Random Thoughts On A Sunday Morning Updated To 7-28

**Yankee4Life** · February 14, 2021

Updated to 2-14

...It’s been awhile since I’ve been home from the hospital but I still can’t forget how hard those nurses had to work each day to care for not only myself but for the entire floor I was on and I have to admit that most of them were in worse shape than I was. I was lucky that I wasn’t there because of Covid but I was there nonetheless and I had to spend eight days there watching them do a job I could never dream of doing.I had my complaints while I was there but it was because of the restrictions I was put under which I did not understand at all. I was not allowed to get out of bed during my stay and when it came time for me to be discharged I couldn’t put any weight on my legs. I never felt that way before and it had me worried but after I started walking around my house with a crutch my legs began to remember what they were there for. I’m fine now but these nurses, who are still working around the clock at hospitals all over the country deserve a big thanks from everyone for the attention and care they provide for each patient.

...I am going to be trying to update this thread more than I have. I haven’t been because my hands begin to hurt after I am typing for ten minutes or so. I thought I had the problem solved when I bought a copy of Dragon Naturally Speaking from Amazon but the head set stopped working. I tried a different head set but I had the same result. So now I am forced to type again. I’ll just have to push myself.

...Since the Corona virus has invaded our lives in every way possible we have been instructed to wear masks while out in public, wash our hands continually and practice social distancing. It’s something that has been drummed into our heads since last March and for most of us its now become a habit, more out of necessity than requirement. But people are people and some choose to listen to this advice and some choose to look at it like this is a personal attack on themselves and their rights as Americans. Every day you read about it. Religious leaders insisting on holding services even though they were told not to, kids holding corona virus parties to give the virtual middle finger to the virus and when a few of them caught the virus themselves they had a hard time finding someone to blame it on. But above all what stands out for me the most is a twenty-one-year old woman named Ava Louise, a girl whose face looks like the poster child for social distancing. She took a video of herself licking an airplane toilet seat because she was annoyed that the virus was getting more publicity than she was. The virus she said was caused by the baby boomers so why should someone like her be worried about it? She is an aspiring singer which means that she doesn’t plan on working any time soon and if you heard her sing the first thing you’d think is that she can carry a disinfectant better than she can carry a tune. I don’t feel bad for this girl at all for whatever happens to her. It’s the people that agree with her that I really feel sorry for.

...2020 was probably the most unique year I have ever lived through and I’m not saying this in a positive way. Covid hit all of us in many different ways. Some directly and sometimes through a member of your family or close-knit group of friends. There were happy ending at times and sometimes there wasn’t. When this first started a roll of toilet paper was almost as worth as a bar of gold and I still haven’t got my hands on Purell hand sanitizer. Thankfully things have calmed down now and I can squeeze the Charmin any time I want to when I go to Walmart. We would have done a better job dealing with the virus when it first got to us had we known what we were up against but all that came out of Washington was that it was a hoax by the Democrats and it was no worse than the common cold, a lie that is still believed by the people wearing the red MAGA hats. That’s why to this day they still won’t wear a mask.

...We got your back, Dept: It must be a wonderful feeling to know from birth that everyone around you will without question make excuses for you no matter what you do and that goes as far as trying over throw the rules and laws of an entire country just because you didn’t get your way. Displaying a tantrum that even toddlers don’t even dream of trying to get away with the idol of many foolish red-hat wearing, confederate flag waving and tobacco chewing advocates stormed the Capitol building in Washington last month and ran around causing as much damage as a six-year-old on a sugar high.

People died that day. Some committed suicide. It was an unabashed attempt to force one person’s will over those of the nation’s majority. Yesterday this criminal got acquitted again and his base will cheer and hug each other. Then they’ll buy a couple of cases of Budweiser and watch the NASCAR race with a smile on their face because they know their hero is free and clear to run again in 2024. I’m not worried about that. What concerns me is if he does run and loses again what we saw on January 6th could happen again and be even worse. And God help us if he gets to be in a position of power because he’ll be in revenge mode for the four years he’s in office and he’ll make Nazi Germany look like Disneyland.

...About the only time I could say I am relaxed and happy where the Yankees are concerned is right now during the off-season. That’s because I don’t have to worry about those two part time players on the Yankees, Stanton and Judge. I say part time because they spend half the season on the disabled list and the only questions you have to ask about those two is when they are going to get hurt and for how long. And to my way of thinking Gary Sanchez shows what is really wrong with baseball today. He didn’t even hit .150 last year. If he would have done only that it would’ve been an improvement. He only managed twenty-three hits for the entire season. DJ LeMahieu gets twenty-three hits in two weeks. But he did manage to strike out sixty-four times in a sixty game season. And despite all this he got a raise recently and will be making 6.35 million dollars in 2021. I got to ask what did he do to deserve a raise, find his way to the ball park every day without getting lost?

...Before I forget, a nice goodbye to J.A. Happ who went over to the Twins. I hope he complains there as much as he did in New York and also to Adam Ottovino, who was the Gary Sanchez of the Yankee pitching staff last year in that he did absolutely nothing except help the other team win games.

...Former Mets ace Matt Harvey will be going to spring training with the Orioles after signing a minor league contract with Baltimore. With the way he’s going through teams he’ll be with the Yankees by September.

...Josh Hamilton is still a free man but barely. You all remember him, right? In October of 2019 he was accused by his teenage daughter of beating her while she was staying at his house. Because of that a Texas grand jury indicted him and Hamilton was free on a $30,000 bond. If convicted, he faces a prison sentence of two to ten years in prison. Hamilton has had a long history of cocaine and alcohol addiction during his major league career but during all that he was known as a good family man. When asked by a reporter outside the court house why this unfortunate incident occurred Hamilton replied without conviction that he warned his daughter that this would happen the next time he caught her going into his stash.

...Wisdom does not always come with age, Dept: A seventy-two-year-old woman from California took a trip to Yellowstone National Park and found out first-hand how some bull fighters in Spain feel when they are gorged by a bull during a fight. In her case it was a bison but a gorge is a gorge. She had no intention of fighting the huge animal since she neglected to bring a cape so she did the next best thing and approached within ten feet of the bison to try to take its picture. She tried to do this a few times because she wasn’t happy with her shot and wanted to get the perfect one until finally the bison had enough and gorged her multiple times before she got away. He only needed to jab her once to give her something to remember her by but what’s a few more between friends? The woman was flown to a hospital in Idaho for treatment and then released, wrecking her plan to pet the Grizzlies later that afternoon.

...Considering this had something to do with the NFL I am surprised that this did not any coverage. Or if it did, not as much. Two men, including an unnamed NFL player, are suing United Airlines, claiming that a woman sexually assaulted and harassed the player on a flight, and that the airline didn’t take proper steps after they complained. On a flight from Los Angeles to Newark, New Jersey a woman, who appeared to be intoxicated sexually harassed, assaulted, abused, and violated the two men and despite the claim that they alerted flight attendants four times about the woman. The only action the attendants did was move the woman’s seat toward the back of the plane after the fourth complaint. Maybe the most incredible part of the lawsuit is the claim that the airline refused to give the plaintiffs the name of the woman in addition to other passengers and flight staff who could have acted as witnesses. Now if you want an example of a double standard in this country look no further than here. If it were the other way around and the two men had did this to the woman they would have their names in the paper and TV journalists would have had a field day, not to mention the cops would have been waiting for them when the flight landed.

...I don’t agree with former Red Sox and Expos pitcher Bill Lee on much but when he said that the designated hitter served one useful purpose and that was it relieved the manager of all responsibility except to post the lineup card on the dugout wall and to make sure everybody got to the airport on time. It was Lee I was thinking of the other day when baseball and the Players Association reached an agreement to not include a universal designated hitter as a new rule. That means we can go back to watching the National League pitchers hit just like the way baseball was meant to be played. Rob Manfred may have messed around with a lot of the traditional rules but so far thankfully he has not killed this one. At least not yet. :mad:

...When you are a Raider fan you really can’t get used to seeing them on the right side of the final score because it’s something they hardly seem to do. They have not been consistent winners in a long time and the days when they were one of the best teams in the NFL are getting further and further away. They were winners in 2016, lost the wild card game to Houston and then went back to normal the following season finishing under .500 again. Watching this team go from consistent winners to consistent losers has not been easy and the worst part is there is no end in sight. Oakland fans are loyal but there is only so much you can take. That’s why for me I have to be satisfied with the minor victories I get when I watch teams that I can not stand lose. The Patriots for example. They had a losing season and didn’t make the playoffs. Just as it should be. Cam Newton did a terrible job replacing Tom Brady. It seems he was more interested in dressing like a pimp during his press conferences than winning games. Same for the Cowboys. I’ve always said my favorite team was Oakland and my second favorite was whoever was playing Dallas. So once again this was another unexciting season for the Silver and Black followers but at least it ended on a high note because at the end of Super Bowl LV Patrick Mahomes had to take his football and go back home to Tyler, Texas to cry to his mother. Tyler by the way is the home of Hall-of-Famer Earl Campbell. Immediately you can see the difference between the two. Campbell had the respect of everyone in the league while Mahomes wishes for it. And I wish for a winning Raider team. It doesn’t look like Mahomes nor I will get what we want.

...The town of Natchez, Mississippi is offering remote workers $6,000 to move there, buy a home and remain for at least one year. Thew town said that thirty slots are currently available to applicants who are employed as remote workers in the United States. Their belief is that with this offer you can live in a beautiful, historic small town where everything is convenient and affordable. That may be so and I am sure they are being honest when they said their town was affordable because compared to any medium to big sized city in the country it has to be. But what is the first person who takes them up on their offer going to say when they find out the people there get their water from a pump and still use outhouses?

...Lastly, I hope you all have a wonderful Valentine’s day today. Oh, who am I kidding? You’re going to be spending money on crap you’d never buy unless you had to. This is not even a gift-giving holiday but for women Hallmark and jewelry stores are just as important as the birth of the Son of God. That’s because on both days they get gifts. Or else. Not everyone will agree with this and that’s ok. Maybe some of you are reading this with your wife or girlfriend looking over your shoulder right now. Before she looks at you funny you should shake your head and mutter that I don’t know what I’m talking about. Go ahead, your secret’s safe with me. 😉

marty65 · February 14, 2021

Glad to see this back Y4L.

Sorry to hear you had such an awful time last year.

in relation to Valentines Day, my lovely wife got a nice bunch of red roses and chocolates.... I got a case of Coronas ( the beer not the virus lol)

Have a great one buddy

**Yankee4Life** · February 14, 2021

8 minutes ago, marty65 said:

Glad to see this back Y4L.

Sorry to hear you had such an awful time last year.

I'm glad this is back too. But as far as me having an awful time last year I consider myself lucky. I did not get the virus while many people did and people all over the world died from it unnecessarily.

11 minutes ago, marty65 said:

in relation to Valentines Day, my lovely wife got a nice bunch of red roses and chocolates.... I got a case of Coronas ( the beer not the virus lol)

Well then, that is certainly different from what I wrote down, which was basically satirical. I'm glad you and your wife had a nice Valentine's day and I wish you many more!

marty65 · February 15, 2021

Oh yeah I did get the satirical angle. I guess I was just trying to show the fact that, while my wife and I are very much in love, a nice bunch of flowers and a few beers together is what makes us happy on Valentine’s Day and I did appreciate your well wishes at the end.

Like you, we were very lucky to avoid the world wide tragedy that Coronavirus has been and continues to be. As a country, we seem to be getting on top of it, with the exception of a few irresponsible individuals, who seem to have the same attitude as that “aspiring singer” you referred to. Thankfully, they are a minority here.

