76

  76. Seventy-six. Setenta y seis. Soixante-seize. Ayin-Vav. Just not the 76’ers (the team with Lebron James, Tyrese Maxey, Joel Embiid and Jaylen Brown which is destined to win the NBA title in 2026-27 and which downed the reigning champion New York Knicks on Ring/Banner night at Madison Square Garden to open the new season).

Whatever way it is said, the words sound old. Not ancient, mind you. I reserve that for 85 and beyond. Which, for the record, I look forward to writing about.  

Yeah, my birthday is October 25th. And yes, I turned one year older than 75. 

At this age, perspective is a matter of history. While living in the present is a good thing—it really is—everything at this age is tinged with memories or problems which didn’t exist years ago. 

With this birthday, I have done a lot of introspection. It’s a reflection of where I am now in comparison with where I have been. With a short-term eye out for the future. 

While I may have been a lawyer through education, training and experience, the inner child in me always derailed the adult I have been. I tease, I joke, I act silly and sometimes inappropriately. 

I have enjoyed being the butt of jokes as much as saying something funny since I was in grammar school. It allowed a short, then a bit pudgy Jewish kid to integrate with his peers. 

Putting a smile on somebody’s face has always meant a lot to me. I don’t know if I could have done stand up comedy—largely because the first heckler would have told the diminutive comic to—STAND UP!!

Perhaps I could have become a comedy writer. It would have taken a lot of hubris to think that I could be as good as Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Larry David and the whole lot of Jewish comedians from Brooklyn or Long Island’s Billy Crystal. 

Not a chance when I was younger. I would have been more like Henny Youngman anyway. I’d just have to find a schtick which could have stuck. Wisdom at a later age makes the past seem so much easier to dream about. 

No, as I turned 76, I took stock of what I have done. It’s one heck of a lot. 

I have been to all 50 states—by age 50. So many of them multiple times; Las Vegas almost 20 times alone. Name a national treasure—I have been there. 

I have seen the Supreme Courts of the United States and Canada along with Congress and Parliament. Throw in a couple of countries in the Bahamas, Jamaica, Mexico, Great Britain, Canada and the Republic of South Africa. Add a whole slew of state capitals, legislatures, state Supreme Courts and Presidential Libraries. 

I traveled Route 66. I went cross-country before the Interstate system was complete. I fully remember stopping on Colorado mountain roads to wait for explosives to detonate—we had to turn off our car radios—before moving on. My father, on our numerous cross-country car trips, actually once took Interstate 80 from New Jersey to California. 

The wheat fields of Kansas were majestic. The cornfields in the Midwest were ever-present. Seeing livestock enduring the Summer heat in Texas as well as dairy cattle, sheep and lots of chickens was unforgettable. 

A self-taught weather buff, I have seen massive thunderstorms on the Great Plains and in Arkansas and Texas. I have run down New Orleans streets escaping torrents of rain. I have seen flooding in Las Vegas and dust storms in Arizona. 

I have experienced Canadian snow and fierce cold, as well as summertime flurries on an Alaskan hillside. I have seen the devastating aftermath of hurricanes in Florida and Louisiana. Or 30 inches of snow in New Jersey paralyzing the state, not to forget the loss of power and the feeling of helplessness courtesy of Super Storm Sandy.  I can go on and on about the weather. 

I have been to state fairs in New Jersey, New York and Minnesota. Corn on a stick and chocolate milk in NY are my favorites. The poultry bars are a sight to see. 

Food is a subject I love. Cooking and eating. What else is there? 

Throughout the years, I have collected so many recipes that they fill overflowing 3X5 inch card files. I have taken so many recipes off of the Internet that I have 15 notebooks, categorized and alphabetized. 

Then there are the cookbooks. Small ones. Brand name ones. Encyclopedias of recipes in larger books. I even have a couple of editions of the The Slim Gourmet and my mother’s ancient cookbook, held together by strong tape, which contains the simplest, old-fashioned recipes in its nearly 900 pages. I have Jewish cookbooks; Italian cookbooks; a Chinese cookbook and so many more. 

