Me? I'd live on Pesky Lane. And you?

In my Worcester neighborhood, there was a clutch of streets with Native American names. Or Native American-ish names.
 Wyola. Utica. Delawanda. Alsada. Tallawanda. The only street named for an actual tribe was Seminole. I'm guessing that these streets were laid out in the 1920's, when there was a general fascination with things Native American. In my mind's eye, going up and down these streets, I'd venture a guesss that the houses were all built between the 1920's and 1950's. 

Anway, it was a curiosity and those street names were a lot more interesting in most of those in my 'hood. Blaine Ave. Henderson. Varnum. Sylvan. Brookline. 

The lone fanciful name was Eureka Street. 

But as a kid, I liked the idea of a "themed" neighborhood, and I envied my friends who lived on one of the streets with a cool "Indian" name.

So as a childhood fan of having a street naming scheme, and a lifetime fan of the Boston Red Sox, I was keenly interested in learning of a Herriman, Utah, subdivision that has streets named for Red Sox players. 

These are not necessarily the all-time greatest players. No Ted Williams Boulevard. No Tris Speaker Lane. No David Ortiz Street. No Pedro Martinez Avenue. No Carl Yastrzemski Road. (Well, you can't blame them for that omission. Who wants to spell Yastremski, let alone pay for the longer street sign?)

No the players who had streets named after them were the favorites of one non-Red Sox Nation native Brandon Parr "a land development project manager with EDGEhomes and lifelong Sox fan." 

“I kind of started following [former Red Sox third baseman] Wade Boggs as a kid,” Parr explained in a phone interview. “And he joined the Red Sox in the ’80s, and I’ve been a fan ever since.” (Source: Boston.com)

Thus there's Pedroia Street. And Varitek Drive. Eovaldi Avenue. And, of course, Boggs Way. (All great players, by the way. Wade Boggs is a Hall of Famer. Dustin Pedroia and Jason Varitek are in the Red Sox Hall of Fame. And Nathan Eovaldi was a key player on the 2018 World Series championship team.)

The opportunity to name streets must be one of the funner aspects of Parr's job. And he went to town. 

“I thought it was just going to be kind of a fun idea to have something I could see every day that’s related to the Red Sox,” he said. “No one really gave me any pushback. I chose players that I have a connection with as I’ve been watching, and then some historical names like Fisk and Pesky and Remy, just to pay homage to some of the older guys as well.”

There was some pushback on Pesky Lane from someone not familiar with the great Johnny Pesky, a Red Sox Hall of Famer and someone who was associated with the Sox for over 60 years. (His number was retired.) The guy just associated the word pesky with annoyance. Parr set him straight. 

Jerry Remy is in the Red Sox Hall of Fame. Carlton Fisk is in the Hall of Fame Hall of Fame. Both of their numbers are retired. 

As for why so many other Red Sox greats didn't make the naming cut: Williams, Ortiz, and Martinez - three Hall of Famers - have common names that were already in use in town. Parr hasn't ruled out naming a street after Yastrzemski. He can always use Yaz instead. 

For Ted Williams, he might want to consider Splender Splinter or Teddy Ballgame. Big Papi would be obvious for Ortiz. There's nothing that obvious for Martinez (one of my personal favorites among Red Sox players). Maybe Petey isn't already in use. 

Anway, this sort of street naming isn't that out of the ordinary in Utah, where:

...quirky street names are actually pretty common around the greater Salt Lake region. In Herriman and other nearby cities and towns, you can find neighborhoods whose street names pay homage to “The Lord of the Rings,” the Marvel Cinematic Universe, wines, authors, Arthurian legends, and even “Wayne’s World.”

Wayne's World!!! Never would I ever, for Petey's sake, live on a street named for Wayne's World. Or Marvel superheroes, for that matter. To each his own.

But I'd be more than happy to live on Pesky Lane. Just as long as it was in Boston and not Herriman, Utah.

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Image Source: Boston.com Facebook

Miller Time

There have been an awful lot of Millers in the news of late. First and most dreadful is, of course, the odious Stephen Miller, the malign White House presence who appears to be his boss's leading white nationalist whisperer. (And who himself looks like a villain from a 19th century penny-dreadful.) 

Of course, with Stephen Miller, there's a two-fer, as his equally vile wife, Katie Miller, is always edging into our consciousness through her social media presence. She recently caught my eye when she put out a snide, belittling tweet when Joe Biden commented - kindly, of course - on the death of Lindsey Graham.

Next up: Ohio Congressman Max Miller, a former Trump aide who was known when he worked in the White House during Trump's first term as "The Music Man." He earned this moniker because he was the staff member called in to figure out which show tune to play to jolly the president out of a bad mood or to calm him down when he was about to blow his stack. 

Post Trump 1.0, Miller managed to move on up to representing Ohio in Congress, and although he's in one of those safely gerrymandered districts that's solid red, he's facing down quite a scandal. He's embroiled in a nasty divorce from Emily Moreno, daughter of one of Ohio's senators. Miller maintains that the charges are just standard contentious divorce lies, but they include allegations of violence, and Moreno has filed for a restraining order. The one charge that seems to have been at least partially acknowledged by Miller is that he prevented someone from coming over to his place to pick up a stuffed blue teddy bear, his child's comfort toy, her lovie, which had been left behind after the kiddo had spent some time with him. (The little girl is two.) Miller only kept custody of the little blue bear overnight. Only 14 hours, which just goes by in such a flash when a small child, going through what is likely a traumatic time, is deprived of her comfort toy. 

Although many Republicans (not Trump, of course; he continues to back The Music Man) urged Max Miller to drop out, he decided to tough it out, and he's on the ballot. Only allegations...Fake news. We'll see what the voters say in November. They're obviiously okey-doke with a lot of atrocious behavior on the part of politicians, but keepng her lovie away from his toddler may be a bit of atrocious behavior too far.

Then there's Matt Miller of ESPN fame, who of late has found himself in trouble within trouble within more trouble. Since I pay zero attention to the NFL draft - this Miller's area of expertise - I had no idea who Matt Miller was. But he was a pretty big deal. And part of his big dealness was his:

...cultivating a brand that included a range of charitable endeavors: coat drives for children in need, scholarships for students of color, and supplies for teachers. He was, as one friend called him, a “local hero.”

But over the past two months, that image of Miller began to crack. Dozens of social media posts accused him of stiffing the winners of fantasy football leagues he ran, leagues he billed as benefiting charities. Commenters also questioned the legitimacy of the charity fundraisers he routinely held. The public outcry prompted an investigation by the Missouri Attorney General’s Office, which has received more than two dozen complaints. (Source: NY Times/Athletic)

Miller had begun paying back those he owed when things in his life went from bad to worse. Far worse.

In June, he was in a very serious car accident and ended up losing his arm. (When a Ford Bronco crosses the double yellow line and slams into a semi, the semi wins.)

