November 22, 1963 (Part I)

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I was in Miss Bromley’s art class, which was simultaneously the best and worst 45 minutes of the school week. The best because it was the last period of the week, and the weekend began as soon as the bell rang. The worst because . . . well, because Miss Bromley. If there was a kid in the school who enjoyed the company of Miss Bromley, I’m still waiting for a hand to go up.

Miss Bromley had some sort of handicap. She dragged a leg while she walked, and we all enjoyed making fun of her because what’s the point of being 13 years old if you can’t act like an insensitive jerk? As I recall, Haynes and Ruby did the best Miss Bromley impression. The rest of us laughed. We all knew it was wrong and cruel, but hell . . . we were 13. And besides, it was Miss Bromley. Continue reading →

Mazer and Maggie and why I flunked American History

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Bill Mazer, The Amazin’, died last week at the age of 92.

Alberta Magzanian, the Toughest Teacher in the World, will be honored by her former colleagues and students somewhere in Maryland this weekend.

There is a connection.

Pull up a chair, kids, and I’ll tell you the story of how a radio sportscaster is the reason the Toughest Teacher in the World gave me an ‘F’ on my American History final in my senior year of high school. Continue reading →

Cooperstown

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My kids have grown up. I know this because I’m banging away on a keyboard in Haverstraw, NY, right now, when I should be on the way home from Cooperstown.

Pull up a chair, kids, and I’ll tell you all about a grand tradition that began in October of 1987, when Josh was 8 and Ben was 2 and Josh and I decided to have a baseball weekend, just us guys, no mom, no baby brother.

The plan was simple:

We’d drive to Cooperstown on Friday night, when I got home from work, and check into a motel for a couple of nights. We’d spend all day Saturday at the Hall of Fame, then head to Brooks’ Diner in Oneonta for some chicken and ribs, and then return to our motel room to watch Game Six of the World Series. Just the two of us.

And there would be a brief but essential stop at a convenience store on the way back to motel from Brooks’, so we could pick up some essentials for watching the game. All involving excessive amounts of sugar and salt.

There was one ground rule: Anything goes. You want it, we’ll buy it. Chips, candy, soda, Twinkies, whatever. We’re guys. We snack till we’re sick.

The next morning, we’d have breakfast somewhere, then doughnuts at Snyder’s Bakery, and then we’d head back home, stopping en route to pick up a Halloween pumpkin or two.

Perfect. Continue reading →

On my honor . . .

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 Repeat after me . . .

On my honor I will do my best
To do my duty to God and my country
And to obey the Scout Law;
To help other people at all times;
To keep myself physically strong,
Mentally awake, and morally straight.

That, kids, is the Scout Oath, the words that every Boy Scout recites with two or three fingers pressed against his forehead.

The “morally straight” part almost got settled this year when the Scouts finally ruled that gay boys would henceforth be worthy of joining the club. I don’t think the founders of this organization ever intended “morally straight” to mean “morally heterosexual,” and now they’ve halfway straightened it all out. I say halfway because they still don’t allow gay adults to be Scout leaders. So now you can be gay and a Scout until you reach adulthood, at which time you must amazingly become straight or, more likely, take a hike. Them’s the rules.

But those rules are downright radical when compared to another part of their pledge. We’re talking “God and my country.”

In 2013, if you don’t happen to believe in God, then you’re still on the outside looking in. The Scouts make it very clear: We don’t want no stinkin’ atheists.

So what do you do when your kid wants to join the Scouts, and you happen not to believe in the Big Bad Invisible Voodoo Guy in the Sky?

Pull up a chair, kids, and I’ll tell you about the day my son, Ben, wanted to be a Tiger Scout, and how a little clause in the signup form opened not only my eyes, but his.  Continue reading →

Bronx cheer, 10/09/13

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Say hello, or guten tag, to Brenda Barton, an Arizona state representative who can’t spell right and can’t think straight.

Our gal Brenda decided recently that the president of the United States reminded her of a certain German dictator from back in the early ’40s. We’ll pause here for a moment while you try to figure out who that might be.

The decidedly left-wing Talking Points Memo notes that our gal Brenda posted this cute message on her Facebook page:

“Someone is paying the National Park Service thugs overtime for their efforts to carry out the order of De Fuhrer… where are our Constitutional Sheriffs who can revoke the Park Service Rangers authority to arrest??? Do we have any Sheriffs with a pair?”