Someday I will come to my senses and pare down this enormous library. That will take some dedicated time and an ability to let go. 

Yes, I am the chief cook in the house. Whether it is breakfast, lunch or dinner, I’m the one using the range, oven, microwave/convection oven or the Weber gas grill on the patio—all year long. 

I’m not going to say I am a good chef. My wife and family seem to like what I make. Turkey burgers go over as well as salmon dishes or salads. We have very few upset stomachs and sometimes more than not, leftovers for lunch the next day. 

My top dishes are a mushroom and onion lasagna; chicken amaretto; chicken in peach sauce and a few salmon recipes. I share the cooking with my wife, who is in charge, on the major holidays; we are augmented by our children. I used to make a mean grilled pork chop when we ate them. 

And I do like to eat. My favorite foods are prune danish; the aforementioned lasagna; spaghetti and meatballs (my wife makes the meatballs) ice cream; and pizza. 

But I am certainly not a stay-at-home person when it comes to food. Not at all. 

I’ve eaten in four Chinatowns: New York, San Francisco, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. Italian food in Little Italy in Manhattan and on The Hill in St. Louis. Pig roasts in Hawaii and West Virginia (where I sampled real homemade moonshine). 

Chuck wagons and five-star restaurants in Las Vegas and top-rated steakhouses in New York and D.C. French food in those two cities and Jewish deli food in New York, New Jersey, Southern California and believe it or not, New Mexico. Of course, Tex-Mex; Mexican; Southern Fried Chicken in Mississippi; lobster in Maine; Cuban cuisine in Miami and Manhattan; Portuguese in Newark; and nothing compares to NYC bagels and appetizing. The list is as long as I am old. 

I have had a fascination with railroads since a child, as the main line of the Pennsylvania Railroad was nearly in my backyard. I have seen great stations in New York (Penn Station before and after the renovation with Madison Square Garden atop it; as well the cathedral known as Grand Central Station); Washington; Philadelphia; Boston; Los Angeles; San Francisco and Kansas City in the United States. The stations in Toronto, Winnipeg, Madrid and Barcelona were special. Riding on trains in Spain which traveled over 200 km/hr while eating breakfast served by white-gloved waiters was breathtaking, in a different way than being seated in domed cars in Alaska or on narrow-gauge trains in Disneyland and the Yukon Territories. 

I loved the different locomotives I have seen throughout the country and world. Electric and diesel. I saw The Hustler being filmed on a siding near my house. (I have also seen movies being filmed in Vancouver—our children were extras—and recently sat in on the shooting of a Netflix series)

If car trips weren’t enough, in the course of my travels, I have likely been to over 50 airports worldwide. I have seen those planes being built at the Boeing factory outside of Seattle. 

Speaking of factory tours, besides Boeing, we have been to see how candy is made; potato chips are cooked; jackets and clothing are made; beer and alcohol distilled; and even how cigarettes are rolled. Museums and galleries in London, Spain, the Vatican; New York City, D.C. and even Huntsville, Alabama to mention just a few, have thrilled us.

Another area which has always interested me is colleges. It started with my father receiving alumni magazines from his two alma maters: Franklin and Marshall College and Temple University’s School of Dentistry. It grew with my fascination from watching sports and other programming. I wanted to see as many campuses as I could. 

I attended college at F&M and spent time in D.C. at American University, which included a summer living in un-air conditioned dorms at George Washington University plus attending lectures at Georgetown University. I also took summer courses at Rutgers University, a short ride away from my childhood home in Highland Park. 

My post-graduate law school was at the Delaware Law School of Widener University located in Wilmington, although I did play baseball at Pennsylvania Military College, the predecessor to Widener, and my graduation was held on campus in Chester, Pennsylvania. During law school, I traveled to law libraries at Hofstra, Dickinson, Pennsylvania and Rutgers. 

