The Owner's Box After Dark, Ep. 60.

This Boston Globe story outlines Alice Cook's courageous battle with ALS.

I have been reminded quite a lot lately about the passage of time and the frailty of our existence on this earth.

I don't suppose I should be surprised by any of it. After all, it knocks on your door even when uninvited and pushes right past you to take up an unwelcome residence.

For instance, I've been flat on my back for almost a month because of a nasty viral infection -- not COVID, not pneumonia, more likely something I would have shed after a week or two when I was a lot younger. In the grand scheme of things, it hasn't been much more than a nagging aggravation, and it even had the surprisingly positive side effect of dropping several pounds off my frame through lack of appetite, so I may actually have come out of it on the plus side of things.

But that will be the extent of the whining you will read from me on that topic. People that I know, and care about, are facing much greater challenges with much greater resolve and determination.

One of those persons is someone with whom I developed a lasting friendship over the many years that I covered the New England Patriots for the local newspaper.

Former WBZ-TV sports reporter Alice Cook is currently in the final stages of her training for a run in the Boston Marathon. It will be her third participation in the annual Hopkinton-to-Boston jaunt of 26.2 miles, which is something I couldn't accomplish unless I was behind the wheel of a car. The kicker here is that it will be her second marathon following her diagnosis for ALS (popularly known as Lou Gehrig's Disease) in 2023.

Alice Cook

Alice has a form of the disease that has attacked the area of her brain that controls her facial muscles; to date, she still has very good control of her mobility, but she has lost the ability to speak. There is no known cure and the disease is relentless in its progression.

A more detailed explanation of the challenges facing Alice appeared in a Boston Globe article that appeared on April 3, written by veteran reporter Kevin Paul Dupont. I've put a screenshot of that article at the top of this post. It's easily accessible on the Globe's website and it contains a video snippet of how Alice can still "speak" with the use of remarkable technology -- she types her words into an iPad, and software translates them into sound. And with the help of her former colleagues at Channel 4, old recordings of her interviews were used to teach the software how to present that sound in a very close approximation of her normal voice.

I first met Alice in the mid-1980s, when the Patriots held their annual summer training camp at what was then Bryant College in Smithfield, R.I. At the time, she was the first woman that had been hired as a full-time sports reporter in the Boston TV market, and despite a series of challenges that came from being a woman in what was then a close-knit and male-dominated media corps, she persevered and emerged as one of the region's most respected TV reporters -- and never lost her characteristic enthusiasm or optimism on the way there.

Alice and partner Bill Fauver.

A lot of that resolve came from her background as an Olympic athlete. She was a pairs skater that competed in the Winter Games in Innsbruck, Austria, in 1976. She and her partner had finished second in the U.S. championships, 12th in the Olympics and then ninth in the following World Championships before she left the ice to finish her education at Boston College and then head on to sports journalism. You don't endure the sacrifices of a lifetime of training and competition without developing a pretty tough backbone, and there was always a steely will to succeed lurking just under the surface of Alice's always-pleasant demeanor.

Those are topics we touched upon when she and I sat down at Gillette Stadium on the 25th anniversary of her hiring by WBZ (Oct. 15, 2009) to record an interview for the frequent Patriots-related podcasts I did for The Sun Chronicle's website that I called "Mark Farinella's Audio Blog." I found that interview in my archives after reading the Globe story, and then turned it into the 60th episode of my current video podcast as a personal tribute to my friend. 

In the interview, Alice and I talk about her background and what it took for her to overcome the challenges that she faced when female reporters were just beginning to make inroads in the industry. She readily admitted it was difficult -- remember, she started almost five years before the notorious sexual harassment of former Boston Herald reporter Lisa Olson in the Patriots' locker room -- and from her description, you learn a lot about the strength of character it took for Alice to advance past it all.

And I will admit, it was so very good to hear Alice's voice again after so many years. And I'm so happy that technology will keep her voice front and center in the lives of her loving family.

I hope you will enjoy this trip in my personal time machine.

