Introducing RoboFearless!

Unfortunately, it didn't come with a hidden holster or thrusters.

Yes, that's my left leg. And the contraption you see on it is the knee brace I got from the folks at SurgiCare Inc., courtesy of Brigham and Women's Hospital and my surgeon, Dr. Elizabeth Matzkin.

Just got it last week, and it is supposed to relieve pressure in certain areas of my surgically-repaired knee so I can walk better and longer.

It's not as lightweight as I thought it was going to be, and it is an absolute bitch to put on in exactly the right position for it to do any good. I almost wish I had found a tattoo artist to etch boundary lines into my knee area so I'd know the exact spot where it should go every time I put it on. No, I don't sleep in it.

It does seem to help a little. I actually mowed my back yard in less than four hours yesterday. It should be a hour-and-a-half job. Small steps ...

The Owner's Box After Dark, Ep. 48.

After taking a bit of a break, I've returned with an all-new episode of the video podcast, The Owner's Box After Dark.

First on the agenda is my own personal version of Gray's Anatomy, or more accurately, a rundown of everything that ails me and what steps I'm taking to combat it all. Then later in the episode I look back upon my play-by-play broadcasting efforts for North TV this past school year, including a few illustrative clips from the King Philip softball team's 7-5 victory over Attleboro a couple of weeks back.

I also spend some time offering a brief but heartfelt tribute to my friend Tom Souza, who passed away last month after a lengthy but spirited battle with cancer. He was 67, gone far too young.

It's good to be back behind the camera, and there will be more episodes to come.

Ponderous thoughts I was pondering ...

A leisurely afternoon with the iPad and Diet Dr Pepper at my side.

Ponderous thoughts I was pondering while looking at some of the overgrown parts of my yard and knowing it’s too hot to get outside to address them:

** I know it’s been a while since my last post, and that was a pretty angry one. But it’s been an emotional time for yours truly and those close to me, following the passing of my dear friend Tom Souza, so I hope you will all cut me some slack. I’ve also been lagging behind on the podcasting front, but I’m working on a couple of ideas that might bear fruit in a few days.

I’ve also used the last couple of weeks for personal maintenance. 

One issue was dental when a relatively new crown fell out, but that was replaced fairly quickly. Another involved a preventative check of the last bit of my “original equipment” still being used for work purposes, my vocal cords.

You may not have noticed it from my work for North TV over the football, volleyball and spring sports seasons, but there has been an increasingly raspy tone to my voice over recent months, leading me to fear that I might have polyps or other problems with my vocal cords. So I scheduled an appointment with a specialist at Brigham & Women’s Hospital, and got four doctors in my room for the price of one. They asked questions and were very thorough, then stuck a little hose up my nose and down into my throat (no pain) to take a look.

What they found was encouraging. There was only a little fraying of the cords, something to be expected from someone my age. I may have a little bit of acid reflux action going on — not enough to be noticeable as stomach upset, but enough to irritate my throat while I’m sleeping and thus cause coughing and a raspy quality to my voice. That’s easily addressed by over-the-counter meds.

The last issue, as it has been for the last 10 months, is my left knee. It’s been very troublesome of late and has severely impacted my ability to walk normally. So I had a follow-up appointment yesterday and learned that while my leg is stronger in a lot of ways, the fluid in my knee has also caused issues with my left Achilles’ tendon area, preventing me from taking a full stride forward.

They gave me a shot to reduce the pain and swelling, but also prescribed a full knee brace for daily use — very similar to what Tom Brady wears during games, in fact — with hopes that it will adjust my stride so I’m putting less pressure on the meniscus area and thus lessen swelling and fluid buildup.

The alternative to that would be a full knee replacement, which would mean another year of rehab. And since I’m still working to broadcast high school games and a lot of that involves walking up bleachers to get to my broadcast location, I’ll have to time that to result in the least possible amount of disruption to my availability.

I’m also really wondering if, as I am three years shy of 70, it’s really worth the expense and commitment to do that. But I do cherish my mobility.

So that where it stands today. There’s more dental work coming (molar implant at the top of the list) and a general checkup in July. All to keep this aging classic on the road.

** With that in mind, I do want to offer some thanks to the people that have prevented me from being totally unemployed, my friend Peter Gay and his co-workers at North Attleborough Community Television. 

Alex Salachi and I are behind the mics during 2019.

This has been a very challenging year for North TV, given pandemic restrictions and the growing desire on the part of viewers to see high school events live because they were restricted from attending them. But I think that North TV did a great job of meeting those demands, at least through the “Fall II” season. Things got a little tight in the springtime because three seasons of coverage were budgeted and not four, the latter being a creation of the pandemic. But we still got to do a few games in the springtime, and for that I was thankful.

