Happy New Year to the Rainbow Connection – By Roy Firestone, Emmy Award Winning Journalist

Up Close with Roy Firestone

Happy New Year from the Somali cab driver who picked you up at the Minneapolis Airport at 4am with no other cabs around…. Happy New Year from the Sudanese seamstress, who repaired your torn trousers at 5:30 when you needed those pants that night… …the Iranian cardiologist who might’ve saved your dad’s life in surgery… Happy New Year from the Yemeni plumber who took time on a Saturday to solve your flooding sink… Happy New…

“Poor” Lane Kiffin – by Roy Firestone, Emmy Award Sports Journalist

Up Close with Roy Firestone

Dan Wetzel of ESPN on “poor”Lane Kiffin: “As victims go, Lane Kiffin doesn’t seem like one. He could have stayed at Ole Miss, made over $10 million a year, led his 11-1 team into a home playoff game and become an icon at a place he supposedly found personal tranquility. Or he could’ve left for LSU to make over $10 million a year leading a program that has won three national titles this century. Fortunate…

Not Until Her “Safe is Empty” – by Roy Firestone, Emmy Award Winning Journalist

Up Close with Roy Firestone

Most wealthy people donate money to charity. That’s not news. But Mackenzie Scott has made giving her money away to the needy her life’s work. Since her divorce from Jeff Bezos in 2019, Scott has has donated more than $19.25 billion to over 2,450 non-profit organizations. Her approach has been to provide large, unrestricted gifts to organizations with a focus on areas like communities facing high poverty, racial inequity, and lack of access to philanthropic…

A Series For The Ages – By Roy Firestone, Emmy Award Winning Journalist

Up Close with Roy Firestone

I’ve been a baseball fan for at least 65 years. I’ve been a batboy for the Orioles when I was a young teenager. I was fortunate to meet and know some of the greatest players in baseball history through my job on television which was to report on games and interview athletes. I’ve covered or reported on at least 50 World Series, including on my first day ever on television, the historic Carlton Fisk home…

GRATITUDE – by Roy Firestone, Emmy Award Winning 

Up Close with Roy Firestone

In the Jewish faith this is the month of  a solemn holiday, one of repentance and forgiveness..I wrote this small piece about the power of gratitude. I try and remember to live these words every day. Gratitude is a power. Find something in your life for which or whom you are grateful. Gratitude is grace in the face of harshness. It does NOT ignore disappointment or cruelty, or truth, but it amplifies and elevates the…

JUST A DOG – By Roy Firestone, Emmy Award Winning Journalist

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Some of you may have seen the funny, viral, “Mable and Olive” videos produced by Andrew Cotter, the sports broadcaster who narrates the life and times of his two Labrador Retrievers, But the other day, Cotter wrote a beautiful essay called “Just a Dog”. When people tell you, often dismissively that you should “lighten up..it’s just a dog”, remember these words. “Like, ” it’s just a dog, or that’s a lot of money. For “just…

What Baseball Means to Me – by Roy Firestone, Multi-Emmy Award Winning Journalist

Up Close with Roy Firestone

My grandchildren went to their first baseball game recently. As is my choice here, I won’t post their pictures here. I won’t mention their names, because that’s not what matters on the page. But I will say that look on those babies faces is indelible in my heart. One grandchild is almost three years old, the other is four and a half. When asked which team they were going to see, one grandchild said with…

Excerpt from COMBUSTIBLE a novel by Billy O’Connor & Frank Pace

MMM

On this last morning of the first year of the new century, the sun was trying to crash through the thick clouds blanketing the South Bronx.  Inside the five boroughs’ busiest firehouse, Conor Kilcullen was sipping coffee and about to sink his teeth into a bagel when three air horn blasts shattered the silence.  The house watchman’s voice thundered over the intercom: “Everybody goes! Truck, engine, and chief!  Everybody goes!  Get out!  Get out!  Get…

Try A Little Kindness…By Frank Pace

theMook - by Frank Pace (The Mook)

