A Load of BS

There are landmark days that stand out in people’s minds, for a variety of reasons. Your birthday, your wedding day, your high school graduation day, or the night you drank the blue liquor and nearly blacked out at a bachelor party. Authors tend to commemorate these occasions by releasing a book on their birthday, or perhaps re-releasing a book on the same day for continuity purposes. I published my first book on February 26, 2016. Even then, I wasn’t an author. I was simply a guy who wrote a book. Some years later, I published another book on April 20, 2023. For all intents and purposes, that was my first day as a “real” author. However, the day that truly sticks out in my mind is July 29, 2023. Facebook likes to tell you what happened "On This Day". You see, a year ago, I boarded a plane to visit my family in Florida and enjoy a trip to Walt Disney World. I landed at approximately 1:30pm, walked for a thousand years through a brand-new concourse at Orlando International Air...

My friend Matt Mentone likes to tell the story of how he first met Jim. He walked into the WNHU studios, down in the bowels of dingy Maxcy Hall, one day back in 1995. The man extended his hand and said, "Hi. Jim Abbott, like the pitcher." I suppose there could have been more than one Jim Abbott in this world, but the one we would come to know and love was one-of-a-kind. This made it all the more sad when Matt texted me last night. He'd heard from a mutual friend that Jim Abbott passed away on June 11th at the age of 59. I later found out that he'd suffered a stroke in January and never fully recovered. When I walked into my first sports department meeting in 1994, I was a little punk with long hair who loved alternative music and sports. I'd previously met Jay McEnaney, WNHU's Sports Director and play-by-play man at the time. Next to him was a young Scott Criscuolo, whom I would later bond with over anything Mets and wrestling-related. Then, there was this...

This morning, Chris “Mad Dog” Russo of the once-famed “Mike and the Mad Dog” radio show did New York a solid. He made their sports fans sound even more arrogant and thick-headed than their reputation would indicate. This time, he unleashed his fury on the city of Seattle, and he couldn’t be more wrong. The Seattle Seahawks are off to their second Super Bowl in team history. They have become a model NFL franchise in a span of four years. In Pete Carroll’s first year as coach, the ‘Hawks made an improbable playoff run, during which they knocked off the defending champion New Orleans Saints. In the process, they resurrected the career of Marshawn Lynch, who gave birth to “Beast Mode”. We all knew they weren’t ready for prime time, but it was a foreshadowing of things to come. Soon after, key defensive personnel like Earl Thomas and the ever-outspoken Richard Sherman grew into their own. Two seasons ago, they caught lightning in a bottle in the form of quarterback Russell Wilson. ...