Snarky Tom's Rants, Raves and Ruminations

As a youngster you develop tastes for things. Some tastes could be for music, movies and sports. I had all three. I was a Beatles fan even before I entered Kindergarten. I loved all kinds of movies. But the one thing that I really fantasized about was being a baseball player. Baseball was my sport. My Jones. I was a slightly above average ballplayer. If I was able to put more time and effort to it, I might have been able to make something of myself. But I didn't or couldn't. So, it never happened. But... I got to meet a few ballplayers. One night I went with my dad to night school at Newark College of Engineering where he was working toward an Engineering degree. After class, we jumped into the car, but didn't go straight home. We went across the GW bridge into the Bronx to Yankee Stadium. The game was over but we hung out for a few minutes on the other side of the fence where the players parked. Walking up to his car was first baseman and centerfielder, Joe Pepitone....

Yes. Today would have been the home openers for the New York Yankees and the Philadelphia Phillies. The New York Mets' home opener came and went. Cancelled, for now. It was March 26th. It's sad. The one true thing that usually pulled me out of the long winter doldrums, as I hate winter, especially living in the northeastern United States, was baseball. I was never truly a Phillies fan. Even though, the first four games of my life I saw live were in Philadelphia. The first two as a youngster on a field trip with the Spokesman newspaper. I was a paper boy while in elementary and junior high school. Both games were in the summer a year apart and against the Mets. (1970 & 1971) They bused us from Jersey to old Connie Mack in north Philly.  I got to be in a legendary ball park for a game in its last season. Nothing remains of the ballpark now.  Long gone, it is now a church, the Deliverance Evangelistic Church. A shout out to my religious homies. My next two games were when...

I know I have been away. I've been BUSY! I took a six month hiatus from writing, but I'm back...sort of. I want to make this a short little rant about the gouge-iness of tickets. Any tickets. All tickets, but in particular this week, Super Bowl Tickets. See below. U.S. Bank Stadium Seating Chart...(You'll need a bank loan to purchase seats here) I have marked three locations which would be suitable to watch an indoor sporting event without any discomfort. I prefer second level mid-field, but decided to pick two places that are popular and the third place was to prove a point. If you noticed the circled seating area that is available for purchase for the Sunday, February 4th, 2018 Super Bowl game between the Cheating Patriots and the Wonderful Eagles (Can you guess for who I am a fan?), It's noted as a awful deal. At $7,245 per seat, you bet your a$$ it's a bad deal. Of course, it's the first of a price gouging trifecta. I noted the other two with a square...

As many of my readers here know, I'm a reader. I like my books and eBooks. I finished a book, Faithful , written by horror-master, Stephen King and fellow novelist and avid Red Sox fan, Stewart O'Nan. Written like a daily diary, we follow the 2004 Boston Red Sox's season to their first World Series victory in eighty-six years. This got me thinking about the World Series in general. Many sportswriters in March or April make their predictions for which team is going to the "Fall Classic." I believe they're all premature and the majority of them look foolish with egg on their faces when they're not even close. Personally, I like to wait until just after the All-Star break and around the trade deadlines. By then you can take into consideration, injuries, slumps, trades and the remaining schedule. Before I set down my predictions, I researched the history of the World Series. The World Series started as far back as the 1880s. That was between the National L...

...you change the mascot from this  to this... Where the naming of teams started is unclear.  Athletic teams have long used colors and nicknames as a form of team identity. This echoes the use of colors and nicknames in other activities such as heraldry, the military, and the flags of nations.  The first openly all-professional team was the Cincinnati Red Stockings, an amateur team that turned professional and began a successful barnstorming tour in 1869.  (Wikipedia)   From Wikipedia, I found a list of baseball teams throughout the years.  Many were named after uniform colors (Red Sox, White Sox, Grays, Blues, Red Stockings, etc.).  The NL went so far to pass a rule where each team had to have a different color stockings to tell them apart.  This evolved to the color naming of teams.  Other team names evolved from the media.  Sportswriters would invent names that resembled the characteristics of the city to make the...