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It’s All About The Buck I?don’t know, Skippy. Maybe it’s me. I spotted this story about this 56-year-old billionaire named Mike Repoe at the top of the front page in the?New York Times?the other day. As a kid from Queens, Mike was a big fan of the St John’s University basketball team. They had some real powerhouse teams then. Players coming from the gyms and playgrounds of New York City.? ? As Mike got rich selling Vitamin Water and Bodyarmor SuperDrink, St John’s basketball was in decline season after season. So Mike, who claims to have graduated from St. John’s, threw in four million dollars in the last year to recruit and pay the best players. He says he’ll do whatever it takes to bring St. John’s a national championship. As of March 14, they were ranked 6th, with a record of 27 and 4. This story reminded me of one my dad told me as a kid. He went to Holy Cross College then was off to the Army for a two-year stint before coming back to Holy Cross. The skinny kid in the next room over from my dad was from New York City. His name was Bob Cousy and he played basketball for the Crusaders. The team had a bunch of good players who clicked. Attendance at the school at the time was 1,500. No big money behind the team. But Dinky Holy Cross went on to win the 1947 NCAA national championship. And later in 2022, there was another great Cinderella story when Saint Peter’s University almost went all the way to the national title and captured every fan in America. The Peacocks were from Jersey City ,New Jersey with a coupla thousand students and hardly any athletic budget. Things were so bad for that team they had to postpone home games because the gym roof leaked. College basketball and March Madness has always been about these small unknown schools like Holy Cross and Saint Peter’s making a run for it. I don’t have any problem with players being compensated, especially when you think about what the schools take in, but let’s keep it real. Don’t let some big-buck billionaire scoop up the best players and buy a national championship. Just sayin’. Keep your dukes up. ? https://lnkd.in/ehWFfXJr

The Limelight Hey, on this Saint Patrick’s Day I want to send out a salute to my old buddies The Dustmen and throw in an old favorite tune we all sang along with the lads at the Limelight bar in Springfield. Thanks for all the memories, boys. Here’s to Johnnie Tabb, Jeff Sullivan, Bo Fitzgerald and the late greats Bruce Fitzgerald and Tommy Grassetti. Keep your dukes up. ? https://lnkd.in/g8hgadNb

Yeah, I knew it.?In Like Flynn, the video series featuring Gainer’s son Flynn trying out oddball foods, has taken off. Now he’s working as screen talent for Hot Table, one of our clients. ? This time out, the little taste-testing leprechaun gave Hot Table’s Paddy Shake a shot. Next thing you know, the snapper will have a hotshot talent agent and be testing cereal for Kellogg’s.? ? Happy St. Patrick’s Day and keep your dukes up. https://lnkd.in/eVMw6dn3

Cub Reporter So here’s how it started. My son Joe gave me a new book about Jimmy Breslin for my birthday. Great read. And you gotta watch the HBO documentary?Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists. Those two were the best New York newspaper columnists. The other day I hit a chapter where twelve-year-old Jimmy starts a neighborhood newspaper. I think he called it?The Flash. Things were going well until young Jimmy decided to write a blurb about a neighborhood kid who was a peeping tom. Oh man, Jimmy’s parents went wacknuts and that was the end of his little newspaper. Then a memory hit me like a George Foreman shot to the kisser. I also had a neighborhood newspaper when I was a kid. I had a toy Cub printing press, and I’d set the type, create the graphics, write the stories, and crank it out. I called my paper the?Goodyearpark Bugle. Like Jimmy, things were rolling along pretty good until I discovered the neighbors’ mail was being delivered to the wrong houses. So I decided to follow the mailman on my Columbia Fire Arrow bike to see what was up. Over the course of my investigation, I witnessed the mailman taking swigs from a bottle of hooch. He was not only carrying a big bag—he was half in it. This made the front page of the next?Bugle. https://lnkd.in/eGqGKz5w

I Heard It Through The Grapevine I gotta throw?this one at ya before I get into my street search intel. The other day I was reading about a time Muhammad Ali was on a plane flying to a heavyweight title bout. When the flight attendant reminded him to fasten his seatbelt, the champ said, “Superman don’t need no seatbelt.” Without missing a beat, the she said, “Superman also don’t need no airplane. Buckle up.” And he did. ? So here’s what I’m hearing out there in the street. That bit where someone repeats your name 50 times in every conversation is backfiring big, Slip Mahoney. It’s supposed to be friendly, but it comes across as a pushy, annoying sales tactic. “Hey Darby, what do you think of this, Darby, I was thinking, Darby, that hey Darby, maybe you ought to…” Get the hell out of here, Gumby! Another thing that’s driving people wacknuts is on-hold music. That looping tune makes an already endless wait seem even longer, to the point where when someone finally comes on the line, you want to bark at them about it. Turns out people rank on-hold music right up there with stepping in dog doo or going to the dentist in terms of annoyance. ? Just a couple things that I’ve been hearing out there. And hey, remember what Rodney Dangerfield said, “Always look out for number one, but be careful not to step in number two.” Keep your dukes up. https://lnkd.in/eDA3kXvX

Yeah, so Noah Hoffenberg, a top talent at the?Republican?called and asked if I’d do a column for the paper’s annual Outlook section. If you didn’t see it, this is the piece that ran in last Sunday’s paper and?later went up on MassLive. https://lnkd.in/eeDESi8n ? I had to tone down my wise guy lingo a bit, but what the hey. I think you’ll get a kick out of it. Keep your dukes up .

