Thoughts of a Common Man

So I got to the K again, as the Kansas City folks call it. Wearing my Yankees hat I got a couple of looks...on a day when I was actually counting the number of times I got annoyed. (It was a social experiment...I got to 22 for the day. Annoyed by drivers, people in airports, the slow rental car guy, men on the job and finally, Yankees pitcher, Michael Pineda, who gave up 3 in the first). It was a perfect night...weather-wise, with the exception of the heat annoying me a little. Sam did his magic and found me a seat that was behind home plate about 5 rows up. I was closer to the catcher and pitcher than I used to be for some of the boys games. Perfect. I also tried the brisket, which set me back 8 bucks, but which I ate like a wolf. In the 8th inning, with the Royals up 8-1...I had some room to stretch out...and I thought about a whole bunch of things: 1). Baseball is so cool. There is no forced action. The kiss-cam and the condiment races on the scoreboard notwithst...

I've actually played golf two weeks in a row. Last week, Picachu and I struggled... the back wouldn't get loose, feet were numb... Miller was shooting in the low 70's beside me. But it was still the best part of the week....I just felt cheated because I had waited to play and felt like garbage. I was intent on stretching, resting and icing the back all week so I could play again. The weather was picture-perfect. Pops and Mike were ready to roll... we didn't have a 4th so I rode alone. It gave me plenty of time to look around. The birds. The grass. Good friends. I double-bogeyed the first hole. Double-bogeyed two. Triple-bogeyed three. Bah!!!! I waited all week for that? And I took a deep breath, cleared my mind, and thought about being aggravated about blowing it. It worked really well.  I just relaxed... ...and played better. Ignored the back and legs... "My retirement goal is to join a club, play 9 every day before breakfast....

I have no idea what it's like to be a black man in America. I also have no idea how difficult it is to make a hundred million dollars for throwing a ball, or sitting on the bench of a professional football team. So perhaps that makes me a bit of a nitwit when it comes to talking about Colin Kapernick, the mediocre QB for the San Francisco 49ers. But we ARE in America...so I can say what I feel!! Kapernick can make a stand by not standing for the National Anthem. He's free to do that just as Curt Schilling was free to bash Muslims. But Schilling got shit-canned and Kapernick has now become public enemy number one. Free to do it! And that's where Kapernick's message loses a whole lot of its steam. What trials and tribulations has he been through? My youngest Sam, was mystified. "Was he a slave?" He asked. "I think he has been free to amass a fortune for tossing a ball," I said. And of course Kapernick is looking at things in a...

Every single day since August 14 one of my kids has reminded me that the Lions were beat at the Jeff Fazzolari Memorial Softball Tourney. We were beat 6-3 by the team that my boys threw together. (Chris Miller - Pumba - was the clean-up hitter on that team - but other than that they were all under 25). Now to be fair - most of the original Lions didn't even play in that game - but whatever: "Remember when we beat you," is their rallying cry. And this year was the very first time when I actually considered that we were cooked. At the trade deadline this year the 27-Time World Champion Greatest Franchise in the History of Organized Sports was cooked too. The Yankees traded Beltran, Miller (no relation to Pumba), Chapman and begged A-Rod to get the hell out while also announcing that Tex was hanging them up. Youth Movement! And a funny thing happened on the way to obscurity! Cessa and Green started pitching in the rotation. Torreyes, Judge, Austin a...

Larry King is 82 years old. His wife of nearly 20 years, Shawn, is 56. Word on the street (the Enquirer) is that she (and how many women do you know named, Shawn) has been having a year-long affair and that the marriage has been effectively over since 2010 as they have been in separate bedrooms since that time. Uh-oh. Poor bastard. First off, every single time I think of Larry King I think of the interview that he did with a woman who had been raped. She said "We stopped for food, and when we got back in the car he just attacked me. He raped me in the car, and I knew there was no way of getting away." Larry asked his follow-up question: "What happened to the food?" That right there is enough for Larry to be cheated on every single day for the rest of his life. Yet I laugh every time I think of it. But imagine what he's going through now. He's been married, what, 9 times, and now, at the ripe old age of 82 he's being absolutely publicly ...

I'm out! Can't take anymore. Today in election coverage: Trump called Clinton a bigot and she said he was a racist. Then he said that she was a liar and she said he was lying when he said that. He said she doesn't want to talk policy and that black people love him, believe me. She said black people hate him more than brown people do. What an absolute shit show. This is what passes as political discourse? I mean, I don't know about you, but I am disgusted with all of it. Who knows what their policies are good for... ...he thinks she's a crook. ....she thinks he steals more than she does. What the hell happened? We have never had a political contest like this, have we? And there are about 75 days to go! What's next? Wedgies on the stage? There needs to be a truce called. Next idiot to call the other idiot a name is named King idiot of the doofus world. Garbage. I'm out! This is now a political free zone. Argue your...

The greatest entertainer of all-time is back in the United States. Bruce played for nearly four hours Tuesday night in the swamps of Jersey. His encore was 8 songs long and included two marathon songs, Jungleland and Rosalita. That encore had to last for at least an hour. We saw Mellencamp play for 75 minutes one night. Bruce is just getting started 75 minutes in. And for the uninitiated, Bruce never leaves the stage. His breaks consist of him dunking his head in a tub of water during a sax solo. What's amazing is that he's 66 years old! I distinctly recall how I felt the first time I saw Bruce...way back in 1983. I couldn't imagine another performer putting on such a show. But he beat that effort nearly every single time I saw him after that. Back about 6 years ago I actually had the chance to see Bruce and the band in New Jersey. My brothers Jim and John went to the show with me, and believe it or not, there was one empty seat in the entire arena that night....