March 13, 2018 The St. Francis University Red Flash have won the NEC (Northeast Conference) Tournament automatically qualifying for the NCAA Tournament where as a sixteenth seed, we will play the UConn Women in the first round. My alma mater will succeed in scoring the biggest upset in athletic history. Now before you accuse me of smoking weed before Connecticut has legalized it, hear me out. Even though our undergraduate enrollment is slightly larger than the number of trainers the Huskies employ, St. Francis University has a proud basketball tradition. Nestled in the foothills of western Pennsylvania in the small town of Loretto, St. Francis produced Maurice Stokes, the NBA Rookie of the Year in 1956. Norm Van Lier and Kevin Porter became NBA stars. Bonnie Kleinschuster shot 90% from the foul line in the 1978 season, a record no male has matched. Mike Iuzzolino lit up the NBA with his deadly three-point shooting in the early 1990s. Skeptics will point out that the Red Flash encountered the … [Read more...]
A Steeler Fan in New England
December 23, 2017 As a physician who trained in many parts of the country, I have had to deal with my fair share of difficult patients – Mafia thugs during my internship in Providence, drunken young men swinging at me at a Bronx hospital and fearsome manacled prisoners from Rikers Island and Sing Sing. But it wasn’t until I established my cozy suburban ophthalmology practice in Connecticut that I encountered the most reprehensible patients of all - who routinely tempt me to violate the Hippocratic Oath and do maximum harm – the smug New England Patriot fan. They appear in my office, after having met their deductible, in Tom Brady jerseys. Patient: “Doc, I think these glasses need to be changed.” Me: “Read the chart.” Patient: “E,V,O,T,Z,2” Me: “You see 20/20. Those glasses are fine.” Patient: “Yeah but can’t you make it a little crisper? I want to see the ball spiral when Brady destroys … [Read more...]
Yard Goats is a Perfect Name for the Hartford Minor League Team
March 20, 2015 With considerable fanfare, the name of the new minor league baseball time that has migrated from New Britain to Harford has been announced. After multiple entries, 35,000 people voted on line and decided to call the team the Hartford Yard Goats. At first, I was disappointed that my name, The Fleecers – as this is what this team will do to the taxpayers – was not chosen. But the Yard Goats is even better. A Yard Goat is the term used for a locomotive that moves rail cars in a rail yard. Apparently, this is a reference to bygone days when Hartford was a railway center, sort of like the Steelers refers to a bygone time when steel was made in Pittsburgh, before these good paying jobs for working class people were shipped overseas. But the logo for the team does not depict a locomotive. It depicts a goat. To the average person, a Yard Goat will conjure the vision of a poorly-kept yard surrounded by a rusting chain link fence, with an abandoned boarded-up house, a few open tin cans and a goat chewing on the few stubbles of grass that remain. This is what the Democrats and the crony capitalists are doing to what was once the great … [Read more...]