Ponderous thoughts I was pondering ...

Alex Cora fiddles while the Red Sox burn. Could be time for a change.

Ponderous thoughts I was pondering while grumbling over forecasts that this will be the 11th straight weekend with rain on its way:

** It's been more than 35 years since I last covered a baseball game at Fenway Park as a sportswriter, and probably about 25 years since I last set foot in the ballpark save for two Thanksgiving weeks ago, when the King Philip Warriors and Franklin Panthers played their annual football rivalry game there on the Tuesday before the holiday (KP won, 35-0).

So I admit, my insight into the Red Sox is completely pedestrian in nature. I'm just another guy sitting in the recliner before the 48-inch TV (I upgraded from 40 last year, but anything larger would not fit in my living room). But I'm not at all hesitant in telling you that this team is absolutely infuriating me.

These Red Sox should be a lot better than they are. No question about it. But right now, as they find themselves 11 games behind in the loss column to the flawed Yankees in the AL East, I want to throw things at the new big-screen in frustration at their miserable lack of consistency ... and maybe even an accompanying lack of cojones. 

Their fielding is suspect. Their pitching is inconsistent at its best, and downright undependable at its worst. They make stupid baserunning mistakes. They have no idea how to close out games that would be wins. And worst of all, they just can't fucking hit the ball. They put 19 runs on the scoreboard in a win over the Orioles on May 23, and have scored a total of 15 runs in five games since.

And all the while, manager Alex Cora goes before the cameras with a blank stare in his eyes and says, "We have to be better," and so on -- his delivery mirroring the total lack of motivation that his team shows every time it can't hold a 1-run lead going into the ninth inning.

I was a big Cora fan at the start of his tenure with the Sox, and was pleased he returned after he served his suspension for his minor role in the Houston Astros' cheating scandal. But the miserable finishes of the team over the past few years and the overwhelming mediocrity of this team are just pissing me off. This team is stagnant, no matter what moves it seems to make -- and often, those moves don't really make sense.

There are a few areas of major concern that are particularly maddening.

Garrett Crochet: Is he Chris Sale 2.0?

For one, free agency signings seem to get the kiss of death once they step off the plane at Logan. Chris Sale was an injury-ridden bust during his time here, and now he's regained his Cy Young pitching form in Atlanta. Infielder Trevor Story appeared heading along that same path, and now, even though he's in the lineup, he can't hit his weight. Ditto Alex Bregman, who got off to a great start -- and yup, there goes his quad. 

And how many more terrific pitching performances by Garrett Crochet can they squander before he becomes Chris Sale 2.0?

Another concern of mine is how many young players are being jerked around and told to play different positions at a time in their careers when too much disruption could turn them into the baseball version of Mac Jones. And it's all because Raffy Devers won't play in the field. Sure, he has actually put up some decent numbers as the DH lately, but his petulance to play either third or first put a growing cancer in the clubhouse.

The fielding lapses just irritate the hell out of me, too. I like Jarren Duran, but that line drive that just fell out of his glove in Milwaukee was the kind of outfield defense that I used to play when I was literally the worst player in the Hockomock League. And the way the Red Sox throw the ball all over the infield haphazardly and allow runners to advance? That has no business happening in the major leagues.

Maybe it's just time for a change. Maybe it's time to clean house in the coaching and training staffs to put people in the jobs that will instill fire in their players' bellies and keep them healthy enough to do something about it. 

Do you think Jordon Hudson would let Bill Belichick coach a baseball team?

All I can say is, "they're ruinin' my summah ..." and it hasn't even begun yet.

** I don't know which is the better burn, but these two recent developments in Trump World have warmed my heart with the potential they have for getting under the Orange Turd's skin.

First came the news that Wall Street investors are calling Trump's policy on tariffs "TACO" -- for "Trump Always Chickens Out." In just a few short hours, that phrase has become the dominant comment on social media.

And right up there is the news that Pope Leo XIV, a Chicago native, will televise a special Mass to be shown to tens of thousands of Chicagoans on the message board at Rate Field (otherwise to me, the new Comiskey Field) on June 14, Trump's birthday and the day on which he wants a massive military parade in Washington. The Mass will likely be shown live on American television.

Both are priceless.

** Nothing still prompts me to turn off the radio faster, after all these years, than that insipid 1-800 Kars-4-Kids jingle. I'll die before I contribute a single penny -- and yes, I will still use that phrase even though the U.S. Mint is no longer minting pennies.

** This is the time of year in which I start feeling a little lost. My work as a sports play-by-play announcer is in hiatus until September, even though several local teams have begun play in the MIAA spring tournaments. 

Locally, the King Philip baseball, softball and girls' lacrosse teams, the North Attleboro baseball team and the Bishop Feehan baseball and softball teams have the best chances to advance deeply in their respective tournament fields. Best of luck to all of the local teams, and I promise, I'll be back behind the mic for the start of the 2025-26 school year.

Oh, and a special shoutout to my hometown's softball team, the Mansfield Hornets, ranked 29th in Division 2, which advanced out of the preliminary round today with a win over No. 36 Dartmouth. Go Hornets.

** Back when I returned to The Sun Chronicle in 1989 as the "Weekend Sports Editor," following a two-year stay at The Patriot Ledger of Quincy, we may have had the most educated sports staff in all of New England. I, of course, proudly hail from Northwestern University, while Bill Stedman, then the sports editor, was a graduate of Harvard -- which I always respectfully referred to as "the Northwestern of the East."

OK, I was joking. Northwestern is a fine school, and it boasts what's universally regarded as the best journalism school in the country (the Medill School of Journalism), as well as a pretty damned fine business school (the Kellogg School of Management), a highly-respected medical school, and top-notch programs in law, engineering and technology, and the dramatic arts -- none of which would accept Donald Trump or any of his offspring. You probably didn't even know that back in the 1970s, Northwestern's computing school was one of the initial origin points for a world-wide linkup of computers that would eventually come to be known as the Internet.

These cards started the Internet.

Not that I had anything to do with that, of course. I'd just stop in there occasionally and steal a whole stack of used computer punch cards, utilized initially to input data. They were great all-purpose items, especially well-suited for sticking under a too-short leg of a chair so it would stop rocking. I was ahead of my time where recycling was concerned.

But Harvard is ... well, Harvard. It's in a class by itself. And now it finds itself in the crosshairs of Trump's vindictive quest to use "anti-semitism" (which is bullshit) as justification to force Harvard to adjust its curriculum to reflect the conservative tropes of the MAGA movement, eviscerate the school of its federal grants, and deport its large enrollment of international students -- rumored to be partially because Harvard would not admit his youngest son with those serial-killer vibes, Barron. Yes, I know Melania's spokesman claimed that isn't the case, which gives me all the more reason to believe it.