**Yankee4Life** · March 14, 2021

Updated to 3-14

...It was Fun while it lasted Dept: It sure was nice to see baseball start up again a few weeks back and I’ll admit I got caught up in it when I allowed my subscription to MLB TV to extend for another year. I’ll end up regretting that as soon as the Yankees go on their first seven game losing streak or when Judge or Stanton go down, which for them should be any day now. But the spring season would not begin without the typical Yankee bragging that I have come to expect out of them in recent years. They may have not won a championship since 2009 but with the way they talk and carry on you’d have sworn they’ve won at least five or six since then. Even before the first stretching exercises took place manager Aaron Boone said that this year’s squad is going to be a team “of championship caliber.” And there you have it. Boone just made every non-Yankee fan very happy with that statement because by saying that he just gave them the kiss of death.

...So I was wrong when I thought it would have been Judge or Stanton to get hurt first down in Tampa but I wasn’t expecting it to be Zack Britton although anyone wearing that uniform can and will get injured on a moment’s notice. Britton was having some elbow issues and he got it checked out and naturally they found something wrong with it. He has to undergo arthroscopic surgery to remove a bone chip in his left elbow and the surgery will either be performed this week or next week. The Yankees said that they will be without Britton for the “foreseeable future” which is another way of saying four or five months without having to actually say it.

...The good thing about James Paxton returning to the Mariners is if he gets hurt again no outside of Seattle will know about it.

...Finally Lou Gehrig is going to be recognized throughout baseball eighty years after his death on June 2nd of this year. That will be the first time that baseball will be holding a day for the Yankees Iron Horse and it will include an annual tribute in which uniformed personnel will wear a jersey patch celebrating Gehrig. He deserves this recognition as much as Jackie Robinson and Roberto Clemente do and as we get closer to June 2nd anyone out there who wishes to portray that jersey patch will get a chance to purchase a special jersey, hoodie, t-shirt or hat from Major League Baseball. Rob Manfred doesn’t miss a trick. Only baseball would know how to take advantage of a deadly disease and make a buck off of it.

...As long as the WAR statistic has been around baseball I have to admit I don’t understand what it is. What is considered a good WAR? Or a bad one? How do you go about figuring it out for yourself and what’s more why would you want to?

...Face masks have really become a big business except of course with Republicans who still refuse to wear them. I’ve seen ones that have a person’s favorite sports teams on them or a saying of some sort or advertising for something or someone. These masks have really become creative since we have had to wear them wherever we go for the past year and some have really become expensive. I’ve seen them sold for as much as twenty dollars apiece on some websites and while my initial knee-jerk reaction was to jump on Amazon to see if they had a decently priced mask that had either the Raiders or Yankees logo on it I resisted because there are more important things for me to spend my money on. We’re not going to be asked to wear these masks indefinitely and as soon as it’s safe enough that we don’t have to have them on I am not going to be walking around with an Oakland mask on to let everyone know that I’m a Raider fan because I have t-shirts that have been doing that for years. The KN-95 mask that I walk around with may not be the most stylish in the bunch but it does the job. That’s all I want.

...One of the many things my late mother taught me was not to speak ill of the dead and this is why I am not going to do that even to someone like Rush Limbaugh who died on the 17th of February. While he may be gone his millions of listeners will safeguard that his memory will live on for a long time through their behavior towards anyone that is different from them. So the next time you are in a bar and you hear a loudmouth going on about Mexicans ruining the country or wanting to go beat up an Asian because “he started the virus” or any other views like that, then the memory of Rush Limbaugh remains alive and well. Limbaugh’s opinions and hate-filled views helped create the Republican party we know today. His supporters would argue that he loved radio, loved our country and the American people. Maybe he did, provided you agreed with him first and were white. So, I will not dance on Limbaugh’s grave or rejoice in his passing but I will not shed a tear either.

...Ever since I was a kid I would read any sports book I could get my hands on and it’s a habit I have continued on to this day. With my Amazon device it makes it easy for me to read as much as I want without finding room for the books. I usually gravitate towards baseball books but every so often I buy something else. So when I bought the The Rebel League, a book about the history of the old World Hockey Association I was not able to put it down. I haven’t thought of the WHA for years and I’m pretty sure that most sports fans today had never heard of it, which in all intents and purposes is understandable. This league was only around for eight years in the 1970’s and for young hockey fans like myself who grew up then we followed both the National Hockey League and the WHA even though this league did not get press coverage compared to the NHL. Undeterred by that I was still a fan of this league. Bobby Hull and Gordie Howe extended their careers in the WHA and it’s also notable to say that this league introduced stars such as Anders Hedberg and Ulf Nilsson to the North American audience and gave Wayne Gretzky his start in professional hockey with the old Indianapolis Racers.

This league along with the old American Basketball Association went out of business in that decade but they both are still represented today in the leagues that ended up absorbing some of their teams and many of their players. For instance, where would the NBA have been without Julius Erving? He played for the ABA’s Virginia Squires and New York Nets. There was a lot more to that league than the red, white and blue basketball. I didn’t pay attention to the World Football League a lot because they were not even around for two years and I don’t recall seeing one of their games on TV. What I remember most about them is how they killed the Miami Dolphins when they signed away Jim Kiick, Larry Csonka and Paul Warfield. Even though Miami had a winning record after they left the team they were never the same. Oakland lost Daryle Lamonica but he was near the end of his career and never returned to the NFL after the league folded and even worse almost lost Ken Stabler but the league was out of business before he could even play a down. Because of that it was the only new league I wasn’t a fan of.

...If you are someone whose sole objective is to find a problem somewhere and will not stop until you come up with something brand new to label racist or insensitive then you’ll love what they are doing to six of the children’s books from Dr. Seuss. Yeah, him. The guy famous for The Grinch Who Stole Christmas and who is now the target of finger pointers everywhere that get offended at least three times before they get dressed in the morning. Ironically it was not the politicians who decided that our eyes were too delicate for these books. It was directly from the company that publishes his books today. Seuss, who wrote his first book in 1937 and died in 1991, is now being looked at as a racist in the present day because his books have under gone intense examinations over and over again until something made those people sit back, clap their hands and exclaim when they found the part in the book that they could hold on to just to try and prove to people that they weren’t wasting their time. Six of them did not pass muster and like Lord Voldemort can not be mentioned out loud again in school libraries from here on out. What’s next, the Hardy Boys? I read those books more than I read Dr. Seuss when I was younger. If they look hard enough they’ll find something there. Who knows, maybe Joe or Frank Hardy -or both!- were closet racists.

...Let me throw this out here and then I’ll move to something else in this week’s latest. Every day I hear about a brand new celebrity or sports figure or a small or big business or a school or God knows what who is accused of being a racist. Sometimes they are. Sometimes they’re not. I’d like to hear one news outlet after they cover a story about some poor schmuck being a racist come out and say they were wrong. Or how about getting through one day without having to hear that word? None of us are going to be around in one hundred years and sometimes during moments like these with the Seuss books I wonder what people in 2121 are going to think of some of us who actually believe this is so important? Now I know that most people are not even affected by this but if you have small children or grandchildren it might. It’s hard enough raising kids without having a corporation telling you something is bad for them because they think so.

...There are some people you can not take anywhere and Rudy Giuliani happens to be one of them. During a charity golf event where he was paired up with Michelle Wie he told a crude story about looking up her skirt when she was lining up for her putts. He told some of his cronies after the tournament that the real reason why there was so much media following them on the course was not because he happened to be there but because they wanted to get shots of Wie's panties as she was bending over to putt. This is probably why he had his tongue out on every hole as he was watching her and his bad dye job on his hair began to get away from him again. Imagine, if Giuliani acted like this just to get a look at a pair of women’s underwear he’d have a stroke if he ever was teamed up with someone like Paige Spiranac. 😉

...Even after all these years I still miss Bill Hader on Saturday Night Live.

...Contrary to what everyone was led to believe former major leaguer Alex Rodriguez and actress Jennifer Lopez are not going their separate ways but according to a statement that they both put out they are “working through some things.” When you read about that taking place during these celebrity break-ups it means at the last minute the woman realizes she made a mistake somewhere and is desperately back tracking to fix what she did while silently hoping that it works. Now if it were the man that caused the relationship to end there would be no working through anything because the woman would be too buy talking to People magazine or being interviewed on Entertainment Tonight to give the man five minutes to talk to her. Either way I hope it works out for them so they are both satisfied but as far as me giving it another thought, I won’t.

...Say it three times fast, Dept: I am a Youtube junkie and about a week ago in one of the videos that came up on my page showed a small town in the country of Wales in the United Kingdom named Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch and it immediately grabbed my interest because I thought it was some kind of click bait. But after deciding why not I watched it and believe it or not it’s an actual place and what was really impressive was there are some people who have no trouble saying it. Amazing. It would take you a half an hour just to write the name of the town if you were writing a letter. And then I thought of our uniform makers in here. How would someone like BallFour make a uniform with fifty-six letters on it? It would probably make him give up modding.😃

.,.While I did not meet the age requirement for the Covid-19 vaccine shot I did meet one of the health criteria that the state of New York had set so last Monday morning I left my house wondering what was in store for me and what kind of pain I’d have go through to get the shot. You see, I heard various things about it and I really didn’t know what to think when I got there but I have to tell you that from the time I checked in until the time I got the shot it went by smooth and easy. Fifteen minutes is how long I had to wait after I got the shot and I had a little soreness in my arm the next day but it was completely gone by Wednesday. Whomever was complaining about this shot must not have got their parking validated or something because when someone like me can go through it with no worries you’ll be able to do it too.

...And finally as a reminder please move your alarm clock, wall clock and any other clocks that need to be manually taken care of ahead one hour at 2:00 a.m. this morning, provided you are still up at that time. Your computer, phone and iPad should move ahead automatically.

**scottybilly** · March 14, 2021

speaking of those cancelled Dr. Seuss books: they all sold out because republicans bought them all to resell to fund their reelection campaigns next year. Ted Cruz is selling dozens of copies of Green Eggs and Ham personally autographed by himself. No kidding!

sabugo · March 14, 2021

A guy emigrated from Senegal to Portugal about a decade and a half ago, to become a soccer player. Because he was as good at soccer as I am at being a rocket scientist, he eventually focused on other things. He got scholarships, food and board from the Portuguese government. He, of course, became involved with politics. Naturally said politics are of the Marxist persuasion. Evidently, somewhere along the way, he got Portuguese citizenship and he became the leader and most outspoken person in an organization called 'SOS Racism', which is there to prevent and call out acts of racism. And of course he had numerous other political 'jobs' for which he is of course handsomely paid with taxpayer money.

He makes it his mission to label my country as racist. Our monuments are racist. Recently dead war-heroes are 'war criminals who do not deserve respect (mind you, this was our most decorated soldier, and he was African-Portuguese). He referred to our Police Department as 'those shit cops'. Everyone who disagrees with him is obviously a fascist.

I mean... this guy came from another country, was feed and taught by our state, gained citizenship... but we're racist?!
Like in every other country, there is racism here and there. But this guy is the living picture that Portugal, as a whole, is the exact opposite.

So yeah, he keeps fostering the idea that we indeed are racist and oppressive. Otherwise he'd lose his cushy job as head of 'SOS Racism'.

Just to keep things in persepective:
Our most celebrated athlete before there was a Cristiano Ronaldo, was for years Eusébio, who came from Mozambique. As do many of our most beloved athletes.
Our justice minister is black.
Our prime minister is of Indian ancestry.
Our most decorated solider came from Guinea-Bissau.

