by John Walters
Tweet Me Right
What the….? It’s not as if someone was Broccoli Rabe’d.
Starting Five
LeBron To Morey: “Shut Up And General Manage”
Here’s what LeBron James said before the Lakers’ preseason game against the Warriors last night:
Our favorite part: “I believe [Morey] wasn’t educated on the situation at hand.”
Not sure how LeBron is able to glean this from Morey’s seven-word since-deleted tweet: “Fight for Freedom. Stand with Hong Kong.”
So then LeBron revved up the Twitter machine to do the ol’ “Wuh I Meant Wuz” thing…
and…
I’m pretty sure LeBron had Colin Kaepernick’s back when he took a knee, a gesture that also had ramifications, particularly financial ones, not only for himself but for his pro sports league at large. It’s okay to be woke about racism but Morey “could have waited a week” if he wanted to make a statement about the supression of freedom by the world’s most powerful authoritarian regime. Ooooooookay, LBJ.
Meanwhile, our good friend Tim Ring crafted a statement that LeBron could’ve/should’ve used instead of what he said, tweeted. It’s so easy. And we’re still working on Tim to launch a Ring Tones podcast.
Six Flags Over Met-Life Stadium (and Lambeau Field, etc.)
On Sunday night we turned on the CBS hoping to see a few moments of 60 Minutes but, alas there was still an NFL game on the tube: Cowboys at Jets. Okay, that’s an interesting matchup, I thought, of two of my favorite childhood teams who rarely play. So I watched. The Cowboys were trying to mount a game-winning drive.
To say the drive was abetted by penalties would be an understatement. On six consecutive plays a flag was thrown, and not all against one team. Finally Tony Romo said what every viewer was thinking: “I just want to see one play without a flag.”
Welcome to the NFL in 2019, where cameras exposed missed calls more than ever, where referees are well aware of that, where action on the field is subject to further review, and where almost every player is taught to hold or do whatever it takes to gain advantage (the old, “If you ain’t cheatin’, you ain’t tryin'” maxim).
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/48460741/GettyImages-129032613.0.jpg)
It’s not as if all of these penalties, or at least most of them, weren’t being committed at nearly the same rate decades ago. It’s that the ability to see them by cameras has improved, which has put the zebras on higher alert, which means that more than ever NFL games are being litigated as opposed to played.
(A Lambeau Leapin’ zebra?)
Apparently the same thing happened last night at Lambeau Field with two hands-to-the-face flags against Detroit Lion defensive end Tre Flowers essentially costing his team the game. I can’t watch. I’ll tune in for the playoffs, but only because it’s January and I probably won’t be at my private sex island in the Caribbean like some New Yorkers.
Chris Hayes Goes All In
Here’s MSNBC’s Chris Hayes vying to be the next Shepherd Smith. Hayes begins by noting the moral void inherent in powerful institutions doing their best to suppress the truth (because it will affect the bottom line), be it the NBA last week or Republican congressmen in regards to the president’s behavior. Then he quickly moves on to how NBC executives who are attempting to discredit former NBC correspondent Ronan Farrow‘s reporting on their lackluster response to Matt Lauer’s sexual predations, which was an aftershock of Farrow’s reporting on Harvey Weinstein.
Hayes, who is going out on a very shaky professional limb here, details how Fannon worked on the Weinstein story for 7 months for NBC, how NBC refused to air it, how he then walked out and published the story in The New Yorker a week or two later, how the story not only won him a Pulitzer Prize but also jump-started the MeToo Movement while also landing Weinstein in jail and effectively ending his career (and his attacks on females).
“Of course there’s a reason it took so long for the true on Weinstein to be told…and that’s because time and again the path of least resistance, for those in power, was to not cross Weinstein and his powerful friends and army of lawyers.” You can sub in “cross Trump” and “cross China” here.
Chris Hayes told the truth and in so doing spit in his bosses’ eyes last night on their eyes. I’d say “All In” is, at last, a fitting name for his show. We’ll see how much longer it remains on air, though.
National News
Remember when the Washington Nationals were unable to re-sign the bedrock of their franchise, The Natural, Bryce Harper, last winter? What ever became of that woeful, misbegotten franchise? Oh yeah. They beat the best regular-season club in the National League, the Dodgers, in an NLDS series and now have won three straight versus the St. Louis Cardinals while allowing a total of one run in those three games.
We are all in for an Acela Express World Series between the Yankees and Nats, by the way. And as for Harper, he’s doing alright with the Phillies: 35 home runs and 114 RBI this season while being slated to earn $318 MILLION over the next dozen years. Still, the Ewing Theory extends to baseball and it’s wild to think that Stephen Strasburg (seven innings, 12 Ks, no earned runs in last night’s win) is going to play in a World Series game before Harper does.
