It was long ago

 and it was far away ,

and it was so much better

than it is today. ( Meat Loaf)

I have been looking back fondly on the glory of the sports world in the 1970's-1980's and I realize just how spoiled I was. The things i remember that were so great, that they couldn't possibly go away...and then suddenly went away. I loved baseball and watched all summer long for as long as i can remember, but i really earned my sea stripes during and after the Mets trip to the World Series in 1973.( I was lucky enough to attend game 4 of the Mets-Reds series...yep, the day AFTER the Rose-Harrelson fight) and i was devastated when my "second favorite" team, the Oakland A's ; defeated my Mets in 7.....Truth is that the prior year i listened to my older brothers drone on and on about how the more professional, and classier and simply better Big Red Machine would crush the upstart clowns in their green and gold uniforms.....i immediately fell in love with Oakland and my childhood hero was Joseph Oden Rudi...#26.

for the rest of the decade we were blessed with some of the Best National and American League Championship series.....there was something special about only 2 divisions in each league and one 5 game series to decide who goes to the World Series.....something very dreadful and sudden to be eliminated in 3 or 4 games after battling for 6 months and 162 regular season games.........bam it's over......like a Johnny Bench golf shot that just cleared the wall or a Chris Chambliss Bomb into the October Night that still hasn't come down......but the real beauty.....this thing that set baseball apart from all the others....was the 3:00 weekday start under that October cloudless sky ....the setting sun that played havoc on right fielders...the shadows from the light stanchions that creeped across the infield as the later inning approached....the blackout under the eye that every player seemed to donn.....and the green grass that survived August heat, just seemed to breath new life with every Kelly green Blade.

I remember racing home from grade school to catch the Orioles-Athletics series and listening to Tom Seaver as a guest in the booth talk about Jim Palmer.....and then chuckle as the mighty A's crushed their dreams, year after year.....I remember the story about the house behind the Center Field wall at Memorial Stadium , and how they refused to paint it Navy Blue to help the batters eye....and so the Orioles planted trees obstructing their view......i remember Rick Monday going yard to snap a tie in the 9th inning of game 5 in Montreal in 1981....a dejected Gary Carter....( surely that game would have been moved to 8:00 nowadays). I remember the Candyman (John Candeleria)  and his Pirates battling the Reds.....and of course the Yankees-Royals parts 1,2 and 3.......and that one day playoff in Fenway Park....if ever there was a 3 hour commercial for the game, something that should have been bottled up and sent to the Smithsonian to explain to future generations what Baseball was like in her prime....this was it.......I can still see Nettles settling under that Yazstremski pop up..........yes we were blessed.

I still long for those days......and i still love the baseball playoffs..although sometimes i find myself sitting in a backyard, under the brilliant fall sunshine, sipping a delicious beer , and instead of focusing on the game on TV......i'm thinking of Lenny Dykstra leaping 5 feet in the air as his HR sailed into the dugout in the bottom of the 9th vs the Astros at Olde Shea......of Bert Campaneris throwing his bat at the Tigers or Reggie breaking his leg on a play at the plate....or Stargell & the Cobra sweeping the Reds in 79, we are family.......or Rusty Staub lacing doubles off the wall and Tug Mcgraw hopping off the mound......Thurman Munson hitting a blast into monument park ....the series was tied 1-1.....bottom of the 8th.....Yanks trailing 5-4......Munson hit a mammoth blast off Doug bird ....410 feet....i had to just stop and watch the video on You Tube....you should too.....the crowd demanded a Curtain Call, he finally popped out of the dugout with his catching gear on...Reggie greeted him at home plate.......Cosell announcing ... said it was Thurman's first homer in 54 games ....the field was in complete shadow....but the left-center field bleachers were drenched in sunshine........we'll never see the likes of meaningful day baseball again.

anyway.....i bought myself a new 75 inch TV for the wall in my garagee...it is being delivered and installed tomorrow morning....the fridge is packed with beeeer and hot dogs and kielbasa will be grilled before the first pitch......and i will watch, but my mind may still be lingering in the 70's 80's....

2+3=BEEER

Holy Cow I think he's gonna make it 

Ticking Away

  the moments that make up a dull day

You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way (Pink Floyd)

I have returned from a glorious trip up north and i have made a few observations. The trip was a grand success... but , as i grow older ; these reunions take on multiple meanings and spark so many different emotions. I chose the Floyd opening lyric because it is the best song i have ever heard about the changing outlooks that develop and advance with age. how seamless the transition can be from bored youth....to dying adult....we all know it, but we all fall into the same trap......from having nothing to do...the restless angst of youth...to being too busy to do anything...the pressures of work/adulthood....to praying for more time at the end......and so with each go around......i find myself being more appreciative of everyone i had a chance to see......to have a chat, share a beer or just shake hands......that unspoken crossover from worrying if you would ever see an old timer again...to reluctantly acquiesce that it is YOU that may never be seen again....I wasn't alone.....On the top of that Hill in Bliss Park there was a spoken and unspoken vibe ....nobody is guaranteed tomorrow....make the most of the moment.