Remember, North TV is not the same as some towns’ local access channels. It’s a non-profit corporation funded jointly by North Attleboro taxpayers, subscribers in North Attleboro and Plainville, and the cable systems that provide premium channels, Internet and phone services to subscribing households. And indeed, the hired help are paid for their services — not a heck of a lot, but I think it’s fair compensation for sitting behind a microphone for a couple of hours and getting to play Jim Nantz or Al Michaels.

I learned a lot this year. I learned not to hate soccer or field hockey (in fact, it was fun to telecast them). I got a lot better at basketball. I didn’t suck that badly at hockey, although I still chuckle at having a goal interrupt a reading of one of my drop-in commercials. My second season of football play-by-play was a clear improvement over my first, and I found that I really enjoyed volleyball. And in the spring, I learned a lot about calling baseball and softball, and the differences between the two in terms of the pace of the commentary (softball is a lot faster).

And of course, I was helped immensely by my co-workers — analysts Glen Farley (football, hockey, baseball, softball), Alex Salachi (basketball, volleyball), Del Malloy (soccer, field hockey) and Martin Grealish (soccer), and cameramen Scott Tooker and Loren Carpenter. 

I’m not sure if we have any tournament action to follow in the days ahead. Nor do I know what the future will be for live broadcasts of the games in a more normal 2021-22 season. The MIAA generally frowns upon coverage that might cut into the local gate by encouraging fans to stay home, but the state association looked the other way during the pandemic.

But overall, it was a blast — as it was for my volunteer efforts for Mansfield Cable Access during basketball season, where it was my privilege to call some great games and even greater personal performances. 

Let’s do it again next year!

At the Plainville Starbucks. Grrrrr.

** The photo to the right illustrates one of my greatest pet peeves — when people do not pull up to the car next to them in the drive-thru lane at a coffee shop or fast-food outlet. Some blame the pandemic, but there was no evidence at all that sitting with less than a full car length between you and the person in front of you was going to accelerate the spread of COVID.

Why does it bother me so? Because often, it prevents me or the next person behind me to place an order within earshot of the kiosk. When it’s me, I just think it’s rude. And even when I get past, I always feel that my rear end is blocking someone else from ordering, and I can’t get out and apologize for what the clueless soul in front of me is doing.

** Weather permitting — and I do hear the roll of thunder in the distance — I might go watch a softball game tonight. King Philip is playing Taunton at 7 at the PAL complex in Plainville, and while Taunton won the first meeting 4-0 last night to take a one-game lead in the Hockomock Kelley-Rex standings with a game remaining, I think KP might be inspired on its own home field. Besides, this KP team may rule the league for the next three years, given the many outstanding freshmen that debuted this year.

See you around town, folks.

Chronicling the decline of a once-great local newspaper.

Selling the product proudly in 2017; a year later, I was out the door.

It's no secret that I used to work for The Sun Chronicle in Attleboro, Mass. I still have a few friends that work there, although not many given the many staff reductions that have taken place in the past three years, and I still have reason to read it on occasion. So it was that I read something in today's Opinion section that made me chuckle.

It was a letter to the editor, written by an old friend and former neighbor who is also the widow of a former copy editor at the newspaper. Apparently she has moved away from within The Sun Chronicle's local circulation area but still has the paper sent to her, and she wrote to tell readers how lucky they are that they are served by a local newspaper that still places local news as its highest priority, as opposed to the local paper that serves the community in which she lives now.

I chuckled not out of derision directed at the letter-writer, but because I know that appearances can be deceiving. 

Yes, The Sun Chronicle still is devoted to local news coverage above all else, or at least as much of it as it can process with a severely reduced staff. In fact, I don't believe there are more than four full-time news reporters and one superhuman 70-year-old sportswriter left on the staff, all of them cranking out prodigious amounts of copy. But what once made The Sun Chronicle a great local newspaper, its ability to cover breaking news in all of the 10 communities it which it is sold, has all-but disappeared.

Especially outside of Attleboro and North Attleboro (with the exception of Foxboro, where the former publisher was rehired as the lone reporter for the weekly newspaper that The Sun Chronicle owns), there is next to no timely coverage of municipal news. Most of what appears is a rehash or rewrite of press releases or other media, often several days after the fact. The old derisive nickname that know-nothing critics had for the paper, "The Sun Comical," now has some merit because of the growing number of headline mistakes and glaring lack of copy editing that goes into the finished product these days.

Again, this is not to criticize those that still work at the Blue Ribbon Daily, as I used to call it. They are working their asses off. They are just overmatched by the challenge presented to them by their penurious new owners -- and that would be more readily apparent if it weren't for the fact that the Gannett-owned papers that surround The Sun Chronicle have been gutted far worse, and have considerably less local content.

