My North TV cablecasting schedule for King Philip sports!

The schedule for telecasts of King Philip Regional High School sports this fall is out, thanks to my boss at North Attleborough Community Television (North TV), Peter Gay, so I thought I'd share it. Here are the games that will be televised on the Plainville Channel, and can be seen via delayed broadcast on the live-streaming link on NorthTV.net. Some scheduled games could be subject to change.

FOOTBALL

Sept. 10: BC High at King Philip, 7 p.m. Announcers: Mark Farinella and Glen Farley.

Sept. 24: North Attleboro at King Philip, 7 p.m. Announcers: Jared Ware and Del Malloy.

Oct. 8: Attleboro at King Philip, 7 p.m. Announcers: Mark Farinella and Glen Farley.

Oct. 15: Milford at King Philip, 7 p.m. Announcers: Mark Farinella and Glen Farley.

Oct. 29: Mansfield at King Philip, 7 p.m. Announcers: Mark Farinella and Glen Farley.

Nov. 25: King Philip at Franklin, 10 a.m. Announcers: Mark Farinella and Glen Farley.

MIAA Playoffs, Nov. 5, 12 and 19, telecasts TBA.

BOYS' SOCCER

Sept. 15: Stoughton at King Philip, 3:45 p.m. Announcers: Mark Farinella and Martin Grealish.

Sept. 20: Mansfield at King Philip, 3:45 p.m. Announcers: Mark Farinella and Martin Grealish.

GIRLS' SOCCER

Sept. 22: Sharon at King Philip, 3:45 p.m. Announcers: Mark Farinella and Martin Grealish.

Oct. 4: Oliver Ames at King Philip, 3:45 p.m. Announcers: Mark Farinella and Martin Grealish.

FIELD HOCKEY

Oct. 8: Franklin at King Philip, 3:45 p.m. Announcers: Mark Farinella and Glen Farley.

Oct. 19: Mansfield at King Philip, 5:30 p.m. Announcers: Mark Farinella and Glen Farley.

GIRLS' VOLLEYBALL

Oct. 12: King Philip at North Attleboro, 5:15 p.m. Announcers: Jared Ware and Del Malloy.

Anniversary of a life-changing event.

My former newspaper in its heyday.

Today is the anniversary of an event I probably shouldn't want to remember. It's three years to the day when I was called into the former publisher's office at The Sun Chronicle of Attleboro, Mass., where I had toiled as an award-winning sportswriter for the better part of five decades, and was told I was no longer of any use to the new ownership.

It took less than a month for the carpetbaggers from Canada to eliminate five vital newsroom positions, including mine. Only nine months earlier, there had been a giant poster hanging from the front of our building, bearing my likeness and imploring passers-by to play my annual football contest. I was called "the face of The Sun Chronicle" (insert derisive jokes here) in my last five performance reviews. Like so many others in the noble profession of journalism, I was out the door and on the street because penurious venture capitalists cared only about the bottom line and not whether the public would be properly informed.

Me at Lambeau Field in 2006.

Fortunately, I was in good shape. I had planned to retire in March 2019 anyway, my finances were in order, I had no mortgages nor any major obligations, and thus I was ready to start a new phase of my life. But they didn't let me write a farewell column, which is something I'll always regret. God knows it would have been a lot better than the shit that passes for columns on the paper's editorial and sports pages today.

Briefly, I resumed my role as a part-time writer for the Associated Press, covering the Patriots -- a job I had previously held from 1982-2004 in addition to my duties in Attleboro. But a combination of the pandemic and my new part-time job as a play-by-play sports announcer for local cable TV systems convinced me earlier this year to surrender the AP job and put the Patriots in my rear-view mirror. I don't regret it ... especially now that the mirror is attached to a Mercedes-Benz. Gotta love those retirement accounts!

At Super Bowl XLVI, one of the Pats' losses.

No, I don't have the audience I once had. Play-by-play isn't the kind of thing that you can clip and affix to your refrigerator with magnets to show off your son's or daughter's big play that was captured in the pages of the newspaper. But still, people tell me that they miss my work and that the newspaper is no longer their local news source because there's no news in it. I feel badly when they say the latter part of that, because I know there are still hard-working and dedicated journalists there, doing the best they can under what must be close to intolerable conditions. 

But there's nothing I can do about that. My responsibility now is to be the best announcer I can be for the teams I cover, and I take that quite seriously. I loved working at the newspaper all those years, but in the end, as it is with almost every profession, the love was somewhat unrequited. So we move on.

I'll tell you this much. These past three years have been happier for me, even with the pandemic and a few ailments and other irritations, than most of the last five years of my career at the Blue Ribbon Daily. If not for Malcolm Butler's interception, the huge comeback against Atlanta, and the state basketball championships by the Feehan girls, the Foxboro girls and the Mansfield boys, I might have wanted to be out of that place a lot sooner -- especially when they killed the Sunday edition.

That's all in the past. Onward and upward.

The Owner's Box After Dark, Ep. 52.

Yeah, I guess you could say I've been in hiding -- hiding from my responsibility to keep new content on this site. But it's the summer, guys ... and in a few short weeks, we'll all be back to seeing the sun set at 7 p.m. and the leaves turning colors. So I just wanted to enjoy the month as best I could.

I talk about that in my latest After Dark episode -- catching up with the end of the summer leagues in basketball, partaking in some personal maintenance and battening down for the hurricane that never came.

I also reveal the 2021 King Philip Regional High School football schedule in anticipation of the later release of my cablecasting schedule for North TV's Plainville Channel.

It's all in Episode 52 of The Owner's Box After Dark -- well worth the price for your admission!