Well, as is usually the case, Trump has conveniently forgotten that he does not have the power to erase the First Amendment from the Constitution. He has made a career of acting out his petty and misinformed grievances by forcing governmental influence (or more accurately, his own personal influence) in every walk of life -- and I firmly believe he will eventually fail.

But in the meantime, I stand firmly behind the Northwestern of the East in its legal battles against this half-pint dictator. 

** You may have noticed a new look at the top of this blog. After almost 17 years, I've changed the photo at the top and the title font to give it a more recent and up-to-date look, and to reflect my new venture into electronic media.

I've been investigating an entirely new look for the blog, but I've gone through all of the templates on the hosting site and I have yet to find something that really tickles my fancy. So I just changed the top photo -- although if you're really sharp-eyed, you may notice a hint of its past.

At the upper left-hand corner, where there is a replica of one of the Patriots' championship banners hanging on the wall behind me, you may notice the letters "BF" inside the blue field. That's the old typeface for the title of the blog, and without those letters, the online version of the blog does not have an identifying title. Now, the online version will have "BF" as its title -- which could stand for a lot of things I can't print here, but it actually stands for "Blogging Fearlessly." Duh.

That may be resolved if I find a new template I like. In the meantime, I still think it was a good idea to freshen up the look a little. After all, a baby born when I started this blog would probably be entering his or her senior year in high school this year. 

** I'm still planning to re-invigorate my podcasting platforms in the next few weeks, especially now that I have more time to devote to them. But I'd also like to take some of this time to do what they call in Australia a "walkabout" ... or in my case, jumping into the ragtop, pointing it elsewhere and then heading there.

I've always loved driving, since the days when my parents would load me into the '56 Chevy for the annual 2,600-mile round-trip drive to Florida to visit my grandparents, as well as my frequent drives to and from Northwestern in my college days. Yeah, I'm older now and I have to take that into account, but I was thinking -- before all of the current North American nastiness erupted, that is -- of heading north into Canada, maybe to Montréal or maybe retracing my steps from a 1980s drive through the Maritime Provinces.

Those considerations were made, of course, before Donald Trump started this nonsense of demanding that Canada become our 51st state and then threatening to inflict all sorts of vindictive tariffs on that sovereign nation. Now, I'm not so sure.

Yes, I'd like to take a spin up there. I'd like to get back in touch with Molson and Labatt's, with Tim Hortons coffee and "viande fumee" (smoked meat) and maybe even try some poutine (never had it!). And it's not as if I am afraid of crossing the border. I don't think the Canadian border guards will be hostile. They, like most of their brethren, are generally polite, almost to a fault. They've also probably heard lots of Americans tell them, "I didn't vote for the son of a bitch!" and so on.

The true north, strong and free.

It may also help that I am fond of wearing a small flag pin on the collar of my polo shirts, a faithful representation of the maple leaf in all its glory. I've worn those since I used to make frequent "beer runs" to Montréal back in the 1970s, bringing back multiple cases of the high-test Molson Brador brew (8.5 percent alcohol) in those little squatty bottles you don't see anymore. I wasn't smuggling; I always paid the duty fee at the U.S. border.

No, I'm more afraid of coming back to my native land. I have no idea if Trump has replaced the border guards with his neo-Gestapo ICE thugs, and if the sight of the flag pin and one half-empty Tim Hortons cup is going to get me thrown into an El Salvadorian gulag.

If I do make the trip, I intend to bring along my mixing board and a new laptop computer, and I should be able to put together some "on the road" podcasts with some new technology. Those might come in handy if I'm processed for deportation as an undesirable upon re-entering Highgate Springs, Vt.

** And finally, some of you may recall my old friend Jackie Pepper, who served as a reporter and sports anchor for NBC Sports Boston and NECN back in the 2000s. Barely 5 feet tall, but feisty and enthusiastic in her work, no one could burrow her way through a scrum of reporters to get right to the source of the group interview better than Peps. 

My friend Jackie Pepper.

The Boston TV market has always been volatile, especially in the cable realm, so Jackie returned to her native Los Angeles and held a variety of positions, including at TMZ and KNBC, before landing a great job as a senior video producer for Yahoo! Sports, where she won a prestigious Edward R. Murrow Award for her work.

Part of what gave Jackie the confidence and energy to excel in life was her association in her youth with Camp JCA Shalom in Malibu and the Shalom Institute. The organization operates a camp, conference and retreat center, focused upon instilling Jewish values, promoting sustainability principles and practices, and being welcoming and inclusive to people of all ages and abilities.

As I have gotten to know Jackie a lot better since her brief tenure in Boston ended, I have learned just how much she treasured her experiences at the camp, and the bonds she forged there. Truly, the friendships she made there have lasted a lifetime, and the lessons she learned made her one of the most confident and personable individuals I have met in the sports media.

But the camp faced a severe challenge to its very existence when, on Nov. 9, 2018, one of the most destructive wildfires to leave a charred path through the southern California landscape destroyed more than 95 percent of the buildings on the Malibu campus. The institute amazingly had most of its programs operating at other sites within four months of the fire, and then it embarked upon the effort to rebuild.

Jackie has made the full commitment to help. Since February, she has been a full-time development associate for the Shalom Institute, and today she put a post on social media that included links to a story about how new facilities on the original Malibu campus are starting to open to the next generation of campers. But the work has really just begun.

I know how much that camp meant to her, and I also know how personally devastated she was when the wildfire claimed it. She's putting 100 percent of her efforts behind the quest to offer new generations the same opportunities she had to experience personal and spiritual growth. I really have to respect that.

I wouldn't ask you to reach into your wallets and contribute, as I have, if I didn't believe in the sincerity of her efforts. You can learn more about the Shalom Institute and its goals at this website: Home - Shalom Institute.

** We'll be back with more posts soon ... but hopefully, not sent out by carrier pigeon from within an El Salvadorian gulag. Cheers!

MARK FARINELLA wrote for The Sun Chronicle of Attleboro, Mass., for 42 years. You may send him cakes with hacksaws hidden inside, but not at his email address -- which is theownersbox2020@gmail.com.

A new North High: To be, or not to be?

North Attleboro voters will be asked in June to replace their current high school.

The hottest debate in the area is definitely over whether North Attleboro's electorate will vote in early June to build a new, $290 million high school off Landry Avenue, replacing the one that was built in the mid-1970s to finally replace what's now called the Community School, which is in the middle of town and adjacent to Community Field.