But for me to make these statements, I need to establish my credentials as someone that actually knows what he's talking about when it comes to local journalism.

The early days (with contact lenses).

I was hired at The Sun Chronicle as a full-time local news reporter on Feb. 7, 1977, and was reassigned to become the first full-time sports editor in the paper's history in 1980. But I wore many hats for the better part of five decades. In my "first" tenure, I covered both local news in four communities and sports in all 10 towns, and did the sports-page layouts until they made my sports assignment permanent. After taking a one-man operation and expanding it to three full-time writers and a network of part-time correspondents, I left the paper on Sept. 9, 1987, then returned as the editor in charge of the Sunday sports section on Sept. 11, 1989 (after a two-year stint at The Patriot Ledger of Quincy). I served in that capacity for another 10 years before the bosses granted me my wish to devote myself fully to writing -- now fully committing me to covering the Patriots and high school sports and writing opinion columns. I did that in award-winning fashion prior to being laid off on Aug. 29, 2018, less than seven months shy of my planned retirement date.

My tenure there actually goes beyond the full-time work; I started contributing to the pages of the then-Attleboro Sun in 1969 as a high school sports correspondent, dutifully calling in the results of every Mansfield High School boys' varsity event for $3 a call. I did not call in girls' scores because it was not requested of me -- an oversight in the newspaper's coverage I would correct as its sports editor about 10 years later. That part-time job was mine for about two years before I went to college.

It was always a balancing act in the early years.

I am proud to say that during my tenure, The Sun Chronicle reached a peak subscription rate of about 26,000, seven days a week, and that it bucked the trend of falling circulation in the 2000s much longer than its competitors. We enjoyed the reputation of having a comprehensive sports section that offered far more extensive coverage of the schools than other papers around us. My coverage of the Patriots held its own against the competition of the metro papers (and almost got me hired elsewhere twice), and our sports columns were must-read features. And even as our circulation fell and our staff was reduced, Peter Gobis and I tried our level best to maintain that level of quality for as long as we could. Gobis, who predated me at The Sun Chronicle by five years, continues to labor on in a manner that defies explanation, given his age.

And yes, I could have left permanently. I had job offers from the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville and The Eagle-Tribune in Lawrence and interviewed favorably at the Boston Globe and Providence Journal. But for me, The Sun Chronicle was "home" -- the paper of record in my hometown and the area in which I grew up -- and the job I had there was still better than the ones I had been offered elsewhere. I became a lifer, and I don't regret it in the slightest.

So, lest what I have to say be labeled the rantings of a "disgruntled" former employee, let it be known from the onset that it was always my intention to become a former employee -- on March 17, 2019, precisely. More than 40 years of full-time work, which included me becoming the longest-tenured reporter assigned to the Patriots beat at the time of my departure, wore me down, especially after I had suffered a mild stroke in late 2014. I could see at the time of my decision to retire that the dire economic conditions faced by the newspaper industry as a whole were only going to get worse, not better -- and that as staffs were trimmed, the end result would be that more work was going to be heaped upon those that remained, not less. That's more easily handled by younger individuals (like me in my 30s, when a 72-hour work week was considered the norm) than by those of us creeping into our middle 60s.

But it could have been a different departure. When the topic of my retirement was first brought up, The Sun Chronicle was still owned by the United Communications Corp. of Kenosha, Wis., whose ownership of The Sun Chronicle is best described as being benevolent and benign for most of the nearly half-century in charge. When it was suggested in 2016 that I accept a buyout during a period of staff reduction, I was told by the publisher that I would be kept on in a part-time capacity, still covering the Patriots and the local high schools and writing opinion columns, just for a lot less money. That, and the need for health insurance as I was continuing to recover from the stroke, prompted me to turn down the buyout and to take my chances with continued full-time employment.

But not long after that, UCC put The Sun Chronicle up for sale. It was purchased by an outfit that called itself "TriBoro Massachusetts News Media," led by an individual named Steven Malkowich, which is a front for a Canadian-based media conglomerate, the Alberta Newspaper Group Ltd., where Malkowich is listed as executive vice president.

That company, which also owns the Pawtucket Times and Woonsocket Call, has been buying up small newspapers and struggling newspaper groups all over North America, then gutting their staffs and operating on a bare-bones level. It's not the only group that operates that way. The national chain Gannett used to stand for excellence in local journalism, but its assets were purchased by the the bottom-line vultures that ran GateHouse Media (which owned The Patriot Ledger, the Brockton Enterprise, Taunton Daily Gazette, Fall River Herald News, New Bedford Standard-Times, Cape Cod Times, Providence Journal and Worcester Telegram & Gazette, among others) and with the full company now under the Gannett name, it's a travesty to see how strong local media outlets have become mere spokes in the big wheel of bottom-lined publications.

