Republican State Legislatures Assume Leadership of Insurrection.

[NiftyNiblick]

It just occurred to me that Boston is a relatively liberal town where people are not expected to complain about taxes.

It's understandable, then, that Red Sox management's failure to shore up the team at the trading deadline,
this due to avoiding the so-called 'luxury payroll tax,"
has the fans in full blown revolt.

Sports talk radio is using the seven second delay feature so extensively that the callers may as well be whales, porpoises, and dolphins.
Their entire comments are just a series of beeps.

[leaningright]

Nice day here. Re-certified my CPR card with three hours of additional training. I keep it valid and try to stay up to date and informed as a volunteer firefighter and as a teacher. Worked in my room putting together my bulletin board to welcome the kiddos back Monday…and getting some work ready for them as well. I should be ready to go.

Got a 9:30 tee time in the morning. Reunion starts at 6 tomorrow evening but I’ll start grilling burgers at 4:30. My cousin and two of his grown daughters are COVID positive so I’ll have to step up my contribution this weekend. Saturday I’ll be working in the kitchen all morning helping to receive, heat and serve what people bring after I cook my stuff. Busy times.

Our stinking sports talk radio (which I listen to every time I’m in the vehicle) talks 80% college football, 10% pro basketball and 10% Olympics. They just hang up on people who cuss. When they do mention baseball it’s the Rangers so … what’s there for them to talk about?

[NiftyNiblick]

I'm so pissed at the Sox that I'm watching Nelly Korda blow her Gold Medal lead instead.

She just played her lob wedge like she never held one in her hands before.
Nifty Niblick can play a lob wedge because he was already a veteran [albeit not great] player when the club emerged in the late 70s. [You don't get that Nifty Niblick nickname for nothing.]
I was the first one I knew to actually bag one. Some of the guys still don't.

I love the Korda sisters. Their parents were both Czech pro tennis players, but the girls figured out how to be big time jocks without sweating nearly as much.
Also, they're representing the US, not the Czech Republic. They weren't known college players at all, but they must live here.
Nelly could stand to eat a little more. If my maternal grandmother were alive, she'd try to put Nelly on an IV drip for fear she was dying.

Girls after my own heart. Never tried tennis, but it looks more like work than recreation to me.
The tennis gang at our club are a totally different breed than the linksters.
Don't even drink together.

As for the Sox, they're currently unwatchable.
I don't give a damn about the Olympics, but I do like short skirts on a golf course.
Even dirty old men can at least look, right?

[NiftyNiblick]

Nelly is back in front.
She's a doll, but I feel that I really need to bake some Ziti for her.
It must be grandfather instinct that I never got to use.

In America, even the poor people are fat.
How can a well remunerated athlete be that skinny?
Who knows anything about Czech food?
I know that all Eastern Europeans aren't alike, but none of my Polack pals are skinny.

[NiftyNiblick]

Gorgeous Mickelson flop shot by the New Zealand girl.
I'm impressed.

[leaningright]

Home from the first night of the reunion. Grilled 72 hamburgers and 4 dozen hot dogs. Now I have the squirrel on to boil and the brisket smoking. Will finish things up in the morning.

Watched the Mets and Pilllies tonight after I got home. Big series for both of them. Now have switched to Yankees and Mariners … tied at 1 in the bottom of the 9th. Gardner up, 2 away, runners at 1st and 2nd.

Popped out to shallow right. Free baseball.

It was great to see my aunt and uncles tonight. A few cousins were there too. My favorite uncle and I hung out at the tailgate of my truck discussing COVID and golf. We’ve both had COVID and don’t want it again and it’d be nice to play a round of golf with him. He’s 80 and tees off from the old man tees now. We used to do a lot of quail hunting together when I was a young man. I always looked forward to him and his family coming to visit.

[leaningright]

Gardner got his redemption in the 11th. Same situation.

[NiftyNiblick]

It was great to see my aunt and uncles tonight.

I may be almost 75, but I do have one uncle left, my dad's baby brother who lives at the Villages in Rhonda Santisville.
He has fifteen years on me.

I had a total of one blood aunt [aahnt] and six blood uncles, their spouses, and several great aunts and uncles growing up. Cousins too, few of which have remained in touch among the living ones.
When i was young, family was everywhere, but it doesn't last forever.
This is especially true for people like my wife and I who were only children without siblings and have no grandchildren now.

I guess what I'm saying is something that leaning already knows: enjoy the family reunions. They don't last forever.

[NiftyNiblick]

Boston is not a populist town at heart.
Boston, like most of the East Coast, is elitist in nature.

Right now, the Red Sox are in freefall because ownership avoided the payroll luxury tax.

That will work in Kansas City.
That will work in Pittsburgh, Cleveland, or Cincinnati.
But in Boston, it's nothing less than throwing the middle finger to loving, supporting fans.

Ownership quit on the team.
The local media eviscerated ownership.
The fans are in revolt.

You can't run the Red Sox like a small market team.
Not with ticket prices that require selling organs to catch a game.
Not with fans who worship the team from cradle to grave.

Red Sox fans would rather have no team that be insulted with a small market type organization.

If ownership cares more about their Premier League club in Liverpool than their baseball club in Boston,
why call the holding company The Fenway Sports Group?

This ownership team brought us World Series wins in 2004, 2007, 2013, and 2018.
We appreciate that. But if they no longer care, sell to somebody who does.