As I am no longer a North Attleboro resident -- and no, I don't use the overly pretentious spelling that employs the colonial-era "-ugh" at the end -- I really shouldn't tell people that pay taxes in that community how to vote. But because I was a resident from 1992 through 2002, and because I've spent practically all of my life living in this area and covering the athletic teams of 11 local high schools including their beloved Red Rocketeers, I think I have some measure of understanding of the issues on the table.

North Attleboro, which separated from big brother Attleboro (which dropped the -ugh from its name in 1914) in 1887, is the second-largest community in the circulation area of my former newspaper, The Sun Chronicle -- which, itself, was the product of the merger of two daily newspapers, the Attleboro Sun and the North Attleboro Chronicle, in 1971. I worked for both. But while North Attleboro has roughly 5,000-6,000 more residents than my bordering hometown of Mansfield, it barely has more than a few hundred more students in the high school.

Mansfield has always been a little more proactive about building new high schools than North (which is what the residents prefer to call it). North built the Community School in 1919, and let it serve the high school students of the town until the new school was finished in 1973. Mansfield, meanwhile, built what's now the town hall as MHS not long after North's, replaced it in 1954 with what's now the Qualters Middle School and then replaced that with the current MHS building in 1970.

Both current high school buildings have been augmented by temporary classrooms over the years, mostly to deal with a sudden uptick in student population in the 2000s. But that has subsided in both communities -- one of the reasons why the proposed NAHS replacement is supposed to house only 1,050 students upon completion.

In Mansfield, no one is talking about replacing the 55-year-old high school -- probably because it has been maintained well over its lifetime, as my property taxes can attest. North residents, however, have seemingly taken great pride in keeping their tax rate artificially low by, as it has been explained to me, cutting corners on maintenance and upkeep of all of the school buildings in town. 

Admittedly, I don't get to see every inch of either school in my ongoing quest to cover high school sports in the towns. Most of what I see are the athletic facilities. This past year, my town raised quite a bit of cash through taxation to renovate the football field, buy a video scoreboard, put down a new floor in the high school gym and meet a few accompanying needs without even a peep of protest. Paying for education is something Mansfield voters tend to do, although they drew a line recently by refusing to pass an override of Proposition 2½, the state legislation that limits annual municipal tax increases to 2½ percent of the previous budget.

North recently spent nearly $5 million for a full reconstruction of its on-site football stadium, lending some to whine about how there are those in town that will pay for anything related to football and not for academics. That can be debated until the cows come home, but North was forced into the project when all of the stands were condemned, and state and federal regulations required construction of additional facilities (including bathrooms) that were compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Also, it should be noted that plenty of teams of several different sports use Beaupre Field.

The much-debated Beaupre Field scoreboard.

The new Beaupre Field is an excellent facility. Among the improvements were a $200,000 scoreboard that projects video replays, just like Mansfield's, which raised the hackles of some of the so-called taxpayer watchdogs in town. School officials countered with three points of information -- first, the old scoreboard was falling apart and new parts were not available; second, the new one could be turned into a revenue stream by selling advertising time to local businesses; and third, by swinging a deal for two new scoreboards for the existing gymnasium that can be mounted in a new gym once it is built.

The bottom line, however, is that a new school would be far more likely to meet the educational needs of the next generation of NAHS students and beyond than a costly renovation of the old school. Younger residents seem to be in favor of it. But there remains the old guard of those that wave their walking sticks in the air and shout that they didn't need all these fancy modern doo-dads to get an education.

I've gotten the distinct feeling that many of those that have made their objections loudly public either didn't graduate from the current NAHS, or haven't set foot inside it since their graduation. And there's this one chap, a constant letter-writer to The Sun Chronicle, who proudly proclaims in his missives that he is a tireless advocate for taxpayer rights. He has also claimed that all of the media organizations covering the town, both The Sun Chronicle and North Attleborough Community Television (Full disclosure: I now work at the latter on a part-time basis), have a liberal bias and are deliberately misrepresenting the facts in an attempt to push their evil liberal Democrat agenda upon the good, Trump-loving conservative voters in town. 

The fact is that North voted to support presidential candidates Hillary Clinton in 2016 (51.2 percent), Joe Biden in 2020 (58 pct.) and Kamala Harris in 2024 (52.4 pct.). The margins may have been a little closer than in other local towns, but facts are facts. The notion that North is some sort of Trump stronghold is nonsense.

Besides, I've always felt that those who constantly tout their allegedly noble intentions are overstating their importance.

The new Tri-County is under construction.

I can't blame North voters for looking out for their wallets -- especially older ones that may not have the resources to cope with constant tax increases. But it could also be argued that the town has artificially kept its tax rate low for many years. North also got a double whammy recently in having to fund the largest share of the new Tri-County Regional Vocational Technical High School in Franklin because it sends the largest share of students to the school that opened in 1977. Like many other communities, North stopped offering vocational education in its own high school once a modern vocational school opened nearby -- but Tri-County's success at its mission eventually caused it to outgrow its facility and create the need for replacement.

The new Tri-County has a $286 million price tag, and North voters approved their share by a large margin. But now there are concerns that Trump's constant threats of tariffs to overseas suppliers of building materials are going to result in huge cost overruns -- which the taxpayers of neighboring towns will have to pay.

There's one hard truth to be stated here. A new North Attleboro High will not be getting any cheaper. The town will be getting a pretty good chunk of change back from the state if it proceeds with the project now, but there are no guarantees of future lucrative reimbursements. And nothing seems to be getting cheaper anywhere -- except, maybe, within the addled confines of Donald Trump's failing brain.

As I said at the start, I can't tell anyone in North how to vote. I know what I'd do, which would be to vote for the new school, because I believe that part of the responsibility of living in a community is to look beyond my own selfish concerns and do what's best for the community as a whole. If that means paying more taxes for a community need, then so be it.

Perhaps that one fellow that touts his undying vigilance over North Attleboro's bottom line should come to realize that North will still exist once he is gone. Decisions of this sort are made with the future in mind -- even if it's not likely to be a future he will live to see.

For more information about the project prior to the June 3 vote, check out the fact sheet at this website: MSBA High School Building Project Updates | North Attleborough Public Schools.

MARK FARINELLA wrote for The Sun Chronicle in Attleboro for 42 years until his retirement in 2018. He had the distinct privilege of being among the first classes of Mansfield students to enter the Everett W. Robinson Elementary School in 1966 and Mansfield High School in 1970.

When I found 'shelter from the storm,' and a good catch-phrase.

The newsroom of The Sun Chronicle, which I lovingly called "the Blue Ribbon Daily."

I still read my former newspaper practically every day, even though I lost my job there in 2018 as part of a corporate downsizing following its sale to venture capitalists. It wasn't the fault of anyone that actually worked there ... and I was going to retire in just a few months following my layoff, anyway. The time had come.

