Juan Pizarro.

CANINES FOR DEMOCRACY

by Elizabeth Sobieski & Peter Brav

Our fellow citizens who are pinning their hopes for democracy on Taylor and her Swifties might do well to spend more time energizing American dog lovers, the one group that just might be the difference maker. 

The U.S. Census Bureau reports that as of 2021, there are 83.9 million households in the country, and Forbes Magazine reports that as of 2024, 65.1 million of them have at least one dog in the house. Rough mathematics suggests that of the 161.42 million people registered to vote in 2022, approximately 125 million of them have a dog in their lives to love and laugh with. 

Almost all of our nation’s 46 presidents in office from George Washington on have been joined by a beloved pup in the White House. There is no better or more faithful companion for an understandably stressed president and household than the family canine. 

Ronald Reagan had Rex; George H.W. Bush had Millie; Bill Clinton had Buddy; George W. Bush had Spotty, Barney and Miss Beazley; Barack Obama had Bo and Sunny; and Joe Biden his adoptees Champ, Major and Commander, even as the latter two proved hard on his security personnel. 

Not so the guy who lost in 2020 but still thinks he won. 

It’s not like he’s a bad dog owner, walking away cavalierly from excrement masses or enrolled in a dog-fighting club. The guy who lost in 2020 but still thinks he won has simply never had anything to do with dogs---other than disparaging them in so many interviews, tweets and pointed comments that we could not possibly list them all here. 

He’s no dog’s best friend and he just might be dog’s worst enemy. 

This should come as no surprise. This is a man who doesn’t read, who sees the world in black and white, who doesn’t want to learn or listen, who makes fun of physically handicapped reporters. A man who never seems to laugh because that would require approving and being entertained by someone or something other than himself. A man who never served in the military but claimed to know more than his heavily decorated generals and went out of his way to belittle captured war heroes. 

A man who has spent no time around dogs opining constantly on the nature of dogs. Makes perfect sense. Or not. 

Since even the smartest of the canines have not yet been trained how to vote and save the nation, it may be helpful to remind those 125 million dog-loving owners how that guy really feels about them. So here goes. 

On Imminent Unemployment 

“Good work by General Kelly for quickly firing that dog!” - 2018 on The Apprentice’s Omarosa Manigault after her tell-all Unhinged hit bookshelves 

“Fired like a dog!" – 2013 on Bill Maher, 2015 on Glenn Beck, 2016 on Chuck Todd, 2016 on David Gregory, 2016 on Conservative pundit Erick Erickson 

“Thrown off ABC like a dog." – 2015 on Conservative Republican columnist and pundit George Will 

“Now Sloppy Steve has been dumped like a dog by almost everyone.” – 2018 on his sometime advisor Steve Bannon  

According to Indeed’s Career Guide, the ten common traits of a good worker are dedication, confidence, reliability, teamwork, independence, leadership, communication, self-awareness, critical thinking, and integrity. Anyone who has spent any time with dogs knows how high the typical canine scores here. 

And we’re not just talking about the police K-9 German Shepherd, seeing-eye Golden Retriever, anxiety-reducing King Charles Cavalier Spaniel, drug and bomb sniffing Labrador Retriever, military Belgian Malinois or sheep herding Border Collie.

Dogs get the job done, well and on time, with little reward other than love and cookies. 

If that guy who lost had any understanding of how well dogs tick off the employer wish list, he would know hired like a dog is an infinitely more apt description. 

Why so many of the 130 million full-time workers in this country support the guy who lost in 2020 and still thinks he won continues to mystify. Real wages adjusted for inflation have been largely stagnant for most folks since 1980 and inequality has soared. Millions live below the poverty line and millions more work multiple jobs, struggle with student loans and housing costs, save little for retirement, see less economic mobility, and endure lifetimes of job insecurity. They still get up and give it their best shot every morning. 

If that guy who lost had any empathy for what most humans are going through, he’d know tired like a dog is an infinitely more apt description. 

That guy who lost in 2020 arbitrarily condescends in the face of his own decidedly mixed results. Never has he admitted to losing money like a dog or going bankrupt like a dog. Not a single statement that students got no education out of his university like dogs or that bondholders got nothing but scraps out of a Chapter 11 reorganization like dogs or that he busted his casino, burned his steaks and grounded his shuttle airline like a dog. 