He set up a GoFundMe to pay for his prosthetic and other expenses associated with his recovery and within a week managed to raise over $50K from well-wishers. However, the GoFundMe also elicted a raft of complaints to the state AG's office:

Those complaints were made by people who had paid for camps and participated in fantasy football leagues where no product or minimal product was delivered, according to the attorney general’s office. 

Although "Miller’s GoFundMe is not part of the investigation," it was suspended once those complaints started coming in. 

Speaking of suspended, Miller is also on leave from ESPN. And he's been kicked off the platform where he ran his fantasy leagues. 

So, he's got the AG on his tail about the fantasy football league payout problems; his charities are being looked into - he often collected charitable donations through personal PayPal, Venmo, and Cash App accounts (not that there's anything suss about that); and he's lost an arm. And, oh year, his Bronco was totaled. And he's been charged with a misdemeanor for his bad driving. At least the truck driver wasn't injured. 

I realize that Miller is a pretty common name. 

But it sure has been a bad summer for Millers in the news. Make that a good summer for news about bad Millers. 

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Image Source: Bockles

The Gambler

From the long list of possible vices, gambling was never going to be my vice of choice. 

Oh, I'm still capable of yelling 'wanna bet?' when some factoid is in question - and I'm 100% sure I'm right. Of course, other than the small smug satisfaction of winning the bet, nothing material ever materializes. But other than buying an occasional lottery ticket, betting has no appeal to me whatsoever.

I've been to casinos, but my limit was always a roll of quarters for the slots - or whatever the electronic equivalent is these days. But once that ten bucks is exhausted, I'm out. In my twenties, I went a couple of times to the track (Narragansett, Suffolk Downs) with friends, where I'd make a couple of two-dollar bets on some nag, based on whether I liked its name or the jockey's colors. 

But gambling to me is one big meh, and I'm about as likely to get sucked into playing one of those betting apps as I am to go skydiving. Is there a probability that's less than zero?

Gambling, however - whether micro wagers on Fan Duel or other sports betting apps, or in the 'when's the next forest fire' prediction makets - has become a huge industry. And what it's doing in the process of growing the businesses, the industry, is getting a whole lot of folks ensnared in gambling. I.e., becoming addicted. And their lives can be pretty much ruined when they go into big, hideous debt. 

One ruinee is a fellow named Terry Thompson, whose road to financial perdition was via FanDuel. 

He began innocently enough, betting on the Philadelphia Eagles to win, but soon found himself "placing microbets, which are in-game wagers on something as small as whether the next play would be a pass or run."

Soon enough, he had wagered $18.5 million on the app. This figure does not, of course, represent total losses. Thompson was making his bets, rewagering his winnings, and (mostly) covering his losses. While FanDuel was taking their cut. 

Meanwhile, having been identified as a Big Spender, Thompson started getting comped. Tickets to Eagles, Flyers, and Sixers games. A couple of fully paid for trips to the Supoer Bowl with perks like invites to swank parties and pregame field access. 

Thompson was assigned a FanDuel relationship manager, Bryttanni Morgan, his VIP host for events like the Super Bowl. She also stayed in contact with Thompson via text, pretending to be his friend - with convos about family, etc. - while always turning the encounter around to urging Thompson to place more bets. 

But the house always wins, and the losses were getting steeper. 

Thompson was losing big time, mortgaging his home. Mortgaging it again. Selling share in a business he ran. He was desperate for the funds to keep fueling his addiction.

Then, one afternoon [in November 2024], he flicked open his phone and received a FanDuel reward that momentarily distracted him from his debts: a personalized video message from Philadelphia Phillies superstar. (Source: Philadelphia Inquirer)

Bryce Harper is a very big deal. He's a future Hall of Famer, playing his way through a $300M plus multi-year contract that nets him about $25M a year. He has a ton of endorsements as well. But there's never enough money, and if you can earn some extra coin by making a bunch of personalized video calls for your fans while you're sitting around with nothing to do but Scrooge McDuck count your money, why not add to the pile o' lucre?

So Harper recorded a video that Morgan sent Thompson that name checks Thompson's son, thanks Thompson for his support (support for Harpef? for FanDuel?), and wishes him a Happy Thanksgiving. 

The video was made through Cameo, the outfit that sells celebrity greetings. You can get an Englebert Humperdinck vid for $345. (Didn't know he was still alive. He's 90, and will be performing in the Boston area in December. Who knew?)

Red Sox great (and Hall of Famer) will give you a shout out for $600. And the price for Kevin O'Leary, Shark Tank ahole supreme, starts at $1,500. 

So Harper wasn't doing directly promotional work for FanDuel. It was via Cameo. But:

Harper mentions that he was reaching out at the request of Thompson’s VIP manager, “your host Bryttanni at FanDuel.” 

So he kinda shoulda known that Thompson was a pretty big gambler to have a FanDuel "host" looking out for him.

You'd think so, no?

Anyway, Thompson ended up owing over a million bucks and spending time in "a psychiatric facility to undergo treatment for gambling addiction."

He's suing FanDuel and Morgan, and I hope he wins big (and that the winnings go into a trust that someone else manages for him). Sure, there's such a thing as free will, but these rotters knowingly prey on those who've become addicted to gambling. 

As for Harper, he's not named in the suit, but he's getting some heat for working with a betting outfit. He's blah-blah-ing about not doing anything directly with FanDuel, but since his message mentions the company, it's not as if he should be "shocked, shocked that gambling is going on in here," as Inspector Renault famously says in Casablanca, while accepting a bag of loot from the croupier at Rick's. 

Oh, FFS. Nothing he did was illegal, but we're sure on the border between ethical and unethical here, no?

I can understand the lure of doing Cameo videos. It's almost free money. And I looked on the site, and a lot of the videos are offered for lesser lights than Bryce Harper. Plenty of them are for "celebrities" I never heard of. And I can understand why fans of celebrities would get a kick out of receiving a "personal" video, even if they know it's hooey.

But especially for the rich folks making these vids, why don't they do it through a charity? Let the Make a Wish Foundation, Saint Jude's Hospital, Habitat for Humanity make some money peddling these videos. They need the money more than Bryce Harper does. 

Sheesh.

Meanwhile, if it's okay wish best of luck to a gambler, best of luck to Terry Thompson. 

As for Bryce Harper, why not pay closer attention to what you're doing in your free time to make even more money than you'll ever possibility need.

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Image Source: Fantasy Costumes

Yo, Yo-Yos!

When I was a kid, I loved playing with my yo-yo.

Not that I was all that good. Sure, I mastered the basics: walk the dog; around the world; getting the yo-yo to sleep; that pendulum thingy. But I wasn't a trick-meister, by any means. Nor was anyone I knew - other than, maybe, my brother Tom. I seem to remember him being pretty adept.  