(An excerpt from the book, IF THESE LIPS COULD TALK, by Frank Pace & Billy O’Connor.  Available at Amazon.com) Here is a bit of advice I have given to young people  over the years, “don’t fuck with anyone you don’t know.  Even if you don’t possibly think it could ever come back to bite you in the ass later, have empathy. I once produced a pilot for Carlos Mencia, a Honduran born comic pretending to…

A GESTURE OF KINDNESS – By Roy Firestone, Multi-Emmy Award Winning Journalist

Up Close with Roy Firestone

One cold January night in New York, Bob Costas shared a dinner with Mickey Mantle. As they finished their meal, Costas noticed something curious — Mantle asked for a doggie bag, something uncharacteristic for the famous ballplayer. They left the restaurant, walking briskly toward their hotel through the biting cold. But then Mantle veered off course. He led Costas to Madison Avenue, to a familiar spot where a homeless man huddled in a cardboard box.…

Max’s Mom…by Roy Firestone, Multi- Emmy Award Winning Journalist

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Max Brooks is a best selling author, and writer, he was a writer on SNL…most of his successful books were “World War Z and The Zombie Survival Guide” Max Brooks is witty, thoughtful, insightful and, oh by the way, he’s also the son of the legendary Mel Brooks and the late Anne Bancroft. Anne won the Academy Award for “The Miracle Worker” in 1962. You might have seen Max on Bill Maher’s “Real Time” .…

THERE IS ONLY ONE…By Roy Firestone, Multi Emny Award Winning Journalist

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I’m going to take a break this morning , a break from writing about the horror of this administration, and tell you about my all time favorite political ensemble TV. And it’s really the ONLY one. I don’t consider SNL a strictly political show, though even if it were, it’s not that funny much to me anymore and hasn’t been for years. Nope, the funniest, the most biting, the most inventive, and the most intelligent political…

Baseball’s Perfect Knights – by Roy Firestone, Multi Emmy Winning Journalist

Up Close with Roy Firestone

Last week was  baseball’s opening day. and I wanted to remember the two finest people I ever knew in the sport, and probably the two finest people I had the pleasure to meet anywhere else either. The man on the left was Brooks Robinson, my very close friend for more than 50 years. We lost Brooks two years ago. And man on the my right, was Stan”The Man” Musial he has been gone 12 years.…

Sadie’s Song – by Roy Firestone, Multi-Timed Emmy Award Winning Journalist

Up Close with Roy Firestone

You may know of the legendary songwriter-lyricist, Johnny Mercer. Johnny was one of the great lyricists of all time, he wrote “Moon Rover”, “The Days of Wine and Roses ” and “Autumn Leaves”. Johnny Mercer was a giant in the songwriting world. One day in 1957 a woman named Sadie Vimmerstadt, a grandmother and beautician, from Youngstown , Ohio upon hearing that Ava Gardener left Frank Sinatra, (after Sinatra left his first wife), Sadie exclaimed…

The Letter – by Roy Firestone, Multi Time Emmy Winning Journalist

Up Close with Roy Firestone

When is the last time you wrote a letter? No, not a complaint, not a response to some bill, but an honest to goodness “pen in hand” letter. Of course, without any technology 150 years ago and before that, people effectively HAD to write hand written letters. Some were forceful, some were witty, many were romantic, and many more were direct and some even brilliant. But there was an art to letter writing. People who…

HAPPINESS – by Roy Firestone, Multi Time Emmy Winning Journalist

Up Close with Roy Firestone

We are in uncharted territory in America. There is fear and anger and distrust and contempt everywhere. Everyone thinks they are right, often at the exclusion of others. The other day I came upon a short clip from the TV series “Afterlife”, a wonderful series starring and created by Ricky Gervais. Gervais plays a man who has lost the love of his life, and contemplates ending his life because he is lost and lonely. There’s…

IMPERMANANCE – By Jeff McCracken

Guest Blogger

We lived in the Pacific Palisades for twenty years. It was an idyllic place and community to raise three children. When we first arrived, it was a sleepy little seaside village, a welcomed respite from the hustle and bustle of Los Angeles. And now it’s completely gone. All that remains from this once vibrant and charming village of the Pacific Palisades, CA It’s so unimaginable, so surreal, to think such a beautiful place that harbored…