On Less Than Clutch Performance 

“Choked like a dog.” – 2016 on Mitt Romney losing to Barack Obama and 2017 on former Attorney General Sally Yates and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper during Senate testimony 

Any of the millions of Americans who have participated in the popular growing sport of Dog Agility or watched American Kennel Club events on ESPN knows that dogs don’t choke. They brilliantly take instruction, ignore distractions and, much more often than not, live in the moment and make the moment theirs. Simply put, dogs perform under pressure. Their human handlers are another story. They panic, miss turns, forget routes, give wrong cues. Any dog lover knows he or she can only hope to measure up to his canine companion in the agility ring or anywhere else. 

On Women’s Appearances 

"A dog who wrongfully comments on me." - 2015 on Arianna Huffington 

"I'm watching television and I see her barking like a dog." - 2016 on Hillary Clinton 

“Only Rosie O’Donnell.” - 2016 response to Megyn Kelly’s query as to why he called women he didn’t like “dogs” and “disgusting animals” 

So much has been said and written about middle school insults and names hurled over the years by the guy who lost that we need not get into it here. Myriad unkind utterances against the opposition and anyone who hasn’t shown the requisite fealty. A special hostile place towards intelligent women who don’t work for him or sleep with him. As for a desirable woman, there is cat nomenclature to grab, although he shows no more knowledge of and affinity for felines than he has for canines. In that infamous 2005 Access Hollywood tape, he said of entertainment journalist Nancy O’Dell, “I moved on her like a bitch, but I couldn’t get there.” 

Our concern of course is for the dogs. When we think of canine beauty, we are not just thinking of those pampered pedigrees who make it to Best in Show competitions over the years. We are thinking of all canines. Such beautiful animals, soulful and smiling, whose owners know they are fortunate to look into their best friend eyes and find nothing but a lifetime of love and devotion. 

On Truth Telling and Moral Virtue

"Lies like a dog." – 2016 on Ted Cruz 

“Cheated on him like a dog & will do it again.” – 2012 on Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart 

The guy who lost popularized the term fake news and then proceeded to disseminate it daily. During his four years in office, the Washington Post compiled a list of 30,573 false or misleading claims he made, not including the Big Lie that he won in 2020. 

He has no insight into the universal openness and integrity of the family dog. Dogs don’t lie and dogs don’t cheat (unless you include getting hold of a sibling’s unattended food). Dogs have no secret agendas. No need for world domination, just a quick and easy to ascertain role in the family, usually based on size, sometimes on seniority. They are honest and open about their needs. Food, love and playtime. 

For the right audience, that guy will even pretend to like dogs. But don’t believe him. Your dog won’t.

On Death

“He died like a dog.  He died like a coward.” - 2019 on the death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi 

“Even if you’re sick as a dog and you say ‘darling I can’t make it…even if you vote and then pass away it’s worth it.” – 2024 on encouraging Iowans to make it to the polls 

All dog owners know that the day they welcome their new pups into the house is a wonderful one. The day they say goodbye is a true tragedy, the downside of falling so hard for our canine companions. Dogs die more gracefully than most human beings, unburdened by regrets and anger. Dogs die the way they live. Loyal and loving to the last. 

The guy who lost in 2020 cannot comprehend the grace of a dog’s life and the tragedy of a dog’s death. 

Ivana, the first wife of the guy who lost, had a poodle named Chappy who would consistently bark at her husband, perhaps sensing his lack of kindness towards all creatures great and small. Ivana wrote in her 2017 memoir of her former husband's hostility towards dogs and couldn’t understand how he could not love a dog that acts like he's won the lottery for life just because he sees you walk through the door? 

Ivana suffered a tragic and accidental fall down the grand, curving staircase of her Manhattan townhouse in 2022. Her former husband arranged to have her buried not far from the first tee at his namesake Bedminster, New Jersey golf course. 

Kind of like a …… 

You get the picture. 

****** 

So just what will become of your beloved canines if the guy who lost in 2020 but thinks he won is elected in 2024? If you dog lovers, and you fans of Taylor and her two Miniature Pinschers Bug and Baby, don’t make your way to the polls in packs? 

If you love this country, and you love your dog, please feel free to like and share with as many photos of your own precious little guy or gal as you wish. And most of all, vote in November with your nose and your bark, the way your favorite companion would if given the chance to do so. 