We all had yo-yos. We used them in the schoolyard during recess. We used them solo, when there was no one around to play with and you didn't feel like reading the latest Nancy Drew.

Everyone had a basic wooden Duncan Yo-Yo, with string-string. I don't remember there being any other options. Those snappy translucent yo-yos in fluorescent green, and the aluminum ones, came later. I don't remember there being any nylon string either.

Other than Duncans, the only yo-yos I remember from my childhood were those ridiculous flimsy little plastic ones that came as the prize in cereal or a box of Cracker Jack. They were in size somewhere between a nickel and a quarter, and the string was thread.

Unlike the swell Navy frogmen that came in Kellogg cereals - the ones where you put baking soda/powder in a little compartment in an outsized flipper and got to watch the frogman buzz around the tub on a very important mission - the cheapo plastic button-sized yo-yos did not work. 

You could yo down, but the yo-yo itself was too light, the thread too flimsy, to be able to yo back up. Let alone do a trick.

In my world, y0-yos were popular in the mid-to-late 1950s, and then had a resurgence when I was in high school in the mid-1960's.

In high school, I owned a red wooden Duncan with a white cloud-like striped design.

As I said, I wasn't all that good at it, but I wasn't out-and-out terrible, either. I just didn't excel in yo-yo as I had in playing jacks, the one "sport" I was ever any good at. (A few years ago, I tried to see if I still had my mojo working, but my hands were too big. And it was too damned uncomfortable sitting on a hard floor, let alone getting up from it.)

Back in the day, if there were any yo-yo contests around, I wasn't aware of them.

I do recall a hula hoop contest in the parking lot of the Stop 'n Shop when I was in fourth or fifth grade or so - whenever the hula hoop craze was at its peak. I went with my sister Kath and our friends, but we didn't arrive in time to contest. There were hundreds of kids there, and we just milled around the perimeter, hoops in hand, before getting bored and heading home.

But as I learned recently, competitive yo-yo is a thing, and in late June the nationals, run by the good folks at the National Yo-Yo Contest, were held in Las Vegas.

Lots of divisions and sub-divisions. So lots of contestants, and lots of winners. It's a sport dominated by males -  young males -  and, let me tell you, what these kids can do with a yo-yo is pretty phenomenal. 

Ryan Connolly, a local from North Easton, Mass., was crowned champion of the 4A Division. 4A is described as yo-yo-ing off the string. I couldn't quite picture what stringless yo-yo-ing is, but seeing is understanding. The string is not attached to the yo-yo. You toss the yo-yo and catch it on the string, in the air, and do tricks with it. 

Connolly is what I would call a quasi-professional. There doesn't appear to be any prize money in these contests. You win your medal and a bag o' yo-yo-related prizes. But Connolly - who graduated from UMass Amherst a couple of years ago and who works as a financial analyst - has a side gig coming up with product ideas for a Korean yo-yo maker. Mostly, I'm guessing he's in it for love of the game. And as side-hustles go, this is a pretty fun and interesting.  (And quirky enough to make it to Connolly's LinkedIn profile.) Beats being an influencer!

Connolly is also the World 4A Champion, and will be defending his title in Japan later this month. Good luck, Ryan!

Me? I think I may have a yo-yo around here somewhere. I don't think I have my trusty high-school Duncan, but I seem to remember a more yup-scale yo-yo I got at Sharper Image (oh, those were the days). Anyway, I'm going to scout around and see if I've still got it. (The yo-yo, and my former mad "skills.")

I don't think I'll be trying any 4A tricks, but I'd like to see if I can still walk the dog.

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Image Source:  National YoYo Hall of Fame

Send in the Indianapolis Clowns.

When it comes to baseball, I'm not a 100% purist, longing for the return of men in baggy wool unis sweltering through a double header. I like that they've sped up the game by putting a stopwatch on the pitcher, and an automatic runner at second when game's go to extras. At Fenway, I enjoy singing Sweet Caroline between the top and bottom of the eighth, even when the Red Sox are losing, which these days they're mostly doing. And I actually like Banana Ball.

For those unfamiliar with Banana Ball, it's a Harlem Globe Trotter style game, centered on the Savannah Bananas.

The team tours the country playing what it calls Banana Ball: a family-friendly, souped-up, TikTok-ready version of the national pastime. Games feature singing and dancing and celebrity cameos, plus backflipping outfielders, stilt-walking batters, and the occasional double to the gap. Last year, according to the organization’s own data, the Bananas and their affiliated teams sold 2.2 million tickets—more than 11 different MLB franchises. (Source: The Atlantic)

I wasn't among those 2.2 million ticket buyers. The Bananas came to Fenway, and I entered the lottery, but didn't make it through to ticket purchase. I didn't score this season, either, although just as well. Walking to Fenway for a game is one thing, trekking to Gillette Stadium, where this year's games are being played, is quite another.

Still, I do like the Bananas. 

I also like baseball history. And if there's one sport that's full o' history, it's baseball. 

Part of this history is its sordid history of segregation, and the glorious history of the Negro Leagues. 

The most famous of the Negro League teams was probably the Homestead Grays, which featured superstars like Josh Gibson and Cool Papa Bell. Pitcher Satchel Paige played for a couple of Negro League teams, including the Kansas City Monarchs.  (In the early 1940s, my father saw Paige and the Monarchs play an exhibition game at Holy Cross' Fitton Field in Worcester.) Say Hey, Willie Mays started out playing with the Birmingham Black Barons. 

The Indianapolis Clowns, one of the lesser known Negro League teams, is being resurrected as one of the teams that plays as a foil for the Savannah Bananas. (The other teams are the Party Animals, the Firefighters, the Texas Tailgaters, and the Loco Beach Coconuts.)

The revival of the Clowns, which is being done in conjunction with the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, is interesting on a number of different fronts. 

One is that the Clowns in their heyday did a lot of clowning around that played into racial stereotypes - shuffling Stepin Fetchits of the diamond. The Banana Ballers are well aware of the stereotype, and have to walk the tightrope between presenting their players as athletes and performers. This is the case across all their teams, but has particular resonance for the Indianpolis Clowns, given their legacy as a Negro League team. (Their most famous player was none other than Hank Aaron, who briefly played for the Clowns before signing on with the Boston Braves.)

Another thread of the new Banana Ball Indianapolis Clowns story is the desire to promote baseball to Black kids. The Clowns are a diverse team, but they prominantly feature Black players. Former Red Sox player (and fan favorite) Jackie Bradley, Jr., is one of them, as he's now playing fo the Clowns. As is Mo'ne Davis, who famously made news a decade ago for being the first girl to pitch and win a game at the Little League World Series. Mo'ne, by the way, has a master's degree in sports management from Columbia University.