A despicable man, a disheartening day.

Trump signs executive order banning transgender athletes from women's sports.

I've made it known many times that I despise Donald Trump, and have since the mid-1980s, when he destroyed the United States Football League in a misguided quest for revenge and retribution against the National Football League for denying him a franchise. If you don't know that story, look it up on Google. I can't waste my time retelling it. 

Of course, way back then, I never thought there would be the chance of an icicle in hell that Trump would ever become President of the United States. I never thought the American people, who had been known to make a few colossal mistakes during my lifetime (Richard Nixon being one), would ever be that alarmingly duped by the nepo baby from Queens -- a racist, a misogynist and definitely a moron of shockingly low intelligence whose only apparent skill was the ability to take his rich daddy's money and piss it away on bad investments, stupid schemes, and settlements to quash potential legal action against him for sexual assaults.

Donald Trump is a bad man. I despise him. Now, if you can't handle reading that, then just fuck off and don't return to this site.

But if you'd like to see what has pissed me off almost beyond the point of personal tolerance, read on. It happened Wednesday afternoon.

This came as no surprise, but the Moron-in-Chief signed an executive order that purports to ban all transgender athletes from competing in women's sports in the United States, at all levels, in any organized sport that can somehow draw federal funding. Trump has framed the action as a redefinition of Title IX, the groundbreaking section of the Education Amendments of 1972 -- supported and signed by Nixon, of all people -- that prohibited discrimination against women at educational institutions supported by federal funding. 

Title IX is rightfully regarded as the turning point of women's athletics, ensuring a fair shake to athletes that were not getting equal access to facilities, equipment, training methods and quality coaching that propped up men's programs for decades prior. 

I was there from the beginning. In my sophomore year in high school (1968-69), my girlfriend's basketball team played that peculiar six-girl game that kept three players behind the center stripe and restricted them to one dribble before being forced to pass the ball. Girls weren't allowed to play the real game because of outdated fears that athletic prowess was an enemy of femininity, or that girls' uteruses would fall out of their vaginas from too much running, or that they'd never be able to nurse babies if they were hit in the boobs by a basketball. Stupid stuff.

And even when they changed over to five-player rules in 1969-70, the school was under no mandate to hire anyone that knew anything about basketball to coach the team. So they handed the reins over to a female English teacher that was eventually dismissed for having an affair with a male student. Great role model.

That all changed in 1972, when the federal government made equality the law of the land. Gradually, things improved. The girls got real uniforms instead of bloomers, and equal gym time and locker facilities. Their schedules became the equals of the boys. And gradually, better coaching was made available to them as coaching salaries were equalized. 

It took a lot longer for attitudes to change -- and even now, 53 years after the fact, there are still knuckle-dragging morons that want to denigrate the women's game. Not a single one of those nitwits could last three trips up and down the court in a game of one-on-one with Caitlin Clark. But for the most part, girls' and women's basketball are enjoying new levels of acceptance and prosperity, as are most women's sports.

Coarse, ignorant and unfit for the presidency.

But equality continues to be an elusive thing in America. It's written into the Constitution as one of our most cherished national goals, but it has taken almost 250 years to draw even remotely close to being achieved. And now, there's a bitter, angry and senile old fuckwad in the White House that is bound and determined to reverse many of those efforts on behalf of women, people of color, people of differing religious beliefs and people whose sexual identity may not adhere to the "only two genders" decree that Trump enacted on the first day of his second administration. 

Right now, it's the height of fashion in MAGA World to demonize transgender individuals. 

False narratives have been manufactured about how the majority of transgender athletes are simply sick males whose mental illnesses are enabling them to dress up as women and take athletic opportunities away from their dainty little daughters, who apparently need to be protected from too much athletic violence as they prance around their athletic fields during breaks in their study of the Scriptures. And these zealots claim that there's an army of young males lurking in the shadows, just waiting to tuck their dicks between their legs (or snip them off) and seek fame and glory as female athletes, taking opportunities away from deserving girls.