PETER BRAV is the author of the quintessential dog memoir
ZAPPY I’M NOT. ZAPPY I'M NOT

THE H WORDS

I slept last night in a good hotel, I went shopping today for jewels, the wind rushed around in the dirty town, and the children let out from the schools, I was standing on a noisy corner, waiting for the walking green, across the street he stood, and he played real good, on his clarinet for free.

FOR FREE - Joni Mitchell 1970

Humility is lasting, hubris not so much. We should remember that. Humility is kindness, hubris not so much. We should remember that too. When we listen to our music, watch our sports heroes and, most of all, when we make decisions on who best can lead us forward.

In 1970’s FOR FREE, one of the great singer-songwriters of all time on a city stroll recognizes her own good fortune while admiring just one of the millions of good people, talented people, hard-working people, out there struggling. That’s what humility does, makes one grateful for all the good things that have come along and less inclined to pat oneself on the back for all one’s hard work and unmatched brilliance. Hubris not so much.

We often seem to be going the opposite way, usually via our phones and big screens. We reward and applaud loud and bold, so much so that it feeds upon itself.

Nobody stopped to hear him, though he played so sweet and high, they knew he had never been on their TV, so they passed his music by.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. We can turn down the volume on anyone and everyone telling us how great they are, decide for ourselves where the talent and goodness lie. To paraphrase Joni, it will most likely be found for free, where big money is nowhere around, now more than ever in the 53 years since her album Ladies of the Canyon was released.

MY PERFECT BAÑO

Welcome one and all,
To my truly perfect baño,
Americans, Russians, North Koreans,
The occasional Mexicano,

Cheap crystal, cheap marble,
Lots of cheap brass,
And boxes and boxes of secrets
When you need to wipe your ass,

Cheap shower curtain,
Cheap vanity, cheap plastic can,
My cheap secret lair
Where the end of Trump began,

Forty Bankers Boxes,
A few more on sale at Staples,
So now you know the real reason
For the flight of Marla Maples,

Fifty years since Watergate,
Fifty more and history will thank me,
For Water Closet Gate it is,
And Water Closet Gate it shall always be.

69

The future of mankind depends on so many things. I worry about that. Yet I cannot help but wonder if allowing an NBA player to wear the number 69 might be a good place to start fixing. No one has ever donned a 69 jersey for a game in the seventy-seven years the pro hoop league’s been around. They say they’ve got a bad sexual reputation, those two digits linked together, although most people who have tried it have hastened back to the Kama Sutra for new ideas. Frankly no one cares, or should care, not any longer, not when the West Coast is burning and the East Coast is drowning and so many people seem so unhappy. That’s right, no one should care, not about that. (Personally it’s worry enough that I’m turning 69 next year and can’t afford to give up any of these years.)

No pro hoopster seemed to want to don the forbidden digits those first fifty plus years although concern for a bad sexual reputation was probably not on player minds. The league did just fine without the numbers and the numbers did just fine without the league. There were allowances along the way of course. When the scoreboard clock showed one team leading 72 to 69 or some variation, usually in every 3rd quarter, the scoreboard didn’t go blank until the next basket out of respect or fear. When the championship Los Angeles Lakers finished the 1972 season with a then record 69 wins, the league didn’t have them forfeit that last win to the Seattle Supersonics, again out of respect or fear. 1972 Lakers

In 1999 along came Dennis Rodman in his heyday, all earrings and tattoos and Carmen Electra and long before Kim Jong Un, and he wanted 69 for his new Dallas Mavericks identity. Owner Mark Cuban supported him too and had a custom jersey made up in anticipation. Rodman Jersey The late NBA Commissioner David Stern was having none of it. Ergo the ban.

Why has 96 gotten a pass by the league? Ron Artest a/k/a Metta World Peace wore it proudly in 2008 with the Houston Rockets and no one blinked. Now Playing Ron Artest No. 96 Innocuous, unthreatening, respectable? Suggestive of middle-aged couples in a position far more familiar to them, disappointed with the kids, disdaining the meddling mother-in-law or the brutish boss, finding relief back to back with different sections of the New York Times? And while we’re at it, how have 10, or the randier 100, and component digits 1 and 0 survived the purge of possible penetrations? If we try, we might just eliminate computer coding and all that goes with it.