By the way, the Los Angeles Times reported in 2019 that "the Vancouver-based Alberta Newspaper Group, where Malkowich is employed as an executive vice president, is run by David Radler, the man who helped fallen media baron Conrad Black build a global newspaper empire. Radler was Black’s longtime right-hand man, and later — in exchange for a plea bargain in their fraud case — served as the star witness against Black at trial. Radler, who was formerly the publisher of the Chicago Sun-Times, served less than a year of his 29-month sentence for fraud. Black was recently pardoned by (former) President Trump."

The sale of The Sun Chronicle was announced on Aug. 1, 2018. In the story announcing the sale, it was said that the new company "would retain all employees" -- which it did for less than four weeks. Among the first wave of cuts were the publisher and five veteran newsroom employees, including me -- most of them over the age of 60, which makes me wonder why we didn't consider an age discrimination lawsuit. And there have been other layoffs and reassignments of full-timers to part-time status in the years that have followed. Up-to-date circulation figures are difficult to find, but I've been told it has plummeted well below 10,000 papers since the return to six-day publication just before I departed.

The famed "banned byline."

Needless to say, the suggestion that I would be kept on as a part-time contributor went out the window with the new ownership. On the day I was dispatched, I was told that I would not be welcomed back in any capacity -- an edict that was not imposed upon several other former staffers who were retained to write opinion columns or more. And when one of the stories I wrote about the Patriots in my resumed capacity as an Associated Press stringer displayed my byline on the front sports page of The Sun Chronicle, the editor that allowed that to happen was reprimanded.

A year before, I was called "the face of The Sun Chronicle to most of its readers" in my performance evaluation because of my long tenure, my award-winning work and the popular football picks contest run for nearly 30 years as "Beat Fearless." But suddenly, I was persona non grata because the new owners did not want to call attention to what had been lost as part of their cost-cutting measures.

As far as I can tell, those efforts have not been successful in eliminating my legacy. A week does not pass without me hearing from someone that misses my writing and says there's nothing to read in the paper anymore. I usually thank them for the compliment and tell them that there are still hard-working individuals at the paper trying to produce a good product, all things considered. I also suggest they check out my podcasts and this website, where I still offer opinions on various topics. The blog recently went over 34,000 visitors since I rekindled it last year. And, of course, I still am active in local sports coverage through my work as a sports announcer for three local cable TV systems.

So, I am fulfilled in my retirement. Indeed, I recently gave up my role as an AP correspondent as an accommodation to advancing age, and I suspect that even if I had been offered part-time work with my former newspaper, I'd probably be lessening my commitment by now so I could more fully appreciate life without daily deadlines. Or, more likely, further belt-tightening would have made that decision for me.

So, instead of being a "disgruntled" former employee, I think it's more accurate to call me a "disappointed" former employee -- disappointed by the decline in the quality of a newspaper to which I devoted the best years of my life. 

One particular thing that sticks in my craw is a recent decision to give a permanent column to a letter-to-the-editor gadfly that has no business being employed by any newspaper anywhere.

This individual has been hired to be the newspaper's "conservative voice," apparently. His lengthy and poorly-written ramblings carry the taint and stench of the Donald Trump doctrine of xenophobia,  racism, exclusionism and divisiveness that practically fractured America before the electorate came to its senses and overwhelmingly threw the failed New York City entrepreneur out of office after four nightmarish years.

But why did The Sun Chronicle hire this individual to write his Trumpian nonsense? Plain and simple, it's pandering to potential subscribers.

Back in the day when newspapers declared their political affiliation to the world, the Attleboro Sun and North Attleboro Chronicle were known as "Republican," and that status carried over to The Sun Chronicle after the papers merged in 1971. But in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the paper hired young reporters and editors who were more forward-thinking and liberal, and thus any official political affiliation was permanently dropped.

Undoubtedly, The Sun Chronicle voiced a more liberal slant to its opinions and endorsements over most of my tenure there, and reserved the letters-to-the-editor column for the yelps of outrage expressed by the area's conservative gadflies. As a matter of fact, a liberal editorial stance is more reflective of most of the readership. In the paper's circulation area, eight of 10 towns voted in support of Hillary Clinton in 2016 and nine of 10 for Joe Biden in 2020, although the margins were narrower in the towns closer to the conservative hotbeds of central Bristol County. 

I have no way of knowing the actual thought processes which went into the decision to hire a columnist that embraces the failed policies of Trump. But given the number of letters the paper received during the election that decried Joe Biden as a Satanic ultra-left radical that hated America, it makes sense that someone in authority might believe that there was an untapped reservoir of potential subscribers that felt unserved by the paper's liberal slant. And by pandering to that specific angry and bitter minority, maybe they might be persuaded to buy a newspaper that offered some measure of validation to their fringe beliefs.