There aren't. Trust me on that. 

If there's one thing I've learned in 71 years on this planet and 55 years in one form of journalism or another, it's that there are infinite possibilities for every situation, and very few situations are so identical that they can be defined by one sweeping conclusion that covers all possibilities.

I have known transgender athletes in my lifetime. Identities will not revealed here to satisfy anyone's morbid curiosity. I respect confidences, but more than that, I don't believe it's really anybody's goddamned business to know anyone's personal and private information unless that person decides it should be revealed.

I'm sensitive about this issue, yes, because I've felt the sting of prying eyes that questioned my sexuality because I became an ardent supporter of women's sports at an early professional age. Some people called me a predator or a pedophile. Others suggested I was gay (back when that was supposedly a source of shame and a cause for ostracization). 

Well, I'm not gay -- but I apologize if that infers there's something wrong with it. I'm unmarried and childless, yes, but people that know me well are aware of the reason for that, and if you don't know me that well, then it's none of your fucking business. And no, I am no pedophile or predator. I have always maintained a respectful and appropriate distance between myself and the individuals I covered. I am proud to say that many of them became lifelong friends of mine in their adulthood, and I'm a better person for it.

In other words, I have never walked through a girls' locker room looking to see female athletes naked -- unlike our current President, who openly bragged about being able to stroll through the dressing rooms when his organization owned the Miss USA and Miss Teen USA beauty pageants, checking out the contestants in various states of undress as if it was his God-given right to do so.

Back in 1991, I covered the Big East Conference's women's basketball tournament when it was held at the McDonough Gym at Georgetown University. After one of the games, I went to the entrance of the Providence College locker room with Sean McAdam, then a writer for the Providence Journal, looking to interview the PC players. We were told upon our arrival that we could enter the locker room if we so desired -- it seems the Big East was operating under the premise that equality also included post-game access to athletes inside the locker room, just like men's sports, instead of waiting for the young women to venture into the hallway.

Sean and I looked nervously at each other, and then we turned to the media relations person and politely declined the offer. Equality is fine, but respect for privacy took precedence. That's something a pervert like Donald Trump simply cannot grasp.

Even when the information about transitioning was willingly offered to me by the athletes I've known, I never asked for details about what that entailed or what "equipment" they had or didn't have. It was none of my business. They came upon their circumstances for reasons that were intensely personal and probably traumatic, but first and foremost, their reasons were their own. And that absolutely demanded my respect, and a suspension of any personal curiosity I might have.

Instead, I have always tried to simply walk in someone's else shoes. 

How would I have felt if I had been born with conflicting genetics that caused confusion about my own identity as I was growing up? Or what if I had been born with both sets of sexual organs? For those of you Bible-thumpers out there that believe "God doesn't make mistakes," let me assure you that if indeed there is a God, He or She surely does err on occasion. Human beings are merely the products of cell division, and our development is guided by the genetic code passed down from each parent through DNA. And sometimes, that code can go awry -- maybe tragically, maybe far more subtly. 

And what if I had been the parent of a child that was facing such traumatic conflicts? What would I want, knowing that there was no simple "quick fix" or magic pill that would restore the so-called traditional norms? And every time I ponder these questions, I know that my answer is that I would want either a solution to bring me in line with the person I believed myself to be, or as a parent, to do whatever I could to prevent my child from spending a lifetime in deep personal conflict. My child's happiness would take precedence over all other concerns.

America's favorite Fifth-Place Girl,
anti-trans activist Riley Gaines

Those are questions that a person such as Riley Gaines has yet to consider, I believe.

Gaines, if you aren't aware, was a swimmer of some talent at the University of Kentucky. She was an 11-time All-America selection in various events, but peaked as an athlete at UK and was unsuccessful in several attempts to qualify for national or Olympic teams. Still, she remained a big fish in a small pond, and that's nothing to sneeze at.

The following passage is from a Wikipedia article on Ms. Gaines.