A MOMENT OF THANKS – By Roy Firestone, Multi Emmy Award Winning Journalist

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I want to salute and honor the brave men and women who are risking their lives battling the most horrific fires in California history and some of the worst fires this nation has seen or will ever see. It’s what we have to and should do. Respect, honor, and thank them. Because these first responders are working 18-19 hour shifts and are exhausted and without a lot of backup and support on their shifts. Jumping…

It’s The Holiday Season Year Round for Dolly Parton – by Roy Firestone, Multii-Timed Emmy Award Winning Journalist

Up Close with Roy Firestone

As this year comes to a close, we need to remember the good in people. God knows we’ve seen enough hate, and violence, and contempt for people. We need to uplift one another and highlight those who do it in big in small ways..everyday. Dolly Parton is an incredible human being.She reminds me a lot of my late friend, the wonderful Brooks Robinson in that, like Brooks, Dolly is an icon with a heart go…

Happiness is the Key to Success – By Frank Pace, The Mook

theMook - by Frank Pace (The Mook)

How do you define success?   One word HAPPINESS.  A very good friend once told me if you have your health and are surrounded by people who love you, you have everything in life you are entitled too. How do you define career success?  That’s something different. That can change. Let’s say you are an actor and your goal in life is to “be a star like Tom Cruise.”  Or a singer and your goal in life is to be Taylor…

MAYBE….By Frank Pace, The Mook

theMook - by Frank Pace (The Mook)

It should come as no surprise to anyone reading this blog that I am no fan of Donald Trump.It may surprise you to hear me say, “Give him a chance.”  Maybe, just maybe, he is on to something.  Government budgets are out of control.Maybe Elon Musk and Vivik Ramaswami can curtail some of Washington’s wasteful spending.  The U.S. government for the first time has spent more than $1trillion this year on interest payments for its $35.3trillion national debt,…

90 Days Until Pitchers & Catcher’s Report – by Roy Firestone, Multi Timed Emmy Award Winning Journalist

Up Close with Roy Firestone

Baseball season is over, and that fact alone makes me somewhat wistful. When the baseball season ends, I am always reminded of my old friend, Bart Giamatti who was a frequent visitor to my “Up Close” show. Besides being President of the National League, and later Commissioner of baseball, Bart was a poet. I think my favorite poem of his fits my mood exactly the day after the baseball season ended. Bart wrote: “It breaks…

My Vote For Democracy – By Billy O’Connor, The Mick

By Billy O’Connor (Da Mick)

I’m old enough to remember a February 1964 night in Miami when a brash, young, Cassius Clay ripped the invincibility mask off an aging Sonny Liston. I thought Liston was going to kill this crazy, young loudmouth. That night, a seventh-round barrage of left jabs and hooks exposed Sonny as a man quite different from the Superman image we fight fans had of him. Liston appeared to age two decades that night.  While listening to…

AS TIME GOES BY – By Frank Pace, The Mook

theMook - by Frank Pace (The Mook)

Saturday night, my wife Karen and I attended the Billy Joel concert at the Los Angeles’ spanking new Intuit Dome. For me, the past and future merged.  Billy Joel is old, reliable and reassuring. The Dome is new and intimidating. Just getting to the venue proved to be a curious intermingling of current and future technology. The Intuit Dome was built by former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at a cost to Ballmer of more than $2…

The Boss Turns 75 – by Roy Firestone, Multi time Emmy Award Winning Journalist

Up Close with Roy Firestone

Bruce Springsteen celebrated his 75th birthday last month. And heres what he says about growing old. “Age. Age brings perspective. And the fine clarity one gets at midnight…on the tracks…looking into the lights of an oncoming train. It dawns on you rather quickly. Theres only so much time left. Only so many star filled nights….snowfalls…brisk fall afternoons…rainy midsummer days. So how you conduct yourself…and do your work..matters. How you treat your friends, your family, your…