Black players dominate the NBA and NFL, but their representation in Major League Baseball has fallen over the last few decades from a high of nearly 20% to a bit under 7% this season. There are a number of reasons for this, including a lack of urban organizations enccouraging partcipation in baseball, and thus a lack of opportunities to play, and the expenses associated with playing the game at a competitive youth level. 

While Black participation has declined, the number of Hispanics (many from the Dominican Republic and Venezuela) playing in the majors has grown to nearly 30%. Asian players are also coming on - Shohei Otani, anyone? - and now make up about 3% of the current rosters. 

I love the idea of increasing Black participation in baseball. More Mookie Betts, please! And I love the idea of anything that promotes interest in baseball, IMHO the best game ever. Even if it's the Banana Ball which, let's face it, is kind of silly. But it's entertaining. And it's baseball. 

So yay Indianapolis Clowns. LFG!

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Image Source: eBay

Wii Bowling. (Wheeeeeee...)

I don't have a non-bucket list, but if I were to maintain one, two items that would safely be on it:

• I will never join a bowling league
• I will never live in Tulsa, Oklahoma

I also hope never to have to live in a senior living community - that's just no country for old introverts - but I don't really know what the future holds. So never say never on senior living. But I'm pretty confident saying never to bowling and Tulsa. 

Still, I was delighted to read a recent story in The New York Times on the U.V. Okies, a bowling team from University Village senior living who are the hottest bowlers in a senior league that bowls via Nintendo Wii Sports.

I must note that I am not against bowlng per se. Every time I've been bowling - which is maybe a few dozen times in my life - I've enjoyed it. Even that first time in eighth grade when I went candlepin bowling with the Junior Catholic Daughters of America (girls spinout of the Knights of Columbus) and managed to knock down 11 pins in total. Now candlepin is a lot harder than "big ball" bowling. Still, 11 is pretty embarrassing. 

I've managed to score over 100 - even well over 100 - in big ball bowling, but the only way I'll go bowling nowadays is using bumpers. 

Maybe I'd be better using Wii, but I doubt it. 

Tulsa is another story. If Oklahoma isn't exactly my cup on tea, state-wise, I would be fine visiting Tulsa to see the Black Wall Street History Center, which commemorates the 1921 race massacre, and to see the Woody Guthrie Center, which commemorates Woody Guthrie. (Fun fact: I'm friends with the former curator of the Woody Guthrie archives. She was an archivist for the collection when it was housed in NYC and was responsible for moving it to Tulsa.)

But there aren't many places in the United States where I can less imagine myself living than Oklahoma. (It might be tied for rock-bottom with Mississippi, but that's factoring out Texas and Florida.)

Yet I delighted in reading about my age peers having such a good time Wii bowling. 

The Okies are the league champeens, and have been so through six seasons. They rarely if ever lose. This season's record was 10-0.

Their team includes Phyllis the Killer Wimer, a.k.a., the GOAT, who is 95; Charlene "the Grasshopper" Giles; Marvelous Marcia Ness; Rollin' Ron Remaree; Ron Pogue; and Dandy Don Alcorn. They're all, like me, old geezers. But I would have guessed that just by looking at their decidedly old-fashioned names. Does anyone get named Charlene or Ron anymore? They're a couple of Maureen-ish names if ever. 

The league was founded 20 years ago, just about when the Wii first came out, and gives folks an opportunity to get together and have some fun while getting some exercise in as well. And compete for bragging rights - and 100 Grand candy bars. 

There are as many as 40 players at a time on the U.V. team, folks competing in-house to earn one of eight places for the week's league game. 

“There are some things I do where I feel ageless,” Ms. Giles, 75, said. She added: “It’s like I could just as well be 13 standing up there. It’s fun to have those things.”

Wii bowling helps them socialize and form friendships, navigate the aches and pains and grief and loss of aging, and encourages them to try new things. “This is the way older people survive,” Pat Winkle, known as “Nana Pat,” 87, said. (Source: NY Times)

Aches, pains, grief, loss. Yep/yelp!, they got aging right!

Players sport team shirts. They cheer on their teammates with pompoms. They decorate their bowling lanes (actually the facility's rec room) with posters. Smells Like Teen Spirit to me!

And if you're wondering whether the bowlers would be mssing the sounds of pins clattering when they go down, wonder no more. Wii comes with special effects: sounds of pins getting knocked down and visuals like "Strike" flashing on the screen when someone knocks down all ten pins. 

And if you're wondering whether real-life bowling alley skills automatically transfer to the virtual game, not really. 

When he first started playing, Mr. Alcorn had to unlearn the techniques and stances he knew from real-life bowling.

“That won’t work,” he said. “You’ve got to go up and out to get the strike.”

Hmmm. Maybe there'd be hope for me as a virtual bowler! 

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Image Source: Barstool Sports

Firing Offense? Well...

Although I don't typically root, root, root for teams from New York, I was delighted when the Knicks won the NBA championship. The games were exciting - some unbelievably so - and NY is such a basketball town, it was good to see them win after a drought of over 50 years since their last NBA title.

That was back in 1973, and I learned of their win while hitchhiking in Ireland. We were picked up by an American - I think he was a priest: the black slacks the giveaway - who was from NYC and gave us the news. We were Celtics fans, but okay. We were happy for Father Knicksfan.

This year, there were a couple of good story lines for the Knicks. My favorite was that three of their starting five had also been teammates on the 2016 Villanova team that won the NCAA championship. (Second favorite: Trump being booed to the rafters.)

Anyway, I was happy to see the Knicks win. It was fun seeing the watch parties throughout all the boroughs - I guess Brooklynites can be forgiven for forgetting that their borough has their own team (the Nets) - and it was fun watching the exuberant ticker-tape parade. 

It is colossally enjoyable to see fans - longtime and johnny-come-lately bandwagoners - out in the streets screaming their heads off.

Love, hate, or be 100% indifferent to sports, they can be a great unifying force. 

The celebrations can, of course, get out of hand. Occasional drunken revelers puking and pissing in the streets. Occasional violence (well beyond trash talk) directed at fans of the other guys (so much for the unifying force theorem, I guess). Occasional wanton acts of destruction. And occasional acts of sheer stupidity that don't fall under any of the above categories.

Into this bucket, I'd put the behavior of one Angie Baez who got totally carried away by carrying away a special Knicks tribute trash can, property of the City of New York. If she'd just carried it away, it might have been one thing. But she was caught on camera dumping the overflowing can onto the sidewalk, leaving a big ugly mess of trash strewn there for sanitation workers to clean up. 

If only Angie had ducked into a bodega or Korean corner store, bought some big old black Hefties, and emptied the trash can into a trash bag or two, she might have been okay. But, nope.

And it would have been one thing if she were a twenty-year old knucklehead caught up in the moment. But, nope. Angie Baez is a 40 year old professional who, until her celebratory madness went viral, was the director of executive director of the community and industry engagement program at JP Morgan Chase. No longer.  