What am I missing here?!

Gordo · March 14, 2021

4 hours ago, scottybilly said:

speaking of those cancelled Dr. Seuss books: they all sold out because republicans bought them all to resell to fund their reelection campaigns next year. Ted Cruz is selling dozens of copies of Green Eggs and Ham personally autographed by himself. No kidding!

Seemingly partially true. But making blanket statements like "republicans bought them all" is asinine. According to msn.com (clearly a left leaning institution):

"Lefties are losing their minds that I'm signing & sending copies of Green Eggs and Ham to anyone who donates $60 or more," the Texas senator said on Twitter late Friday. "We've raised $125k in just 24 hours!"

If all buyers gave the minimum $60 donation, Cruz would have to put his signature in more than 2,000 copies of the book. On Twitter, he said the "hand-wringing" of his political opponents likely led to high sales of the signed books. Cruz's team was positioning the sales as an effort to fight back against the "cancel culture mob."

But let's back track here. If moronic extreme leftists wouldn't be trying to cancel everything they find offensive (*cough* Fahrenheit 451 *cough*) and simply trust that commonsensical thinking people can judge for themselves what's acceptable and what isn't, then we wouldn't have any of this nonsense. Some of you who think you are "liberal" on this website probably don't get or don't want to get that that term is no longer what you know it to mean or how you think. You really want government in this country CONTROLLING you materials and even what language you use? You really, REALLY want to become Canada!? Trust me. You don't.

And sabugo, this is the direction people in leadership positions are taking here now where and when they can. This notion of "systemic racism" is espoused, spouted and shoved down every possible institution, especially education systems because there is an interest to conquer and divide the family. Those examples are all over the place in all kinds of media. Just look around. Men and fathers in the U.S. are being made to look "toxic", less strong as figures in movies, shows, pictorials/publications. It's not even debatable.

**Yankee4Life** · March 14, 2021

3 hours ago, sabugo said:

A guy emigrated from Senegal to Portugal about a decade and a half ago, to become a soccer player. Because he was as good at soccer as I am at being a rocket scientist, he eventually focused on other things. He got scholarships, food and board from the Portuguese government. He, of course, became involved with politics. Naturally said politics are of the Marxist persuasion. Evidently, somewhere along the way, he got Portuguese citizenship and he became the leader and most outspoken person in an organization called 'SOS Racism', which is there to prevent and call out acts of racism. And of course he had numerous other political 'jobs' for which he is of course handsomely paid with taxpayer money.

I am sorry to find out that people in that fine country of yours have to be forced to listen to the same crap that we seem to get in this country non-stop every day. Who is this ungrateful SOB? And nothing will ever convince me that these people who point out racism here, there and everywhere only do it for the attention it gets them because if you don't agree with them then you become today's racist of the day.

1 hour ago, Gordo said:

But let's back track here. If moronic extreme leftists wouldn't be trying to cancel everything they find offensive (*cough* Fahrenheit 451 *cough*) and simply trust that commonsensical thinking people can judge for themselves what's acceptable and what isn't, then we wouldn't have any of this nonsense. Some of you who think you are "liberal" on this website probably don't get or don't want to get that that term is no longer what you know it to mean or how you think. You really want government in this country CONTROLLING you materials and even what language you use? You really, REALLY want to become Canada!? Trust me. You don't.

I don't consider myself an extreme leftist. I consider myself a Democrat who has over the years and especially since Trump someone who has lost a lot of respect for Republicans because they are afraid of him. I also want nothing to do with "cancel culture" or anything remotely a part of it. This Seuss thing is just one example of cancel culture and I personally would be embarrassed to be associated with it. I don't know what kind of Democrat that makes me but there it is. What I really would like to see is cancel culture being cancelled and letting people come to their own opinions instead of being pressured into going along with the next new thing to pile on. Right now, Suess. This week or next week? Who knows.

**scottybilly** · March 14, 2021

6 hours ago, Gordo said:

Seemingly partially true. But making blanket statements like "republicans bought them all" is asinine. According to msn.com (clearly a left leaning institution):

"Lefties are losing their minds that I'm signing & sending copies of Green Eggs and Ham to anyone who donates $60 or more," the Texas senator said on Twitter late Friday. "We've raised $125k in just 24 hours!"

If all buyers gave the minimum $60 donation, Cruz would have to put his signature in more than 2,000 copies of the book. On Twitter, he said the "hand-wringing" of his political opponents likely led to high sales of the signed books. Cruz's team was positioning the sales as an effort to fight back against the "cancel culture mob."

But let's back track here. If moronic extreme leftists wouldn't be trying to cancel everything they find offensive (*cough* Fahrenheit 451 *cough*) and simply trust that commonsensical thinking people can judge for themselves what's acceptable and what isn't, then we wouldn't have any of this nonsense. Some of you who think you are "liberal" on this website probably don't get or don't want to get that that term is no longer what you know it to mean or how you think. You really want government in this country CONTROLLING you materials and even what language you use? You really, REALLY want to become Canada!? Trust me. You don't.

And sabugo, this is the direction people in leadership positions are taking here now where and when they can. This notion of "systemic racism" is espoused, spouted and shoved down every possible institution, especially education systems because there is an interest to conquer and divide the family. Those examples are all over the place in all kinds of media. Just look around. Men and fathers in the U.S. are being made to look "toxic", less strong as figures in movies, shows, pictorials/publications. It's not even debatable.

Frankly Gordo, my random, allegedly asinine comment I made was strictly for my own amusement. I have enough bad things going on in my immediate and extended family for me to pay too much attention to all the pathetic, ignorant, selfish, racist, sexist bullshit that is going on in the country. I am a caregiver for my invalid father who suffered a massive stroke in late 2010 and now cant get out of bed or sit up under his own power. My mother has had multiple health issues relating to congestive heart failure during this past year. And we just found out that her sister has breast cancer, and her sister's husband has been going treatment for cancer in his throat, cheeks, and tongue. Last I heard, he had a feeding tube inserted into his gut and he has stopped talking because of the pain. I have a girlfriend battling leukemia and other health issues. And why this heat on the goingons in Canada? My parents have dear friends in Canada and none of them complain about how supposedly repressed they are. All they complain/joke about is the cold and snow during the winter.

Gordo · March 14, 2021

2 hours ago, scottybilly said:

Frankly Gordo, my random, allegedly asinine comment I made was strictly for my own amusement. I have enough bad things going on in my immediate and extended family for me to pay too much attention to all the pathetic, ignorant, selfish, racist, sexist bullshit that is going on in the country. I am a caregiver for my invalid father who suffered a massive stroke in late 2010 and now cant get out of bed or sit up under his own power. My mother has had multiple health issues relating to congestive heart failure during this past year. And we just found out that her sister has breast cancer, and her sister's husband has been going treatment for cancer in his throat, cheeks, and tongue. Last I heard, he had a feeding tube inserted into his gut and he has stopped talking because of the pain. I have a girlfriend battling leukemia and other health issues. And why this heat on the goingons in Canada? My parents have dear friends in Canada and none of them complain about how supposedly repressed they are. All they complain/joke about is the cold and snow during the winter.

I'm sorry for your family's health problems. Almost all families deal with this in one way or another. Mine has too. Loss, pain, suffering. It's all horrible, but I don't want to bring it to a forum where I really don't know or befriend people. That has nothing to do with the discussion going on here. Ok, maybe asinine was too strong. How about "ill informed" or "overly generalized"?

My point remains that it's not systemic. Is there racism and sexism in pockets of life. Of course... always, everywhere...that won't change. The point is taking these human conditions and turning them into rampant, unbridled, unproven concepts... defining the terms by which others should live and trying to change the overall fabric of a largely great nation. It's not about anecdotal situations in Canada, it's about the larger government control. Control of what language you can use, limitations on how you can raise your kids, how much of your money the government should take, etc. Check anything by Canadian Jordan Peterson. Have an open mind when listening ... it's deep and wide.

Gordo · March 14, 2021

6 hours ago, Yankee4Life said:

I am sorry to find out that people in that fine country of yours have to be forced to listen to the same crap that we seem to get in this country non-stop every day. Who is this ungrateful SOB? And nothing will ever convince me that these people who point out racism here, there and everywhere only do it for the attention it gets them because if you don't agree with them then you become today's racist of the day.

I don't consider myself an extreme leftist. I consider myself a Democrat who has over the years and especially since Trump someone who has lost a lot of respect for Republicans because they are afraid of him. I also want nothing to do with "cancel culture" or anything remotely a part of it. This Seuss thing is just one example of cancel culture and I personally would be embarrassed to be associated with it. I don't know what kind of Democrat that makes me but there it is. What I really would like to see is cancel culture being cancelled and letting people come to their own opinions instead of being pressured into going along with the next new thing to pile on. Right now, Suess. This week or next week? Who knows.

The only Republicans "afraid" of Trump are the RINOs, because Trump exposed the incompetence of politicians in general by producing. That's not an opinion. The economic numbers are there. Deep state politicians on both sides of the aisle don't generally want to progress through the problems because then what is their purpose? They don't produce anything ... they don't bring on profits. Politicians know how to do one thing and do it very well: spend remember: budget "cuts" means "we're not asking for as big of an increase as last year"). Do I like Trump's personality ... no, not really. But I don't need to like my dentist's personality either. But if he's damn good and I come away better off than when I walked in, that's all I need. I'm not hanging out with Trump or seeing him at family gatherings. Trump's popularity had nothing to do with fear ... it had to do with people sick of the same old guard on the political institutions and he exposed their lack of conviction for why they were elected in the first place ... to serve us no for us to serve them! Wtf did he need to jump into the presidency for? Dude is a multi-multi-millionaire! Give up that life for dealing with all the political BS for shits and giggles? Would you do it? Hell, 99.99999% of people in the same position wouldn't.

This Democrat party is not your father's Democrat party. Look around; question what you're seeing. They're employing Communist tactics. You think that's Biden leading the country? You never saw the Manchurian Candidate? I mean they're not even really hiding this. No, I would consider you're probably more of a Libertarian by today's definition than Democrat.

**Yankee4Life** · March 15, 2021

11 hours ago, Gordo said:

The only Republicans "afraid" of Trump are the RINOs, because Trump exposed the incompetence of politicians in general by producing. That's not an opinion.

Is that so? And you don't think that Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz are not afraid of that rotten...well forget how I feel about him. Those guys sure as hell had plenty to say against him before he got the nominee to run for office but right after that all was forgiven. If major butt kissing was a course in college these two would be professors teaching the class.

12 hours ago, Gordo said:

This Democrat party is not your father's Democrat party. Look around; question what you're seeing. They're employing Communist tactics. You think that's Biden leading the country? You never saw the Manchurian Candidate? I mean they're not even really hiding this.

What the hell are you talking about? That comment is right out of the Trump playbook although it doesn't surprise me. Your opinions are yours and I sure as heck won't persecute you for having them but the Democrats are now Communists? In what way? And no, I never saw the Manchurian Candidate.

Gordo · March 15, 2021

Can't see the forest for the trees, ma man. Sorry. Good luck.

**Yankee4Life** · March 15, 2021

1 hour ago, Gordo said:

Can't see the forest for the trees, ma man. Sorry. Good luck.

That's one hell of a comeback. Great post.