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Never mind that it should be Der Fuhrer, not De Fuhrer (It’s Der, d’uhhhh!). Let’s just consider that it is really, really offensive to compare just about anybody to that certain German dictator who was responsible for the systematic extermination of roughly . . .

5.1–6.0 million Jews, including 3.0–3.5 million Polish Jews
1.8 –1.9 million non-Jewish Poles (includes all those killed in executions or those that died in prisons, labor, and concentration camps, as well as civilians killed in the 1939 invasion and the 1944 Warsaw Uprising)
500,000–1.2 million Serbs killed by Croat Nazis
200,000–800,000 Roma & Sinti
200,000–300,000 people with disabilities
80,000–200,000 Freemasons [23]
100,000 communists
10,000–25,000 homosexual men
2,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses

Barton, to her “credit,” decided to stick to her guns (this, after all, is Arizona), reportedly telling the Arizona Capital Times, which is behind a paywall:

“He’s dictating beyond his authority . . . . “It’s not just the death camps. [Hitler] started in the communities, with national health care and gun control. You better read your history. Germany started with national health care and gun control before any of that other stuff happened. And Hitler was elected by a majority of people.”

Well, I guess that makes it official. Obama = Hitler.

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Here’s someone else who was compared to Hitler . . .

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And here’s another . . .

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And another . . .

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I could go on. But you know what? It ain’t funny. Not even close.

Frank Bruni addressed this in The New York Times the other day, and he was dead right.

The only person who should be reasonably compared to the worst genocidal maniac in the history of our planet should be an equally genocidal maniac. And we haven’t seen him in the last 70 years, and I hope we never do. Largely because of him, over 60 million people were killed, including nearly half a million American servicemen.

So I’m sick and tired of hearing about how this is like the Nazis and how this guy is like this guy . . .

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. . . because it debases each and every one of us when we say that. Nobody is like this guy. Nobody.

Not a day has gone by in my life when I haven’t heard the word “Nazi” or “Hitler” or “Third Reich,” which just goes to show what an influence this evil wretch had on history. Time Magazine named Albert Einstein the Person of the Century back in 2000, but they were wrong. It was Hitler. It’s 2013 now, and I can go days, even weeks, without reading or hearing Einstein’s name. I can’t say the same for Hitler. Somehow, I seem to hear or read a reference to him every damn day.

See for yourself. See if a day goes by when you don’t see a reference to Nazis/Hitler/Third Reich. (I’ve just covered today.) They’re always there. And there’s a reason for that . . . Because an unimaginable global horror took place just 70 years ago, and we can’t help but gape in awe at the evil.

There’s a reason we say “Never Forget.” And that’s because we never should. But it’s also why we need to stop comparing people we don’t happen to like to the person we hate more than anyone else. It’s unseemly. It’s beneath us. Let’s stop.

— 30 —

The night my kid chatted with Tom Clancy

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Pull up a chair, kids, and I’ll tell you about the night my 10-year-old kid chatted with Tom Clancy.

Contrary to reports, Josh didn’t actually come out of the womb with a book in his hand. It just always seemed that way. He took to reading at a very young age, and I’m certain he’d tell you it’s always been one of the greatest pleasures of his life. When a friend told me the toughest part of law school was handling all the reading, I knew there’d be no problem. My son is now a lawyer.

But I digress. This is about the night Josh chatted with Tom Clancy, who died yesterday.

When Josh was in the fifth grade, around 1989, his teacher assigned the class to read a book and write a book report. I’m sure you’ve been there.

Josh picked The Hunt for Red October.

Did I mention that he was 10-years-old at the time?

No, the teacher told him, that book is wayyyy too hard for a 10-year-old. Grownups have trouble reading that book. Pick something else.

But I want to read The Hunt for Red October, Josh told his teacher. And then Josh came home and told me. And then I had to call Josh’s teacher — I called a lot of teachers between K and 12 — and tell him that if Josh wanted to read The Hunt for Red October, the appropriate response should be, “Go for it, kid.”

Because nobody tells my kid a book is too hard for him.

And so it came to pass that Josh, age 10, read The Hunt for Red October, and devoured it, and delivered an excellent book report. And a few months later we visited the Submarine Force Library & Museum in Groton, Ct., and Josh went from exhibit to exhibit explaining everything to me, because I had tried to read the book and got lost in the weeds somewhere around Page 50.