There's no denying, however, that The Sun Chronicle played a major role in my life. Not only did I work there from Feb. 7, 1977, through Aug. 28, 2018 (with a two-year break in the middle), I also served as a part-time sports correspondent for both of its predecessor newspapers, the Attleboro Sun and the North Attleborough Chronicle, when I was in high school.

That's not easy to forget. I've made it impossible to do so, in fact, because an entire wall in the room in which visitors enter my house is dedicated to all the plaques from the many awards I won for my writing and editing skills over my many years there.

The Sun Chronicle did quite well in the awards department in those days. We had a strong staff of news reporters, sportswriters and editors, and we'd bring home a lot of hardware from the many banquets staged by the regional news organizations that doled out such awards every year.

The triumphant return of my newspaper's nickname.

In fact, one of the favorite terms I used in my sports columns to refer to the newspaper was "the Blue Ribbon Daily." That's not a reference to Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer, but instead, a reference to how prize-winning entries at state fairs and other such events were often issued medals hung from blue ribbons to indicate first-place honors.

I was reminded of this on Monday when I thumbed through the online print edition of the paper -- yes, I actually pay for it -- and found "Blue Ribbon Daily" in an opinion-page column written by former colleague Tom Reilly. I was overjoyed to see it; hey, it's not as if I held a copyright on it.

Truth is, I actually stole it from someone else -- and now, the story can be told.

Portrait of the author as a young man, circa 1975.

I finished my education at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism in December 1975, but because I had to polish off a few course requirements in an extra semester or two, I missed my chance to graduate with the Class of 1975 and had to wait until the following June to participate in the Class of 1976 graduation ceremonies inside the school's basketball arena.

Before that, I started my first post-graduation job in the real world -- as "suburban editor" of the Westfield (Mass.) Evening News. We didn't have a very big staff at that tiny newspaper, so it took quite a bit of negotiating to get a long weekend off so I could head out to Chicago for my graduation. And I was getting paid only $110 a week to work in Westfield, so I had to travel on the cheap. I took off-peak-hours flights from Bradley Airport in Connecticut and back again, and in planning for the trip, I called former classmates that were still in the area, hoping I could crash at their apartment for the two nights I'd be in Evanston.

All seemed to be going well by the time I landed at O'Hare Airport on a late Friday afternoon and took the shuttle bus to the northern suburb where Northwestern is located. It dropped me off at the Orrington Hotel in Evanston, the only real non-fleabag hotel in town at the time, and well out of my price range. I disembarked from the bus, grabbed my huge garment bag (remember those?) and headed out on foot into the campus area to the address given to me by my former classmates.

I reached the house in about 20 minutes, rang the doorbell and waited to see the friendly faces of my old pals, eager to take a load off. The door opened, and instead, strangers greeted me.

Apparently, my friends absolutely forgot that I was coming out for graduation, and they had already terminated their lease and headed to their families' homes in the Chicago suburbs with the intention of returning to campus the next day for their graduate school ceremonies. The new occupants had no idea what was up, however, and they weren't bashful in telling me to go elsewhere. Maybe they thought I was a narc, or something ... I always did look pretty straight-laced, and even more so after I shed my longer locks to join the workforce a few months earlier.

So, back I went into the mean streets of Evanston. If you're from there, you'd understand how sarcastic a statement that is. Despite being only 14 miles north of the center of one of the largest cities in the country, Evanston was as prim, proper and tight-assed a community as you could find. Even in 1976, you could not purchase hard liquor in the city (and couldn't even buy beer except served with a dinner) because it was the headquarters of the national Women's Christian Temperance Union, and those sweet little old ladies wielded iron fists in denying the purchase of alcohol to a community that hosted a Big Ten university.

I wandered the town for hours, wearing a three-piece suit (don't ask why) and slinging the big garment bag over my shoulder. Occasionally I would stop at pay phones and try to call phone numbers of former classmates that might still be in town, but one call after another was either greeted with recorded disconnection messages or unfamiliar voices. So I kept walking, stopping once for a slice of pizza that practically broke my travel budget, and otherwise retreating to the student union or sitting on park benches along the lakefront just to rest. 

By around 8 p.m., it was dark and I was getting desperate. I stepped into the lobby of a dormitory on the north end of campus thinking that my only option would be to overspend on a room at the Orrington, if one was available, and maybe beg my parents to wire me some emergency cash to pay for it.

As I was dialing, I heard a familiar voice from behind.

"Mark? Is that you? What are you doing here?"

My friend Marilyn Adams in 1977.

I turned and saw a very familiar face. It was a young woman named Marilyn Adams, a fellow Medill student, who had taken the Introduction to Photography class for which I served as a teaching assistant. Marilyn was 6-foot-2, very attractive and absolutely brilliant, and we struck up a friendship during her time in the class -- but as it is with so many people at that stage of one's life, I assumed I'd never see her again once the semester ended.

After the initial hugs and greetings were shared, Marilyn and I found chairs in the dorm lobby and I told her my sad story about being cast into the wilderness by my absent friends. Without hesitation, she said, "I can help!"

Marilyn had become a resident assistant in that dormitory, and she had to remain on station there until all of its residents had departed. This was likely to be her last night in the dorm, but her room was absolutely palatial compared to the student rooms -- two full-size beds, lots of closet space, a kitchenette and a private bathroom -- and she immediately extended the invitation to stay there for as long as I needed.

I was absolutely floored by her generosity. I mean, we hardly knew each other, but it was nice to know that she sufficiently enjoyed chatting with me during her time in the class to offer me sanctuary before I was about to become one of the best-dressed vagrants in Evanston's history.

We went to her room and talked about all sorts of things for at least three hours before it was time to retire. And all the while, I equated my experience to a song by Bob Dylan that had been released the year before -- "Shelter from the Storm."

The next day, refreshed and relaxed, I called my folks and begged them for some money to avoid sleeping on a park bench after graduation. Sadly, Marilyn had to finish moving out of her room that day, otherwise she would have been more than willing to share her room with me for another night. We exchanged addresses and promised to correspond before parting company.

My folks were very generous, wiring me enough cash at the State National Bank for me to afford a rental car and a room at a Holiday Inn in the nearby suburb of Schaumberg for the second night. With all that accomplished, I headed to what was then known as McGaw Hall (now the Welsh-Ryan Arena), donned my cap and gown and finally became a proud graduate of Northwestern University.

Indeed, Marilyn and I did correspond quite a bit over the year that followed. She stayed at Northwestern for another year and we met up for a second time that following June when I went to Chicago to attend the wedding of former classmates. After her graduation, she started working at a small newspaper in Indiana and I moved on to The Sun Chronicle, and we continued to share our experiences in long, thoughtful letters.