I worry about 1969 too. Bryan Adams wrote and performed Summer of ’69 and Don Henley did the same in The Boys of Summer about coming of age that year. Summer of '69 It was my favorite year too, really. I was fourteen years old and hopeful about my own future and that of my country notwithstanding everything going on around me. There were riots on American streets and just so many bombs dropping on villages thousands of miles away. A man died in the chaos of a Rolling Stones concert at Altamont Speedway in California. Police raided the Stonewall Inn in Manhattan, riots ensued and the battle for gay rights was forever joined. African Americans took over the Cornell student union demanding educational rights, respect and social justice. Nixon took office. A lottery of bad luck was instituted for the Vietnam War draft. Charles Manson and his crazies ran murderously loose in California. The Supreme Court again tried to figure out what was obscene and who might look and where. But against this backdrop, three things happened that I will always remember. In July, human beings walked on the moon, a reminder of what hard work, planning, commitment, and individual courage can achieve. In August, human beings gathered in upstate Bethel, New York for nothing but three days of peace and music, a reminder of how good music and good feelings can make one hopeful. And in October, the formerly hapless and lovable loser New York Mets rewarded their longtime believers for their faith and won the World Series, a reminder that good things can happen when the stars align. Even in a year with a possible bad sexual connotation.

Sure, there’s a time and a place for everything. That’s why we have ratings, for movies and music and the like. They make sense. That’s why we have restrictions, for buying cigarettes, driving a car, drinking alcohol. They make sense too. But it’s the slipperiest of slopes. Go too far and you’re letting the very few control information and lifestyle for the many. That’s never worked out well and has been the weapon of choice for every despot in human history. They say democracy dies in darkness. I suppose truth does best in daylight. Not banned, not burned, and not reshelved to a place it can’t be found. To paraphrase Jack Nicholson, one who can’t handle the truth, or the search for it, becomes quite adept at banning it, or with a wink, reshelving.

Blacks were banned from undergraduate degrees until 1947 and women banned for the most part until 1969 at Princeton University because so-called intelligent white men thought it would ruin things. African Americans at Princeton Coeducation at Princeton Blacks and women have been educated there since and the world is infinitely better off for them. Marijuana was banned for most of my lifetime because so-called principled folks of good conscience thought it would ruin things. Lately hypocrisy’s been slightly curtailed, prisons slightly uncrowded and private prison companies slightly less profitable, and those former principles have resurfaced in big profits and tax dollars.

It is actually banning, and its all too close relative burning, that have a way of doing the ruining. One day in 2021 you’re watching 22 year-old Amanda Gorman at the presidential inauguration bring a hopeful nation to tears of joy with her uplifting poem The Hill We Climb: An Inaugural Poem for the Country (“somehow, we've weathered and witnessed a nation that isn't broken, but simply unfinished”) and a scant two years later you’re watching a presidential hopeful bring a tearful nation to incredulity with his support for one woman’s banning attempts directed at Gorman’s book of the same title and others in her child’s Florida school. Gorman Reshelved

Millions of people seem to want no (or almost no) government with a sweet spot reserved in their hearts for a government that is funded only to wage war and regulate bodies, bedrooms and books. That form of government, be it large and Federal or super local in the form of the local school system, given free rein will almost always rein too far. So let’s work on fixing the world instead. Standing up or lying down. Together. Let’s start with Dennis Rodman’s jersey. Come on, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, show some balls here, not too many of course. Bring Dennis Rodman out of retirement to set the right example. We’re more mature than you think we are and will only giggle for part of the first quarter before settling down.

Editor’s Note - June 24, 2023: Just learned from my travels that former NBA player (Philadelphia 76ers) and coach (Milwaukee Bucks) Larry Costello in 1953 played in all but twenty seconds of the then longest college basketball game ever at 69 minutes. His teammate Ed Fleming agreed to switch his uniform number to 70 so that Costello could wear 69, a number retired shortly before his 2001 death by alma mater Niagara University in upstate New York. That seems like a more valid reason for retiring the number since basketball lifer Costello is in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. Costello 69 Jersey Retired

Memorial Day 2023

My father never went back to Europe, didn't travel much. He got his fill with the 69th Infantry, 271st Division. I wish we had talked more about it while he was alive; we never did and I don't think he could. I wish all the stores closed on Memorial Day and we had an hour of national silence. I wish we would stop fighting everyone and each other. I wish.