With my son having also become a lawyer, I visited many law schools. When I go to a campus, I still look for the law school. I have watched classes at such renowned places as Pittsburgh, the University of California at Berkeley, New York University—and yes—Harvard to feel the vibes generated in the movie The Paper Chase. 

That movie, along with TV shows Perry Mason and The Defenders, were my impetus to become an attorney. I had the privilege of arguing in the New Jersey Supreme Court as well as preserving the rights of juveniles. I have seen big law. Bad law. Prisons. It was a great ride. I’d like to think I made a difference.

What has impacted me the most in my 76 years was my acquired love of sports. When I was young, I didn’t realize that being as short as I was wouldn’t allow me to star like my heroes. 

Whether it was reading accounts of the New York teams in the local papers, watching the games first in black and white then in glorious color, I fantasized about playing every sport I could. I have played, with very modest success, baseball, basketball, football, tennis, lifted weights, swam, golf racquetball, squash, lacrosse, hockey, soccer and have wrestled, run, lifted weights, swam, water skied and tobogganed, and probably a couple of other sports, too. 

Having participated in some manner, I attained a rudimentary understanding of many sports. That also gave me a sense of trying to emulate those who excelled at some level. Believe me, for so many of the aforementioned sports, I was way out of my element. But it didn’t matter.

Baseball was always my number one sport. In my hometown, I was pretty good. Good enough to play every position. To switch hit. To steal home to win a game. I played very little on the high school level due to my size and prejudices, which led to bullying. Which should have been stopped. But it wasn’t. 

I augmented my love for the game with modified games of stick ball using real bats as my substitute. Plus I had a friend who regularly hit me fly balls using a fungo bat like in the pros. 

Evidently, all that work allowed me to think I could play college baseball. It never occurred to me that I wouldn’t be able to hit, throw and field like everyone else—even if I had not played organized ball since age 15. With that bit of delusional confidence, I walked onto the team at Franklin and Marshall and started, playing two years before injury kept me from playing regularly. 

It was that same element of pride which made me think I could wrestle intramurally because my father wrestled at F&M, which was a storied wrestling school. I actually pinned a guy who had been recruited. I was stupidly lucky. Just like the intramural basketball game where I hogged the basketball and scored 31 points in the days before the three point line. 

I had a fascination with numbers. I learned how to keep score in baseball way before age 10; I was taught how to keep basketball and football scorebooks, which I was proficient at. And I even became a media runner with scores, pocketing some money in the process. 

I have seen the inside of numerous press boxes and scorer’s tables throughout Central and North Jersey while in high school as well as all the schools in the Centennial Conference, Jersey City State, FDU-Florham, Lebanon Valley College and Rutgers and Princeton. 

In football, this permitted me to deliver the statistics and have a seat at the Sunday morning film and donuts sessions, where I learned and even participated in the next week’s game plan. With basketball, I learned so much about offense and defense and the strategies involved in the game flow. 

It was the fun aspect of seeing other schools which led me to want to watch sports in person. The televised games looked so exciting. I wanted to see every venue I could, whether they were professional or collegiate. 

The excitement of in person sporting events led me to have season tickets in some manner for the New York Jets for 50 seasons; the New York Rangers and New Jersey Devils; and Rutgers basketball. I have seen the US Open in both golf and tennis; All-Star games in baseball and hockey; the World Series, Division III Men’s Basketball Final Four; the Stanley Cup Finals; the NBA Finals and NFL playoff games. 

I have seen football at all levels and been fortunate enough to have seen high school and college basketball in many places too. I have gone to see the New Jersey Devils play in all the Canadian cities and I was there to see Montreal play at Toronto. I’ve been to NHL games in Pittsburgh and Los Angeles. I have seen the NBA at Madison Square Garden; New Jersey; Boston; New Orleans and Cleveland. 

Name a college, I have been there. Outside of Washington State, Gonzaga and schools in Montana and Idaho, I have been on so many campuses. Inside many of their arenas and stadiums, too. 