I will add that rumors of the demise of New York City are premature....sure they have their problems....their politicians suck......taxes and cost of living are out of control and crimes is always a problem.....but the living , breathing spirit of the Greatest City the World has even known is still alive and well......the 5 boroughs tend to adjust and reinvent themselves as each wave that was supposed to drowned them recedes.....maybe a year away at this age was what i needed.....but it sure was exciting to be back in midtown and drinking on the banks of Redhook.....I fully see what the attraction is ...i get it why college grads are willing to live in a closet sixed apartment on the edges of the madness....just to say they were A PART of IT and some date in the future.

2+3=BEEER

Every year is getting shorter
Never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught
Or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone
The song is over
Thought I'd something more to say

Home, home again
I like to be here when I can
When I come home cold and tired
It's good to warm my bones beside the fire
Far away across the field
The tolling of the iron bell
Calls the faithful to their knees
To hear the softly spoken magic spells

Come down off your throne

 And leave your body alone

Somebody must change
You are the reason I've been waiting all these years
Somebody holds the key (Blind Faith)

The night is dark and full of terrors as they say on Game of Thrones….but we have to identify and isolate the true Satan…and fight that…..no more friendly fire or collateral damage…..it’s easy to swing on the defenseless , but it takes courage to admit the true problem and climb that mountain…..but we can …..and we must.

Well, I'm near the end and I just ain't got the time
And I'm wasted and I can't find my way home

I've just reached the place

 Where the willow don’t bend

There’s not much more to be said
It’s the top of the end
I’m going
I’m going
I’m gone  (Dylan)

Truth is I  left hours ago....riding the Steel Locomotive North towards the Big Apple......I left a China Robot the password to my blog and this is probably him typing now.....who knows.

anyway....it's laughable how all of a sudden BIG Tech is sounding the alarm bells on themselves and begging the Govt or someone to put the breaks on the artificial intelligence movement......how  every democrat politician woke up one morning and started waving the caution Flag on data centers.......how the MSM has lost it's collective mind that someone from Anthropic quit because he suddenly found a conscience and fears for the future of humanity....the timing is wild...isn't it ? General Tso chicken is soooo gooood.....

First Off.....Big Tech has no soul, filet or rhythm......they would,  and probably already have; sold their grandmothers for a competitive edge....the big boys are already 95% of the way there.....the only thing that worries them is that someone might be gaining on them.....and SO.....they want EVERYONE to stop moving forward....until they can sew up the little loose ends and completely corner the market future.....you want fried rice with that ??

The demonrats are allergic to the truth , greedy and pretty dumb (with a B )and will sing any song on behalf of china or a chinese backed lobbyist....and so each day they digest the theme of the day memo from Doctor Evil , or Xi Xi Ping Pong, and regurgitate the same sound bites.....he said 2 eggroll....not 3.

Jessica tarlovski and the leftist media are all fired up because some clown Coxon quit Anthropic ....they first insisted he left millions on the table and walked away without his options because he is afraid A I will kill everyone real soon....and he wanted Nothing to do with it .

turns  out this jackass was only there 4 months.......just how many options do we think he accumulated in 4 months ?  my guess from past experience with Firms going public is 0 ....ZERO.....NADA.....Nuthin....he's either a Chinese agent that was about to be fired or a lazy moron that wants to start a podcast or write a book .

side note.....i'm disgusted with the swamp move of Trump offering $5K as a bribe for votes in the midterm...this is wrong on every imaginable level......I assume he is deliberately trying to blow this up , but i'm not sure why.......no more duck sauce.

Thursday Night......Mike & Eddie playing in Pippins....JC behind the stick....giddy up.

this robot must have a short circuit.

2+3= Tsingtao

I’m closin’ the book
On the pages and the text
And I don’t really care
What happens next
I’m just going
I’m going
I’m gone

Old Man down

 way down, down, down by the docks of the city

blind and dirty, he asked me for a dime

a dime for a cup of coffee.....

i got no dime but i have some time

to hear a story (Hunter-Garcia)

so i remember the cup with maroon triangles more than anything else.....i see it consistently....i dream about it....it's always there......i will try to find a picture on the internet.......it's significance to me is not just because i was fiddling with the lid to add sweet & Low when i was knocked out of my chair and onto my desk when the first plane struck my building.....it was the last thing i saw before all hell broke loose......i had a recurring dream ( and still do) that i am in the building and i am the only one that knows the planes are coming....and that cup is always there......and all of a sudden in my dream i realize that i have to run for the stairs......usually wake up in a cold sweat......but that cup....yep......it never should have been there, but it may have saved my life.

