It is amazing how sports seasons run into each other. The World Series has finally ended, along with 80 years of failure for the Boston Red Sox fans. Having grown up as a New York Rangers hockey fan, I understood their frustration and actually feel a bit happy for them at finally winning a championship. Meanwhile football is in mid-season form and basketball is starting next week. I am not much of an NBA fan, although I did regain an interest in the Nets when they traded for Jason Kidd. I was a Nets fan back in the old ABA days when their star was Julius Erving. My brothers and I were at the very last ABA game, which was the championship game when the Nets made an amazing comeback and won, led by Dr. J. The next day the league ceased to exist as it merged into the NBA, and the Nets promptly sold Dr. J. to the Sixers, thus starting their own 25-year curse.

What I really enjoy in the winter is Big East basketball. I graduated from Seton Hall University, and there was nothing more exciting than the 1989 basketball season when they went to the finals of the NCAA tournament, a game they should have won, and probably would have except for that referee’s stupid call on the last play of the game. My brothers and I go to about a half-dozen Big East games, and they are always fun, except Rutgers games which are much too harsh to be fun. SHU fans despise Rutgers much more than Yankee fans despise the Boston Red Sox, a hatred fueled by the Newark Star-Ledger whose sportswriters and editors are obviously Rutgers graduates who favor them so much over Seton Hall that it really annoys Pirate fans. Plus the fact that whenever the NCAA regionals are held in the Meadowlands, which is Seton Hall’s home court, the state always designates Rutgers as the “home school” in spite of the fact that they have absolutely no affiliation with the Meadowlands at all except that they are a state entity and the Meadowlands are owned by the state. Just another annoyance for SHU fans. ☺