Mike O'Connell

Tomorrow begins a new season of one of my favorite pastimes: watching Notre Dame football. I’ve been doing it for more than 30 years.

When you’re a kid you don’t realize that the players are not that much older than you are. You’re 12 and they’re 18? That’s a blink of an eye.

Now I’m a little more than a blink older than the players.

Actually, the players could be my kids. They are in fact closer to my son’s age than to mine.

And this year, as goes a theme of sports watching for me recently, the coach is younger than I am too.

Ouch.

The jazz world suffered a shocking blow last Thursday when multi-instrumentalist bandleader Joey DeFrancesco died at the age of 51.

I’ve read a dozen articles about Joey’s life and death but still haven’t found one that details the cause of the latter. I know it was unexpected because…

I saw Joey play a gig two weeks ago.

Friday’s episode of Math and Musings will give a greater description of the show (and of the man), but yeah, I saw Joey and his trio play on August 13 at Keystone Korner in Baltimore. Not a hint of declining health or anything like that–the exact opposite as a matter of fact. Proof? I knew Joey was a virtuoso on the trumpet in addition to his “main” instrument (organ), so imagine my surprise when I saw him pick up a tenor saxophone and blow like Dexter Gordon. I understand he “picked it up recently.” Not exactly the actions of someone who knew he was near the end.

RIP, Joey DeFrancesco, and all the best to his family. The jazz world has now a giant Hammond B3-sized hole that’s going to be tough to fill.

School for students starts tomorrow, though teachers have been back for a full week already. This means today’s my last “easy” day at work, the last day my classroom is relatively quiet, and, most importantly…

the last day I can enjoy a peanut butter sandwich at my desk.

True public service for the benefit of the kids.

On today’s episode of Math and Musings you will hear the somewhat unfortunate news that I had Covid. I say somewhat unfortunate because, yeah, for me it really was an absolute joke of a disease. Thankfully.

Mildly inconvenient, I suppose, is the best way I can describe it, as I did have to hide from the world for a few days. First world pain for sure.

My Covid experience? Unknown origin, no obvious tracing to others, no symptoms, and it disappeared as mysteriously as it arrived. I guess that’s what you hope for.

And someday I can tell my grandchildren yeah, I had Covid…

Two and a half years after everyone else.

The Yankees and Red Sox play the ESPN Sunday night game often because, well, they put on a great show.

Case in point last night, though I could have imagined a more victorious outcome for the Bronx Bombers.

The team of my youth was shut down by none other than Michael Wacha.

Michael Wacha, seriously? Guy’s having a great season, having found in Boston the groove he had long ago as an ace for the Cardinals.

He’s been around forever, gotta be around my age, right?

Oh, wait, he’s nine years younger than I am.

Ouch.