**Yankee4Life** · June 27, 2021

Updated to 6-27

...This has not been a very good season for Yankee baseball as it nears the completion of the third month of play. Time does fly even when they are playing bad. Any way you care to look at their situation it all ends up back to one thing and it’s that they simply are not that good of a team. They are not a good hitting team because they mostly have right-handed hitters who always are swinging for the fences and are usually striking out. When I was a kid and played on youth baseball teams the bigger kids in the league would always go for the home run when they were up at bat and they didn’t care if they won or lost just as long as they hit a couple balls farther than anyone else. That’s how I view the Yankees. Clint Frazier and Gleyber Torres have turned into easy outs because they rarely hit and the catching situation is terrible and I don’t care one bit that Sanchez has begun to hit a little. The only way this team wins is by hitting home runs and they haven’t done a lot of that this year either. The pitching? Where do you start? Remember last year all we heard was now that the Yankees got Gerrit Cole that was all they needed? That didn’t take long at all to prove that was more hope than actual fact. You need a pitching staff to win and with people like Jameson Taillon backing you up you won’t be going far. I do realize it is a long season and anything can happen but these three months are more than I care to deal with. This team makes me want the off season to come quickly so spring training can start up and then the Yankees will be the Yankees like old times because they’ll be in first place in the grapefruit league standings and it will last all the way until Opening Day, when reality hits again.

...Back in 2019 Aaron Hicks signed a seven-year, seventy million dollar contract extension with the Yankees and all he’s done since then was shaft them with another over inflated and long contract that has provided no dividends. His contract situation is comparable to Giancarlo Stanton’s in that they are both for too many years and for too much money but since Stanton’s is more of a load it attracts more attention. But Hicks is Stanton’s equal when it comes to being hurt and this year he has him beat because he will be missing the remainder of the 2021 campaign due to season-ending surgery on his wrist. At the start of the season Hicks was on the active roster, a fact that amazed Yankee fans because they weren’t in the habit of seeing him in the lineup but then because of an incident involving a young kid named Daunte Wright, a twenty-year-old who was shot and killed in Minneapolis by the police Hicks decided that he didn’t want to play and did just that with Aaron Boone’s blessing. Hicks is hardly out on the field anyways unless you count pre-game warm ups and here he finding another reason not to play. And I am not trying to ignore or look past what happened to this kid at all but Hicks felt that he would have a hard time going out to play baseball with the knowledge of his death on his mind.

I understand up to a point. Daunte Wright is not a family member of Hicks and he should have held a video conference on Zoom either before or after the game to let the press know how he felt but instead he boycotted the game with the Yankees blessing because the Yankees knew that if they did not let him do this the fall out from it on the all mighty Twitter would have crucified them and they would be labeled “racially insensitive” simply by insisting that their employee go to work.

...Last month in a game against the Twins with the White Sox barely holding onto a 15 - 4 lead, Chicago rookie Yermin Mercedes hit a solo home run on a 3 - 0 count to give the White Sox some breathing room as they hung on to a 16 - 4 nail biter against Minnesota. White Sox manager Tony Larussa was the first one upset with what Mercedes did because of an unwritten rule in baseball that says you keep the bat on your shoulders late in the game when you are on the right side of a blowout. Unwritten rules are just that. You won’t find them anywhere in the rule book but they carry just as much weight as the ones that are in there. Larussa apologized to the Twins and as expected there was a lot of backlash because of what he did. Larussa, at age seventy-six has been accused by some as being “out of touch with the game” like C.C. Sabathia so ardently put it. Larussa may be seventy-six but Chicago did not hire him to manage because of that. Sabathia is just an outspoken and foul-mouthed ex-player who by the time he is Larussa’s age will not be able to fit in a uniform let alone be involved in the game.

A similar situation happened last year with Fernando Tatis, Jr. San Diego was beating Texas 10 - 3 late in the game and he hit a grand slam home run to put the game out of reach 14 - 3. Padre manager Jayce Tingler was not happy with his star shortstop because that same unwritten rule was broken. Former Oakland A’s pitcher Darold Knowles, who once commented about teammate Reggie Jackson said that “there wasn’t enough mustard in the world to cover that hot dog.” The same can be said about Tatis, Jr. The guy points up to the sky more than a preacher does on Sunday mornings on his pulpit. So the game has changed. That’s obvious to anyone. It’s more of a look-at-what-I-did and less of a team game. But you can’t blame people like Larussa for trying to teach the right way to play the game even to people who are in it for themselves.

...What is it with baseball players forgetting to touch all bases this season after hitting home runs let alone with all the bad base running? In a matter of days it was a Royals prospect in AA ball who did everything right after his home run except touch home plate. Bobby Witt, Jr. Is the offender’s name and he swore he touched home after what he calls his “trademark skip” when he hits a four-bagger. Instead of skipping he couldn’t just touch home and then shake his teammates hands for a job well done? And up in the major leagues the same thing happened but without the skipping. Pirates third baseman Ke’Bryan Hayes, returning to action after a sixty-day stint on the disabled list, homered in the first inning against the Dodgers but his trip around first cost him because he stepped around first base instead of on it because he was too busy watching the ball. Well, you can excuse that. He was on the disabled list for so long that he thought maybe they changed the rules.

Base running has been something else. I mostly watch the Yankees unless they get me so angry that I switch over to the Minnesota Twins of all teams to see how bad they are doing and with the way the Yankees are playing this year I’ve seen more Twins games than I care to. The Yankees lead baseball in running into outs. At least they lead the majors in something besides excuses. Gary Sanchez does not get on base much but when he does he manages to look someone wandering around the airport looking for the gate he’s supposed to be at. But that team is not the only one that manages to look stupid when they’re on base. I saw a Phillies game recently where Travis Jankowski, who, sent into a tight game as a pinch runner in the bottom of the ninth against the Nationals with no one out, managed to get himself picked off second base. After that the next two Phillies went down easily and Washington won. Running the bases correctly isn’t focused on much anymore when all these guys care about is trotting around them. Now they can’t even do that right.

...I would love to talk to the guy that is in charge of writing the headlines on the front page of MLB.com because I’d like to remind him that there are other players to feature and talk about instead of Shohei Ohtani.

...Maybe it’s just me but those new City Connect uniforms that the White Sox are wearing are going to be eventually worn by all the best-dressed gangsters on the south side of Chicago.

...Walk a mile in Old Scratch’s shoes, Dept: Some time back a rapper named Lil Nas X (whatever that means) launched a controversial pair of what he named “Satan Shoes” because they had a bronze pentagram, an inverted cross and a drop of real human blood and astonishingly enough they sold out in a matter of minutes despite being priced at $1,018 a pair. Only 666 were made (666, get it?) and if any of you wannabe gangsters out there with one thousand dollars burning in your pocket wants to try to get one somewhere you can forget it because Nike filed a trademark lawsuit and won an injunction against the rapper and a company named MSCHF, a New York-based art collective that combined to make the shoes. These modified sneakers were made by using the Nike Air Max 97s as a model, without the pentagram, cross and blood of course. This stands out as one of the few things Nike has done right in recent years.

...The passing last month of Tawny Kitaen did not cause much talk or discussion about celebrity deaths because first of all she wasn’t that much of a celebrity and second of all the last few times she was in the news was for spousal abuse, drug possession and driving under the influence. It was the spousal abuse nineteen years ago that got her the most headlines and that was because she attacked former Angels pitcher Chuck Finley. After that she was just another has-been who couldn’t even get a job as a greeter at Walmart. The 1980’s were her salad days as she was the cover girl on two of Ratt’s albums, making videos for and dating and eventually marrying Whitesnake singer David Coverdale and starring in 1984’s Bachelor Party, playing the role as Tom Hanks’ fiancé. A terrible actress, she did her best work on the Ratt albums and the music videos because she didn’t have to talk. All she had to do is look slutty and if you could have given Oscars for that she’d have won one.

...For obvious reasons I have been trying to fill my time by doing things that are a lot more relaxing than watching a certain team play baseball and that has lead me to watching past seasons of Blue Bloods. Not a bad show although Tom Selleck will always be Magnum to me. Anyway, I am watching the shows and almost every episode I keep hearing the word “bodega.” I had no idea what one was although I was starting to get a pretty good idea. It turns out a bodega is a small corner store or market that sells groceries. We have them here in Upstate New York too but around here we don’t call them bodegas. We call them small corner stores or sometimes 7 - 11. 😄

...Say it isn’t so, Dept: Ted Nugent, whose views on politics are as bad as his music recently contracted the corona virus even though he has kept on insisting that Covid-19 was a hoax and was not a real pandemic. The hoax got him so sick that he couldn’t get out of bed for a few days. No matter though because there was enough blame to be thrown around as long as none of it was on him. When you walk around without a mask on and ignoring every safety instruction given out then you are just asking to get this thing. Well, he got it.

...Marjorie Taylor Greene, the woman that all Republican men fantasize about late at night recently compared the mandate set by Speaker Nancy Pelosi that all representatives had to continue wearing face masks on the chamber floor to the treatment that Jewish people received during the years that Nazi Germany was in power. I would really like to know what history book she read when she was growing up because it sounds like she believes the Jews were all locked in a room without having the ceiling fans on and anything else that happened to them was just hearsay. I don’t know what is worse - that she actually had some people believing what she says whether it is this in particular or anything else she says or if the next thing out of her mouth is going to make this look tame in comparison.

...I think I have it figured out why Republicans hate Liz Cheney so much. She doesn’t think or talk like them because she is intelligent. She doesn’t say that what happened on January 6th should be downplayed and ignored. In fact, she states the opposite and that right there along with the refusal to bow to Trump makes her persona non grata for the GOP. No wonder why she had to be removed. She was a constant reminder to the rest of them how things really are.

...Besides divorcing Kanye West (now who didn’t see that coming?) Kim Kardashian is studying for the bar exam so for the next time she needs a lawyer to represent her in her next divorce all she has to do is look in the mirror. California, as well as three other U.S. states, offers a path to passing the bar without attending law school by "reading the law," or apprenticing with a practicing lawyer or judge. This is probably the only way she’ll get her law degree because her grades were not good enough to get into Harvard.

...Can you believe that one week from today is the Fourth of July? If dogs had calendars that day would be their D-Day. Watch over your furry friends next week and have a wonderful holiday.

Venger · June 28, 2021

I remember when the Yankees traded for Stanton and I complained to my Yankee friends that we woud have been better served trading for Yelich. He is a lefty that is a much better contact hitter than Stanton. But of course, the Yankee fans simply fell in love with Stanton's power.

Those "unwritten rules" in baseball always puzzled me. So a batter is not supposed to swing at a 3-0 pitch right don the middle? Granted, I understand about not stealing if the game is a blowout but the batter is still obligated to swing at a pitch.

I alway have to pause when Iam defending Liz Cheney because her father wasa huge war profiteer when he was VP. But I do respect the fact that she possess an intellect and even when there are reasons to object to her, her position is based on and intelligent viewpoint.

I don't follow anything those Kardashians do so your information on Kim Kardashian is a revelation. She will become a "lawyer" simply to enhance her brand. Sickening.

As for Ted Nugent, I personally know a few people that shared his small-minded approach on COVID-19 and actually believed that they were epidemiologists just because they saw some grainy youtube video someone posted. Mind you, these were the same people tht swore that COVID-19 was caused by the 5G towers and yet they still used their cell phones to post up that nonsense.

**Yankee4Life** · June 28, 2021

3 hours ago, Venger said:

I remember when the Yankees traded for Stanton and I complained to my Yankee friends that we woud have been better served trading for Yelich. He is a lefty that is a much better contact hitter than Stanton. But of course, the Yankee fans simply fell in love with Stanton's power.