“I’ll Tell You Somethin…” “…I think you’ll understand.” ? Last Friday I really?pulled a Bill Buckner move. I forgot it was 61 years ago that the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show for the first of three straight Sunday nights. Those shows were watched by 73 million people, a record at the time. I was a kid and watched all three shows with my brothers and sisters. One of the few times we all sat together without a rumble breaking out. I’d forgotten that night until I read a story about it by Mike Barnicle’s son Tim. Tim’s 33, so he sure as hell wasn’t around back then. But he said something that I have always felt. That the reason that night was so important to America, and the reason I’m bringing it up now, was that we were reeling and mourning the assassination of President John F. Kennedy a few months earlier. I always felt it was the Beatles and Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali, who won the heavyweight title later in February that year, that pulled us out of the ditch.? ? We’re reeling again now and maybe it will take somebody like the Fab Four or the Champ to pull us outta this one. But in the meantime,?read Tim’s story?and listen to some Beatles tunes and “know you should be glad.” Keep your dukes up. https://lnkd.in/egbKkk9

A Conscientious Objector Salutes A General Yeah, time goes by and it’s funny how things turn out. Today I’m gonna salute a four-star general. Mark Milley, the retired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has had a helluva distinguished military career, holding multiple command and staff positions in six divisions and a special forces group over the last 44 years. He’s led American troops all over the world, including in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even Trump once noted Milley’s “brilliance and fortitude.” What’s kinda oddball about this Friday ditty where I salute a general is that I was a conscientious objector during the Vietnam?War. I did what was called alternative service, which was a two-year requirement. I put in 3 years working for the Diocese of Springfield in the rough and tough North End of Springfield, helping Puerto Rican kids learn how to speak English. I gotta say, I always respected my friends who were drafted. I just had a different opinion and a strong point of view against the war. ? So back to Milley. He was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs when a drone strike killed the powerful Iranian general Qasem Soleimani. He’s been the target of Iranian assassins ever since, which is why he has had a security detail protecting him. Well, that is until last week when the detail was pulled. Now orders have been given to the Inspector General to do an inquiry into his record. They’re also going to review his rank and may pull a star and demote him. Some of this is because of his comments to troops at a retirement ceremony where he reminded them that they took an oath to the Constitution and not to a king or a queen or a dictator or a tyrant. In the past, Trump has accused Milley of treason and suggested that in another era, he would have been executed. Milley’s portrait that was hanging in the Pentagon also mysteriously disappeared right around January 20. Are you kidding me? This is where we’re at right now. Here’s a guy who stood by the oath and gave his life to the Army and his country and this is how we thank him. It’s like Brian Wilson’s tune says, “I just wasn’t made for these times.” March on, General, march on. Keep your dukes up.? ? https://lnkd.in/gexTT6SZ

With God On Her Side I’m not going to try to make a political statement here, just a citizen’s commentary. Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde is the first woman to lead the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, D.C. She?oversees 86 churches with 38,000 members across and D.C. and Maryland. Throughout her long career, she has always given a damn about people in her communities. You probably saw clips of the prayer service she gave after Trump was inaugurated. You know, the guy who says he was saved by God from an assassin’s bullet. She faced him at the end of her sermon with a plea to “have mercy upon people in our country who are scared now.” Isn’t that what you’d expect from a person of the cloth? Well, she got lambasted. Death threats. Called nasty and stupid and trashed to high heaven on social media. Even though she’s an American citizen, some people have called for her to be deported. Even more people said that she should apologize. For what? Doing her duties as a religious pastor? Hey, the way I see it, she represents the best of us. For Christ’s sake, is this what this country has become? My mother was an inner-city schoolteacher in Holyoke and she used to always throw that old line, “Treat people the way you want to be treated.” And then I’d go pick on one of my six sisters. But I gotta say she was right. ? Maybe those days are over. But this bishop showed a lot of courage. We need more of her. Even though I was brought up Catholic, I haven’t been to church for anything except a funeral in a long time. But if we had more pastors like Budde, I’d be sitting there on Sundays to hear the sermons. Keep your dukes up. ? https://lnkd.in/e_pvC5qQ

Front Row Hey, I figured we could use a few laughs at the end of this week, if you know what I’m saying. Bob Uecker, the baseball clubhouse comic, bought the farm the other day. Everybody loved Ueck. For a guy with the nickname Mr. Baseball, he wasn’t much of a player. He had a career batting average of 200. The batboy could have hit?that. He was also a catcher who couldn’t catch. One season he had one of the worst showings by a catcher in baseball history, allowing 27 pitches to bounce, roll, or skitter past him in just 76 games behind the plate. He used to tell a story about how he was once named minor league player of the year. “Unfortunately I’d been up in the majors for two years at the time,” he said. What Ueck could do is make people laugh. One of his best performances on the field was when he caught fly balls with a marching band tuba during batting practice. After retiring from his lousy playing career, he became a legendary broadcaster for the Milwaukee Brewers, a WWE Wrestlemania announcer, and acted in lots of TV shows and movies—from the dad on?Mr. Belvedere?to the boozehound commentator in?Major League. ? But if you ask me, Parakeet Brain Callahan, Ueck’s best work was as a pitchman for Miller Lite. Back when advertising was fun and had a sense of humor. Here are some of the best of ‘em.? ? https://lnkd.in/enbA5KMi https://lnkd.in/e9BfaEqH https://lnkd.in/ekHd56V9 Crack one open and have a coupla laughs. We all need it. Keep your dukes up.