But I digress. This is about the night Josh chatted with Tom Clancy.

This was around 1989, remember, and the whole online thing was pretty new. I had a Macintosh II computer — the original color Mac — with a whopping 2MB of RAM and a 40MB hard drive and a 1200-baud modem, and I was like the king of the world with a setup like that.

And I became a beta tester for a new service called Applelink Personal Edition, which later became known as America Online, which later became AOL. Maybe you’ve heard of it.

Tom Clancy had heard of it. He came to this online stuff pretty early, too, and on this particular night he was hosting an online forum with his fans. People could type their questions to him, and he could type back. This was amazing stuff. Imagine, talking with a famous author from your living room.

And Clancy’s greatest fan was in my house. By this time Josh had also read Red Storm Rising and Patriot Games, and he wanted more. And, like any 10-year-old, he wanted it NOW! And Clancy mentioned that he had another book coming out very soon, which most likely was Clear & Present Danger, and, of course, he was encouraging all his online friends to run out to their local bookstore and buy a copy as soon as it came out.

And that was pretty much all he had to say about it.

But Josh was in no mood to wait. Like any 10-year-old, he needed to know some things, and he needed to know about them NOW.

Josh typed:

“What is your new book about?”

And Clancy typed back:

About $22.99.

Yeah, that happened.

Thanks for chatting with my kid, Tom. And rest in peace.

— 30 —

Exit Sandman

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Willie Mays, the greatest player ever to lace up a pair of cleats, was a shell of himself when he said goodbye to America. He was wearing a Mets uniform by then, and all you could do was celebrate the career of a man whose time had long since passed.

No so Mariano Rivera.

It’s so rare to see an athlete go out on top, especially a star baseball player, who will play until he’s 40-something and won’t take off the uniform until his final team tells him he can’t wear it anymore. Time’s up. You’re done.

Dodgers_Sandy_Koufax_2013-300x237The only other ballplayer I can remember leaving at the top was Sandy Koufax, who won 27 games for the Dodgers in 1966 and led the league in everything (his ERA was a ridiculous 1.73 and he struck out 317). Sandy collected his unprecedented third Cy Young Award that fall and walked away from the game. He was 30-years-old.

But Sandy retired because his doctors told him his gifted left arm was seriously arthritic, and it would become essentially useless if he continued pitching.

I reckon these days he’d have Tommy John surgery, or something, and come back and win 30 games two years later. But that wasn’t possible in 1966.

So Sandy called it quits.

But Sandy was the only one. All the other greats saw their skills erode before they retired.

All but Mo.

I’m a Mets fan, so I’m genetically wired to root for the Yankees lose 162 games every season.

But when Mo took the mound, even I had to root for him. You have to admire greatness.

The greatest closer in history — and one of the greatest pitchers ever — threw his last pitch in Yankee Stadium yesterday. And he did it in a Yankee uniform, the only one he ever wore. And his teammates through all those years, Derek Jeter and Andy Pettitte, took him out of the game.

The Yanks have three more games to play, and they will be meaningless — the Pinstripes are gloriously out of the postseason. So I hope they don’t use Mo in any of them, unless they want to let him play centerfield for an inning.

He went out last night on top, where he belongs. Click the picture below and see for yourself.

— 30 —

Say it ain’t so, dad

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This is back in 1995, when my younger son, Ben, was 10 years old, and we sent him down to Florida to visit his grandparents.

His grandpa took him to a spring training game in Fort Myers — either the Twins or Red Sox vs. the visiting Yankees — and Ben did what all 10-year-olds do in those circumstances. He got as close as he could and begged for autographs.

One player in a Yankees uniform complied.

Ben came home with the autographed ball a week later and showed it to me.

I regarded the signature and said:

“Ben, I’ve never heard of him. He’s a minor leaguer. The ball isn’t worth anything.

And Ben sighed, and he decided the ball WAS worth something. It was worth what all baseballs are worth.

And he took it outside and played with it. And played with it. And we played catch and we hit it and it scuffed in the grass and it went in the mud and it scraped the pavement and before you knew it, the stitches were ripping and the signature was gone.

And that’s why Ben no longer has a baseball autographed by Andy Pettitte in his rookie year.

Today, 18 years later, Andy Pettitte announced his retirement.