In the summer/autumn of 2001 I was working for Instinet Clearing Services ( a subdivision of Reuters...we were one of the first and only at the time ECN ; electronic crossing networks) we were on the 13th Floor of the North Tower...TOWER 1....first hit, last to fall. I was part of their venture into a Retail Brokerage offering and a Clearing Corp......we were still in our early stages and Reuters was prepping for an IPO to take us public ( an offering that i would have close to 100,000 share of options ...i was going to retire before my 50th birthday) i digress.....in the summer of 2001, since we did not have much work, the Margin Dept did a lot of sitting around, we took extended lunches in Little Italy or the Village, Drank in O'Haras and played on the computer......but we had a regular breakfast in the Port Authority Cafeteria on the 43rd floor of Tower 1 ( we had to take 2 elevators to get there)  we would sit there and admire the incredible views while we read the post and drank coffee.....It was me, Johnny Fraulo, Pooch and Anthony.........but the day prior it just so happened that Fraulo was on Vacation in Vegas.....Pooch was on Jury Duty in Staten Island and Anthony was always late on the Express Bus from Brooklyn.......so as i rode the ferry over from Hoboken i decided to grab a coffee from a street vendor on Vesey street between wtc 6 and wtc 7.......ironically i then walked up the survivor staircase to the plaza and into Tower 1....and so a few minutes later i was at my desk ( and NOT in the elevator going to the cafeteria) i have often wondered what would have happened if any of the other 3 were in the office......the howling screams i heard coming from the elevators just a few minutes later (while i was on the Emergency Phones by the Stairs) could have been my own screams....the burnt, smoldering corpses that littered the lobby just 10 minutes later , the still smoking bodies we had to step around to get to the Vista Hotel could have been me and my buddies....

I remember Sept 13th ....i was the only person in my car on the NJ Transit train....I had to walk from Hoboken to our disaster site at 101 Pavonia Ave in Jersey City...it was a ghost town....we setup shop in a room that housed our computer servers...it was freezing in there, it had to be.....and the Old AC unit made a loud BANG every time it kicked on.....which was every few minutes......i remember some of the women were in tears from being scared by the loud noises....i remember some of them were sent home....i remember we had one long window in the room that faced lower Manhattan......we spent a month there.....there weren't any good bars there along the water in 2001......but we had a deli......and everyday the four of us would grab 3 or 4 pints in brown bags and sit on a park bench and stare across the Hudson at the smoldering pile that used to be our office (years later Dorrians would open across the street)  we watched the smoke change from Black....to grey......to a sickening yellow haze......for weeks it continued to rise....slowly killing everyone and everything in it's path.....and we sat helpless across the river just watching...wondering ...waiting.

I share some of this today because i fear that many in the country have....if not forgotten...have chose to move on......i fear that attention paid to the anniversary will only wane and diminish from year 26 and forward...i wanted to get this out and on paper before it slipped from my memory too....although i doubt that will happen ....my luck, even i have Alzheimer's someday; this will be the only shit that sticks with me.....the Cup with the maroon triangles....i wish i could find one, i would post a picture.

anyway...stay safe......i'm going off the grid until saturday.....i have a beach chair and a cooler full of beer with my name written all over it

I got up and wandered
Wandered downtown
nowhere to go
just to hang around

well they Say

 that time loves a hero

But only time will tell
If he's real he's a legend from heaven
If he ain't he was sent here from hell (Little Feat)

and so just a few days before the 25th anniversary comes news that 9/11 related cancers saw an dramatic uptick this past year , but who knows if that is even true....doctors, lawyers and other liars are all in this game for the money....they have managed to put a price tag on everything from cancer to heart burn....does it diminish from the people that truly lost their lives on that day or years later from the smoke ? that's for everyone to decide on their own........i just think its disgusting to live in a time where everything has to taken with a grain of salt...so many lies, distractions and censorship.......I fully understand how older folks become so jaded and distrusting of anyone and everything.

This week Gov Pataki said the he has a 9/11 related "restricted airway disease"  .....ok..........he was Gov from 1995-2006......did he stand up for the people of his State and insist that the air quality was a problem in the days, weeks, months afterwards.....OR...did he hide behind Kristy Todd Whittman........Whittman of course apologized for claiming the air was Fine.....in 2016......what took so long ?

Yesterday mandanni released files that he said were found in lock boxes in city hall.....smoking gun memo's showing the Guliani Administration knew all along that the asbestos in the air was a problem and that they hid the truth and were more concerned about the cities lawsuit liability.