Rather than convince any of the well-meaning and respected Republican public servants of the area (of which there are many) to become a regular contributor to add balance to the paper's perspective, it instead offered regular column space to a junior-grade Alex Jones, a Trump wannabe that loves to dish out the criticism but can't take any himself. Years earlier, when he was just another letter-column gadfly, I personally and privately disputed a falsehood directed at me that he espoused in one of his diatribes. He immediately went running to the managing editor, crying that the big, bad sportswriter had said awful things to him (which I hadn't). And because spines lost a lot of calcium within the offices at 34 South Main Street as the circulation numbers plummeted, I was called into the office and reprimanded as being "unprofessional" -- the implication being that it was wrong to challenge any potential subscriber about anything, no matter how stupid, untrue and insulting it was, as long as it was possible for us to squeeze 10 bucks a week out of that nitwit's wallet.

That may have been the day, in fact, that I knew it was time to retire. That was the day that I realized that the paper would never again back one of its columnists in a dispute that included a threat to stop buying the paper by those aggrieved by an opinion contrary to their own.

Still proud of the work we did.

Don't get me wrong. I loved the paper for most of my long tenure there. There were bumps along the way and nothing was ever perfect. I thought some of my bosses had no idea what made our section successful and often tried to change our content in a manner that would be distasteful and repellant to our loyal readers, and some of my bosses surely thought I was headstrong, arrogant, unwilling to take direction and occasionally reckless and insubordinate. They were correct, of course. But somehow, we all managed to get the job done in a positive way over more than 40 years. 

I'll always have the greatest love and respect for the newspaper and many of the people that worked for it, and the adventures we shared -- some of which I speak about in the episode of "The Owner's Box After Dark" to which I added a link at the end of this column. In that episode, I recognized the positive things said about Gobis and me in a special section marking the paper's post-merger 50th anniversary. And who knows, maybe I'll write a lengthy post someday about the positive memories -- things like how we all banded together during a surprise April 1 blizzard to put out a newspaper with ancient, battery-powered laptop computers and lanterns, or the amazing tales of publishing (or trying to publish) in the wake of the Blizzard of '78.

I grieve the impending death of local journalism, because it's already clear that the less local news reporting there is, the less informed the public becomes about the world around them, and that eventually leads to how you get the likes of Donald Trump elected to national office. And it's only going to get worse before it gets better -- if it ever does.

But while I also believe, as my friend said in her letter to the editor, that there's still reason to respect The Sun Chronicle as a vital source of local news, I think I should be able to note the mistakes it makes -- especially the continuing participation of the rabble-rousing conservative columnist -- without my being labeled as a "disgruntled" former employee.

Disappointed, yes. Disgruntled? Not at all. I'm quite proud of what I accomplished along with so many other outstanding community journalists over the years. And I'm saddened to see it disappearing with every passing day.

Thomas G. Souza, 67.

The three amigos -- from left, Tom Souza, Mark Farinella, Alex Salachi.

I lost a friend this week. And even though I have spent the last half-century or so expressing myself through the written word, it's difficult to find the precise language to express how I feel.

After all, there is a certain inevitability to death. We all die. The time and place are rarely of our own choosing, nor are the circumstances, but the realization of its finality may be the hardest thing of all to accept. And so it is that I cannot believe that I will never see Tom Souza again.

Thomas G. Souza.

Thomas Gerard Souza was a little more than month younger than I, having been born on Feb. 22, 1954. We became friends sometime in our early teens, brought together by mutual friend Alex Salachi as we ate 99-cent pizzas from the Gloria Colombo Hall and sang our own version of karaoke -- before there really was such a thing -- to the music of the Beach Boys.

It was a merging of Mansfield cultures -- Tom lived on Pratt Street to the east, I lived on Dean Street to the west, and Alex smack dab in the middle of town on Pleasant Street. Alex and I attended different schools than Tom in our youth, but he knew Tom from his participation in youth sports, and it was only natural that the Three Amigos would be united at some point.

From those humble beginnings were forged a bond that would last a lifetime. And while adulthood, family responsibilities and careers may have extended that bond to its limits at times, it never broke -- until last week.

Cancer took Tom's life after a lengthy battle in which he truly fought the good fight. He endured multiple surgeries and rehabilitation stays, and gradually, the disease robbed him of the vitality that was the hallmark of his 67 years on this earth. But it never robbed him of his spirit. 