What I remember about them getting Stanton was that they just got out of a ten year contract with Alex Rodriguez and they tie themselves up with another one? I honestly believe they got him so he could tattoo the ball off of the Green Monster in Boston. Good idea but he has to actually hit the ball first.

3 hours ago, Venger said:

I don't follow anything those Kardashians do so your information on Kim Kardashian is a revelation. She will become a "lawyer" simply to enhance her brand. Sickening.

I'm not a follower either but when I read that article about her I had to write about it. She'll be the only counselor who will sell you nude photos of herself.

3 hours ago, Venger said:

As for Ted Nugent, I personally know a few people that shared his small-minded approach on COVID-19 and actually believed that they were epidemiologists just because they saw some grainy youtube video someone posted. Mind you, these were the same people tht swore that COVID-19 was caused by the 5G towers and yet they still used their cell phones to post up that nonsense.

I'm lucky because when I was growing up no one liked Nugent so therefore we didn't listen to him. To this day I don't listen to him nor care what he has to say. That is not to say I was happy to find out that he caught Covid. I wasn't. That is nothing to mess with. But I do notice that since he got the virus and recovered he has suddenly been quiet.

marty65 · June 30, 2021

Growing up my whole life in Melbourne Australia meant I had absolutely no idea what a bodega was when I first heard the term used on an episode of Law and Order (I think it was SVU). Like you buddy, I wondered why they didn’t just call it the small corner grocery store

**Kccitystar** · June 30, 2021

3 hours ago, marty65 said:

Growing up my whole life in Melbourne Australia meant I had absolutely no idea what a bodega was when I first heard the term used on an episode of Law and Order (I think it was SVU). Like you buddy, I wondered why they didn’t just call it the small corner grocery store

It's a catch-all term for grocery stores that's basically a new york city colloquialism

**Jim825** · June 30, 2021

6 hours ago, marty65 said:

Growing up my whole life in Melbourne Australia meant I had absolutely no idea what a bodega was when I first heard the term used on an episode of Law and Order (I think it was SVU). Like you buddy, I wondered why they didn’t just call it the small corner grocery store

It’s also easier to say “I’ll meet you at the bodega at the corner of Broadway and 59th Street”

marty65 · June 30, 2021

Yeah, way less words lol

we just say “ I’ll meetcha at the shop on the corner” lol

**Yankee4Life** · August 29, 2021

Updated to 8-29

...Up until the ninth-inning of the Field of Dreams game and last month’s All-Star game that provided the only joy that I had from watching baseball this season because watching the Yankees up until the All-Star break was like having pain from a toothache that would not go away. They have been playing better but I'm not sold yet although I hope they prove me 100% wrong. I worry, I fret and I get upset at players who look like they're just going through the motions. You must admit with Sanchez I have a point. I will become a Red Sox fan for one day if that guy ever busts it down the line out of the batter's box. He just has to do it once. I'm not worried because it's not in him. I’ll sleep easy.

...On the subject of the Field of Dreams game that they played a few weeks back it really was a big hit. Finally baseball came up with a good idea. The Little League classic is a good one too but it can't touch the atmosphere and location of the Field of Dreams game. The throwback uniforms looked great except for that Nike swoosh on them. I still can't believe that such a small addition can be such an eyesore. I'm looking forward to next year's game in Iowa with the Reds and Cubs. My only suggestion and I know they won't do it is if they continue having these games in Iowa once a year only the teams that made up the original sixteen teams in baseball should participate. It just doesn't look right having a Field of Dreams game watching the Blue Jays play the Mariners. But that’s me, a traditionalist all the way.

...Connect with your City, Dept: For many years I thought that the ugliest uniforms I have ever saw were the ones worn by the Houston Astros of the 1980s that had those rainbow stripes. But when the Red Sox came out with those hideous yellow uniforms back in April to start out Nike's "City Connect" promotion I was once again proven wrong. Those by far are the worst uniforms I have laid eyes on and it would figure that these uniforms represent the city of Boston where ugliness can be seen wherever you turn your head.

By the end of the 2023 season all thirty major league teams will have their own version of the City Connect uniform. I don't believe that this has anything to do with a ball club connecting to their city but I do see three obvious reasons why this is happening. First, Nike has baseball by the you-know-what and when they wanted to do this baseball said sure go right ahead. Secondly, Commissioner Rob Manfred. That guy will get on his knees for anything that will line his pockets. Just ask the Fox network. Finally the fans. They are so willing to buy anything that has their favorite team that style and fashion take a backseat to the newest and latest thing. Have you seen the city connect jerseys for the Dodgers that they recently wore? They look like pajamas that a little kid would wear. But never mind that. If the Dodgers are selling it then they are buying it.

Baseball fans are the ones who are making this popular and in the end, possible. Even the Yankees, whose uniforms have basically remained untouched for generations, are reportedly interested in having one of these uniforms for themselves so their fans can have the same opportunity to be fleeced like everyone else. They're the Yankees. It's not like they need the money but they have no choice in it. It's Nike's game now.

...Allison Mack, best known for her role as Chloe Sullivan on TV’s Smallville was sentenced to three years in prison on charges she manipulated women into becoming sex slaves for the cult-like group NXIVM. Mack had already pled guilty in the scheme with group founder Keith Raniere to recruit women in the purported self-help group, all of which would eventually become his slaves. While in court Mack told the judge that she believed Raniere’s intentions were to help people but she now knows that she was incorrect in believing that and that after months of reflection since her arrest she knows she can and will be a better person. Anyone who has seen her on TV will be quick to agree that this was her best piece of acting she has ever done. She’s getting the three years but with good behavior she’ll maybe get half of that. Then she’ll get out and do the talk show circuits so she can cry and look sad when the camera is on her and after awhile it will be all that Raniere guy’s fault because she just got caught up with everything happening around her. And don’t forget the book. With these people there’s always a book.

...A recent study of female Ivy League students learned that only 6% would be willing to date a Trump supporter. That says a lot because the study doesn’t say would they be willing to marry one. If your a Trump guy you aren’t even getting their phone number let alone trying to get to know them. Why would these bright, highly educated girls date one of these guys when they come calling? If one of them happens to give one of the Trump boys a chance, fifteen minutes into the date the guy will talk about the heroes of January 6th and how they did nothing wrong. One may argue that this is a form of political discrimination but that’s just sour grapes from the guys who are stuck holding their um, phones on a Friday night. You have to be smart to get into one of the eight schools that make up the Ivy League and that’s why it’s easier for these girls to avoid the guys walking around with those red baseball hats on.

...Disband the Tribe, Dept: The Cleveland Indians are no more. They didn't leave town like the Dodgers and the Giants and they didn't sneak out of town like the Colts did to Baltimore. They're still in Cleveland but next year thanks to the complainers on social media they will not be called the Indians anymore. Now they are going to go by the twitter approved generic name of "Guardians." From now on say the name Indians in dark alleys in the dead of night where nobody knows who you are and no questions are asked. Hide the custom Francisco Lindor jersey that you own under your hoodie so no one sees it and by all means act like you don’t know who Chief Wahoo is if other people fondly bring him up. Protect yourselves against the finger pointers at all costs. What I’d really want to know is when is this going to stop? And why go after Cleveland? What did they do? There are a lot of major sports teams that have Indian names but I have never once thought that they would be insulting to any Indian.I mean I never once heard an Indian mutter that life is pretty damn good except for those Cleveland Indians.

And as I said it seems that only certain teams are being singled out by the small but loud and effective group of complainers. The Washington Redskins had to go through an entire NFL season without a nickname because all of a sudden that name was not good anymore. I think if you ask any Indian (the real ones, not the ones in Cleveland) they will tell you that they have a lot more things to concern themselves in their lives than what sports teams are called. You know like jobs, providing for their families, education and health care.

I have read quite a few articles on the name change for the Indians and not one of them stated that the new name that Cleveland is going to have was bad. I get it. They don't want to be targeted by the social media cowards because those people are always looking to harass someone else all in the name of social justice. The reason why I say this is that none of them said why are the Atlanta Braves, the Chicago Blackhawks or the Kansas City Chiefs being left alone? The way I see it those are Indian names just as much as Redskins or Indians. So what is the difference? Why are those teams getting a pass? Are those somehow less offensive names? People are afraid to bring that question up because the knee-jerk reaction from most people will be that they are racist or insensitive and when you have the fear of being labeled like this just because you have a question it means that your free-speech rights are slowly being taken away.

How about the Notre Dame Fighting Irish? No, that's not an Indian name but let's be ridiculous here for a moment shall we? What if the fine folks of Irish descent in this country suddenly take offense to that name? The Irish are just as important as the Indians but so far no one out there has decided to be the hero for the Irish people. Then again maybe someone will as soon as the college football season begins. That’s because on the surface one would erroneously assume that the name derives from the habits of the Irish immigrants to this country in the 1800’s as they were a hard fighting group of individuals especially after a long days work and a few beers. The Fighting Irish of Notre Dame actually got their name from sportswriters back in the day when they were trying to explain the makeup of the school’s athletic teams and how they all seemed to have a never-say-die fighting spirit and the Irish qualities of grit, determination and tenacity. Nothing insulting about that just like the baseball team in Cleveland has never tried to insult or make fun of Indians.

As for me the Indians will always be the Cleveland Indians and never in all my years have I considered it insulting to the Indian race when I thought of that baseball team. Same for the Redskins in the NFL. There has to be a part where people as a whole stop and see for themselves that this political correctness is out of control and the more power and attention it receives the more your basic rights are taken away.

...Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred, who never misses an opportunity to get behind any cause that benefits him first and baseball second, has pledged to donate up to one hundred million dollars over the next ten years to The Players Alliance, a nonprofit group that seeks to improve the diversity at all levels for the Black community such as providing more support for baseball programs in schools and community centers which will as they are hoping will raise the number of Black youth and young adults in the game. At least that’s the plan. And if you want to know where the money is coming from to pay for all of this just check your wallet.

In this day and age you have to explain everything you write online or else someone from oh, I don’t know, let’s say Boston will read what you say and without asking you will call you racist. No I’m not but I see when something is doomed to fail right at the beginning. I think it’s a great idea that they want to give those young kids a better opportunity to play baseball. And if this can improve their playing fields, provide uniforms and get kids to look at baseball for the first time then that’s fine. With all the new rules that baseball has now it is still better than all the other sports combined. I don’t care if there is a White, Latin American, Asian or Black player on the Yankees. No matter what color they are, they're going to strike out and get hurt too much.

CC Sabathia is the vice president for The Players Alliance. That’s a big reason why I don’t like this nonprofit organization. This loudmouth has been complaining for a long time that there has been a lack of Black players in the major leagues and because of that it can make it difficult to publicly advocate for social justice causes. This never managed to shut him up though unless you put a bottle of vodka in front of him and the only injustice he’d see then is that there weren’t two bottles of vodka in front of him. If this were the late 1940’s you could make the argument that there were not a lot of black players in the game. But right there is where you have your answer. Back then the black athletes wanted to be a ballplayer. Not anymore. Not when the NBA and NFL is king. One hundred million dollars is not going to change that.

...People will talk, Dept: Actress Florence Pugh, age twenty-four and smarter than her years, has been for over two years now been going out with forty-six-year-old actor Zach Braff and the judgmental division of Twitter, also known as the people who have no idea how to mind their own business are having none of it. They don’t think it’s right for two people with that much of a difference in ages to be going out together and what’s worse Pugh writes about it on her social media account about the things the couple do and how happy she is. The nerve of this woman!