Dear Former Knicks Season Ticket Holder

April 30, 2023

Dear Former Knicks Season Ticket Holder,

Just a note of thanks on behalf of the entire New York Knickerbockers organization. I have just been informed that you and a friend shared Knicks season tickets in Section 102 for 12 seasons before failing to renew this past fall. At that time, you stated to anyone who would listen that “this is pretty much a guarantee that the Knicks will move beyond the first round and might even win the whole thing.”       

My understanding is that you originally signed up in 2010, confident that one of my many ex-GMs, in this case Donnie Walsh, would be able to bring Lebron James to town. While “The Decision” left Lebron free to join Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh in the NBA championship game for the next four years, winning in 2012 and 2013, you were still able to witness competitive ball under our two able Mike coaches, D’Antoni and Woodson. You were there for a few playoff games and Jeremy Lin’s month-long period of Linsanity (which I abruptly ended by not paying him that next summer).

It wasn’t until the 2014 season that we were able to become truly laughable under coaches Derek Fisher, Jeff Hornacek, Kurt Rambis, and David Fizdale. And when I say laughable, I don’t only refer to our losing records year after year. I’m also thinking about how I brought in Phil Jackson for three years to insist on running his triangle offense that would only work if he could lure Jordan and Pippen out of retirement and then proceed to blame everyone else including fans like you for what went wrong. Phil Jackson Interview Phil Jackson Timeline

You were treated to awful season after awful season that had you looking forward to the hopefulness of preseason team introductions Knicks Preseason Intro and the calories of some free food at the last (often losing) game of the season. Hey, remember that epic last place finish in 2014-2015 with 65 losses when I treated you to unlimited sushi and knishes at Fan Appreciation Night? Knicks Free Food Night You were able to see me go at it with Knicks legend Charles Oakley and a few taunting fans----how many owners are that passionate and what a treat it must be for fans like you to be there live to see it? 

So yes, now we are winning, and we are winning without you. It seems only two things can derail this train now. The Miami Heat in Round 2…..or you and your buddy electing to rejoin us in Section 102 next season. I’m pretty sure that might be just the incentive I need to trade Brunson and Hart, send Leon Rose back to Philly, get into a boxing match with Julius Randle in a stairwell, and throw Clyde Frazier and Earl Monroe out during our next anniversary of the 1973 championship team. On second thought, it might be safer to just ban you like any other attorney who makes my list. James Dolan Fox Interview

Regards,

James L. Dolan, Chairman
Madison Square Garden Sports Corp.

THE TAX MAN ROCKS

With April 15 this year falling on a Saturday and Monday April 17 being D.C.’s celebration of Emancipation Day, there would have been three extra days to line up at the post office to get those tax returns stamped. It used to be a party, one I never invited myself to, but with more than 90% of returns filed online, that party is over.

We can sit here and debate who should pay how much, where it should go, why it’s more complicated after every attempt at simplification….but I’ll let the politicians do that because it seems to be at the heart of what they actually do debate year after year.

Instead it’s much more fun to use the extra three days to check out just five of the many outpourings from songwriters thinking about the public till and its proverbial collector, the dreaded Tax Man. So, so good, they should have been exempt.

SUNNY AFTERNOON - The Kinks (1966) Sunny Afternoon

The tax man’s taken all my dough and left in my stately home, lazing on a sunny afternoon, and I can’t sail my yacht, he’s taken everything I’ve got, all I’ve got’s this sunny afternoon

TAXMAN - The Beatles (1966) Taxman

Don't ask me what I want it for (ah, ah, Mr. Wilson), if you don't want to pay some more (ah, ah, Mr. Heath), 'cause I'm the taxman, yeah, I'm the taxman

FORTUNATE SON - Credence Clearwater Revival (1969) Fortunate Son

Some folks are born silver spoon in hand, Lord, don’t they help themselves, no? But when the taxman come to the door, Lord, the house lookin’ like a rummage sale

TAX FREE - Joni Mitchell (1985) Tax Free

Preacher preaching love like vengeance, preaching love like hate, calling for large donations, promising estates, rolling lawns and angel bands behind the pearly gates, you know he will have his in this life but yours will have to wait, he's immaculately tax free