"In March 2022, while swimming for the University of Kentucky in the 200-yard NCAA freestyle championship (her final competitive event race before retiring from the sport), Gaines tied for fifth place with University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas, who subsequently became the first openly transgender woman champion in the NCAA women's division after winning the 500-yard freestyle later in the same event. Gaines said that Thomas shared locker room space with her while still intact with 'male genitalia,' that the championship trophy was to be given to Thomas for 'photo purposes' and that Gaines was expected to go empty-handed while waiting for her trophy in the mail."

At that point, Gaines became a fervent and tireless activist opposing all participation in women's athletics by transgender individuals. Along the way, she became the darling of the MAGA movement -- and why not? She's blonde, fit and deeply prejudiced. And it matters not to her if she's railing against a late-transitioning individual such as Thomas, or someone that may have begun the process much earlier in life. To Riley Gaines, transgender individuals are an all-encompassing evil that must be purged from the earth because God knows that there couldn't be any other reason why she couldn't finish any higher than fifth place in a meet populated overwhelmingly by women just like her.

Would this have even been an issue if Gaines had finished third or fourth, which was apparently outside her capabilities? 

Riley Gaines is a despicable person, totally devoid of any possible understanding of circumstances outside her narrow-minded understanding of normal. You'd think that it would be karma or poetic justice if she and her new husband were "blessed" with a conflicted child -- but that might make me a very bad person for wishing that upon the poor child. 

Still, all this made Ms. Gaines look right at home on Wednesday, standing behind the Mango Mussolini as he scratched out his illegible signature on the executive order document. With those child-like Sharpie strokes, Trump gleefully pronounced to a room filled with acolytes, bigots and brainwashed children that the scourge of transgenderism had ended. And so, Donald Trump echoed the 90-year-old acts of a demented Austrian paper-hanger by codifying his hatred of minorities into legal discrimination and persecution.

This is intolerable. This is not what America should be. Let's forget for a minute that America has always persecuted people that didn't look like the Founding Fathers' reflection in a mirror, and be encouraged otherwise by the fact that America has frequently amended its Constitution and changed its laws to correct past mistakes. But in Trump World, we may as well stick six-pointed yellow stars on transgender individuals and ship them off to the camps -- but they'll have to stand in line behind the people of color that are first in line to get the Trump demonization treatment.

And the worst thing? This executive order barely caused a ripple in public discourse. 

Everyone was still buzzing Wednesday over Trump's pronouncement that he wanted to "take over" war-torn Gaza, relocating the surviving Palestinians from their shattered homeland to other countries and sending in U.S. troops to oversee the conversion of that region into the new Mediterranean Riviera -- presumably, with a few Trump pockets being lined with a hefty percentage of the billions of dollars that it will require.

The Orange Turd has been president now for just 2½ weeks, but he's already shredded the foundations of American democracy with no regard for the Constitution. His top advisor is a South African billionaire who might actually qualify for deportation under Trump's goal to purge America of illegal immigrants. His Cabinet members are a mishmash of MAGA loyalists and billionaires that have neither empathy for nor understanding of the hundreds of millions of Americans whose lives they now control. Trump has the House, the Senate and the Supreme Court under his ketchup-soiled thumb. He wants to annex Canada and Greenland, go to war with Mexico, and otherwise infuriate every other allied nation that once saw America as the beacon of democracy.

The only thing missing is the Reichstag fire and the brown shirts.

I wish I could do something to end it. But I've already done all I can. Anything more, as Nixon famously said, "would be wrong."

I didn't vote for the asshole last time and I didn't this time, either. Neither did Massachusetts -- a state which, by the way, still guarantees the rights of the LBGTQ+ community thanks to two pieces of legislation from the early 1970s that piggybacked upon the federal Title IX, the state's Equal Rights Amendment in 1979, and a 2011 amendment that specifically included the LBGTQ+ protections into the ERA's wording. 

Trump can write all the executive orders he wants, but there's little chance he can legally overrule a state's constitution with a stroke of his crayon. Unfortunately, the only "legality" he respects is the sound of his own voice.