To her credit Pugh is not taking this criticism lying down. She let all of the finger pointers know that it is her life to lead and no one else’s and that she did not need anyone out there to tell her who she should and should not love. It’s sound advice and so easy to follow but I wish one of her friends had a talk with her to let her know that what she said will do no good no matter how knowledgeable she came across. Twitter does not like being told anything. They like to be the ones with the voice. They’re like a group of old ladies sitting on a bench making comments about everyone that walks past them and no matter who goes by they’ll find fault even if they have to come up with something themselves. To be honest I’ve never heard of Florence Pugh until now but I’m glad her first reaction was not to apologize because like she explained it’s her business. It certainly is.

...For any of you who have Listerine in their medicine cabinet try something one day because I've been attempting this and I haven't done it yet. When you use the Listerine try to keep it in your mouth for at least thirty seconds. I can't do it. I can't even get close. I don't know what's in it that makes your mouth burn but whatever it is they're not fooling around.

...You almost have to feel sorry for Trey Sweeney, the shortstop the Yankees got from Eastern Illinois in the 2021 MLB draft. Sweeney, is a left-handed hitting six-foot four, two hundred pound shortstop who can hit and hit with power. They are going to build this kid up to make him sound like the second coming of Robin Yount, Barry Larkin and Derek Jeter all rolled into one. Instead with the way the Yankees draft they probably found the next David Eckstein.

...Somebody forgot to tell Detroit Tigers television announcer Jack Morris that no one should have a sense of humor when talking about the Angels Shohei Ohtani. I mean what was the man thinking? Doesn’t he know?? Ohanti is baseball's newest Golden boy so no negative comments up and to including any attempts at humor should be directed at him at any time. However, it is encouraged for any and all announcers to fall all over themselves and kiss his you-know-what.

In case you missed it when the Angels were in Detroit last week playing a series against the Tigers play-by-play announcer Matt Shepard asked what Detroit should do with Ohtani coming to the plate and Morris, in an Asian accent, said, “Be very, very careful.” It was nothing but a joke and it was meant solely as a joke. Many years ago in this country jokes were told by people who were comfortable in making them without having a second thought when they did it or what people will say. Can you imagine if Don Rickles was still around today? Twitter would demand he apologize before he even said a word. I’m not trying to compare Morris to Rickles because they are a different as night and day. Rickles made a living in comedy and Morris is a baseball man. Today if you are quick to make a joke you better be just as fast to apologize for what you said and that is exactly what Morris did the next time that Ohtani came to bat. Morris apologized to him and the Asian community for what he said and the next day when Ohtani heard about it he said he took no offense to what Morris said during the broadcast. That should've been it but people don't work that way anymore. They had to have their pound of flesh and Morris was indefinitely suspended and was pulled off the job as a racist and, at the age of sixty-six, was ordered to undergo “sensitivity training” which if you don't know what that means is forced counseling to show him the error of his ways and to point out to him that in his 60+ years he has been doing everything wrong. He will not be back on the job until Bally Sports Detroit, the people he works for, determine he has been showed up and embarrassed enough to satisfy people who have never heard of Morris since last week, because it is those loyal and paying customers that matter the most.

I don't listen to the Tigers broadcasters a lot because I don't watch their games too much but from what I've heard they do a good job. I don't know how Morris feels about continuing on with this job but after all he's done for the Tigers I think he deserves a lot more consideration than he is getting and should not be treated as a pariah just for trying to make a joke. When he comes back -whenever that is- he’s not going to be the same because every word he says is going to be analyzed. I heard the audio clip of what he said and I am convinced that he was not trying to be mean to Ohtani in any way. My hope is that at the end of the season he can hook up with another team and leave Detroit behind forever.

...If you have not noticed by now I have no respect for what comes out of Twitter or the people who are on it that ruin lives with the posts that they make.

...What was that, Dept: I am sure that any of you who have watched a game on TV can not help but notice the people in the box seats that the TV cameras can not help but show while the player is at bat. No matter what game or what city it’s in I am convinced that the people that sit in these seats are only concerned with getting their mugs on television while ignoring what is going on out on the field. Well, recently I was watching the end of a Padres - Rockies game that was being played in Denver and behind Jake Cronenworth there was a woman sitting in her seat enjoying the game. Now I can almost hear all of you now saying to me “so what’s your point here?” That my friends is exactly my point. Watch a game today, any game. If you see a woman in the box seats she will usually be doing one of four things. Talking on her phone, looking at her phone, talking to someone else who is trying to watch the game or is just looking around with a bored expression on her face. Not her! She had great seats and was watching the ball game on a beautiful summer afternoon. Fans like her are rare. Imagine going to a game and actually watching it!

...The first Sunday of the NFL season starts in two weeks but I’m not that geared up for it. Oakland will start out well as they usually do but then Derek Carr will remember who he is and then he’ll start overthrowing receivers, throwing interceptions and will give the Raider punter ten chances a game to be on the field. And there is one extra game this year! How nice.

**Yankee4Life** · November 21, 2021

Updated to 11-21

...Back in 2001 I got the very first X-Box for Christmas and I couldn’t wait until the spring when I could play baseball on it and also on X-Box live when that came out. I played many games against the guys from the old High Heat forum and I am not ashamed to say that those guys tore me apart. It suppose it was a good thing because of my work schedule that I was unable to play in the league they had because I would have had a nice, comfortable seat in last place looking up at them. The reason why I am bringing this up is that I played a game against a random user that happened to be on at the same time I was and I was anxious to play a game. This guy, from the first batter on until he up and quit in the fifth inning was doing nothing but going for home runs every single time. It was the easiest game I’ve ever played. I pitched inside, up and away, changed speeds, made him chase pitches, etc. In other words I tried to take a page out of the Greg Maddux book of pitching. I was leading 6 - 1 and before I recorded the last out in the top of the fifth this guy quit the game but not before telling me that I was “no fun.”

I haven’t thought about this for twenty years but it came back to me one day after watching another frustrating Yankee defeat over the summer. I suddenly realized that the Yankees were playing like that anonymous user I played against. Everyone swing for the fences and let’s see what happens. Well, we all saw what happened. Good teams like Tampa Bay had a hard time hiding their smiles when they had to play the Yankees. Boston showed them how much better they were because they hit and ran and did the little things to win games and the Orioles, losers of 110 games were a respectable 8 - 11 against the Yankees in 2021, something that ended up costing them dearly because if the Yanks won a few more games against them they’d of been the ones to host the wild card game.

But I am not writing this so I can come up with excuses. I will say this. This team managed to win ninety-two games somehow and aside from that thirteen-game winning streak that they had they were easily beatable because they always ended up beating themselves. I know I give Gary Sanchez a lot of grief and for good reason I may add but he’s not the only problem. Mention any position and you’ll see an issue. First base? Luke Voit did his best work this year on the disabled list. Outfield? Very thin. Aaron Judge is solid and when the dangerous Stanton is out there he’s a much better player. Pitching? Maybe if Luis Severino and Domingo German play the entire year it will make for a good staff. If the Yankees had any doubt about those two they would not have thought twice to looking at Justin Verlander, who hasn’t pitched in two years and is thirty-nine years old. He re-signed with the Astros and that’s a good thing because he is just the kind of player the Yankee front office can not resist - a name player who also happens to be past his prime.

I am looking forward to spring training but not for reasons you might be. When it arrives it then it will be the middle of February and winter will have a little over a month to go. I don’t care what this team does as they get ready for the season and I won’t listen to the hype from the New York tabloids or Aaron Boone. Whatever he says I believe the opposite. I just want them to hit better, to go the opposite way, to hit and run, steal bases, etc. When you swing for home runs all the time you’ll get a few and also have some blowout games but you’ll also have a team that will strike out twelve times a game and won’t care one bit when it happens.

...It was a fun World Series to watch if you were a Braves fan or if you were someone who just wanted to see Houston lose. Just seeing Jose Altuve with a sad look on his face in front of the home crowd made it worth having Houston in the Series. Anyone who predicted that the Braves would win it let alone be in the Series were not following them too close for half the year. They had a losing record in July but since then they caught fire at the right time, won their division and then everything else to become champions. I give them credit because I am certainly not used to seeing that with the team that I follow. Speaking of the Yankees, or I should say only their team president Randy Levine made the news before the fourth game in Atlanta. It seems that insurrectionist instigator Donald Trump was planning on making a grand appearance at the game thanks to being invited by Levine the Commissioner of Baseball Rob Manfred. In typical Trump style he was never invited by either of them but he never lets the truth get in the way of a good lie. What actually happened was that he wanted to go to the game so he called the people at major league baseball and they said sure, why not? Trump had to make it sound as if baseball reached out to him first. I feel bad for the Braves that this blowhard had to show up at one of their games but at least he didn’t try to give a speech. Who knows, between innings or during a pitching change the thought had to cross his mind.

...If you have not been keeping up with the transactions that are coming out of the Bronx, New York, Clint Frazier has been designated for assignment. That means he can go get dizzy for another team for five months of the season. Rougned Odor was also given his walking papers and maybe he can find his way back to Texas and grow his beard again. Tyler Wade was also let go but I am hoping he comes back because I think he’s a talented player with a lot of speed and a decent bat. For Wade I think it is just a numbers game. The one I am really paying attention to is Gary Sanchez, he of the silent bat and the hole in his mitt. New York has until December 2nd to tender him another contract, which is projected to be worth nearly eight million dollars in arbitration which by my count is eight million dollars more than he’s worth. The Yankees did right by getting rid of Frazier. Now it’s time for Sanchez.

...The problem with Carlos Correa’s comment about Derek Jeter not deserving five Gold Glove awards is that the guy is probably right. I am one of those Yankee fans that does not kneel at the shrine of Jeter and thinks that everything he did on a baseball field was better than anyone else who has come before or after him. I get what the Jeter loyalists are saying, that he has lead the team to five championships, has the most hits of any Yankee, etc, etc. But his defense was always a question and Correa is hardly the first one to bring that up about him. He just happens to be the latest one to do so. This could cost Correa a chance to play in the Bronx but that may have been a very slim chance to begin with.

...They’ll never learn, Dept: Major League Baseball appears headed for its first work stoppage since the player’s strike that ended the 1994 season. A work stoppage beginning on December 2nd is almost certain - at least that is what many baseball writers and insiders are telling everyone. I don’t want it to happen and if they can get it settled before next Thursday that would be all that I would want for Christmas. But what if they don’t? Trust me, you’ll make it. You’ll be fine. I have to laugh when I think back about the player’s strike in 1981 that started in June of that year and wasn’t settled until August. Relatives called my house and asked my parents if I was ok because they knew I was a big baseball fan. They told them I was just fine, and I was. I found other things to do to pass my time while that was going on. Everyone did. Baseball should have picked up on that and realized that besides the ticket takers, the grounds crew and the vendors around the ball park, people had no trouble finding other interests, especially in the summer.

In 1994 they did it again but that time it was even worse. A World Series was lost but we survived and if worse comes to worse we will do it again because the people who run baseball still do not understand that there are other things to do then watch a guy making twenty million dollars a year while still remaining miserable. Baseball is a captivating sport and should never be interrupted except with the coming of fall and the completion of the World Series but if it does then sadly so be it. Again, we will make it. For any of you who have not lived through a long lockout it is going to be very surprising to you how easy you’ll adjust while it’s going on. It’s not the first go-around for the players and owners and it won’t be the last. Baseball, sad to say does not have a engrossing hold on people anymore. In 2020 the series between the Dodgers and the Rays was the lowest rated and least-watched Fall Classic ever and this year's was just a little bit better. If they strike people will gravitate to the NFL and other sports or lose themselves in Netflix or Hulu. Talks of strikes, threats of strikes and the strike itself only turn more people away from baseball. Forty-one years ago John Lennon was shot to death and some fans were so upset about it that they committed suicide and Yoko Ono had to make an announcement to beg people to not go and take their lives because of her husband’s death. If baseball strikes, no announcement like this will have to be made.