TAXMAN, MR. THIEF - Cheap Trick (1977) Taxman, Mr. Thief

You work hard, you make money, there ain't no one in the world who can stop you, you work hard, you went hungry, now the taxman is out to get you, you worked hard and slaved and slaved for years, break your back sweat a lot, well, it's just not fair

CONFIDENTIAL MEMORANDUM

Many of you are aware that James L. Dolan, CEO of both Madison Square Garden Sports Corp. and Madison Square Garden Entertainment Corp., has gone to great lengths to ban from MSG facilities and events any lawyers and law firms and their employees currently in litigation with the company. Lawyers Are Back in MSG MSG Boss Erupts as His Ban of Lawyers Draws Scrutiny We were able to obtain this confidential list of some new names being added to the ban.

CONFIDENTIAL MEMORANDUM

Memo To: Madison Square Garden Sports/Entertainment Staff
From: JD
Date: January 29, 2023
Re: Continuing Attorney Ban (Loser Lawyer Lockout)

This memorandum is circulated for the purpose of adding the following attorneys to our Loser Lawyer Lockout, the biometric program of vision recognition for screening of customers at all Company facilities and events, including but not limited to, MSG, Radio City Music Hall, Beacon Theatre, Hulu Theater, Knicks and Rangers games, comedy shows, concerts. These lawyers are currently involved in active litigation against the Company and may not be admitted.

1. Harvey Schpilkis, Esq.: Represents Lou Massone Jr. who has brought wrongful death action on behalf of the Estate of Lou Massone Sr. Claim made that the elder Massone, a Knicks season ticket holder from 1958 to 1993, suffered a fatal heart attack on June 2, 1993 in his second row seat at Game 5 of the Eastern Division Finals after four layup attempts at go-ahead basket by Charles Smith were denied by Horace Grant, Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen in final seconds. Case is still pending as judge weighs whether fifth shot attempt may still be possible.

2. Debra Baker, Esq.: Represents Boyd Robinson III who claims that listening to the song Under Pressure at all 87 of Billy Joel’s monthly residency concerts at The Garden has been the proximate cause of his schizophrenia.

3. Stanley Blackmon, Esq.: Represents Harvey Weinstein in connection with claim that my band JD & The Straight Shot’s song I Should Have Known (“and what of the others, in some way all my brothers, sitting on the very top, could not hear the call to stop, behind locked doors the eyes of men who take what don't belong to them”) misrepresents that we were friends.

4. Loni Zaidi, Esq.: Has filed Celebrity Discrimination Lawsuit on behalf of Carmen Electra, as well as all Real Housewives of Various Locales, not invited to sit in the six seats of Knicks Celebrity Row during a time when Entourage’s Jerry Turtle Ferrara and rapper Flavor Flav received multiple invitations.

5. Lana Fellows, Esq.: Represents plaintiff Knicks 1st and 2nd round draft picks Tom Riker (1972), Gene Short (1975), DeWayne Scales (1980), Greg Butler (1988), Jerrod Mustaf (1990), Charlie Ward (1994), Fredric Weis (1999), Mike Sweetney, Maciej Lampe and Slavko Vranes (2003), Renaldo Balkman (2006), Jordan Hill (2009), Andy Rautins (2010), Kostas Papanikolaou (2012), and Cleanthony Early (2014) claiming that Knicks drafting them many rounds higher than was rational resulted in undue pressure and career oblivion.

6. Tyler Richmond, Esq.: Has filed class action suit on behalf of season ticket holders between 1999 and 2003 in connection with trade of John Wallace for Chris Dudley, subsequently signed to 4-year $28 million contract. Claim that contract signing (which worked out to be $825,000 per made free throw by Dudley, recognized as one of the worst percentage foul shooters in NBA history) constituted breach of contract to provide entertainment and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

7. Beverly Newsome, Esq.: Represents claimant in personal injury suit against Company’s Radio City Music Hall and Rockettes claiming that one of the dancers inadvertently kicked off her prosthetic right leg injuring two young children attending 2017 Holiday Concert.

8. Eldridge C. Eldridge, Esq.: Represents me in suit against myself in connection with my song Fix the Knicks (“fix the Knicks and make them shine, get 'em to win like it's '69, hitting all their free throws and no more shooting bricks, time to get it right and fix the Knicks, doing my best and that's my problem, I check with my friend called Isiah Thomas, pay no mind to those nasty critics, they haven't done a thing to fix the Knicks”). Estate of Aretha Franklin is additional plaintiff as my band was her opening act in 2011 at the Jones Beach Theater. Claim is for irreparable career damage and pain and suffering.

