Pardon us?
Not only did Bucci wonder why he had been contacted, but what the hell is the governor's office doing referring his budget questions to a public interest group? Bucci said he had no idea why he was referred to, but people in the guv's office better get their shit together pronto if their boss doesn't want his legacy to go down in flames in his last months in office. We'll wait for Billy Lynch, Bill Murphy, and Gordo Fox to go to town on this. C'mon boys, they don't throw you fat ones down the middle like this all the time.
JOCKULAR
As Phillipe and Jorge headed up to the Red Sox-Yankees game on June 9 at Fenway, we took a look at baseball's pitchers with 300+ wins, published after that hillbilly Randy Johnson won his 300th game.
It appears that if you really wanted to win 300 games or more, you needed a pretty cool name. Of the 22 gentlemen (and otherwise) who have reached the mark, here's a sampling:
Cy Young (nice enough, but his real name was Denton True Young, even better)
Grover Cleveland Alexander
Pud Galvin
Kid Nichols
Eddie Plank
Old Hoss Radbourn (Providence Grays, 1881-1885)
Lefty Grove
Early Wynn
Now if the N.Y. Mets' J.J. Putz even had a chance . . .
On another front, we saw the former NBA star Randy Smith died of a heart attack last week. As the local papers noted, he once played with St. Ernie D. of Providence while with the Buffalo Braves, and his coach there, the legendary Jack Ramsay, called him the best athlete he had ever coached. What Ramsay and no one else cited was the fact that he was also a fantastic soccer player at Buffalo State College. Phillipe met Smith in 1970 at the old Commodore Hotel in Grand Central Station in New York, when they both were being honored for being selected to the NCAA All America soccer team. The main thought that crossed P's mind upon standing around talking to this 6'3" "Body by Rolls Royce" was, "Man, am I glad I never had to play against this motherf—ker."
RIP, Randy.
WHACKING JUDGE SOTOMAYOR
It appears that the GOP has come to its senses in the matter of the nomination of Judge Sotomayor. After the expected racist foolishness from Rush "What, Me Bigot?" Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich's trial balloon, the rest of the party has had to make its cynical calculations a bit more, shall we say, nuanced. These are based on some pretty dependable calculations.
First, most Republicans would, despite recent evidence to the contrary, like to win some elections in the not too distant future. That means that further eroding their relationship with Hispanic Americans is none too wise. They also know that, barring any unforeseen revelation, Judge Sotomayor is a shoo-in for a seat on the court.
What does make sense to the Party of No, however, is discuss-ed in an article in Tuesday's Christian Science Monitor, succinctly titled "GOP's new Sotomayor strategy: Attack Obama."