The last time I saw Tom, we were both undergoing physical therapy at the Foxboro facility of Brigham and Women's Hospital at Patriot Place. His challenge was far more daunting than mine; he was trying to restore his ability to walk after yet another resurgence of his cancer, while I was trying to get my balky left knee to work again after surgery performed last August. Indeed, that was to have been my last visit while it was Tom's first, brought to the facility by his oldest brother, Jack.

After our sessions were over, we chatted in the waiting area. It had been a grueling session for Tom, who, in seemingly another life, had been the quarterback of the Mansfield High School football team and then a defensive back for Dartmouth College. But the light in his eyes was still shining. His sense of humor and his wit were still intact. The confidence that made him a leader in the travel industry and then successful in television sports production later in life was still present. 

The '71 Hornets. Tom is No. 24.

It was a good day. I was lucky to have shared one of them with him.

In high school, Tom, Alex and I were thick as thieves. Alex was "The Fox." I was "The Hawk," And Tom? Well, he was known by many simply as "T" -- a one-letter brand that was synonymous with a larger-than-life personality.

T was the quarterback. Alex was the basketball star. And I was the clumsy oaf that tried and failed to keep up with my friends' athletic accomplishments, so I turned to scorekeeping and later to sports journalism to be part of the group. But it didn't matter -- my friends never ostracized me for my lack of skill between the lines.

Besides, there was an element of humility involved. We had the misfortune of donning the Green and White of Mansfield High at its lowest ebb in its athletic history, when the school was the smallest in enrollment among the members of the Hockomock League and others took great pleasure in taking us to task for past drubbings dealt by previous Hornet squads. Tom's three years as Mansfield's quarterback resulted in statistics that place him highly among others in school history, yet the one statistic that seems to matter more than it should to those that judge Tom's place in that history still stands out like a sore thumb -- no wins, 24 losses, three ties over that three-year span.

That's what happens when you're playing behind an offensive line in which the weights of three of its five members don't equal the number that Patriots' tackle Trent Brown sees when he steps on the scale.

Tom and Alex on Martha's Vineyard.

But that didn't affect the friendship. Not in the slightest. Alex, Tom and I had countless adventures in our youth, all of which provided our older selves with hours of laughter when we'd get together and tell the tales. There were midnight rides to the Cape and the sweet smell of peppermint schnapps emanating from the back seat of my '68 Plymouth Fury (which Tom had to drive), hi-jinks and escapades galore in the bars and nightclubs of Pawtucket as we searched for female companionship (only to have the ladies naturally gravitate to Tom because he was the smoothest operator of the group), and even memorable "beer runs" to Montreal. And all of these adventures ended with Tom in search of "a good cup of coffee."

But it wasn't always just mindless fun and games. 

Early in 1975, I left Northwestern University for a vacation at home, but with an extremely heavy heart. Four years earlier, I had arrived in Evanston, Ill., with my high school sweetheart, Jackie Cross, thinking that college life was just going to be the last obstacle in our path toward a life together. That lasted about eight months; Jackie found someone else and broke up with me in May 1972, and though we occasionally rekindled our relationship for short and terribly confusing periods of time over the next two years, eventually it became clear that reconciliation was not in the cards.

I struggled mightily with the loss of the woman I loved, but I did not know the news that awaited me upon my arrival home on this particular trip -- that she had become pregnant and married her husband of the next 12 years (until her death of breast cancer at the age of 36) in a small ceremony at nearby Wheaton College. Someone was going to have to break the news to me, and that job fell to Alex and Tom -- who, knowing my emotional excesses of the time, feared the worst.

Tom, Linda and Alex upon my return home.

They, and my girlfriend of the time, Linda Sarazen, were waiting at my parents' home as I completed the 1,100-mile journey. As I pulled the Fury into the driveway, and saw their cars parked nearby, I quickly put two and two together and figured that this homecoming reception would not take place without bad news awaiting me. Thus, the gathering was not overly emotional. It was actually lighthearted at times. And it surely confirmed who my real friends were -- although to this day, I regret that Linda had to participate because she entered my life at a time in which I could not fully return the affection and commitment she was willing to offer me.

Life took the "three amigos" in different directions, although never too far away from each other. 

Alex became a teacher and coach, and today he is the head librarian at Xaverian Brothers High School in Westwood -- as well as my basketball and volleyball broadcast partner for North TV's telecasts of King Philip Regional High School sports.

Tom, meanwhile, became an innovative executive in the travel industry, helping Collette Tours of Pawtucket become a player on the national and international level. One of my happiest memories of his time with Collette was when he hired Alex and me to serve as tour chaperones for a bus excursion of a group of senior citizens to Montreal for New Year's Eve. Once the old folks were put to bed, and fueled by several high-octane Canadian beers, I took a memorable dip in the pool on the rooftop of the Bonaventure Hotel, emerging from the heated indoor portion into the exposed-to-the-elements half, feeling my hair suddenly freeze in place in the sub-zero night air. 