With all that, I yearn for more. For more restaurants. For more sites. For more games, although I am cutting back to limit my travel. To revisit places I love. To share moments with friends and family. To continue to share our exploits on Facebook in “Travels With Toby.”

And that is the last part I need to comment about. I was blessed to meet a woman who I had so much in common with. She captivated me then and she has been a great partner for over 44 years. Plus she knows her sports as well as her politics. We have two bright and wonderful children who are stars in their chose professions. I couldn’t be prouder. 

I am a blogger by choice. To express to the world my love of life and sports. I think I do that with aplomb. I have even been published. 

I can continue this list of achievements. I hope it doesn’t sound like I’m bragging. 

People have told me that age is only a number. I suffer from a number of ailments  resulting from my participation in sports. My tortured body is now stating the obvious. Doctors, especially orthopedists, have been in my life full-time since 1989. Ditto physical therapists.

I might complain that my teams do not win enough. I have watched the World Series since 1957, which included a heck of a lot of Yankees World Championships. Maybe I was unfortunate with the New York Jets as my chosen NFL team. The Knicks have won three titles. I have seen the Devils raise the Stanley Cup in person.

We all have our journeys. They are singularly as different as they are unique. I acknowledge them for their beauty. This is simply my trip of my lifetime.  

Thus I reached another birthday on October 25th. Far from my first cry from Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital in Albany, Georgia. 

This is me at age 76.

SoCal--Inundated?

  Things are a bit topsy turvy in the sports world. Especially in Los Angeles. I’ll get to that.

The defining World Champion Dodgers are no longer in the playoffs. They were dethroned by the Milwaukee Brewers, a team built with patience, power, heart, grit, and a significantly lower payroll than the team they just beat. 

So as the Dodgers and their fans lick their wounds, the Brew Crew will head to the World Series for the third time, seeking its first championship. Deservedly.

Let’s face it—they were the better team. In fact, if victories in the regular season were an absolute guide as to a team’s value, then yes, Milwaukee was the favorite all along since they accumulated 103 wins with only 59 losses. The Brewers won the NL Central Division by a whopping 14 games over the Chicago Cubs. 

Chicago was a Wild Card team, although the Cubbies were summarily ousted by the San Diego Padres. San Diego won 91 games and was on a roll—until they met up with the buzz saw from Wisconsin. The Padres, who finished 9 games behind the Dodgers in the NL West, went down in 4 games to “The Cheeseheads”, as Pardon The Interruption’s Michael Wilson not very affectionately calls them. 

The Brewers consist of names not too familiar outside of the Greater Milwaukee Metro area. That’s a shade over 1.5 million people in a state where the population numbers very close to 6 million. 

While the Brewers have been in town since 1970 and were owned by former MLB Commissioner Bud Selig, they reside in what is considered to be a small market and compete against teams with greater followings like the Green Bay Packers and University of Wisconsin Badgers. I’m not excluding the NBA Bucks—they fall a distant fourth in favorability (I sound like a pollster analyst on television in this current election cycle). 

Moreover, when the powers at be in New York needed a team to switch leagues for competitive balance for inter-league play in 1998, Milwaukee was the logical choice —after Kansas City declined a move to the National League—due to its ties with the Braves, who played there from 1953 to 1965. Remember, those Braves played in shabby County Stadium and left for Atlanta when declining attendance and the lure of a much bigger, virgin market in Atlanta was too much to resist. 

When the franchise reached the only other World Series in 1982, they were the American League champions. St. Louis defeated Milwaukee in 7 games to win it all. 

Now the Brewers await the winner to emerge from the ALCS between AL East winner Tampa Bay and AL Central champion Cleveland. Two other small market franchises hungry for a taste of the gold. 

Not too many people outside of the Ohio shores of Lake Erie gave the Guardians much of a chance to advance to the ALCS. It took five games to defeat the upstart Chicago White Sox in the ALDS in a matchup of the top teams from the AL Central Division. 