9. Peter Brav, Esq.: A non-practicing attorney who allegedly wrote this and has recently attempted to circumvent the Loser Lawyer Lockout and enter The World’s Most Famous Arena utilizing the same brown paper bag he wore for the Knicks franchise-record 14th consecutive loss on January 8, 2015 during the franchise-record 17-win and 65-loss season.

WELL ENDOWED

April 5, 2022

Dear Mr. Smith,

I am writing to congratulate you on behalf of Harvard University for acceptance of your undergraduate application to enroll this coming year. As you know, Harvard University has been known for our high standards in the application process and our dedication to academic excellence. We were very impressed by both your academic record and future promise. Please fill out the enclosed acceptance form and return it to us no later than the 1st day of May.

You should look forward to four years of academic study and individual growth, as well as an eternity of monetary solicitations. Almost immediately upon graduation we intend to barrage you with daily envelopes and emails in our institutional pursuit of an ever-greater endowment. Whether your years after graduation are filled with bullion or balloons bursting, we will come after you and all other graduates with equal determination. Of course, not everyone will find his or her name on a building or rear end bussed at a Manhattan cocktail party by busy deans on break. Rest assured though that your money will always be good here.

Please make a mental note now that if you graduate with more than one hundred thousand dollars in outstanding student loan debt, you should not worry if you don’t hear from us right away as no solicitations will be made in the first month after graduation.

Yours sincerely,

John Doe, Admissions Department

A Stroll Down Close-Minded Lane

When the administration proposed a new system of residential colleges with their own dining halls, Prospect denounced the idea as a potential threat to the system of eating clubs. The magazine charged that, like affirmative action, the plan was "intended to create racial harmony."

—1985 issue of Prospect magazine published by Concerned Alumni of Princeton

Oh no, not that, not racial harmony. Next thing you know, men and women will be seeing eye to eye. If they let that crazy notion out of Princeton into the world, people spending weekends in different temples and across borders might get along too.

Take a look back at From Alito's Past, a Window on Conservatives at Princeton, David D. Kirkpatrick’s New York Times story from November 2005 when Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. was being considered for the Supreme Court. November 27, 2005 from David D. Kirkpatrick Seventeen years later it reads like a comic book super-villain origin story with some names we’ve become too familiar with. Zealous missionaries panicked about the possibility of infecting their beloved Christian Ivy League pillar with virulent strains of other gods and, heaven forbid, actual breathing, independent, education-seeking…women.

There is today’s conservative pundit Dinesh D'Souza in a 1984 Prospect piece upset about a Puerto Rican first-year student whose mother sought to remove her from the school after learning that she was having sex with a male student and receiving sex education from the school.

There is a 1985 Prospect editorial concerned about letting black students out of the one dormitory they were concentrated in and allowing them to join the exclusive eating clubs dotting Prospect Street near the university. "Doubtless, there will be many who regard this as mere stalling, and prejudice by another name. If realistic approaches to problems must be called dirty names because we do not like them, well, there is no remedy for it."

And there is Justice Alito in a 1985 government application listing his membership in Concerned Alumni as a reference point for his conservative bona fides although he subsequently sought at the time of his Supreme Court consideration to downplay his membership and condemn the organization’s missions. 2017 Mudd Manuscript Library Blog Post

You likely don’t have to look much past the Kirkpatrick article (and the subsequent 2017 blog post of Princeton University students linked immediately above) to understand how the small group of what we would today call influencers who believe that this country should be Christian and led by white men were honing their non-liberal arts as undergraduates in an otherwise bucolic location in Central New Jersey.

FLAGGING SPIRIT

My daughter came home today worrying about a giant American flag draped over the stone entrance to our driveway, held in place by two bricks. Who would put it there? she wondered worriedly. I was off to remove it, folding it neatly and placing it atop the stone for whoever did put it there to retrieve. I walked back to the house, wondering, having a dialogue with myself.