...Another Worthy Lawsuit, Dept: An Illinois woman is suing Kelloggs because she claims that there are not enough strawberries in the company’s frosted strawberry-flavored Pop-Tarts and she is so upset and distressed about this that she has filed a five million dollar class-action lawsuit against them because, well, let me have her explain it. “Kelloggs gives consumers the impression the fruit filling in the strawberry Pop-Tarts contains a greater relative and absolute amount of strawberries than it does.” She also went on to say that more Americans are eating strawberries because they are one of the highest levels of nutrient density of all fruits and an excellent source of vitamin C. How do you like that? It’s so nice to know that there are people out there like this woman who are looking out for all of us.

The lawyer or lawyers that heard her complaint and escorted her out of their office should be commended. The one who actually thought she had a case should be disbarred. Kelloggs has been producing Pop-Tarts since 1964 and aside from the amount of sugar that they pack in these things this is the first complaint I’ve ever heard about them. I honestly do not imagine how far she is going to take this suit or if someone is going to take her aside and tell her she is wasting her time and resources taking on this company because if it goes to trial Kelloggs will have a team of lawyers waiting to tear her apart as easy as one of those Pop-Tarts when you take it out of the toaster.

Incidentally she was correct about strawberries because they are very nutritious and good for your daily diet but anyone who cares about nutrition would not buy Pop-Tarts in the first place. The next time you get a chance go to a corner store like 7-11 and look at the two-pack of Pop-Tarts that are sold there. There’s a lot of sugar in it and to make it even sweeter they’ve added an additional twenty-three grams of sugar on top of it. So what you are holding in your hand is two breakfast treats that add up to fifty-nine grams of sugar. There’s more nutrition in the wrapper than what’s inside it.

...Another Worthy Lawsuit, Dept (Part 2): In 1991 Nirvana released an album called Nevermind and on the cover of the album it portrayed a naked baby in a pool appearing to be fixated on a one dollar bill that is dangling in front of him (see attached image.) These were the days before Facebook and Twitter and any other social media platform that has ceased being social long ago and instead has become a sounding board for any and all complainers from Maine to California. Now, thirty years after the album’s release the baby who was on the cover, a man named Spencer Elden, is all grown now and is now trying to cash in any way he can. He is suing Nirvana because he now says the cover is “child pornography” and child sexual exploitation. The man’s attorney has now claimed that his client has suffered "lifelong damages" as a result of his involvement with being on the cover of the album. Of course he has. Now what is going to make all of lifelong suffering he’s had at the hands of these pornographers make him feel better and help him to live the remainder of his days in peace and happiness? An apology? For what exactly? It’s not like Nirvana went to a local mall, grabbed the first baby they saw and then threw him in a pool and took his picture. Permission had to be asked and then given from the parents and a fee was agreed upon. But this guy is claiming -with a lot of help from his lawyer- that he was sexualized because the dollar bill used in the image made the baby resemble "a sex worker." If that’s the case that is the cheapest sex worker on record.

No, Elden is using the tried and true route. He wants money and a lot of it. Money will make him feel better and it will help him put all of this behind him. He has listed the surviving band members, the executors of lead singer Kurt Cobain's estate, and various record labels as defendants. He is seeking $150,000 in damages from each of the defendants, plus legal costs, and alleges the defendants "knowingly produced, possessed, and advertised commercial child pornography." Did you catch that? He wants money from all of these people plus he’s telling them to pay all the legal fees from a lawsuit that he started. The guy may have grown a bigger pair since that photo was taken but I hope Nirvana and company kick him so hard that his balls shrink back to their original size.

1594187358_NirvanaNevermind.jpg.094d17e49332ee62182c19324fe8bfe7.jpg

...My condolences to former Red Sox second baseman and broadcaster Jerry Remy, who passed away recently from lung cancer at the age of sixty-eight. I first saw him when he was playing for the Angels and when he got traded to the Red Sox before the 1978 season he worked well with shortstop Rick Burleson to give the Red Sox a very good double play combination. I don’t have many memories of him broadcasting because I hardly tuned into the NESN feed but I do have one of him as a player. It was in 1979 and my father and I took a bus trip to New York to see a three game series between Boston and the Yankees. I believe it was the second game that we went to that Remy lead off the game with a triple and then he hurt his knee on a play at the plate as he was trying to score on a ground out. He could not put any pressure at all on it and then Jim Rice came out of the dugout and carried him into the dugout and I presume into the Boston clubhouse. I don’t know how many games he missed after that but every time I heard the name Jerry Remy since that day I immediately flash back to a teammate of his helping him when he was hurt. R.I.P.

...I have a lot of respect for the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and the work that they do because I am an animal lover who spoils his dogs every single day just so they are always well fed and at this time of year, warm. But when I heard that PETA, in all seriousness, asked baseball to change the term 'bullpen' to 'arm barn'. The reason? If you call it arm barn then it is more "animal-friendly." I didn’t know that animals are now watching baseball games and if so how do they feel about the possible strike? Maybe a bunch of angry grizzly bears can visit Rob Manfred to let him know how they feel. What I really think is going on is that someone at PETA came up with the idea, maybe the CEO’s daughter, and they decided to run with it. This suggestion is so stupid that even Twitter, who supports any kind of complaining and fault-finding, has not really been behind it. Then again, give them time. They’re probably still too busy digging into the lives of people who lived in the early twentieth century to see if they can find a reason to call them racist.

...Read the labels, Dept: I enjoy buying different coffee brands from Amazon to use in my Keurig machine and I’m partial to the dark roast coffees that they have. But that’s not the only kind I drink and every once in awhile I like a bit of flavor in the coffee. I am almost embarrassed to admit to doing this and going as far as writing it on here but when I was in Walmart a couple of days ago and I saw Aloha Coconut and Hazelnut Creme k-cup coffees. I was immediately interested and I thought that they both sounded pretty good to me but (these stories always have a but in them don’t they?) as I was reaching to get them I saw the company’s name on the box, Boston’s Best. I don’t have to tell you that I did not buy those two boxes of coffee no matter how good the coffee may have been. I don’t need any convincing about how crazy that may sound and it can also be pointed out by anyone who may or may not be a sports fan and also has no problem separating a hot cup of coffee from the baseball team even if the company is based in Boston. But I can’t. The way I see it the people who make this coffee are baseball fans they have to be Red Sox fans and I am not contributing one nickel to those fans at any time. I’ll stick to my usual Kauai Coffee because at least the people who make that coffee are people I’d shake hands with.

...Finally, the NFL Thanksgiving game schedule to help you plan your meal and nap time around. Leading off is the usual stinker with the Detroit Lions. They will be hosting the Chicago Bears at 12:30 p.m. Eastern time. The game will be on FOX and that’s ok because that will be the game Joe Buck is doing so we can get him out of the way early and enjoy the rest of the day. At 4:30 p.m. the Oakland Raiders go to Dallas to take on the Cowboys. This one will be on CBS and it should be a better game with better announcers. Finally if you have not passed out yet there’s one more game and it will be on NBC with the Buffalo Bills visiting the New Orleans Saints. That one starts at 8:20 p.m. Whether you watch them all or just one or none at all I hope you and your family have a happy Thanksgiving and a wonderful holiday season coming up.

**Yankee4Life** · November 20, 2022

Updated to 11-20

...The 2022 Yankees: Different season, same result, Dept: It was another predictable end to the Yankees season as they quietly lost their last four games to the eventual World Champion Houston Astros in the American League Championship Series. It is very hard to win when your team does not show up except for one guy (Harrison Bader) who did not get the memorandum that you were supposed to go up there, take three mighty swings and then walk back to the dugout. Aaron Judge and Josh Donaldson sure did.

Like most people I like to make predictions during the baseball season and just like anyone else I am usually wrong. But I was not wrong about this Yankee team because I said back in February that I had no faith and confidence in this team and I did not change my mind even when they started out like gangbusters. That was nice to see but it’s better to finish like that and by the time the season was coming to a close it seemed that someone was getting hurt every single day. The Yankees may have not won since 2009 but they once again lead the major leagues in injuries.

Their good start allowed them to hold off a very tough Tampa ball club and if it wasn’t for Aaron Judge’s incredible year they’d have never held on to first place. Every team gets in slumps but not as long as the Yankees did. For two months all they did was make every opposing pitcher look like Cy Young reincarnated. I know I do not have the gift of patience when it comes to being a Yankee fan but even this was pushing the limit.

I don’t care if they sign Judge or not. They already are overpaying Stanton who always seems to take the summer off with injuries and I am counting on him doing it again next year. If Judge wants eight years or more then all I got to say is that he will look good in a Giant uniform or wherever he goes. Anything lower than that I won’t complain but since Cashman calls the shots I am not hopeful.

What I think the Yankees need to do is give their young players a shot. The kids like Peraza, Volpe, Cabrera and Florial. But does anyone see that happening? Neither do I. Florial’s up for two games and then they send him down again. Houston won with a rookie shortstop. We did too back in 1996. I don’t see it repeating any time soon.

...There are some that may think that the San Diego Padres were fortunate to make the playoffs this season especially the way Juan Soto struggled after joining the team at the beginning of August but for anyone who has watched the team play on MLB.TV it was one player who was the basically kept things running smoothly and it wasn’t one of their multi-million dollar players. Ha-Seong Kim hit .251 this season with eleven home runs and fifty-nine runs batted in. Most importantly he only made eight errors in 150 games and his steady play at the position overshadowed the selfish me-first attitude of Fernando Tatis, Jr. and it was just what the Padres needed for their playoff push.

It is a shame that Kim may be regulated to the bench when Tatis comes back next spring. This was a lost season for Tatis, who, with his actions in the 2021 off season forced him to have surgery because of two motorcycle accidents. That took care of the first three months of the season. Tatis was then suspended on August 12th for the remainder of the season for eighty games because he was caught using steroids.

His father came out with some unintentionally amusing comments a few days after the decision to ban his son for the rest of the season. He called it "a catastrophe" and that his son’s reputation has been tarnished because of it. No you idiot. A catastrophe is the hurricane they had down in Florida not that long ago or the 6.1 earthquake Japan had this month. That’s a catastrophe, not whether your self-centered son was going to be able to play. But he wasn’t done. The older Tatis said that millions of fans were going to stop watching baseball because his son wasn’t going to be able to play. It’s obvious to see where Tatis Jr. gets his brains from. He will be back with San Diego once the remaining games of his suspension is served and if it were any other player I’d say this would be a big help for San Diego but the only thing Tatis, Jr is interested in is Tatis, Jr. Ha-Seong Kim was the right guy for San Diego this year but now has to take a back seat to a big contract and an even bigger ego.

...One of my favorite things to do especially with the winter months here is going to see a movie on the big screen but I have not been to one since I saw Jurassic World: Dominion back in June. That’s because more often then not a new comic book movie is being released and while I generally do enjoy one or two of them the steady bombardment of them has become a little bit too much. It’s like being given nothing to eat for dinner but pizza and wings and and while that sounds good on the surface eventually you will find yourself sick of it.

...I have never been a member of the Twitter world and I have never had the desire to but whatever Elon Musk is doing or planning on doing to it I just have to ask one question. Isn’t there another place that people can gravitate to so they can continue posting their complaints along with their whining and moaning and groaning about everything they don’t like or what does not go their way? There has to be another social media outlet where all the cool kids can run off to and start posting again and calling this, that and the other thing “racial.” If not, pay your money and make a rich guy even richer.