The Patriots, Celtics, and Bruins are amusing, cold weather pastimes.
The Red Sox are our religion.
Don't screw with them.
l

[NiftyNiblick]

I'm babying myself today.

No strenuous activity.
Got a "guest-walker" for the dog.

Lots of ice application on just about every part of my body.
I reek of Bengay [formerly Ben Gay], too.

Eating light not to get bloated.

Tomorrow, I want to get back on the golf course, and I want to swing the club hard without anything hurting.
I'm afraid that even that part of my life may be on slippery ground.

What comes next is only getting out of my recliner to eat and go to the bathroom,
and assisted living comes after that.

Are you in a good mood too?

[leaningright]

I had a good weekend. Great times with the family, some I hadn’t seen in more than 2 years. We had a large crowd at church services this morning and a good lunch at my dad’s house following.

I didn’t watch the Red Sox today but I did watch a good game between the Phillies and the Mets (huge series win for the Phillies) then the end of the Yankees/Mariners game. Then I watched the front runners in the St. Jude’s Invitational collapse and almost saw Abraham Ancer win the thing in a playoff … but ran out of time and had to leave for evening services. I know he’s from Mexico but he went to OU so … BOOMER!

Speaking of OU, tonight will be the last night for my son in our house as a permanent resident. We move him into the dorms On the campus in Norman Tuesday morning but will be driving up there tomorrow evening. The folks at church all administered their hugs and gave him their well-wishes this evening then we met his roommate and his parents for a send off supper for the two young men. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t sad … but at the same time I’m excited for him.

Good luck in calming the pain, Mr. Niblick. Hopefully you can play for another 15-20 years. One of my favorite guys to golf with back in the mid 90’s was in his early 90’s. He was a hoot and not a bad golfer.

[NiftyNiblick]

Not that I hold football in the same esteem as baseball--
it's good but just another attack and defend goals under a clock game--
but this year's Red Sox remind me of the 2019 Patriots.

The latter, with the soon to be departing Tom Brady at the helm,
started the season at 8-0.

The rest of the season looked like a train wreck with no survivors.

The Red Sox had a solid lock on first place during the first half of this season.
Now, if they win even one game, the official scorer demands a recount.

Failing to do anything to prop up the team before the trade deadline--
all to avoid the payroll luxury tax--
did the trick.

The local media gave up on the team.
The fans gave up on the team.
The team gave up on the team.
But it all started with the ownership not caring about the team.

I'm feeling better today, but not quite good enough to risk golf.
I may need a few more days of icing down, but I am feeling better.
Thanks for the good wishes, leaning.

[NiftyNiblick]

Want to know what's good about Mondays and Thursdays?
The Red Sox will probably have one of those two nights off as they do tonight.
I'll be spared from a night of soul crushing spastic baseball.

My son was by earlier this afternoon. We were bemoaning the fate of the 2021 Red Sox, but as usually happens, we also talked about seasons past.
He recalled a story I had told him about the 1959 edition, a truly mediocre team that drew fewer than a million fans at home and finished with an 80-74 record [they played 154 games back then].

In spring training, Red Sox centerfielder Jimmy Piersall stupidly told the press that he should get half of the aging Ted Williams' salary since he had to cover half of Ted's position in the field.
[As a quick tangent, that salary was $135,000 and it was, unbelievable as it may be today, the highest in MLB at the time.]

Owner Tom Yawkey didn't have that kind of sense of humor, especially when it came to his Hall of Fame superstar., to this day the last man to hit .400 for a season [.406 in 1941].

The words were no sooner out of Piersall's mouth when he was immediately traded to the Cleveland Indians for a box of scoreboard light bulbs.

That box remains unopened today.
Fenway Park famously had and still has a manual, not electric, scoreboard--the last one in baseball.

[Blackwater Lunchbreak]

I'm babying myself today.

No strenuous activity.
Got a "guest-walker" for the dog.

Lots of ice application on just about every part of my body.
I reek of Bengay [formerly Ben Gay], too.

Eating light not to get bloated.

Tomorrow, I want to get back on the golf course, and I want to swing the club hard without anything hurting.
I'm afraid that even that part of my life may be on slippery ground.

What comes next is only getting out of my recliner to eat and go to the bathroom,
and assisted living comes after that.

Are you in a good mood too?

did you double up on gay pills?

[leaningright]

I hear a gnat flying around somewhere…

Put in my first day at school with students. Gave one homework assignment and two pre-tests. We’ve sure got some good kids.

Checked into the hotel in Norman tonight. Move the boy into his dorm at 8:30 in the morning.

Before we got here the head coach back at the high school was calling wanting my son and I to set up Gamechanger (a baseball scoring app on an iPad that not only scores the game but keeps track of pitch count…a relatively new rule in OK) for him for this Fall. We got the schedule put in after we got settled in our room and the coach has decided he’ll try to put in the roster himself. Y’all that pray might say a little prayer for him as he is technologically deficient.

Got to have the boy to Lloyd-Noble Center at 8 in the morning and start the process. I’m excited for him and will definitely be coming up for a Sooner football game or three.

New chapter of our life is upon us. One positive thing is the wife and I won’t have to be sneaking around or staying up so late to … vodee-oh-doh-doh. Now if we can just remember how.