My friend Zach swears he’s a future Hall of Famer. I don’t agree, but I’ll concede he comes close.

And Ben has no autographed baseball.

Sorry, son. My fault.

— 30 —

Bronx cheer, 09/20/13

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Stupid just can’t seem to stop. The idjits just keep on coming out of the woodwork. Here’s a week’s worth of dumb and dumber.

Let’s start with this guy:

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John (Hey, I Thought It Was Funny) Whitbeck

Johnnie Boy is the Republican Party chairman in Virginia’s 10th Congressional District, and he knows a good Jewish joke when he hears one. See, there’s this “leader of the Jewish faith” who meets the new pope and hands him a piece of paper, and the pope decides he needs to know what it is, and he finds out it’s the bill for the Last Supper hahahahahaha.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKENPy2Vr90

So now everyone in the Virginia GOP, especially gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli, whom Whitbeck was introducing to the crowd when he told the joke, is distancing himself from this clown, for obvious reasons.

According to the Washington Free Beacon, Cuccinelli said:

“I wasn’t there, but I heard about it that night. And obviously I think it was inappropriate and certainly unfortunate – something if I had heard it at the time, I would have spoken to right there. It’s certainly not an appropriate thing to carry into public discussion we’re having.”

But I think Whitbeck is getting a bad rap. He’s being called an anti-Semite for telling an anti-Semitic joke, and I’m not sure that’s fair. I have no idea whether he actually hates Jews. Sure, the joke portrays an ugly, hateful stereotype, but I don’t think Whitbeck even realized that. I don’t think he’s bright enough to realize that.

Consider his explanation why the joke WASN’T anti-Semitic. again from the Free Beacon:

“At yesterday’s rally, I told a joke. I did not tell an anti-Semitic joke. I told a joke I heard from a priest at a church service.” 

Oh. I guess that made it OK.

Let’s end this segment with a word from my friend, Elliot, who seems to know the only joke of this sort that is acceptable:

A rabbi, an Indian and a midget walk into a bar…the bartender says, “Hey, what is this, a joke?”

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And then there’s this guy . . .

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Lora (Family Guy) Reinbold

Our gal Lora is a state rep in Alaska who hasn’t heard of the Alaska Supreme Court, which ruled in 2005 that gay couples are entitled to the same state benefits as straight couples, despite the state’s prohibition of same-sex marriage

Nonetheless, Lora thinks the world will go to hell in a handbasket if employees in gay relationships are allowed to do family things like taking leave to care for an ailing partner. Such an arrangement would give “special privileges to individuals who have in fact made a Life-Style Choice,” Lora wrote, adding that calling gay couples “family” is “not in keeping with my interpretation of statue or the legislative intent.”

I’m happy to report that the dinosaur lost this fight.

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And then there are the guys who did this . . .

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That, kids, is the decapitated head of a statue of Jesus, one of eight statue heads that were decapitated by one or more cretins at St. Mary’s Church in Malaga, N.J., early Thursday morning.

Here’s another look:

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Nuf said.

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And then there’s these guys . . .

The Randolph County, N.C., Board of Education

When it comes to education, you can’t beat these guys. They know all about what’s best for the kids in their county. That’s why they took this book . . .

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. . . off their summer reading list and banned it from the school libraries.

According to The Courier-Tribune in Asheville, N.C.:

By a 5-2 margin, the Randolph County Board of Education voted Monday night, at its regular meeting held at Eastern Randolph High School, to remove all copies of the book from school libraries.

The action stems from a Randleman High School parent’s complaint about the book. Committees at both the school and district levels recommended it not be removed.

Voting in favor of the ban were Board Chair Tommy McDonald and members Tracy Boyles, Gary Cook, Matthew Lambeth and Gary Mason. Voting against the action were Board Vice Chair Emily Coltrane and member Todd Cutler who both first introduced a motion to keep the book in the schools. This first motion was defeated by a 2-5 vote.

The book, originally published in 1952, addresses many of the social and intellectual issues facing African-Americans in the first half of the 20th century….

McDonald asked if everyone had read the book, stating, “It was a hard read.”

Mason said, “I didn’t find any literary value.” He also objected to the language in the book. “I’m for not allowing it to be available.”

This is where we note, per Wikipedia:

Invisible Man won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction in 1953.[1] In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Invisible Man nineteenth on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Time magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.[2]

Thank god those kids in Randolph County won’t have to read this trash.