In one of those letters, Marilyn explained her joys and frustrations at working out in the sticks in America's heartland. But she was always optimistic about her future, and she ended one her missives with a fateful phrase.

"Life goes on at the Blue Ribbon Daily!" she wrote.

Hmmmmmm, I thought. I like that.

And thus, I appropriated her intellectual property, turning it into my go-to catch phrase to describe my place of employment over the next 40 years of column writing.

As time passed, I lost touch with Marilyn. She didn't stay long at that small newspaper; the Gannett Co., then a far more reputable publishing company than it is today, snapped her up to join the staff at USA Today. She moved to the suburbs of Washington, D.C., and became USA Today's top aviation writer, covering all facets of the industry and airline safety for most of her career there. Not long ago, through the magic of Google, I found a video clip of her being interviewed on C-SPAN about some ongoing issue in aviation sometime in the mid-1980s.

I probably should have tried to give her a call on one of my Patriots' road trips to Baltimore or Washington, but I didn't have an address or a number and didn't want to be an intrusive pest. She was busy covering the real world while I was enjoying playtime in the sandbox of journalism. She might not have even remembered me. Life moves on, you know.

But I always wish I had thanked her more -- not only for rescuing me from Evanston's mean streets on the eve of my graduation, but also for that four-word catch phrase that would become my in-print term of endearment for the newspaper that gave me a pretty good career for the majority of my adult life.

And after seeing it in print again on Monday, I'm glad it hasn't been forgotten.

MARK FARINELLA wrote for The Sun Chronicle in Attleboro, Mass., for 42 years. He has yet to come up with a good explanation for his other, less-affectionate nickname for the newspaper, i.e., "The Dinky Daily."

When you gotta go, where can you go?

The Mansfield rest area off I-95 North is getting a long-awaited makeover.

I'm old enough to remember the southeastern Massachusetts corridor without the Interstate highways that now dominate the flow of humanity to the north, south, east and west.

Interstate 95, which extends from Houlton, Maine, to Miami, a total distance of 1,923.8 miles, barreled through the Great Woods in the early 1960s. I was attending a Catholic elementary school in Plainville, which resulted in many bumpy rides over Routes 106 and 140 as the construction relentlessly advanced southward. But there was also a source of wonder in my young soul at seeing the mighty construction vehicles plowing their way through ancient forests to fulfill President Eisenhower's vision of a network of limited access highways that would connect all parts of the nation -- a network very similar to the famed German autobahn system that caught his fancy during World War II.

And Interstate 495, which is one of the longest spur routes in the entire Interstate system, followed not much later -- but it took a lot longer to complete. The section coming down from the Mass. Pike to I-95 near the Foxboro-Mansfield town line was finished not long after I-95's completion, but that's one of the places where it stalled. The extension to Route 24 in Raynham was finally completed in 1982, and it took many more years to extend the road (then called Mass. Route 25) to U.S. 6 in Wareham. The final connection to the Bourne Bridge was held up by court cases seeking to prevent access through farmland held in private ownership, and eventually, compromises created a convoluted route that finally got the superhighway to the doorstep of Cape Cod in 1987.

Before then, good ol' U.S. 1 was the main way to get to and from Boston or Providence and beyond. And as for I-495? Well, its long-awaited completion was a godsend to the residents of my hometown, which had to endure ridiculous summertime traffic jams as vacationers wound their way through our streets over Route 106 on the slow and winding way to Halifax, Route 3 and the Sagamore Bridge.

Sometimes, it doesn't pay to be in a slow-moving car, gulping down cups of coffee to stay alert, and suddenly finding one's self in need of a rest stop. No question about it, when you gotta go, you gotta go.

But in the years prior to the Interstates, three-hour drives that became 45-minute sprints in later years could be interrupted when nature called by stopping at any of the several gasoline stations that could be found in the towns along the route. And all of them touted clean restrooms, as well as attentive attendants that would fill your tank, check your tires and oil, and clean your windshields with smiles on their faces.

That is truly a lost part of Americana, but I digress.

My beloved 1968 Plymouth Fury.

As I grew older, I became quite reliant upon the Interstate Highway System. Starting in my sophomore year at Northwestern, I drove my 1968 Plymouth Fury back and forth to Chicago at least 19 times by my count, and additionally driving from Chicago to Florida and back when my grandfather died in 1974. I became quite familiar with the New York State Thruway, the Ohio Turnpike, Indiana Toll Road and the many expressways around Chicagoland. I even occasionally took sidetrips north, through Michigan and on Highway 401 in Ontario to Niagara Falls, because the Canadians were much better at removing snow from their highways in winter.

And you know what? It doesn't matter if you're driving 30 miles an hour or 70. The longer you spend in your car, you're eventually going to have to make a bathroom stop somewhere. And because the goal is to get from Point A to Point B in as little time as possible, you don't always want to find an exit, head into some unfamiliar town in the middle of the night, and just hope that there's some gas station or restaurant open where I wouldn't have to ask for a key to use the men's room.

That's why I was always glad to see the many rest areas along the Interstates. They had gas, they had food, and most importantly, they had lots of toilets.

Almost everywhere, there were HoJos.

Back in those days, some states called them an "oasis" to distinguish them from rest areas without services. Along the Connecticut Turnpike, they were called "canteens." Most of them would have a full-service gas station with multiple pumps, a restaurant (often a Howard Johnson's along the Northeast corridor), and maybe a gift shop. Some in lesser-traveled areas might have only a gas station and a lot of vending machines. And in New Jersey, the ones along the New Jersey Turnpike and Garden State Parkway had multiple food choices and even possibly more than one brand of gasoline.

In the 1970s, you could trust them to be clean and safe at all hours of the day. You might even trust them enough, as I often did, to pull into them and catch a quick cat nap before resuming the marathon drive. 

I recall all this because recently, my former newspaper ran a story about the rest area along I-95 northbound in Mansfield, at Mile Marker 10 north of the Rhode Island border. When it was first built, it featured an attractive central building finished in a red brick façade. Located within were modern men's and women's necessary facilities, vending machines and a staffed information desk where you could find pamphlets about local and regional tourist attractions. 

Mansfield's own rest stop fell into disrepair.

But after a lengthy period of financial belt-tightening, the state shuttered the visitor facility and boarded it up. It closed in 2009, re-opened briefly in 2010, but was soon closed for good and fell into serious disrepair. Now, however, relief is about to return to the rest area. Through the efforts of local legislators, the state Department of Transportation has decided to raze the old building and replace it with permanent portable restrooms -- and thankfully, not those stinky plastic kiosks with the noxious blue liquid festering at their bases. These are large trailers that should, if properly maintained, provide the traveler in need with a reasonable level of comfort and privacy while answering nature's call. 