She had returned the trash can, and paid a $175 fine for littering. But that was apparently not enough for her to keep her job, which is rumored to have been worth well into the six-figures. (I saw a couple of estimates that her package would have been between $250K and $350K. That is going to be difficult to replace...)

If only Angie Baez had waited, she might have learned that she could have bought one legitimately. 

Meaghan Chillianis, the chief operating officer for OnlyNY, which is selling both full-size and miniature versions of the cans (the mini runs $58), said the company had partnered with the city sanitation department to “celebrate the city’s championship season in a way that felt authentic.” (Source: NY Times)

Instead, poor Angie acted in haste and will no doubt be repenting in leisure.

People have swiped stuff lying around untethered since, like, forever. 

How many college dorm rooms are decorated with No Parking signs? Traffic cones? 

I don't think anyone thinks about grabbing this sort of stuff one way or the other.

A popular "found object" of my era was the plastic milk crate which, depending on the dairy, came in all sorts of swell colors. Perfect for storing record albums. (Ask me how I know.) They became such a popular item that companies started producing them for sale. Which kind of took some of the fun out of it. (Ask me how I know.)

Sometimes the thievery is more seriously thieving. One example: every couple of years some jerks manage to dislodge one of the (expensive bronze) Make Way for Ducklings statues in the Boston Public Garden and make their way off with it. 

But garden-variety stupidity-fueled pilfering by a twenty year old is one thing. One would think that a 40 year old could manage to keep her inner 20 year old reveler tamped down.

Do I think that Angie Baez should have been fired because of this? Not really. Assuming that she was taking Paid Time Off, and given that she was fully decked out in Knicks gear, and wasn't sporting a JP Morgan Chase quarter zip or polo shirt, I don't see why this is a firing offense. Sure, it's an embarrassment to the organization, her making a spectacle of herself. But I think they should have let her profusely apologize and grovel to keep her job. With a warning to grow TF up. 

I'm pretty sure that, among the 300,000+ JP Morgan Chase employees there are at least a handful who've done worse without repercussion. 

Management was probably looking for an opportunity to placate those leading the current anti-diversity zeitgeist anyway. And here was Angie Baez, offering herself up if not on a silver platter, then in a blue-and-orange Knicks trash can.

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Image Source: Instragram

No Scotland, No Party. (All Hail, the Tartan Army!)

I hadn't been paying particular attention to the World Cup. I'd been keeping a very small eye on it, mostly to see whether futbol teams and fans from countries the US currently doesn't like (i.e., countries with Black people, brown people, Muslims...) were being hassled on their way in. And I'd been laughing and eye-rolling whenever I heard someone on the local news awkwardly using the FIFA-demanded locution for Gillette Staium, which has been renamed Boston Stadium for the duration. (Can't have the name Gillette anywhere in sight unless they're willing to pay FIFA big bucks for the privilege.)

And then the Tartan Army invaded Boston: thousands of kilt- and kit-wearing fans who've descended on our city because Scotland's national team has made it to the show for the first time in nearly 30 years. 

I've been to Scotland a couple of times, and found the natives pleasant, but overall, I wouldn't have characterized the Scots personality as particularly friendly, good-humored, or buoyant. Buoy was I wrong.

Scottish fans have thronged our streets, which is something I've witnessed on a daily basis. Living in a tourist area, right down the street from Cheers, I've seen plenty of them making the pilgrimage, walking by my front door. Not only have they all seen the show, they've got a special World Cup anthem - one of nearly two dozen such anthems they've come up with - to the tune of the Cheers "Everybody Knows Your Name." The song, written by comedian Rosco McLleland, is very sweet and funny, name checks the players, and includes the lines "Wouldn't you like to win a game? Or even score a goal?" (It was recorded with the Scotland Symphony Orchestra, btw.)

Which they did both of in the first game of the two they're playing at Gillette, beating Haiti 1-nil. 

The Tartan Army has also been thronging the local pubs. Some of the watering holes - and even some packies (Massachusetts for liquor store) - have run out of beer. 

These fans are getting uniform five-star reviews from everyone who runs into them. Funny, polite, full of brio, full of love of country and team - but not bursting with the obnoxious, bombastic "We're Number One!" and "USA! USA!" chants that 'Muricans bring to every international sporting event.  (In contrast, one of the major Tartan Army chants is "No Scotland, No Party.")

The Scottish fans have no expectations about their team's making it all that far. They know they're not Spain, Brazil, Argentina, England, Germany, Portugal, France. (In the rankings I saw on ESPN, Scotland was rated 28 out of 48 participating teams; USA! USA! is 22. So they actual punch above their weight, given their population is a bit over 5 million, and ours is about 70 times that.)

Locally, the Tartan Army has dominated World Cup coverage, and Bostonians can't get enough of them. 

In a city that's been in a sports funk of late - the Pats lost the Super Bowl, the Celts and the Bruins didn't get far in the playoffs, and the Red Sox are unspeakably bad - we are so enjoying the joy of the Scots. We hadn't known we needed it, but we do now, and no one wants to let the Tartan Army go back home. 

Last Sunday, five thousand of them, led by bagpipers, marched en masse to Fenway Park for a Red Sox game. The Sox, predictably, lost, but the Fenway Faithful got to enjoy the game because of the presence of the Scottish brigade, who kept bursting into cheers and songs. 

Over the time they've been there, I've had a number of occasions to chat with some Scottish fans, mostly to tell them how much we're enjoying their visit and wishing them luck. But I've had longer conversations with a few.

One couple said "you don't know what it's like to go so long without making it to the World Cup." I explained to them that I was a lifelong Red Sox fan, and we'd waited 84 years between World Series wins. We commiserated.

In talking with another fellow, I noted that there were an awful lot of Irish names on the team. Sure, they've got an Angus, a Grant, a Kenny. But they've also got a Liam Kelly, a Kieran Tierney, a Ryan Christie, and a John McGinn (which was the name of the decidedly Irish husband of my mother's best friend). 

God knows, the countries are geographically close. God knows, they both have Gaelic native languages. God knows, neither country is wild about England. God know there's not a lot of difference between Mac and Mc. So commonality is not that surprising. And I knew that Scotland had a lot of folks with Irish ancestry. Still, I was surprised by the number of pretty darned Irish names on the team.

But the guy told me that he was from Glasgow - a football hotbed - and said his city was half Irish Catholic and half Scots Presbyterian, so it was no surprise to him that there were some Irish Scotsmen on the team. 

The Scots were thrilled to beat Haiti. The ones I spoke with were realistic about their chances against Morocco. They could win, but not likely. Morocco is just a better team. And lose Scotland did, but they left the stadium in good humor, having made friends with the fans from Morocco. 

Of course, the Scots are totally realistic about their prospects against Brazil, the team they'll be playing tomorrow in Miami. Brazil is not just a better team, they're one of the best teams. But the Tartan Army will have one more opportunity to march in as a clan and sing their lovely unofficial national anthem, Flower of Scotland, which I had never heard before the Scots blew into town.