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And finally, there’s this guy . . .

House Immigration Reform CaucusGeorgia Rep. Phil (Let Them Eat Nothing) Gingrey

Gingrey, who introduced the fine-sounding “No Special Treatment for Congress Act,” said during a hearing this week:

[Capitol Hill] aides “may be 33 years old now and not making a lot of money. But in a few years they can just go to K Street and make $500,000 a year. Meanwhile I’m stuck here making $172,000 a year.”

Yeah, the poor guy, whose net worth is reported to be $3 million, is STUCK in Congress making $172,000 a year.

Which probably explains why he voted on Thursday to cut about $39 billion in funding for food stamps over the next decade. Because, you know . . . He’s working real hard for his $172,000 a year, unlike those freeloaders who need food stamps.

This time next week, we’ll be on the brink of a government shutdown. Should be lots of stupid between now and then.

— 30 —

The day I made a 14-year-old kid the happiest Jew in New York

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Pull up a chair, kids, and I’ll tell you all about the day I made a 14-year-old stranger the happiest Jewish boy in New York.

Today is Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, and it brings back memories of something that happened back in 1973 or so, when I was a kid on the sports desk of the New York Post.

The Post was a very different newspaper back then, a few years before Murdoch bought it and turned the steering wheel hard to the right. It was a leftist newspaper, owned by a woman named Dorothy Schiff, and it was very much the favored tabloid of New York’s liberal Jewish population. The popular joke was that on the day the world ended, The Post’s wood would read:

WORLD ENDS
Jews suffer most

The sports department had a list of bylines that was not only awe-inspiring, but coincidentally upheld the reputation. Ike Gellis. Sid Friedlander. Milton Gross. Maury Allen. Vic Ziegel. Paul Zimmerman. Larry Merchant. Leonard Lewin. Leonard Cohen. Gene Roswell. Dick Klayman.

Need a minyan? Call Post Sports.

And that clearly was what the woman on the other end of the line had in mind when the phone rang in the office late one afternoon, a few days before Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur. (I don’t remember which, but the rules are generally the same. A “good” Jew puts on a tie and jacket and goes to shul.)

It was late afternoon, and I was all alone in the office. Ike, Sid, Jack, Dick, Bob and Jerry had all gone home. My job, as the kid, was to stick around until the last race at Aqueduct was over, edit the wire report and take it to the composing room. First one in, last one out. What a job!

The phone rang. What follows is pretty much how it went down.

Me: Post Sports.

Her: Are you Jewish?

Me: Ummmm . . . What was that? (WTF???)

Her: Are you Jewish?

Me: Ummmmm, OK, what the hell. Yes. (I expect to be hanging up the phone in a couple of seconds.)

Her: You’re Jewish.

Me: Yes. (Here it comes.)

Her: Great. We’re having a problem and we need you to solve it.

Me: OK. (WTF???)

Her: We have a 14-year-old son and he wants to go to Forest Hills (where they played the U.S. Open back then, before they built the tennis complex at Flushing Meadows) on Friday. But it’s Rosh Hashanah (or Yom Kippur, I don’t remember) and his father and I say he belongs in temple. But he says he doesn’t want to go to temple, he wants to go see the tennis. We need a referee. We’ve agreed to let you make the decision.

(This woman is an idiot.)

Now, I’m sure her son read the New York Post sports pages religiously (ahem), and that she figured she was being a really cool mom letting someone in the sports department make this monumental decision, and that since the sports department had a gazillion Jews, the Jewish person on the phone would make the “right” decision, and her son would do what the guy in the sports department said.

But the Jew she got was me.

Me: Let me get this straight. You want me to decide whether your kid goes to Forest Hills or to shul on Friday?

Her: Yes.

Me: (Lady, you’re crazy.) OK. First of all, I need to make something very clear. I am speaking for me, not for the management of The New York Post or the sports department of The New York Post. In no way does my decision represent that of anyone other than myself. Is that understood?

Her: Yes.

Me: OK. Here’s my answer. You can force your son to go to shul, but you can’t force him to want to be there, and he’ll most definitely resent it, because he wants to go to Forest Hills. My decision is that HE’S OLD ENOUGH TO MAKE UP HIS OWN MIND about these things. I hope he enjoys the tennis.

That poor woman. She got the wrong Jew.

— 30 —