The plan fell short of what the legislators hoped to get -- electric charging stations, automated information kiosks and vending machines -- but at least it's something, and it should open for your business by the end of the year.

Now, you may ask, "where's the Howard Johnson's and the Atlantic gas station?" But if you're asking that, you're my age or older.

In Pennsylvania, the stops are like mini-malls.

Surely, it would be nice to offer motorists a fully-functional oasis like you see on the toll roads, with a McDonald's, a Subway, a Starbucks or a Dunks, a gift shop, lots of clean restrooms and maybe even a Mobil station where the gasoline isn't priced 40 cents a gallon more than it is a mile off the highway. Problem is, they can't do it.

In 1960, Congress passed a law prohibiting private businesses to operate within the rest areas on Interstate highways. The idea was to protect local businesses from losing customers to the services operating on the highway itself. That's why there are signs along the Interstates telling you what restaurants, hotels and fueling stops are near the highway.

"But wait," you ask. "What about all those rest stops you just mentioned?" 

Well, many of those operate on pre-existing highways that were made part of the Interstate system long after the facilities were built. And if the states collect tolls in lieu of receiving federal funding for maintaining their portions of those numbered highways, they aren't subject to the ban. A quick trip around Google told me that there are 10 states -- Florida, Maine, Maryland, Oklahoma, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Kansas, Indiana, New York and New Jersey -- where these types of service areas were grandfathered in. I recall some in Ohio as well, and Google Earth confirms to me that those still exist.

Massachusetts also apparently grandfathered in a few other service areas, like the one on Route 24 in Bridgewater and on the former Route 128 (now I-95) in Newton and Lexington. Those were built when the highways were state roads, as Route 24 still is. But I do recall a few that have disappeared from the landscape; one was near Sturbridge heading toward Connecticut on I-84, whose buildings -- orange roof on the former restaurant and red trim on the former gas station -- were clearly visible from the highway for years before finally being torn down. The overview from Google Earth still shows a small clearing where the facilities once were, but nature is reclaiming the site.

Rest areas on American highways have somewhat of a romantic notion about them. When high-speed travel became a possibility, the states that operated them often turned them into palaces. And many of the states added their own unique stamp to them. 

You won't find the Bada Bing at this rest stop.

For instance, New Jersey has always named its rest areas after famous residents of the state. People have long known of the Vince Lombardi Rest Area along the New Jersey Turnpike, as well as plazas named for entertainers Frank Sinatra and Jon Bon Jovi. More recently, the Garden State Parkway has added its service plazas to that list. 

In 2022, a rest stop in the Montvale area of North Jersey was named for none other than the late actor James Gandolfini, whose unforgettable portrayal of mobster/family man Tony Soprano was the force behind the groundbreaking HBO series that redefined episodic drama on television. That rest area was slated for a major renovation and closed not long after, but it re-opened in January. 

Sadly, among the many dining options on the site, there are not franchises of Satriale's Pork Store or Artie Bucco's Vesuvio II.

These Merritt Parkway stops aren't much different.

You can still find some mid-century charm in the tiny rest stops along the Merritt Parkway in Connecticut, a favorite alternative for westbound motorists looking to avoid the chaos on the Connecticut Turnpike. The tiny buildings have restrooms and convenience-store items, and there's usually just one row of gas pumps in the middle of a narrow strip of pavement off the travel lanes. Both have been upgraded and modernized a little over the years, but as the accompanying 1949 photo attests, the changes haven't been extensive.

I've waxed poetically about these rest areas thus far, but there's a darker side to them as well.

As time has passed and the highways have grown busier, the rest areas have grown more congested and don't always feel as safe as they might have 50 years ago. And from personal experience, I can tell you that I'm not always impressed with the level of cleanliness. We've seen Robert F. Kennedy Jr., our current Secretary of Health and Human Services, swimming gleefully in a bacteria-infested river, and from that, I surmise he'd feel right at home in some of the feces-encrusted rest rooms I've seen along today's Interstates.

And there are other, less savory issues. You may recall that several years ago, a woman was brutally murdered inside the Burger King on the northbound side of Route 24 in Bridgewater.

Across from the Mansfield rest area, on the southbound stretch of I-95 in North Attleboro, there's a much smaller parking area. There are no services, and it borders closely to Plain Street and the gravel pits in the vicinity. For many years, that area was widely known as a prime area for what the gendarmes called "lewd and lascivious behavior" between same-sex individuals looking for a secretive hookup.

There were frequent arrests made there, and I recall one day in the newsroom when our irascible police-beat reporter, Henry Reiley, stormed through the door and loudly inquired, "Has anyone here heard of (name of local former parish priest redacted)?" When I responded that I had because he used to be the parish priest at my church, Henry responded that the individual had just been arrested at the North Attleboro rest stop. It seems that he had been soliciting a hookup from a motorist, and received a significant beating because of it.

That did not surprise me at all, because when I was a pre-teen, trying to be a good little Catholic and confessing my sins before performing the Easter ritual of taking communion, this individual asked me a very inappropriate question of a sexual nature while in the confessional. Young as I was, I wasn't really sure what the hell I had just been asked, but I knew it was sketchy, and when I told my father (a very devout Catholic) about it later that evening, his face turned beet red and he wanted to head directly to the rectory and commit mayhem. Fortunately, my mother talked him out of it.

And this was long before anyone knew of what was going on at churches all over the state -- far more horribly in a neighboring town, in fact. 

That fellow died about a year ago. There was not one single word of his rest area escapade in his diocesan-approved obituary. Par for the course, I suppose. Pope Leo XIV has his work cut out for him in that area, I suspect.

Now, nothing awful has ever happened to me at a rest stop in more than a half-century of personal travel. But there's no way I could imagine myself taking the quick naps I once did, and thus leave myself vulnerable to who knows what.

Gradually, the rest areas' importance to travelers is waning in favor of the giant truck stops, huge convenience stores and the clusters of hotels and dining establishments that spring up around otherwise isolated exits all across this great land of ours. I'll probably not be availing myself of those in the years to come, because I'm getting a little too old for long drives -- and my bladder would have me stopping every 35-40 minutes at the rate that I consume caffeine-laced drinks to keep myself alert behind the wheel. 

But as I said before, there are just times that when you gotta go, you gotta go. And when you're in those desperate situations and you find yourself seriously considering peeing into an empty Starbucks cup while driving 70 mph, nothing says "Valhalla" better than a blue sign on the side of the road that says REST AREA 1 MILE, and with that, the unspoken guarantee that there will be relatively clean toilets and even a place to get that next giant latte.