But, hey - or is it hoot mon - this is sports. Anything can happen.

But whatever happens, All Hail the Tartan Army! You can come back any old time.

(I already miss seeing them around.)

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 Image Source: NY Times

Should've stuck to bubble gum...

When the story was first reported, it looked as if Ipswich school administrators were way over-reacting by suspending from play six members of the lacrosse team for posting pics of themselves, on graduation day, in their gowns and with big (unlit) stogies in their mouths.

The Ipswich Six weren't being allowed to play in the state boys lacrosse semi-finals in their division because they were in violation of state sports regulations that prohibit high school athletes from using alcohol, drugs, or tobacco. In order to participate in sports, the young athletes have to sign this agreement.

But if the cigars were unlit, as douche-y and bro as the pictures of these young men depict them to be, what's the BFD? They may have been cocking a snook at school administration, but what else is new.

And supposedly, the a stogie-pic on graduation day is some grand high school tradition in some quarters. So what if this tradition is obnoxious and noxious? If the 'gars weren't lit, no harm, no foul, right? (If the 'gars weren't lit, you must acquit.)

Well, the admin was quick to point out, there was another picture showing the boys puffing away, wreathed in cigar smoke. Thus, a violation.

Meanwhile, when the notice went out that the six students would not be allowed to play, three other team members said that, out of loyalty to their supposedly wrongly accused teammates, they wouldn't play. The team at that point didn't have enough players to arm with cudgels, so the remaining members voted to forfeit the game to Cohasset. (Coincidentally, Cohasset and Ipswich are both picturesque, affluent, ocean-front communities: Cohasset on Boston's South Shore, Ipswich on the North.)

Some parents went haywire.

So what if their boys posted a picture of themselves with cigars in their mouths? So what, even, if they were found to have smoked them. The cigars, one father claimed, were fake. He, in fact, had taken the real cigars, removed the tobacco, and had stuffed them with a combo of chamomile and English breakfast tea leaves. So there!

Forget for a moment that even an emptied out cigar is still tobacco, as the wrapper is a tobacco leaf. (This is unlike a cigarette, which is tobacco rolled in paper.) So if the cigars were mostly fake, that shows that the kids just wanted to appear to be smoking and weren't deliberately flouting the just-say-no regulation.

The fake cigar-making dad went so far as to submit a store receipt showing that he'd purchased the tea at Shaw's Market. Sure, the time and date stamp were smudged, but proof is proof, no?

Well, not if it's fake proof, as the Ipswich crack administators found out when they went into full Law & Order, CSI, Columbo mode and brought the receipt to Shaw's to check out whether it was legit. Well, Shaw's had a duplicate, and the receipt was legit. But when the time and date weren't smudged out, the time and date showed that the purchase had been made a few minutes after the email went out informing the lacrosse players that there had likely been a rules violation. 

As the Boston Globe put it, "the fake cigar defense appears to be going up in smoke."

The whole sitch turned into a kertuffle, with parents screaming at admins and lawyering up, the father who fakely claimed to have made the fake cigars sticking to his story - “It’s a fake cigar, it’s been proven,” - and the cops being called in. 

“We fully understand the disappointment, frustration, and emotions that have accompanied this outcome,” administrators said. “As educators and school leaders, we are always disappointed when we must make difficult decisions such as this." (Source: Boston Globe)

Yes, it is disappointing to many that the team wasn't allowed to play in the state playoffs. (For the record, Cohasset, the team Ipswich forfeited to in the semi-finals, went on to beat Nantucket for and win the state's Division 4 boys lacrosse championship.)

And the underclassmen on the team, the kids who didn't smoke the cigars, have every right to be disappointed. What the kids who smoked the cigars - violating an agreement that they had signed, and then letting a parent lie about the cigars being fake - shouldn't be disappointed. They should be embarrased. And, if not ashamed of themselves for letting the lie proceed - and, yes, it is hard to stand up to your or someone else's father, even if they're in the wrong - they should be ashamed that they're part of this entirely shameful situation.

If they wanted to have the "traditional" cigar smoking pic, they could have waited until after their playoff game(s). Or they could have poked a bit of fun at the traditional and gone with bubble gum cigars.

Ipswich admin released this statement:

... “One of the most important lessons we teach young people is that choices have consequences, even when those consequences are difficult or painful,” [Principal Jonathan] Mitchell and [School Superintendent Brian] Blake said in their statement. “While this outcome was heartbreaking for the student-athletes, their families, their coaches, and our school community, we remain committed to applying our policies consistently and acting in what we believe to be the best interests of the integrity of our educational and athletic programs.”

Good for standing up for integrity in their "educational and athletic programs." But heartbreak, shmeartbreak. This is high school. I'm guessing that most kids from Ipswich (and all pf the lacrosse players) go on to college. My wish for all of them is that high school, as much as they may have enjoyed it, is not the be all and end all of their existence.  Glory Days, indeed.

As for those conniving, lying, idiotic parents who came up with the fake cigar scheme. Grow the f up!

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Image Source: Etsy

At lest they didn't name him Adolf

We are now a couple of months into the baseball season. As I write this post - first of May - the Red Sox are terrible, beleaguered, in disarray. Mostly, they are no fun to watch. Which is too bad, because I really enjoy baseball. Just not the way the Olde Towne Team has been playing it. 

They don't have to win it all every year. I was a Red Sox fan for a good long time before they won their first World Series in 86 years in 2004. During my first decades of fandom, there was a lot more thin than thick, and I'm not going to abandon them now. I'm a better-or-worse kind of gal. I'd just like them to be a bit more competitive than they are now.

Then there are the NY Yankees. 

Unlike our boys of summer, they're having a pretty good year. Including coldcocking the Red Sox three times in April. Hiss, boo. 

One Yankees player who is a particular nemesis is pitcher Cam Schlittler. In his April win over the Sox, he did his part to secure a series sweep, beating our boys 4-2. And last October, when the Red Sox had narrowly made it in to the post-season, it was Schlittler who put the Sox away in the deciding game of the three-game Wild Card series. He went 8 innings in a 4-0 shoutout. (Fortunately, the Yankees got clobbered by the Blue Jays in their next series.)

Schlittler's just 25, and, unless he turns out to be injury-prone or gets the yips, it looks like he has a pretty good career ahead of him. The rub, of course, is that he's a local. He grew up a Red Sox fan in Walpole, a south-of-Boston suburb that, before Cam Schlittler, was perhaps best known as the home of the ultra-violent, maximum security Walpole State Prison. (In the mid-1980s, the good citizens of Walpole demanded that the state rename the prison, as they didn't want it to keep tarnishing the town's reputation. The state renamed it Cedar Junction, which makes it sound like a leafy, bucolic neighbor of Mayberry. The prison is now closed.)