The experts pooh-poohed the AL Central as weak compared to the AL East, where the Rays, New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox had good records and made the playoffs. Yet only league-leading Tampa Bay made it to the ALCS and their alleged invincibility took a hit once they were done with the floundering Yankees. 

The Guardians are as feisty as the Rays. Talent-wise, they aren’t so far apart. And Cleveland has third baseman Jose Ramirez, who, in 14 seasons with the team, has a lifetime .276 batting average with 297 home runs. Ramirez did have an off season in 2026, batting .235 with 12 homers during an injury-plagued year. 

Still, he is the unquestioned leader of the Guardians on the field.  His accolades are Manu, having been selected for 7 All-Star appearances along with 6 Silver Slugger awards as the top hitter at his position in his 14 year career. Ramirez has hit two homers this post-season with 8 R.B.I. 

Overall, the regular season numbers for the Guardians hitters do not jump out like they do for the Rays. Same thing with the pitching—youngster Parker Messick went 12-9 with a 2.56 E.R.A. and Gavin Williams went 14-8 with a 3.76 E.R.A. After all, Cleveland was 85-77 for the 2026 campaign. 

In Game 1, Cleveland banged out 14 hits en route to a 7-3 victory over a Rays team which may have become a little stale after a too long stretch of off days following the Yankees series. Tampa Bay had never trailed NYY in that sweep. 

Ramirez’s critical fielding error plus strong pitching from Freddy Peralta powered the Rays to a Game 2 win. The series was tied 1 apiece heading to Ohio.

Behind Williams and a bevy of relievers who held the Rays to 2 runs off of just 3 hits, Petey Halpin’s two-run homer gave the Guardians enough of a cushion. Final score 3-2 in favor of the Guardians. 

As much as this series could end in five games if Cleveland continues the magic, a seventh game would not be surprising. Then it is anybody’s guess which team moves on. 

Meanwhile, LAD has to pack its gear and wait for another year to regain its championship persona. The team is led by a manager who has  fire beneath his calm exterior and a 1044-638 regular season record along with four World Series appearances and three titles. Dave Roberts will be there next year and for the foreseeable future—the first African-American and first Japanese heritage manager in LAD history. 

Roberts has a better winning percentage than two Hall of Fame Dodgers managers—Walter Alston and Tommy Lasorda. He has one more World Series win than Lasorda and one less than Alston. He will, if he chooses, match his predecessors’ longevity, but he has done incrementally better in the 11 seasons at the helm in Chavez Ravine. How do you say surefire Hall of Fame credentials for the 54 year old skipper?  

Of course, Roberts has been fortunate to have a nearly blank check payroll at his disposal. LAD pays out far more to its stars than other teams can afford to and the luxury tax the franchise must pay for its spending is actually greater than the 2026 payrolls for the Rays, Guardians and Brewers—combined. 

No greater examples of how the Dodgers can outspend everybody else is how they could afford the mega-contracts to Japanese slugger/pitcher Shohei Ohtani, fellow countryman  Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman. At least three, if not all four may make the Hall of Fame. Pitcher Tyler Glasnow and Blake Snell are paid a ton of money. And the team could easily afford to take on Tarik Skull via trade with Detroit and absorb his $32 million salary. 

So the expectation is that with such a large amount shelled out to the players, the only dividend should be a world championship every season. Except the they have to play the games to win it all and that may not go exactly as planned. 

Watching the Brewers and Dodgers as I periodically did during their series, it was painfully obvious that LAD was struggling against a better foe. The LAD pitching, so instrumental during this season and in the past, struggled to contain the red hot Milwaukee bats. 

I didn’t see the Brewers very often in 2026. The Yankees visited American Family Field in early May. Milwaukee had been scuffling, not finding its footing, while the Cubs and Pirates were winning. 

New York was ambushed by the Brewers, losing on Friday night 6-0 with likely NL Cy Young Award winner Jacob Misiorowski striking out 11 (NYY struck out 14 times overall). On Saturday, presumptive AL Cy Young Award winner Cam Schlittler dominated over six innings, but the Brewers fought back to win 4-3 in 10 innings. Then a walk off homer by Brice Turang off Yankees’ closer David Bednar sealed the sweep by another 4-3 score. 