I'm glad that my hometown will once again be able to satisfy the restroom requirement to those in need. 

MARK FARINELLA drove that beloved '68 Plymouth Fury through 36 U.S. states and four Canadian provinces before the gasoline crisis of 1974 doubled the price of filling its 24-gallon tank. Contact him at theownersbox2020@gmail.com

Ponderous thoughts I was pondering ...

My tools of the trade are more electronic than analog these days.

Ponderous thoughts I was pondering before loading tables, chairs and electronics into the SUV for a game in Plainville and hoping the thundershowers will stay away, all being a rite of New England springtime:

** Obviously, I have a lot more time on my hands than I used to. Such is life in retirement from the daily work grind. People ask me if I miss my days as a swashbuckling defender of truth, justice and accurate box scores in the newspaper, which are now almost seven full years in the past, and it takes me a couple of seconds to come up with a legitimate answer.

The truth is, I do -- and I don't.

I do in that I fully realize these days how fortunate I was to have a job in local journalism that was fulfilling and enabled me to straddle the world of big-time professional sports and the local high school sports that I always loved so much. 

I covered just about every level of the sporting world during my tenure at The Sun Chronicle and dalliances with other news-gathering organizations. I covered nine NFL Super Bowls, including quite possibly the most exciting one ever played -- and of course, I'm talking about the Patriots' overtime victory over Atlanta in Super Bowl 51. And because I had been able to convince (some would say "con") The Sun Chronicle into committing a lot of financial resources into sending me on the road for a couple of decades, I got to see almost every important game the Patriots played during their two dynastic eras and so much more.

I also covered World Series games, NCAA basketball tournament games (both men's and women's), and all sorts of other major events over those many years. But when I'm asked what I count as my most exciting experiences as a sportswriter, I still point to two local circumstances above else -- the quest of Foxboro High's Sarah Behn to break the state basketball scoring record in 1989, and the day in March 2018 when both the Mansfield High boys and the Foxboro High girls both won state basketball championships at Springfield's MassMutual Center.

But at the same time, I don't miss it. And the main reason why?

Deadline work. 

Those that believe it's a glamorous life to hop from city to city and stadium to stadium covering pro football do not see the long hours slaving over the writing instruments (typewriters at first, then laptop computers) after each game is done. Especially when you're the guy working for the small newspaper trying to compete with the multiple writers sent to the same event by the large metropolitan newspapers, the workload is considerably larger.

I believe my personal record for stories of 16 or more inches written after a Super Bowl was 11, all of which made it into the newspaper the next day because The Sun Chronicle was then published in the afternoons. I came close to that after our change to morning publication with 10, three of which appeared only on our web page because of deadlines.

And those were just the Super Bowls. My usual average after any pro game was seven stories, all written in place at the stadium following a game. It usually took about three hours -- the only benefit to that being that it usually emptied out the Foxboro parking lots by the time I was finished.

That's a young man's job, and I willingly and enthusiastically attacked it. But by the time I was in my 60s, it was much harder to accomplish. And, with shrinking revenues and less space in the daily newspaper because of it, it became impossible to accomplish toward the end of my career. 

But try as I might to keep the coverage at a high level, I was still exhausted at the end of the night. And after suffering a mild stroke in 2014, it became a concern going forward that too much stress would not be good for me. 

I had planned to retire around St. Patrick's Day in 2019, but the fates took control and altered the plan. New ownership of the newspaper threw me out on my ear in the last week of August 2018. I expected it; the writing had been on the wall for weeks after the sale that lots of staff was going to be let go for the bottom line, and I was an expensive commodity. Fortunately, I had also planned well for my future, so the disappointment of enduring such an ignominious end to my career was mitigated by the realization that most everything was going to be OK.

These days, I'm still fulfilled with a continuing involvement in covering high school sports as a play-by-play announcer for North Attleborough Community Television, Mansfield Cable Access and Foxboro Cable Access as a play-by-play announcer. I'm no Vin Scully, Curt Gowdy or Gil Santos and I never will be, and it sometimes frustrates me that it's a little tougher to climb that learning curve in my 70s than it might have been 50 years ago. But I do love the job and I've gotten to announce state championships and hopefully provide a strong-voiced and enthusiastic call for the athletes to cherish in recorded memories.

Gobis and I are still on the job. Just less.

I am asked frequently if I'm disappointed in what has happened to my old newspaper's sports coverage since my departure and the retirement of Peter Gobis (who still contributes some in retirement). I quickly answer that they should respect the effort being made by staff writer Tyler Hetu to keep the local coverage comprehensive despite demands and challenges that Gobis and I stopped facing in the 1970s when the paper's growth skyrocketed. He's doing a good job, folks. 

It's still a lot of fun to be involved -- even if I do have to carry a lot more heavy equipment to the fields and courts than I used to. In truth, the level of effort is almost perfect for an old man with a young man's heart.

** I was shocked this week to learn that old friend Missy Traversi had left her job as the head coach of the Army-West Point women's basketball team. I was even more shocked to read that it was being framed in some corners as a dismissal, although it was called a "mutual agreement" in the official press release issued by the military academy.

Missy Traversi made Army a winner.

I reached out to Missy, and she assured me that she was "in a good place," but she did not offer any more insight into the situation -- which is her right. A personal statement she released upon her departure certainly made it sound as if it was an emotional decision, and she said she was now going to devote more time to her family, and to be honest. I have no cause nor any license to want to pry any deeper.

But the old journalist in me is struggling with why this happened. Missy had just completed her most successful season in four years at Army -- 25-8, just missing an NCAA Division 1 berth, and going two rounds deep into the Women's NIT, which was a first for the Black Knights of the Hudson. She was 66-55 at Army, which might just be the toughest place to coach in all of NCAA basketball because her recruiting base is severely limited, the athletes at service academies cannot partake in NIL benefits, and their five-year service commitment post-graduation kicks in after two years of attendance, negating the value of the transfer portal.

One thing that irked me was the wording of the Army press release. Not only did it not thank Missy for her accomplishments, it said that a search would be conducted to find a coach that would "recruit, educate, train, and inspire leaders of character who are committed to the Army Values through an extraordinary Division I athletic experience."

I believe that's exactly what Missy did.

Maybe at some point, Missy will share in more depth what happened -- but that will be up to her to choose whether it's anyone's business to know. I hope all is well for my long-time friend, and I salute her for bringing her trademark "inspiring brand of basketball" to West Point, just as she had at every step up the coaching ladder she has taken.