And another rub: Schlittler didn't flee the harsh New England weather to play college ball in the more baseball-friendly climate of, say, Florida. No, he stayed put and played for Northeastern. 

Anyway, Cam Schlittler is a Yankee now, his family converted to Yankees fandom, part of the Evil Empire. And prior to the April series, played at Fenway, he reported that he and his family had received online death threats. The nature of these death threats did not rise to the level of 'call the cops' - which would have been his father, who is the police chief in Needham, another Boston suburb. (Apparently, no one texted a picture of seashells writing out 86 31 - Cam's number - or someone would probably have tried to make a federal case out of it.)

Schlittler shrugged the threats off as meaningless, diehard intensity. And he's been known to engage in online back-and-forth trolling with Red Sox fans. (Among other barbs, after he shut the Red Sox down and out in the Wild Card series last fall, he tweeted “Drinking dat dirty water.” Which is actually pretty funny, given that "Love that Dirty Water" is a Red Sox theme song, played after every winning home game.)

“Most normal fans could care less, right?,” Schlittler told [the New York Post's John] Sherman. “It’s just those diehards that just have nothing else in their lives other than baseball or sports that really care about this and the fact that I play for the Yankees makes it worse for them.” (Source: Boston Globe)

As one of those normal fans, I find it beyond ridiculous that someone would make an online death threat against an athlete, let alone his family. 

I'm all in favor of trashtalk, but don't cross the line into death threats. And you'd think that some of the trashtalkers might be silenced by the fact that Schlittler pretty much owns the Sox. (Kind of like the Fenway faithful should probably stop breaking into Yankees Suck chants everytime they get bored. Which is plenty, given how the Sox are performing this season. Admittedly, it is true that the Yankees do suck. Sadly, just not at baseball.)

Anyway, while we're on the subject of Cam Schlittler, I'm pretty sure that if my name were Schlittler, I would have changed it. Kept it Germanic with Schlitz. Pick out the best part and go with Little. But Schlittler is just such an unfortunate combination of the first syllable sounding like shit, and the overall name rhyming with Hitler. 

At least his parents didn't name him Adolf.

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Image Source: Topps

Dreamily Cremily

Arizona Diamondbacks: out $2.3M 

Anaheim Angels: out $3.45M

That's what they were promised by Cremily, makers - make that supposed makers - of lactose-free, keto-friendly frozen yogurt, in exchange for ballpark promotions. 

The Diamondbacks' stadium, Chase Field, displayed a giant popsicle behind its swimming poil, and had "the company’s name spelled out in black tiles at the pool’s bottom." The Angels' stadium in Anaheim displayed a big old Cremily sign and had "rights to an animated between-innings race, in-game commercials and more."

The Diamondbacks gave away T-shirts featuring the Cremily logo at a game that year. Ballparks in both Phoenix and Anaheim had stands in the concourse featuring Cremily products. (Source: NY Times)

Those sponsorship payments weren't huge. But they were nice walking-around money for the teams - maybe enough to pay a not-great player his annual salary - plus there was an irresistible element of do goodery. Not only was the Cremily yogurt lactose-free and keto - HEALTHY IS A GOOD THING! - but profits from product sales were going to "empowering women and girls globally.” EMPOWERING WOMEN AND GIRLS GLOBALLY IS A GOOD THING! (O used to be.)

Couple o' problems: Pretty soon, Cremily stopped making the promised sponsorship payments; and the product turned out to be largely mythic. 

Multiple former employees said Cremily could not produce product to scale, leaving teams with “untenable delays” and subsequently providing the Angels and Diamondbacks with product that was not made by Cremily. The Angels argued in a court filing Cremily was “fraudulently passing (third-party) ice cream off as its own” and knew it didn’t have a viable ice cream formula. An ex-marketing employee even said he was asked to create Cremily labels for generic ice cream.

“(It was) just ice cream,” the employee said. “And they were selling that as authentic French frozen yogurt, that was also keto.”

...“We were naive,” said another former employee, “in thinking it was a real product.”

And when there was actual Cremily product shipped, it was allegedly so thick and hard that it broke Angel Stadium's soft-serve machines. 

An employee took a hunk of Cremily home and started "stabbing it with [a] knife. The knife wouldn’t even go through it.”

The backstory for all this is a thicket of confusing details that include (but are not limited to):

• Steven Delaportas, who has a long history of cons, was hired to run Cremily by Kylie Schuyler, a well-to-do California non-profit executive whose charity was focused on helping women and girls thrive, and who also founded Cremily. (Profits slated for helping women and girls...)
  
  
• Delaportas had been involved in Ponzi schemes, defrauding a partner, concealing a bankruptcy, and financial mismanagment. Not to mention that:

Madison Square Garden sued Delaportas in 2016, alleging he failed to pay sponsorship fees while marketing Jim Beam Nuts under a company called TDG brands. The suit was ultimately dismissed.

• Kylie Schuyler's husband is Doug Hodge. It wasn't mentioned in the Times article, but - thanks to my own sleuthing - I found that Hodge is the former CEO of PIMCO (big-arse bond traders). And that he went to prison for his involvement in the college bribery admissions scandal of a few years back. (Schuyler herself was lightly involved, having sent her husband - who was trying to engineer their son into USC as a football player - a picture of another son playing football - saying that was all she could come up with. Hodge decided that the kids looked enough alike to carry it off.)

And speaking of lightly involved in this entire fiasco, the Red Sox had a short-lived deal (2022) with Cremily, as had the Mets and other pro sports teams. 

Anyway, as Cremily CEO, Delaportas wooed sales, marketing, and production executives away from their established, successful careers in legit companies. The marketing folks were given an "endless amount of money to spend." Whatever the teams wanted. Without Cremily having "earned a single dime of revenue."

For Cremily employees, the job was pretty cushy. 

“We were just collecting paychecks and sitting around,” one employee said.

Another employee described their work as a “ghost job,” saying they watched YouTube clips for hours on end. Cremily gave that employee a raise and doubled the size of their department.

When they did work, multiple employees said it was solely for the purpose of showing Schuyler things were happening. They created ad shoots and social media campaigns, but Delaportas rarely let those projects see the light of day.

“(Delaportas) wanted to play-work,” said a former employee, “to pretend that there was business happening.”

The production employees had to do a bit of work, trying to come up with a tasty fro-yo formula, which they eventually did. Alas, scaling production was an entirely different issue. 

But employees mostly just sat around while Cremily "sailed about like a ghost ship with no real direction."

“We just thought it was a bad company that was still trying to find itself, or was maybe overbuilt (and) wasn’t ready for this stuff,” said a former Cremily employee. “It was like walking around an empty mall. It was crazy.”