...Why the hell do people pile on Jewish folks and give them so much hate? I have always wondered that and I have even wanted to go and ask a rabbi about this but I don’t know where any temples are in my area even though we do have quite a few. In every society Jews have made positive contributions in the world of science, medicine, literature, entertainment and sports and that is hardly an exaggeration. I wonder what made Kanye West start in on the Jews although to be fair I have to wonder what makes that guy do anything. He has been getting away with a lot of things and he even thought he was untouchable with Adidas with the comments he made about Jewish people because he said they wouldn’t touch him. Well, they did and now along with other companies that dropped him (all non-Jewish) he lost over a billion dollars. Don’t start a GoFundMe for him yet because he still has four hundred million dollars left so he should be ok for the next hundred years, give or take a few decades. Remember back in 2006 with Mel Gibson was arrested for suspected drink driving in Malibu? He made anti-Semitic remarks to a policeman, which he later apologized for, stating that the comments were “blurted out in a moment of insanity”. He was was blacklisted by Hollywood for a short time but has since returned. When he wasn’t working no one would touch him and he received zero support. It wasn’t the same for West. Antisemitic demonstrators referenced him in signs raised in Los Angeles and Jacksonville in support of what he said. I won’t make excuses for what either one said but Gibson’s comments, wrong as they were, were said when he was intoxicated. The same could not be said for West which just goes to show how he really feels about the people who follow the Hebrew faith and nothing he said can be excused by having one too many drinks.

...From Russia, With Love, Dept: For the next nine and one half years that is exactly what basketball star Brittney Griner is going to learn to do because that is how long she was sentenced by a Russian court for trying to smuggle less than 1 gram of cannabis oil in her luggage back in February when she arrived there to play with the Russian Premier League during the WNBA offseason. There’s been some talk that the Russians did this to her because she’s a lesbian but I don’t buy that at all. If they had a problem with her being gay they’d have let her play out the basketball season there and then got her the hell out of the country. Some people have been arguing that she “only had” less than a gram of the cannabis oil and that she accidentally packed the drugs while in a hurry to be able to catch her flight to Russia. If that’s what she did then she is even dumber than she looks. First of all less than a gram of anything illegal entering Russia is more than enough for them to detain you and arrest you, which is what happened here. And if she was in a hurry and just threw stuff in her suitcase without double-checking the contents knowing that she was going to a country that is famous for having a tight control over the rights of their countrymen, then all of this is on her and her alone. When you’re in Russia they are the home team and you play by their rules. She’s going to be there so long that by the time she gets out she’s going to know the language. All this for less than a gram.

...Last year Atlanta’s Marcell Ozuna was arrested on charges of aggravated assault by strangulation and battery after police officers said they witnessed him attacking his wife. The guy couldn’t even try to deny it since the cops were right there watching him trying to take all the air out of his wife. He skated by on that one when all the charges were dropped after he completed a pretrial diversion program. He later told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that what he mostly learned from that program was that if he did this again to look around first and be sure there were no police officers in his proximity. Recently Ozuna was at it again as he was arrested and booked on a driving under the influence charge. Ozuna is in his third season in Atlanta and in the second year of a sixty-five million, four-year contract and there is a good chance that the Braves may want to cut ties with him once this season concludes. No worries though because if Ozunza’s off-field troubles do lead him out of Atlanta the Boston Red Sox are the perfect team to pick him up. It will be the perfect marriage of a ballplayer who could care less about what he does off the field and a team that feels the same.

Paging C.C. Sabathia, Dept: During the MLB draft three of the first six players picked were African-Americans. I can almost hear what you are saying after you read that. “So what!!” Well, for a long time retired loudmouth C.C. Sabathia has been making noise about the lack of black major league players and when you look at all the rosters he’s right. Sabathia wants more black players in the game but he fails to mention that no one is intentionally keeping them out. It’s a easy way to complain about racism when it clearly isn’t there and the only thing this does is give him attention now that his career is done. He has no rationalization for saying this and is only pointing fingers at a problem that isn’t there. Do what you do best and pour yourself a cold one. Baseball has enough problems already without you adding to the mix.

This did die down after awhile as the season progressed because there were better things to worry about but union head Tony Clark had to bring it up again during the World Series when he said that this was the first World Series being played without any U.S.born Black players since 1950. Again, so what? Are there any young black athletes who have been told by baseball that they won’t be allowed to play? You know the answer to that as well as I do. The NFL and NBA gets them almost every time and that is all there is to this. Sabathia and Clark are right but they only want you to know half of the story. That’s why there is no real outrage about this.

...Daniel Vogelbach is the only player in the history of baseball that can put on five pounds while circling the bases after a home run.

The Anti-Scully Group Dept: Back on August 2nd the baseball world lost unarguably the greatest broadcaster we have ever heard when Vin Scully passed away at the age of ninety-four. Even if you did not care about the fortunes of the Dodgers just listening to Scully describe a game made you realize right away that he was so much better than any of his contemporaries. Losing him was probably the last connection to Brooklyn and their beloved Bums and the battles with the Giants and the Yankees.

Every announcer to sit behind the microphone at the ball park describing the action to their audience should not be compared to Scully just like every .220 swing-for-the-fences-every-time-up hitter should not be compared to hitters from forty years ago because at that time it was more important to get on base, move the runner over and put pressure on the opposition instead of only caring about the launch angle of their home runs provided that they were able to connect.

Which brings us to the point of this post, namely the broadcasting crew of the New York Yankees. The only comparison with this group of on-air “talent” to Vin Scully is that like Scully they are paid to talk about baseball but after listening to them for a few innings you wonder why someone is paying them. There are a lot of Yankee broadcasters and only one of them is worth listening to and he’s not around every game. Michael Kay is the lead announcer and he does his best work when he’s not there. He’s a blowhard and he sometimes thinks the announcer’s booth is an extension of his radio show which is uninformative and opinionated. The Yankees had the perfect opportunity to hire one of the best broadcasters today in Don Orsillo after the Red Sox fired him after the 2015 season but they let him go to the Padres. Orsillo makes you want to stay with the telecast no matter what is happening out on the field. When the Yankees are getting killed and Kay is doing the game you grab your remote to see what’s on Hulu. Comparing Orsillo to Michael Kay is like comparing a Delmonico steak to a McDonald’s double cheeseburger. Paul O’Neill doesn’t come to the games because he’s unvaccinated and while this gave the Yankees a perfect reason to get rid of him they allow him to work from home. O’Neill always says “I’ll tell you what” about everything. Have a drinking game on Opening Day next year and count how many times he says that and I promise you that you will be passed out by the fourth inning. Carlos Beltran may have a good baseball mind and knowledgeable about the game but I’m just guessing here since I can not understand anything he is saying. He’d fit right in on the Spanish language telecasts and I think he would shine there if given the opportunity to work in a language he is more comfortable in.

Cameron Maybin is as guy that just will not shut up. He went on and on one time after someone grounded out to shortstop. Cameron, sometimes when a player grounds out to short that’s all there is to it. Move on to the next batter and stop trying to analyze the obvious.

David Cone is the only regular there that justifies his paycheck and if he is not there you may as well listen to the game on the radio but you can’t even do that because the Yankees have you beat there too. A lot of people can take or leave John Sterling but he doesn’t really bother me when you compare him to Susan Waldman, who spends half the time screeching into her microphone. Waldman does nothing but tell the listeners after every pitch how fast it was and what kind of pitch was thrown. After a home run she lets you know how far the ball went and the all important exit velocity. What the score is, what inning it is, if anyone is on base, who is warming up in the bullpen,, etc is not important to her. It makes me really miss the days with Frank Messer, Bill White and Phil Rizzuto when there were real pros working the Yankee radio airwaves.

I’m sure you have heard the comparison about a player who does not measure up to another player in any way when it is said that he “couldn’t hold his jockstrap.” Something similar can be said here since none of these people could even carry Vin Scully’s scorecard.

...Y4L vs RG&E, a mismatch: not too long ago something reminded me of what happened to me way back in the spring. After a long winter we were treated to our second day in a row of warm temperatures as the thermometer hit close to seventy degrees. But instead of enjoying the day I had to remain at home because our gas and energy company, one Rochester Gas and Electric, was supposed to come by between the hours of 8:00 AM and 4:00 PM to read my meter. They told me that before someone got there I would get a phone call to let me know that they were on their way so I could be ready and I was. I took a shower before 8:00 because I didn’t want to miss the call just in case they called when I was in there. I should not have bothered. When it got to be a little past noon I decided to give them a call just to see if everything was ok because I began to have the feeling that it wasn’t. They reassured me and told me that if I didn't hear anything from them by 3:30 PM that I should call back. I said thank you and that is what I’ll do and I said to myself that I really hope I didn't have to call back.

I think that you can probably guess what happened next.

3:30 p.m. came and went and I did call back -three times- but before I got any answers out of them I was put on hold because I was going to be transferred to “customer service” I was accidentally or maybe on purpose hung up on twice and I had to call back again. That meant going through the automated system and hitting the proper numbers on my phone and finally waiting to talk to someone. By this time I knew no one was coming by but I had to know why. When I heard why no one was coming I knew it was a down right lie. First they said my appointment was canceled and I told them there is no way that I canceled anything because it took me three tries just to talk to customer service and they said they canceled the appointment themselves because of the rain in our area. I asked them what rain and what area were they talking about because that day was a wonderful spring day. No rain, no wind at all. Just a sunny and warm day.

Then they told me that they could come by on the tenth of May to read my meter, once again between the hours of 8:00 AM and 4:00 PM. I told them if you do not show up that day don't ever bother coming in the future. And the lady I spoke with said if I wanted to give my meter reads today I can do so. I told her I would be happy to do it but I have to go in the cellar to do it and my knees do not allow me to go downstairs very fast. Three geological ages later I made it down the stairs and I gave her my readings. And that was that. Well, not really. I found out after I hung up that I had a splitting headache and that I was so mad I made myself light headed.

I typed this out a few days after this happened and the more I think about it I believe automated systems are made with the sole intent of frustrating the customer and when and if they do get to talk to someone they are so relieved to be doing it that they will agree to just about anything. These people had me beat the second I dialed their number.

...Finally I want to wish everyone a very Happy Thanksgiving on Thursday and I hope you have a nice time wherever you are. Between the meal and the desserts we will be overflowed with the NFL because if there is one day out of the year that the NFL owns most of all it is Thanksgiving Day. Find that day on your calendar and you know there will be three games on television. When Christmas comes the NBA is the big shot although I have yet to find someone that watched any game to the halfway point. The first game on CBS will have the Buffalo Bills visiting the Detroit Lions at 12:30 p.m. eastern. That’s always a nice way to start the holiday off right because that game will put your guests to sleep and keep them out of the kitchen and out of the way. The Lions accomplish this every year. Next on FOX at 4:30 p.m. (eastern) is the New York Giants going to Dallas to take on the Cowboys. Why the NFL insists on shoving the Cowboys at us every year is baffling. Lastly in the evening on NBC after your Turkey Day nap is done is the New England Patriots going to Minnesota to play the Vikings at 8:20 p.m. (eastern.) This is Minnesota’s first Thanksgiving appearance in twenty-two years and that really is a shame compared to how much we have to see the Cowboys. Have a good one everyone and drive safe if you are traveling.

Random Thoughts On A Sunday Morning Updated To 7-28

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