Mike O'Connell

Much has been made over the vaccination status of retired Yankees player and current broadcaster, Paul O’Neill. One of the most admired players of my youth, it’s a shame O’Neill’s legacy has been tarred a bit by this issue.

No matter, though, as the Yankees yesterday afternoon were able to pull off a masterful stroke of social distancing and have O’Neill–in person!–receive one of the highest honors a team can bestow, retiring his uniform number 21.

Kudos to the Yankee PR team for pulling off this bit of magic.

The team on the field recently?

Eh, they’ve left a little to be desired as fans were quick to point out, booing team owner Hal Steinbrenner and general manager Brian Cashman.

Quipped O’Neill: “You Yankee fans have obviously been practicing.”

New Yorkers call ’em like they see ’em.

From the when I was a kid series…

School never started until after Labor Day. Teachers returned the day after Labor Day (Tuesday), then students arrived Wednesday. Somehow without the Internet or e-mail or social media or anything like that they got it done.

Today starts a marathon of preparation for students who will arrive eight days from now, 20 days before teachers of my parents’ era would walk through the schoolhouse doors after two and a half months of being totally disconnected.

Wow.

Two things happened in the spring of 1989, just a few weeks apart as a matter of fact.
April 3, 1989… Opening Day of the Major League Baseball season. This was the day I became obsessed with sports, aided by a young Ken Griffey Jr. and these things called baseball cards.
May 5, 1989… the movie Field of Dreams opens. Now everyone is a baseball fan.
And Griffey? Still doing things. Still around to have a catch with the old man.
Kudos to the folks at the “real” Field of Dreams for setting that up for us to see last night.

My travels this week took me to Williamsburg, Virginia, a city founded nearly 400 years ago that I had somehow never been to.

Williamsburg was capital of the Virginia Colony and later Commonwealth for more than eight decades, its land and residents playing important roles in the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, among other things over the past few centuries.

They also have an ice cream stand called Sno-to-Go, which puts all that history to shame.

If you’re ever in the neighborhood skip the monuments and historic reenactments and all that jazz and get you some Sno-to-Go. The hook? Shave ice and soft serve ice cream in the same delicious bowl.

Yeah, other places probably do it too but these guys do it right. They’ve got a million flavors of milkshakes and sno-cones or slushies or whatever you want to call them, thrown together by some evil genius to whom we should all pay tribute.

Peanut butter and jelly, mashed potatoes and gravy, Shaq and Kobe… shave ice and soft serve. No wonder people decided to settle here.

Last week on Math and Musings I mentioned that every kid I’d ever talked to about Great Wolf Lodge in Williamsburg said it was the greatest place on earth.
Adults I talked to said it was expensive.
Well…

they were both right.