This is largely on Delaportas and his chicanery - even his former attorney, when asked whether Delaportas was a con artist said "'I would not disagree.'" But what abot Schuyler? She certainly comes across as a victim, but also as someone who "failed to address the company’s obvious issues," among other things refusing to respond to organizers of an Orange County event which dedicates proceeds from their annual event to "assisting women and girls" when they were stiffed by Cremily in 2023. 

Cremily is out of business, the employees all laid off, many struggling:

One took the experience off their resumé entirely after a potential employer asked in a job interview, “‘Aren’t they a scam?’”

Delaportas is sitll out there, having talked his way into another CEO position where he's being sued by a variety of entities (including employees).

I've worked for some companies that were loosely tethered to reality, but Cremily really takes the cake. Or the keto fro-yo popsicle.

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Image Source: Pinstripe Alley

A baseball yarn

When I was a kid, my father would sometimes hand me a useless golf ball - one with a gash in its side that would render it erratic if put into play. I would sit there with a razor, carving through the hard white outer layer (made of a sap called barata), unwinding the tightly wound rubber "string" (it could sting if the rubber broke and you weren't careful), all to get to the hidden prize at the core: a teeny-tiny little rubber ball (sometimes with a liquid center) that had incredible bounce. Unfortunately, after you made the first wondrous bounce, you were lucky to find that teeny-tiny ball.

When I was carving up the golfball, I was usually sitting there watching a baseball game. 

I would have loved to have had an occasional baseball to similarly dismantle, but even when a baseball got gashed up, it wasn't rendered useless. A torn baseball was wrapped in black electrical tape and kept in play. 

But before the baseball got wrapped, you did get a peek inside and could see that what was under the horsehide and red top stitching there was yarn.

The yarn in the baseball I was looking at back in the early 1960's didn't come from a third-generation-run textile mill in Woonsocket, RI. The Brickle Group has been around for over a hundred years, but they've only been providing yarn for Rawlings for about 15 years. But if I were looking at a slashed up Rawlings-made MLB baseball these days, that yarn would have been Brickle yarn. 

The company’s story is as tightly wound as the product it creates. CEO Max Brickle traces it back to his grandfather, who immigrated to the United States during the pogroms of the early 1900s.

“He was selling rags on the streets of Woonsocket,” Brickle said. “He’d buy stuff for a nickel and sell it for a dime.”

That entrepreneurial spirit carried forward. Today, the company employs about 150 people and plays a behind-the-scenes role in America’s pastime.(Source: WCVB-Chronicle)

Rawlings provides all the baseballs for MLB, and has been doing for nearly 50 years. (Today, MLB owns a minority stake in Rawlings, so the company i probably in no danger of losing their position as sole provider.) I've seen wildly different estimates of how many baseballs MLB puts in play each season, but with spring training, a long season, and playoffs, it's a lot of baseballs. And that means a lot of yarn!

The Brickle Group also produces military berets, blankets, and other extreme cold weather gear, Brickle said. (Source: Boston Globe)

But baseballs are the fun stuff. They're also surprisingly complex. 

Brickle wouldn’t give away any trade secrets about the making of each ball, but he did say that there are four different yarns inside each baseball. 

Even though Woonsocket isn't Massachusetts, I'm always delighted when I read about things that are manufactured anywhere in New England. And to have something integral to baseball made hereabouts...I just loved this baseball yarn. (Plus an excellent immigrant story, I might add.)

And if you're wondering what's underneath those four types of yarn, there's a cork center wrapped in rubber. 

Maybe I'll get me a run of the mill baseball, an old school "safety razor," and carve it up while watching a game. 

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Image Source: Rawlings

A day late and a flag wave short

Yesterday was Patriots' Day, and I did what I usually do.

I went to the Red Sox game, which on Patriots' Day has an early (11 a.m.) start. The early start time tradition started years ago, and I guess the thinking is that, because Fenway Park is just off the route of the Boston Marathon (a mile or so from the finish line), the baseball fans also get to see some of the race. The Marathon has become a lot bigger deal that it was when the early-start was introduced nearly 60 years ago, and now getting to and fro from the game requires dealing with security checkpoints and massive crazy crowds. But it's still fun to be around. More or less.

A few years back, for some reason we tried to take one of our usual ways home and ended up - thanks to blocked streets and security measures - walking a couple of miles out of our way in the cold and drizzle. But we know better now: fight the crowds into the entrance to the T-station in Kenmore Square and use the underground passageway that takes you under the Marathon Route and over to the side of the street where your passage home is not blocked.  

Anyway, the Patriots' Day game is pretty much my favorite game to see live, even if the weather is iffy (make that terrible, most of the time). I'm writing this before Game Day, so I don't know whether the Sox won or lost, or whether the game was even held. (I've had rain checks in the past.) But if the game was on, I know that, win or lose, I was enjoying it with my niece (Sweet) Caroline.

For me, the Red Sox game is a highlight of the day, as is the Marathon, which is always a good buzz (other than in 2013, when the bombing occurred). And it takes my mind off the fact that it's exceedingly difficult to enjoy this wonderful, quirky holiday in the malign era we're currently enduring.

Last year, here's a bit of what I wrote:

I've never been a big flag waver, but this year I'm feeling a definite deficit of patriotism - at least of the fervid, jingoistic, blinders-on variety that for a good long time has defined the term. But if the definition of patriotism can accommodate someone who appreciates the country for its good, wants to acknowledge the not-so-good (and the out-and-out bad), and tries to make things better by voting for good candidates, donating to good causes (increasingly of the pro-democracy kind), and showing up for demonstrations to demonstrate to the powers that regrettably be (as if they give damn) that not everyone in America welcomes the slide into autocracy/kleptocracy,well, I guess I can count myself as patriotic.

So if I'm feeling anything today, it's the red, white, and blues. (Source: Pink Slip)

Ditto for this year, with the add on that things are far, far, far worse than I could possiblly have imagined they would be way back in April 2025, when we were only a few months into Trump Redux.

I have two patriotic traditions.

On the Fourth of July, I reread the Declaration of Independence. 

And on Patriots Day, I recite  (mostly from memory) Ralph Waldo Emerson's beautiful tribute to the "embattled farmers" who "fired the shot heard round the world." The poem was first read in 1837 at the dedication of a monument at Concord Bridge honoring those "embattled farmers." It is a beautiful, tranquil spot, probably my favorite tourist site in our state.

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard round the world.
The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.
On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set today a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.
Spirit, that made those heroes dare
To die, and leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee.

So much to be proud of in our history, so much good (even if there are plenty of not so proud moments, plenty of not so good, which, under the current regime, we are not supposed to admit to). 

This year, I've added William Butler Yeats' The Second Coming to my Patriots' Day mix:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? 

Sadly, a very rough beast has slouched into the White House. I'm a day late, and a flag wave short, to celebrate Patriots' Day 2026, other than to say God - if there is a God - help us. 

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Image Source: Commons/Wikimedia