That must end. And I fear that it won't end without plunging our nation into its darkest days. 

MARK FARINELLA has voted in 14 presidential elections. He fervently hopes to live long enough to experience an America that still has free elections -- and one that does not include Donald Trump.

Mike Babul, 47.

Mike Babul, left, and his brother Jon, pose for a photo before the 1995-96 season.

I learned earlier today that North Attleboro High School and Mansfield High School have agreed to reschedule their upcoming boys' and girls' basketball games from Friday, Jan. 10, to Thursday, Jan. 9 -- the boys playing at North Attleboro and the girls at Mansfield. The reason is to accommodate the calling hours for the late North Attleboro basketball star, Mike Babul, on Friday.

These two schools are fierce rivals, but they are totally united in showing appropriate and deserved respect for Babul, who died earlier this week of a heart attack at the all-too-young age of 47.

Since I heard the news from former colleague Peter Gobis, I've been having trouble wrapping my head around this. Everyone dies, I know. We all will. There are timely deaths and deserved deaths, but of late, there have been far too many tragic deaths of younger people I knew that had bright and fulfilling futures snatched away from them in an instant.

Until today, I have hesitated to offer my thoughts publicly on this news other than to put short posts on social media to inform others of this tragedy. That is my nature. I spent more than a half-century covering the news and passing it along as quickly and accurately as I could, as if it was still my sworn duty to the public to uphold an unspoken oath.

Mike Babul on the collegiate sidelines.

Most others reacted as I did -- with shock and sadness at the loss of such a highly regarded individual who had positively impacted multitudes of young people through his coaching and his participation in basketball camps, as well as through his positivity and his energy. 

One individual, however, called me a "douche" for having blurted out the bad news before anyone had time to grieve, or so he claimed. I did not. I checked the time stamps. I had not even read Gobis' email to me until two hours after he sent it. Social media accounts from various organizations and individuals were already reporting the news three hours before I wrote my first post. 

It did have a residual effect, however. Asked to comment on Mike's passing by other news organizations, I deferred to Gobis, because not only had he written the first story that appeared in The Sun Chronicle about Mike Babul's passing, he was also closer to the local boys' basketball scene in the mid-1990s than I was. I don't always have to have the first or last word on everything that happens, especially when there are others that might have better perspective to offer.

Another such individual with great perspective is Mike Kirby, another former colleague at the local newspaper, who started there as a sportswriter before becoming the big boss in the newsroom over his 40-year career. Mike has always been plugged into the heartbeat of his hometown of North Attleboro, and that was reaffirmed today by a column he wrote for the paper. 

Mike clearly states that North Attleboro, usually regarded by the Massachusetts sports community as a football town, surged to the forefront of the basketball community when Mike Babul and his twin brother, Jon, first stepped onto the court inside what would later be known as the Ken Pickering Gymnasium.

Mike scored 1,423 career points over his Rocketeer career, and Jon scored 910 -- I remember pulling openly for Jon to get to the 1,000-point plateau as well because it would have made their legacy even more impressive. But Mike (even at 6-6) was the shooting guard and primary scorer, and Jon (an inch taller at 6-7) was the pivot around whom much of North's halfcourt offense was designed, with him serving as more of a facilitator and rebounder. They averaged 18.8 and 12.2 points respectively as seniors, and almost got the Rocketeers to a state title.

My only quibble with this retelling of history is that North already had some great basketball chops before the Babul brothers' emergence -- the girls' team had already won two state Division 2 titles, in 1987, defeating Athol, and in 1991, defeating the Rebecca Lobo-led Southwick team. But for some unknown reason, the girls don't seem to get the respect they deserve in Big Red Country. I know -- I've had many debates with a lot of individuals about that over the years.

Sadly, we have also lost two members of that 1987 team, center Alyssa Gutauskas in 1997 and shooting forward Heidi Deppisch in 2022. Both are still sources of personal joy from having known them, and deep sadness from their passings.

Mike Babul, at right, defends
Attleboro High's Jason Smith (4).