While I came away impressed with the Brewers taking it to a highly-touted NYY team with slugger Aaron Judge still in the lineup prior to injury sidelining him, I didn’t recognize how good the team really was. The fact is, Milwaukee went 82-43 the rest of the 2026 season, leaving the National League in its dust. 

Could this Brewers team be the team of destiny? Or will the AL winner prove to be too much? I bet FOX isn’t thrilled that the big media markets of New York and Los Angeles aren’t involved. 

However, if the best teams emerge, then who should question the legitimacy of their reaching the World Series? Even if their payrolls are small—their hearts are much bigger as is the talent of the teams and their managers. 

LA fans must be in the doldrums right now. Their beloved Dodgers are unexpectedly out of the playoffs. The Angels have been so bad for so long people are glad that new ownerships might be what is needed to resurrect the franchise. 

The NFL Rams, thought to be the team to win it all, are only 2-3 heading into a NFC West battle at SoFi Stadium against the 1-4 Arizona Cardinals. After an overtime loss to Buffalo at home on Monday night when a game-tying field goal attempt was blocked, the Rams badly need a win.

It’s worse for the Chargers under Jim Harbaugh. Try 0-5. New offensive coordinator Mike Mc Daniel, recognized as a whiz but who was fired in Miami for not getting the most out of his team, is struggling with a veteran quarterback in Justin Herbert. 

Herbert ranks 30th out of 32 quarterbacks in the NFL. Unaccustomed territory for him and Harbaugh. There are offense line injuries and the depth at wide receiver isn’t good. Mc Daniel’s tenure may be short on the West Coast. 

Heading into the NBA season, the Clippers will be reeling from the Kawhi Leonard fiasco. The Lakers will be trying to prove they are better now that Lebron James is gone and in Philadelphia where he can bring the Sixers down as a 42 year old icon who definitely has seen better days. LAL has to hope to keep Luca Doncic and Austin Reaves both on the court more than not. The lineup does not exactly strike fear in Oklahoma City, San Antonio and Minnesota, all better Western Conference squads.

Moreover, the sale of the team still has its issues among the Buss family. Jeanie Buss, once the great Phil Jackson’s heartthrob, is trying to keep the remaining Buss members from selling their shares. High-stakes public litigation isn’t the best image.

In the NHL, both the Anaheim Ducks and LA Kings haven’t stormed out of the gate. I know it’s early; their problems mirror the rest of the professional scene in Los Angeles.

Only USC and UCLA football seem to be above water. For now. UCLA is unbeaten. USC lost once. UCLA has five home games remaining, none versus ranked teams until they face the Trojans. USC hosts Ohio State on Halloween then travels to Indiana the week after. Will the teams have a meaningful game when they meet in the final game on November 28? Will they sell out their stadiums at least once?

The Dodgers should regroup. Their top executives are proven winners: Stan Kasten,  Andrew Friedman and Brandon Gomes are  among the best in the business. They tend to make the right choices. 

Although owner Mark Walter is under Federal and SEC investigations and has massive financial issues facing him, the Dodgers brass maintain that the team generates massive independent income and is fully funded for the length of contracts like Ohtani’s deferred payments. This remains to be seen.

Of course, there is the whole lockout scenario facing baseball beginning in November. The Dodgers are the poster child for excessive spending. The other owners want a salary cap to protect themselves—even if small market teams will reach the World Series this year. 

Hold onto you hats for this one. It is’t going to be pretty between MLB and the MLBPA. Because of the Dodgers. Who lost badly. 

Let me leave you with some lyrics. Albert Hammond’s 1972 hit song goes like this:

Seems it never rains in southern California

Seems I’ve often heard that kind of talk before

It never rains in California

But girl, don’t they warn you?

It pours, man, it pours. 

With the rare tropical storm which laced the coast perhaps a metaphor, the sports world in SoCal is as inundated as can be.