Tom eventually struck out on his own, and later in life embraced an entirely different challenge when he founded his own television production company, USA World Media. His company would provide the production equipment and talent for telecasts of small-college sports and the Cape Cod Baseball League for various networks such as NESN, Fox College Sports, NBC Sports Network and ESPNU, among others. Tom was particularly proud of his work with the Cape League, and that the sideline reporter's position for those games helped jump-start the media careers of talented individuals such as NBC's Kathryn Tappen and Megan O'Brien, a fellow Northwestern Wildcat, who until recently was a familiar face on the Patriots' in-house media presentations and now works on WWE telecasts.

And of course, my career in sportswriting took me to nine Super Bowls and also involved coverage of a World Series, the NCAA men's and women's basketball championships and a whole lot more. Alex and Tom started families, while I adopted the athletes I covered for my newspaper as "children in sport" -- an acceptable substitute for something that had been ripped out of my heart years earlier.

Tom Souza in 2009.

As time passed, my interactions with Tom lessened. It was driven home to me how long it had been in a considerably embarrassing manner; I ran into him at a high school basketball game after several years of not seeing him, and because I was not aware that his brown hair had turned fully gray, I called him by his brother Bob's name. Imagine my chagrin when he graciously corrected my mistake!

In more recent years, fortunately, we saw each other more. Alex and I would make a point of checking in with him as he supervised a Cape League telecast. He continued to work even after his initial diagnosis, and it was at one of the more recent games that I realized what a toll it was taking on his physicality. But as stated before, the spirit was still as willing as ever -- just as it was when I saw him a few months ago, trying to exercise as a harness supported him on a treadmill.

My heart is with his family -- brothers Jack, Bob and Paul, all fondly remembered by many for their athletic prowess at Mansfield High, and sister Janet, and their families. Tom met his wife, Sylvie, in Montreal, and while I was not as present as others in the lives of her and her children, Kyle and Alexandra, I want them to know that Tom was as much a brother to me as if I had been blessed with one of my own. His spirit and the grace and dignity with which he faced his last challenge will be an inspiration to me for as long as I have left on this planet.

And I hope that Tom has finally found that good cup of coffee.

The Owner's Box After Dark, Ep. 47.

It's been a while since the last episode of the After Dark franchise, but as promised, I have returned with the step-by-step instructions for how you can make quick and relatively easy fake Southern pit barbecue on your very own outdoor grill -- no hours waiting for meat to tenderize in a smoker, no special ingredients, no muss and no fuss. Just good eatin' in less than 60 minutes from turning on the grill.

I also offer a quick update about my remaining TV schedule for baseball and softball at King Philip Regional High this spring.

It's quick and entertaining, and you will be hungry afterward.

The Owner's Box After Dark, Ep. 46.

Ray Martel is the executive producer of Mets baseball on WCBS Radio in New York.

Ray Martel, originally of Pawtucket and a Bishop Feehan alum, is the man in charge of New York Mets radio broadcasts on WCBS (880 AM) in New York City. He's ideally positioned to be able to answer questions that I have about how the pandemic has affected how pro sports get on the air, and whether some of the cost-saving measures currently place might persist even after COVID-19 is nothing but a bad memory.

I recently spoke to Ray to get his insights into what it takes to get Major League Baseball to you in the midst of a pandemic, and it was an entertaining and informative conversation. What we have in this episode of After Dark is about five-eighths of the full interview, which can be heard in its entirety in Episode 36 of The Owner's Box, my original audio podcast. These are good highlights, and thus we could bring this interview to you in under an hour's time.

Enjoy!

The Owner's Box, Ep. 36.

Bishop Feehan alum Ray Martel is the executive producer of Mets baseball on radio.

We're back in a big way, having cranked out our third episode of the O.G. of my podcasts, The Owner's Box, in just 10 days.

Today we welcome a first-time guest, Ray Martel, the executive producer of New York Mets baseball broadcasts on WCBS Radio in New York City, who is well-versed in the changes in sports broadcasting caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ever since pro sports returned to the airwaves following last year's lockdown, media outlets have taken significant steps to comply with pandemic restrictions and keep their talent safe, including the announcing of games from remote locations instead of the ballparks, stadiums and arenas. And broadcasting from stadiums in other parts of the country? As they say in NYC, fuhgedaboudit. 

We also discuss whether some of these restrictions have led to conclusions in the bean-counters' offices that maybe they don't have to pay for expensive trips for announcers if they can do a passable broadcast from watching the games on monitors in a local studio.