There is no denying, however, that Mike and Jon Babul were outstanding ambassadors for their sport and that they did raise North Attleboro's hoop profile significantly. First coached by their father, Mike Sr., and then by Don Johnson, both were hard-working and dedicated young men, personable, and totally respectful of their sport and their places in it. They understood and embraced their responsibilities as role models -- a very difficult thing for anyone to do, no less a pair of twin teenagers.

I remember fondly one particular day, not long before the start of their senior seasons at NAHS. I wanted to create a special design for our annual boys' basketball preview, so Sun Chronicle photographer Mark Stockwell and I commandeered the boys' locker room and posed the two twins -- Mike in his red No. 43 uniform, Jon in his white No. 44 togs. We tried several different poses (one of which topped this column), but we struck gold with a low-angle shot that made the twins look like giants. And of course, the headline to the preview declared them to be the "Twin Towers." I was very proud of that presentation.

Who would have known that about six years later, that title would come to represent a moment of staggering national heartbreak upon the destruction of New York City's World Trade Center?

Both Babul brothers made lives in the sport for themselves after high school. Mike was a defensive standout at UMass and Jon played at Georgia Tech. Mike had been recruited by John Calipari, who had built UMass into a national power, but then raced off to the pros and left Mike to be coached by Bruiser Flint. There was no transfer portal in those days, but Mike held true to his commitment, and I respected him immensely for it.

They both got into coaching and basketball management positions afterward. Jon works in the front office of the Atlanta Hawks. And Mike's résumé included coaching jobs at several colleges and the Brooklyn Nets' G-League team before he decided to accept the North Attleboro High School coaching job before the 2023-24 season.

It should have been a tremendous and hopefully triumphant return home for Mike, who was already familiar to a new generation of Rocketeers because of his work with AAU programs and local basketball camps, including those run by him and his brother. But for reasons that are unknown, and I resist speculating why, he decided to re-apply for the Thayer Academy coaching position and he was given it just before the new season was to start. 

He was in his second season at Thayer, and had them on the winning track, when his life came to an unexpected end early Monday morning.

I've been reading most of the heartfelt tributes to Mike that have appeared in social media -- not just from individuals that knew him or may have had children coached by him, but also from elite basketball organizations or individuals whose lives were also touched by him. Even John Calipari weighed in on Twitter/X ... and he only recruited Mike.

Part of me wonders what would have happened if Mike had taken the reins at North Attleboro. Basketball there has been in the doldrums for some time now, but I have to believe he would have used everything he learned every step along the way to restore enthusiasm to the boys' program.

Yet in pondering that, I fear that it might be construed as a criticism of those presently in charge. I intend no disrespect at all to Derek Smith -- himself the son of another famous North Attleboro coach, Rick Smith, who brought that 1987 girls' team to the pinnacle of Massachusetts basketball. I have no doubt that Derek is doing everything he can to reverse North's basketball fortunes, and it is patently unfair for anyone to play the "what-if" game. 

More than anything else, Mike's death has reminded me of the preciousness of life. 

Too many young athletes of superlative ability have left us in recent years. North Attleboro has suffered more than its share of loss in the deaths of Mike Babul, Alyssa Gutauskas and Heidi Deppisch. Attleboro's Leland Anderson died earlier this year from lung cancer, and Rebecca Hardt passed in her sleep in a few years ago. Many recall the tragedy of Bishop Feehan's Cheryl Warren, who died giving birth to twins. There are others as well, all of whom are forever young in my memory -- pictured in my mind's eye as they were, running up and down basketball courts, joy and determination concurrently expressed on their faces, always looking to improve their skills, to refine them and to succeed.

In a time in which we need to derive positive reinforcement and inspiration from any available sources, I can only hope that the basketball community of the Attleboros and beyond, young and old alike, will embrace the life Mike Babul led and let it serve as a guide for their futures.

MARK FARINELLA wrote for The Sun Chronicle of Attleboro, Mass., for 42 years.