I love this country and its flag. But I was worried too. For far too long the flag has been waved not out of joy and gratitude but as an admonition---to get on board or leave. I worry that we have paid too much attention to symbols and anthems and not enough to people and whether this nation is doing as good a job as it could for caring about them. All of them. America is an ideal, of freedom for all and shared purpose and prosperity. It can be guided by its Constitution, inspired by its Anthem and united by its Flag but its people, all its people, are paramount.

I was thirteen when Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their gloved fists in a human rights protest on the podium at the ’68 Mexico City Olympics. It was a time of oppression of African Americans in America and throughout the world, apartheid in South Africa and record daily death totals in Southeast Asia. Smith and Carlos had trained their whole lives for that medal moment of gold and bronze but they felt the need to speak powerfully without words about human rights and the need for change.

America was born out of dissent and protest.

In 2003 the drumbeat for the invasion of Iraq in search of weapons of mass destruction and regime change was deafening. The Senate vote for approval was 77, including Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton, to 23. When the lead singer of the Dixie Chicks told a London crowd she was ashamed President George W. Bush was also from Texas, blacklisting and death threats ensued. When France declined to support the Iraq invasion, Bush labeled the French position as anti-American, resulting in anti-French sentiment sweeping our nation and the absurd menu revision in many restaurants of French fries to Freedom fries.

In 2016 Colin Kaepernick first sat and later knelt during pre-game singing of the Star Spangled Banner, stating that “America oppresses black people and people of color”. Although then President Barack Obama called it his constitutional right, President Donald J. Trump later stated “you have to stand proudly for the national anthem or you shouldn't be playing, you shouldn't be there, maybe you shouldn't be in the country.” The outrage at the kneeling prevented people from focusing on the point Kaepernick was trying to make about racism and brutality, about human rights, about kindness.

I’ve been around long enough to witness how many flag-wavers are ignorant of what makes a nation strong, just and lasting and how many Bible-thumpers are spiritually void. They routinely conflate nation and religion in any event and use the flag and the Bible as weapons and not inspirations.

Not too long ago we moved to a somewhat rural New Jersey community. Beautiful amber waves of grain are everywhere but I’ve noticed many more Trump 2020 and Trump 2024 pennants than I am used to. And I can’t pick up the news, local or national, without reading about someone threatening someone, often in the name of patriotism of the malevolent and not benevolent sort. That’s where my paranoia came in. I imagined the flag was placed there by one of them, whoever they are, eager to see who would keep it in place and who would remove it. In my overly vivid imagination, they were making a list and checking it twice, the kind of list Joseph McCarthy, not Santa, would keep.

I came home to learn my usually shy and not demonstrative wife had put up the flag, to celebrate the Fourth of July.

Why not? she wondered.

Why not indeed? I thought as I unfolded the flag, kissed it gently and draped it proudly back across the entrance stone.

BEWARE OF ANGRY MEN WITH GOATS: The Joy of Losing Baseball and More

It’s baseball season again, the Yankees and Mets are playing great, the Chicago Cubs not so much. But hope springs eternal for every true baseball fan, especially in Chicago. Revisit my novel THE OTHER SIDE OF LOSING or read it for the first time. It’s that time of the year, that time of life.

THE OTHER SIDE OF LOSING

Former President Nixon - A Key to Knicks 1970 Championship?

With the New York Knickerbockers not making it into June again, true Knicks fans have some time to reflect. For me, it’s coming upon a scorecard recalling this 13 year-old’s train trip to MSG late November 1968 to see the hated Celtics. This was less than a month before the December 19, 1968 trade of Walt Bellamy and Howard Komives for Dave DeBusschere which would ultimately lead to a Knicks NBA championship in 1970. And now from Wikipedia I learn that “Komives was involved in a personal feud with Cazzie Russell that negatively affected the rest of the team. Russell was an ardent supporter of Richard Nixon in the 1968 Presidential election, while Komives worked for the Hubert Humphrey campaign which led to the trade.” Who knew? DeBusschere’s gritty and outstanding play, Walt “Clyde” Frazier’s promotion to point guard and Willis Reed’s becoming a force at center might just might make Cazzie Russell the MVP—notwithstanding Clyde’s 36 points, 19 assists and 7 rebounds in Game 7 against the Lakers on May 7, 1970 on his way to the Hall of Fame. Here’s to Cazzie Russell and his rather poor taste in presidential politics—-it’s not all about the x’s and o’s! And if not Cazzie, let’s give some credit to Richard Milhous himself.