A Farewell To The Cookoutateria
Yesterday, a gloriously sunny and warm mid-October day here, marked the final day of the season for the Cookoutateria (a.k.a. “The Boat Basin Cafe”). It was also the final day of what will be at least three or four years, as the city is closing the area in which it is housed to completely renovate the W. 79th Street traffic circle (situated directly above).
I haven’t worked there much the past six weeks or so, but I wanted to stop by and pay my respects. This is a picture of one of the few other staffers who has worked there almost as long as I did. This is Ubaldo, a busser, whose English is as poor as my Spanish and yet who has for years been one of my closest friends there. “Hola, Papi” is how we greeted each other each day, and with a close hug.
If there’s anything I know as to why we were such good work friends, it’s because I think we both admired the other’s work ethic. Too, after I was finished bartending a private party, I might have occasionally slipped Ubaldo a can of cerveza for him to enjoy after his shift.
Highly doubt I’ll ever put in another shift at the Cookoutateria (at least I hope not), but I’m eternally grateful for the people I met and for the awareness it awoke in me. And working outside under sunny skies along the Hudson River in shorts and a T-shirt was never a bad gig.
Music 101
That Voice Again
There were only eight songs on Peter Gabriel’s outstanding 1986 album, So, a true masterpiece. Of those eight, at least five if not six received more airplay than this track, which closes the first side of the album (if you have it on vinyl). We love the haunting tone. This was somehow never released as a single. Maybe they should release it now.
Remote Patrol
Game 3: Astros at Yankees
4 p.m. FS1
Check that time! Baseball in the gloaming, and it’s going to be a lovely sunny day here in NYC. Gerrit Cole, the most dominant pitcher in baseball the past four months, brings the heat for the Astros.
Happy for the Nats, but I don’t understand the glee in some that they are doing it without Harper. Harper played very well for Washington for eight seasons. When he became a free agent, the Nats made only a token effort to re-sign him and he took an offer from another team for $30 million more. Why should this year’s success feel sweeter for Nats fans because Harper is gone, other than team tribalism? Why do fans feel so personally wronged when a player on their team opts to sign for more money elsewhere? By the way, the Nats trailed late in two elimination games — had they lost either, and continued their history of postseason disappointment, it seems like Nats fans would have wished their ownership would have coughed up for Harper.
I don’t see where you saw “glee” in my item. I reported facts. Your inference comes from a defensive position.
I wasn’t referring to you. In baseball media, there has been a lot of reporting about National fans and their feelings about winning without Harper. https://www.nbcsports.com/washington/nationals/bryce-less-october-has-nationals-fans-thrilled.
Wally,
If you’re just going to use my column to make comments on things outside the column, you have to get Susie B’s permission first. That’s her turf.
Wow, goodbye Cookoutateria! Gee, I’m going to miss your occasional posts & tweets about working there, your fellow employees, the deadbeat tippers & the guy that ran out without paying the bill with you in hot pursuit. And “3-4 YEARS”?! What are all those businesses supposed to do? Going by your posts thru the years, the Cookoutateria was a “learning experience” for you & I’m hazarding a guess that if you’re fellow coworkers paid attention (and did NOT sneak out early!), they learned a great deal from you too. Well, maybe your other culinary place of employment will now get a nickname? Although maybe you’ve already moved on from there too. Wherever you go & do, I’m sure you’ll continue to be one of those workers who inspire some & irritate others as, hard as it is to believe, not everybody is “down” with the whole “work ethic” thing. 😉
About LBJ’s “misspoken” comment – I SAW on the ESPN crawl last night that “LeBron says Daryl Morey misinformed”. “Oh noooooo” I stammered! For a while, I was VERY disappointed with my old Sweet Pea. However, eventually I listened to his entire comment & it’s clear he was trying to convey that Morey’s tweet put his team & everyone else with the NBA that was in China last week at RISK to possible physical harm & he was NOT ok with that! In fact, he’s still pret-tee pissed about it. I agree. Morey did NOT seem to think about the ramifications to such a tweet to the NBA people in that country at that time. It wasn’t “misinformed” so much as RECKLESS. LeBron just ‘misspoke’ when he started commenting & quickly rambled on. I do not believe LBJ was/is thinking solely or even mostly about his financial deals in that country as much as the safety of that entire group. The entire trip was a total FUBAR & the ramifications are ongoing. And they are LUCKY that no one got a bottle thrown at their head (or worse). I am hoping that once LeBron studies what is happening in & to Hong Kong, he may come out with another statement. But, as I said last week, why should HE or anyone in the NBA do so when Apple, Disney, the companies that make up YUM, & all the other American businesses that do business with China have NOT?
Speaking of “So” and it’s singles, “Sledgehammer” reached #1 in July ’86, supplanting “Invisible Touch” at the top spot, a single by Gabriel’s former band. Has that ever happened before or since ? Casey Kasem is no longer around to tell us.