The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Sunday Gravy: Boone a curious choice for Yanks
When I was growing up, we went to the arcade to pump quarters into video games in futile attempts to set the high score at PacMan, Donkey Kong and my personal favorite, Punch Out!! (Glass Joe and Bald Bull were easy knockouts. The Italian champ, Pizza Pasta, always gave me fits.)
Arcades nowadays are about ticket-redemption games like Skee-Ball and Pop-A-Shot. The machines award tickets based on your score. Kids collect as many as they can. When it’s time to leave, they redeem them for cheaplymade prizes.
But the arcade will offer a few upscale items as incentive to keep the young ones coming back. The boy is aiming for a flat-screen TV that’s available for 190,000 tickets. By my calculation, based on the number of tickets he won with $20, that TV would cost me roughly $36,000.
To be fair, I understand the boy’s motivation. Even now, I’d gladly spend 36 grand in quarters if that’s what it took to finally beat Pizza Pasta.
⏩ Aaron Boone? OK, I guess. It’s not easy to make heads or tails of the Yankees decision. Because he has no experience as a coach or manager and few really understand what, exactly, the job of manager of the New York Yankees entails.
Boone’s got baseball in his blood. By all accounts has the personality and smarts to run a clubhouse, which is the major qualification for the job description.
How much he’ll be involved in the day-to-day decisions is anyone’s guess. Joe Girardi came within a win of the World Series, knocking off the Indians (who won 22 straight games and might have been the best team in baseball) and still got canned.
Will Boone be a better manager than Girardi? It certainly won’t be easy. And there’s no way of truly knowing until the season begins.
⏩ One would be hardpressed to remember the last time the collective outcry from a notoriously harsh New York fan base was so decidedly onesided. But fans, media and teammates alike rushed to the defense of Eli Manning after Giants’ coach Ben McAdoo announced he was benching the team’s iconic quarterback.
It’s an interesting dilemma. The Giants stink. It’s not entirely Manning’s fault. They’re poorly coached, can’t block, run, catch or play defense. Yet Manning isn’t doing anything to help them win games.
So it’s not unreasonable to attempt to work rookie Webb Davis into the mix at the tail end of a lost season. Where the Giants’ bungled the situation is by scapegoating, patronizing and insulting Eli by telling him he could play the first half today against Oakland but that Geno Smith would play the second half no matter what.
Geno Smith. Manning won two Super Bowls for the franchise. Sure, he’s getting blasted into something that resembles cold oatmeal every Sunday. But he’s earned the right to choose whether or not he’d like finish out this horrific season, especially when the alternate plan involves Geno Smith.
The entire city of New York agrees on this one.
⏩ There’s one bright spot to this ordeal. McAdoo cemented his status as a slick-haired yokel unfit to serve as a head football coach, anywhere.
⏩ NFL Films stuck a microphone on Bill Belichick last Sunday, and it was fascinating to get a small glimpse into the sideline demeanor of the best football coach who ever lived. Unsurprisingly, he’s fairly even-keeled on the sidelines and commands complete respect from his staff and the players (who all refer to him as ‘sir.’) The best part of the clip is Belichick’s complete lack of reaction to all five Patriot touchdowns in the win over Miami. Others around him celebrate. Belichick acts like he’s watching the keynote speaker at an insurance seminar. It’s magnificent.
⏩ My Heisman Trophy ballot is due Monday. I always wait until the final weekend of games in complete to vote, but it could have been mailed in weeks ago. Oklahoma quarterback Baker Mayfield — 4,000 passing yards, 37 touchdowns, five interceptions — is such a shoo-in for the award that in Vegas, you’d have to bet $2,500 to make a $100 profit.
⏩ This week’s reminder that time stops for no man: Bo Jackson turned 55. I’ll bet he could still strap on the pads and run through an unsuspecting linebacker, artificial hip and all.
⏩ The annual Yale-Harvard football game belongs on a college campus, not a makeshift gridiron inside a baseball stadium. But when The Game moves to Fenway Park next season, it will be a fun and exciting twist on one of the best rivalries out there, as long as it’s a once-in-a-while deal.
When the ancient rivals signed a two-year agreement to play each other in hockey at Madison Square Garden earlier this decade, it’d already begun to lose some luster in year two. One game at Fenway is perfect. And my message to Yale: please keep ignoring those propositions from Yankee Stadium. The Game at the Bowl means too much to New Haven.
⏩ Floyd Little returns to New Haven this week to present his namesake scholarship to Notre DameWest Haven senior Kaileb Cadet at the New Haven Gridiron Club’s annual dinner on Thursday night at the Cascade Banquet Facility in Hamden. Little, a college and NFL Hall of Famer, is expected to speak at the dinner.
Also honored at Thursday’s dinner will be the 28 members of the Levi Jackson team, an all-star squad chosen from area high schools. Awards will be presented to top collegiate players from the University of New Haven, Southern Connecticut State and Yale.
Tickets for the dinner are $40 each and can be purchased by mailing checks to the New Haven Gridiron Club, PO Box 32, New Haven 06501, no later than Monday morning. Ticket orders are being filled on a first-come, firstserved basis, and no tickets will be sold at the door.