Full disclosure: Ray is a Pawtucket native, a Bishop Feehan graduate and a loyal Patriots fan, so we have plenty to talk about beyond the broadcasting industry. It's an hour's worth of good listening from the podcast that leads the way among all others from Mansfield, Mass. Enjoy.

"Cam's our quarterback ..." until he isn't.

Cam Newton will be the starter ... until he isn't. That's always how the story goes.

Some people never learn. 

Last night, after Patriots' coach Bill Belichick met the media to discuss his selection of Alabama quarterback Mac Jones with the 15th selection overall, most of the collected reporters made a big deal out of the fact that Belichick said in his opening remark that "Cam's our quarterback" -- of course, in reference to Cam Newton.

Well, what else was Belichick going to say? And since he's been here since 2000, hasn't the media picked up on his mannerisms yet?

As always, it will be Bill's call.

Belichick is not going to say publicly that Newton should be ready to pack his bags. First of all, he respects veteran players too much to publicly humiliate them. And he's not going to give the media fodder to create dissent and disruption within his team. It's his way -- although I have to give one unnamed reporter credit from the transcript I read, for getting Belichick to say that for Newton to not be the starting quarterback, "Somebody would have to play better than he does."

Well, duh. That's usually the case with all players. And indeed, I'd have to agree with what Belichick said at the top, although I would presume to finish his initial statement by adding "until he isn't."

Belichick is not going to anoint Mac the Knife (younger readers, Google "Threepenny Opera.") as his starter right now, before he has even set foot on the artificial turf at Gillette Stadium. He'll probably even make the kid wear some stupid number like 58 (sorry, Pete Brock) in training camp. Only Bill knows when Jones will become the starter, and he won't tell anyone outside the team until long after the decision has been made.

Mac Jones is here to be a starter.

But I'll tell you one thing. Nobody in the NFL has ever drafted a college quarterback within the first 15 picks without the intention of starting him -- and soon. I do remember that Bill Parcells danced around some nonsense of starting journeyman Scott Secules over Drew Bledsoe, the No. 1 pick in the land in 1993, but that foolishness didn't last very long.

Mac Jones will be the starter for the New England Patriots soon. Very soon -- unless he absolutely shits the bed in training camp. That's not likely. 

Newton will remain here only as long as Belichick sees him as a necessary insurance policy. But given his struggles last year, and the blueprint that Belichick laid down through his free-agency expenditures, it almost seems inevitable that the Patriots will move on from Newton as quickly as possible.

It's not that Newton didn't try. He did. He played as well as he could -- and, he had the unfortunate circumstance of coming down with COVID-19 early in the season. Some say he never fully recovered, but COVID does not turn a man's arm into jelly. Athletic old age does. And given how much Belichick spent in the offseason to upgrade his receiving corps and tight end, he does not want to hand the keys over to a quarterback whose last option for success is to run the ball himself.

That's not to say that Newton can't help some other team. And usually, Belichick is quite accommodating to accomplished veterans. If he is convinced that Jones can take the reins at the start of the season, and he can't find a willing suitor for Newton through trade during the lead-up to training camp, Belichick will release Newton early in camp to give him time to find another interested team and to get familiar with their system in time for their season to start.

Call it a professional courtesy. Bill's big on those.

Meanwhile, he has nine other draft picks to ponder when the draft resumes tonight at 7. The odds of him using all nine in their original positions have to be worse than 1/1,000. And that's why I'm glad I don't cover the draft any more, because no matter how many bands the NFL invites to turn the most boring three days in sport into a boring three-day fan festival, it's still a whole lot of "hurry up and wait" for the media members covering the proceedings.

But at least Belichick didn't trade out of the first round this year. We can all be thankful for small favors.

The Owner's Box After Dark, Ep. 45.

Glen Farley, left, and I agreed about the merits of the "Fall II" sports season.

The high school football season is finished here in Massachusetts, although with a little luck, a new one should be starting in another four months or so. So it's a good time to recap what we've seen, and what we think may happen in the future, here on the area's most compelling video podcast.

I talk with my broadcast partner for North TV's coverage of King Philip Regional High School football, Glen Farley, about how the state responded positively top the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic to create a season for the fall sports' athletes that couldn't play during their traditional time of year. It's a thoughtful conversation, but it may take a little extra effort to listen to it; we recorded it at Macktaz Field in Wrentham just before the KP-Franklin game last Friday, and the pre-game music blasting over the loudspeakers provided us and our vocal cords with a rather unique challenge.

I also include highlights of this thoroughly entertaining game, and then add some comments in praise of a couple of former local athletes that are making their way up the ladder of basketball success, former Bishop Feehan standouts Lauren Manis and Katie Nelson. It's all in a jam-packed 45th edition of The Owner's Box After Dark ... and yes, even the Hugh Hefner pipe makes an appearance in this one.