by John Walters

MH staffers nursing a cracked rib this morning, but you gotta play hurt. Thanks for the help, Jacob.

Who Was That Masked Man?

The president wearing a mask? Participating in a coronavirus presser for the first time since April? Warning that the pandemic, which spiked above 1,000 deaths in one day in the U.S. for the first time this month, is about to get worse before it gets better?

Sounds as if someone is finally willing to believe those 2020 presidential election polls.

K.O. Kid

Last night Edgar Berlanga, a 23 year-old super middleweight from Brooklyn, knocked out his opponent in the first round. So? So it was the 14th consecutive opponent that the 6’1″ New Yorker of Puerto Rican descent has knocked out in the first round.

Shades of another Brooklynite with a massive fist from more than 30 years ago: Iron Mike Tyson.

Is Berlanga that devastating? Or have they been lining up tomato cans for him? Or a little of both? It would be fun to see boxing, not ultimate fighting, return to the spotlight. Is this young man the person to bring it back?

The Lesson Of Ocoee

As election day 2020 creeps closer and as the president already sends signals that he may not accept the results (but only if he loses), you’re going to be hearing about it also being the 100th anniversary of the Massacre of Ocoee.

So just remember you heard it here first.

November 2, 1920, was the date of the presidential election pitting Republican Warren G. Harding versus Democrat James Cox. According to Wikipedia, the previous year had been “marked by major strikes in the meatpacking and steel industries and large-scale race riots in Chicago and other cities.”

You don’t say.

In tiny Ocoee, a village abutting what is now Orlando, Fla., blacks were simply trying to vote. In the months preceding the election, they were told they would need to register with the county notary public, but he was repeatedly being sent away on fishing trips. And they could not simply text him.

On election day, Mose Norman, a prominent black farmer who had registered, attempted to vote multiple times but was turned away. Eventually enough angry whites decided to do something about Norman’s uppity ways, as it were. They went to track him down at the home of Jules Perry and eventually tried to break in through Perry’s back door. Norman had somehow escaped (or never been there) and he was never found. But Perry shot and killed two white intruders (Klansmen?) and then it was game on.

The whites sent for reinforcements. In the next day or two more than 3 dozen blacks in Ocoee were murdered. The rest fled their property and basically lost everything they owned. Ocoee was 100% white.

It’s good to see we’ve come so far in the past century.

I’d never even heard about this before last night, when a Google search for something else landed me on it. Imagine you’ll be hearing about it more as we approach Nov. 4. It is the 100th anniversary, after all.

Punting Is Winning

There’s a ton of prep football talent in California, and none of it will be on display until at least December. The Golden State has punted on its high school football season until after Thanksgiving at the earliest. The California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) tipped its hand Monday when it announced that the last day for football championships this coming academic year will be April 17.

Cool Mom

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIwP3Fg7CUE

You’ve probably seen this by now, but here’s Reese Witherspoon dancing to her son Deacon’s first pop hit. He seems like a grounded kid (not as in, “You can’t leave the house for 2 weeks!” the way MH was when we were that age, though the sentence was usually commuted after a few days and thousands of pouty faces) and our favorite thing in this video is his old-school Phillies road jersey. His last name does start with a “P” (Phillippe).