Can't anybody here play this game?

Through a glass, darkly: Growing up in Newark, a Brooklyn Dodger fan in a Yankee neighborhood, Spring Training was always the advent of 'next year.' Almost always, the previous season had ended in a Yankee World Series win and a heart-breaking Dodger loss, and the rallying cry of the Brooklyn faithful was 'Wait 'til next year.' And hope sprung eternal.
It was beautiful. There was no trade scuttlebutt, no salary negotiations, no ownership or management folderol. There was only baseball, the Dodgers and the Yankees. God would press a re-start button, and the same exact team that lost in October would take the field for revenge... or not.

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Those were the days, my friend.. and they are surely over, dead and buried, never to return.This is what's left:

From the middle of last summer onwards, what passed for buzz inside CitiField was some sort of vague sense of doom. It had to do with the jailed Ponzi Schemer Bernie Madoff, but no other details emerged. It didn�t seem to make much sense; the Wilpon family had insisted it had not suffered greatly at the hands of the ultimate financial snake oil salesman, and all evidence backed up their assertion. Now it becomes clear that the owners were in trouble not because Madoff had stolen their money, but because he hadn�t. They are the defendants in an extraordinary billion-dollar suit that claims they knowingly pocketed the profits from a kind of privatized Enron disaster. While the action is headed to mediation by former New York Governor (and former Pittsburgh Pirates farmhand) Mario Cuomo, it has already paralyzed the team�s finances and threatens to continue to do so for an indefinite period.

Which explains why the Mets, when still vaguely competitive last June and July, added no payroll. Which explains why the bullets were not bitten on the statues that replaced Luis Castillo and Ollie Perez. Which explains why, when another bat was needed, the Mets could reach only for Mike Hessman. Which explains why men named Wilpon did not take the fall in October.

Jason Bay and Carlos Beltran are enigmas. Jose Reyes is at the critical step, forwards to greatness or backwards towards underachievement. Ike Davis and Josh Thole are dedicated and gifted players who may not bring enough power to their respective positions. The second baseman could be a Rule V draftee. There isn�t one starting pitcher who isn�t weighed down with a huge question mark (Mike Pelfrey�s head, Jon Niese�s endurance, Johan Santana�s shoulder, Dillon Gee�s inexperience, the overall health of Chrisses Young and Capuano, and the likelihood that R.A. Dickey actually found himself last season at the age of 35). And the bullpen? You don�t want to know about the bullpen.
Keith Olbermann

The Jersey Gene -- It's the real thing, baby!

A primer on Jersey Humor
The summer of '63. Nine college guys in their Point Pleasant summer rental home. The Sunday ritual began with mass, everyone hung over, standing in the back of the church; it climaxed with a brunch of bagels, buns, juice and coffee around the kitchen table. Like matadors, the boy/men prepared for the beach. Football? Got it. Wiffle ball? Bat? Blanket? Affirmative.
The official MC at the table was one Gerry O'Keefe, a wiry 6-foot-plus Queen City resident (Plainfield, dummy!) whose dry, sarcastic wit was already legendary. Gerry would read aloud the headlines from the morning papers, ostensibly to prepare the troupe for whatever conversational gambit would attract girls. In the middle of a particularly effective and funny monolog,  he was interrupted by someone who had a friend driving down to Point Pleasant from Wayne who needed highway directions.
"Does 23 go into 46?"
"Yes," Gerry deadpanned. "Twice."
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Every state probably has a hall of fame, a list of natives who made their marks in various human fields of endeavor. New Jersey, being the third smallest state in the Union, would logically have a small contingent. If you believe that, well, you just don't know New Jersey.

Here are two videos that illustrate the uniqueness of the Garden State. The first is a news report of the 2010 gathering of the locally famous; the second is an incredible -- and only partial -- recollection of the state's musical footprint. Both, as the credit card commercial says, are priceless.
 




Thanks to Bob Balascio for forwarding the music video and inspiring this article.

Enterprise is moving to Jaguar

Jaxonia has learned that Enterprise rent-a-car is moving from the QuickChek strip mall to the small building at the very end of this Jaguar videotape:


When?  Sometime in April. It should be a good move for them; they'll be closer to the center of town and much more visible. Plus they'll have more parking AND a cleaning bay.
It's a small beginning, but maybe that block from Greenwood down to Alexander can start to look like something other than a WWII battle site.

Iwo Jima: Lest we forget

The battle for Iwo Jima began on Feb.19, 1945.  This was the first American attack on the Japanese Home Islands, and the Imperial soldiers defended their positions tenaciously. Of the more than 18,000 Japanese soldiers present at the beginning of the battle, only 34 were taken prisoner. The rest were killed or were reported missing and assumed dead.
The fighting lasted more than month, and the American losses were horrific -- 6,822 Marines dead, another 19,217 wounded. Put into modern perspective, in ten years, 6,600 Americans have died in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Remember the fallen Marines; click on the headline.