I am grateful that i am still here 25 years later.....i don't know if it helped....but while i spent an Hour in a thick cloud of smoke outside Castle Clinton and the Holocaust Memorial ( so thick i couldn't even see Mondo standing next to me, could hear his voice, couldn't see his face) i used a water bottle that someone was giving out , to wet the sleeve of my work shirt and then i tried to breathe through the shirt....using the wet shirt as a filter to block some of the dust from getting to my lungs....maybe it helped....i still feel in the back of my mind that i will walk into a doctor someday and be given a 6 month death sentence.....nothing i can do about that, i try not to think about that too much....but every year this month of September gets worse and worse.

anyway, this time next week i will be in good old Bayridge......Blisstock on the 19th and the Hoban run on the 20th.....hopefully i see a lot of friendly faces on the Hill at Owls Head....

Some say my uncle that he's a zero
His life as a shell, he left it back at Stateside
I'd say he's doing well without his shell
Bumming 'round the beaches of Puerto Rico
The beauty of the sunrise and sunset
To his friends he wish he could tell
They're at home still running for bells
Better San Juan than that blue collar hell

What's happening on Wall Street

 What´s happening at the Stock Exchange

I want to know
What´s happening on Squawk Box
What´s happening with my stocks
I want to know
I watch you on the TV every single day
Those eyes make everything okay ( Joey Ramone)

Well the true Queen of Bayridge has been unceremoniously fired by the Fox News Corporation.

From a coat check girl at the Rex Manor to Halls of Fontbonne Academy to the Floor of the NY Stock Exchange she blazed a trail...her rise was fast and furious....she put up with a great deal of harassment when she became the first woman to broadcast from the lions den ( the all male floor of the NYSE)...and she threw out the first pitch before a sold-out crowd at Yankee Stadium...and as referenced above, she had a song written for/about her by none other than the great Joey Ramone....not bad for a kid from Brooklyn.

Her reporting at Fox Business was simply put, the best there ever was; if you never saw her live, you should spend a day searching for clips from the show.....she interviewed Corporate tycoons, thousands of politicians, foreign heads of state and POTUS himself on a regular basis.....she let nobody off the hook......in her famous Brooklyn accent she demanded of every political blowhard " Whatta are Ya gonna do about it"?.....she was toughest on Republicans that came on the show expecting to be treated with kid gloves, but she was relentless....she love to demand to know WHEN a vote would happen.....and when the politician tap danced...she would remind her audience how many days were left in session before concluding " Your Not gonna get that Vote before recess" .

She was a China Hawk......she never let up on the origins of Covid and wrote a book about how China was trying to corrupt the world...she befriended Jimmy Lai before he was imprisoned in Honk Kong and she had Gordon Chang on as a regular guest......but the thing i admired most was her style of interviewing.....she listened......most Talking Heads are busy thinking about their next question....but she was notorious for picking up something in the persons answer and then going off script and pushing back or calling people out for what they just said.......she was also the one of the first that accused China of deliberately spreading the virus....she railed on the fact that China sent a huge delegation to Davos in Feb 2020 to attend the economic forum....."in years prior you didn't even know if they were there" she would say.." but in 2020 everywhere you went there was someone from China mingling with Economic big shots, locals and reporters"  she was never afraid to call a spade a spade.

The early reports on her firing are troubling....not for her....bur for FOX.

apparently when the President gave his  National Address back in July and he accused CHINA of election interference ...the bosses at Fox instructed their staff to censor the story....do NOT report what the President said and do NOT further his theories.....and they put that in writing via internal Memo's and texts......and allegedly Maria shared this TRUTH with the White House.

I don't know about you but i think this could be the final nail in the MSM coffin.....this provides furthur conviction that nobody can really be trusted....no network, no newspaper , no body ! ......i watch the news for entertainment value.....but i tuned to Maria's multiple shows for the truth....no matter how unpleasant or inconvenient it was to report....and now, that too; has been taken from us.

if only there was a Blog that told the truth, the whole truth and nuthin but the Truth...with some booze and jocularity tossed in for good measure......the truth is many of the stories i share with you originated from Mornings with Maria.....i'll wait patiently for her statement and her next move.....hopefully instead of signing an NDA, she comes out swinging and suing and writing a book about Murdoch's Regime.

it's funny now how all the demonrats are spewing the same taglines about Data centers...all of them negative talking points that originated in ? you guessed it, CHINA....but my favorite is AOC......she suggested they build a Data center near Mar-a-Lago to see how Trump like it.......of course by now you can surmise correctly that there are 2 data centers within a mile of Mar A Lago.......is she really that stupid or does she just think that you are ?

2+3=  FOX news censored the answer

I watch her at the big board every single day
While she´s reporting you best stay out of her way
I watch her every day
I watch her every night
She´s really outta sight

Maria Bartiromo 

Maria Bartiromo

Maria Bartiromo