I don't think we've seen the last of Missy Traversi on the sidelines.

** Recently, I had one of those very irritating circumstances that required quick action on my part to avert a potentially calamitous result.

There was a data breach at my bank, affecting all of the accounts I held there. The situation had been nipped in the bud by the proper authorities, but the bank still recommended that I change all my account numbers -- which I did, promptly.

Unfortunately, one aspect of that was a complete change of checking accounts. Since I first signed up for checking with this bank (or its predecessor) in 1971, my check numbers stayed consistent for the entire time I had the account -- which means that before the breach happened, I was writing checks with the identifying numbers "8871" and so on, and was hoping to reach five figures before my check-writing days were over.

Sadly, the new account reverted to "101," and from there I continue.

The silly things people worry about ...

** A recent story in the Boston Globe said that new Patriots' coach Mike Vrabel is having a closeout sale at Gillette Stadium, trying to rid the franchise of all things related to Bill Belichick and Jerod Mayo. As evidence, the story said that there are now more than 40 new individuals on the roster, and the number continues to grow.

Mike Vrabel has the reins.

Well, I'm good with that. In case you haven't noticed, the last five years or so have really sucked.

Years ago, when Bill Parcells first came to the Patriots and he started changing everything in sight, I had the occasion to quibble a bit over some changes in media access to the team. I wrote him a letter (I thought that was the dignified way to do it), and as soon as he received it, he was on the phone to me almost instantly.

It didn't start as a pleasant phone call, and I recall Parcells bellowing at me in a voice that would melt steel, "It's my team now, and I have to do what I think is right."

And he was absolutely right. That's why he was hired. He had a vision for what a real NFL team should be, and it was his job to turn that into reality.

By the way, the call went a lot better after that. Once Bill understood that I wasn't just trying to be a selfish little douchebag whining about where I had to stand during practice, and that I really cared about maintaining a certain comprehensive level of coverage for the benefit of my readers, the conversation became amicable and productive. Bill bent a little on a few of his new rules -- not much, but even a little was a lot for him -- and the result was, as Humphrey Bogart said to Claude Rains at the end of Casablanca, "the beginning of a beautiful friendship." Or at the very least, a good working relationship, which I cherish to this day.

Tear it up and start again, Mike. 

MARK FARINELLA wrote for The Sun Chronicle of Attleboro, Mass., for 42 years. Reach him at theownersbox2020@gmail.com.

The fans got it wrong again.

Julian Edelman (11) makes a difficult catch in a 2014 game against Denver.

I have been a member of the Patriots Hall of Fame Nomination Committee since 2007, when the committee was founded. Of the 17 times the committee has met since then (we all missed the COVID year and it was unnecessary with Tom Brady), I have missed only one meeting, when work commitments got in the way.

And in all those years, I've been happy and honored to do my job -- to be involved in the nomination of three former players or coaches and then to let the fans finish the job by voting for the player they feel is most worthy of enshrinement.

Only twice have I felt with all my heart that the fans got it wrong. The first time was 2016, when Kevin Faulk was selected. The second time? This year.

On Monday, the Patriots announced that the fan balloting had chosen wide receiver Julian Edelman to become the 37th inductee to the team's hall of fame. Edelman outpolled another first-time nominee, kicker Adam Vinatieri, as well as offensive guard Logan Mankins, a three-time finalist.

Edelman was often the center of attention.

Before I say anything else, I want it clearly understood that I fully believe Julian Edelman is worthy of enshrinement. A former quarterback from Kent State, Edelman became one of the more clutch receivers in team history as well as a highly accomplished kick returner. He made quite possibly the greatest catch in Super Bowl history in Super Bowl 51 against the Atlanta Falcons, and was the MVP of another Super Bowl. He even played defensive back on more than a few occasions, and was always one of the more interesting and entertaining players that was able to radiate some personality out of an otherwise lead-lined locker room during the era of Bill Belichick's philosophy of radio silence to the outside world.

Yes, Edelman is worthy. But this year, I was certain that someone else was more worthy. Far more worthy.

Without Adam Vinatieri, there may have been no dynasty.

I have never shared the league-wide notion that kickers are not real athletes, and little more than a necessary evil. You've heard the jokes -- the big guys do all the grunt work, spilling blood and fending off pain, and then the little kicker runs on the field and says. "I keek a touchdown! I keek a touchdown!"

Vinatieri celebrates the winning kick in SB 36.

No, Adam Vinatieri was an athlete from Day One of his career. He was in rock-hard physical condition. He ran sprints and gassers before and after practices with the running backs and wide receivers, and not just prancing down the fields with the punters. He even ran down the United States of America's ambassador to the Bahamas, Herschel Walker, on a kick return in one of the league's more memorable special-teams plays in its history -- which, I assume, Walker has yet to live down.

But more than anything else, Vinatieri was clutch. He was money. He had ice in his veins -- especially when he nailed the two field goals against Oakland in the Snow Bowl at Foxboro Stadium that saved their bacon on the path to Super Bowl 36 in New Orleans. Those, and the game winning kick against the Rams, were the foundation of the first of two Patriot dynasties in the 21st century.

He spent 10 seasons with the Patriots and won two of their three Super Bowl championships in that period with late-game field goals. He had so many game-winning kicks in his career, I lost count. And for those who scream, "But he left the Patriots and played 14 more years for the Colts," I counter with the observation that it wasn't Vinatieri's choice. Bill Belichick had his ideas of what kind of money kickers should make, and after a decade in the league, Vinatieri was never going to be offered a contract by the penny-pinching Patriots that fully reflected his accomplishments and worth.

Clearly, Belichick undervalued this asset. Stephen Gostkowski, who succeeded Vinatieri, proved to be a very good kicker -- but he never attained the same level of "clutch" as his predecessor. Meanwhile, Vinatieri went on to become the NFL's all-time scoring leader. And yet, the Pro Football Hall of Fame still thumbed its nose at him during its last round of nominations.

We committee members aren't really supposed to reveal the actual deliberations that go on at our meetings, just as the actual vote totals -- both for our nominations, and the eventual fan balloting -- are not revealed to the public. Frankly, I think there should be more transparency in all of those areas. But I'm not afraid to reveal at least my involvement in the whole process.

I'm the one that stood first before the committee -- and the only one that actually stood, come to think of it -- to nominate Vinatieri for the ballot. I didn't bog down my brief oratory with a long list of statistics or minutia, but instead, I dedicated my comments to his place in team history -- the seminal moments when his actions rose above the game itself to become the stuff of NFL legend. It seemed a no-brainer to me, that the player that provided the Patriots with the most memorable moments in their history other than those authored by Tom Brady should be not just nominated, but immediately enshrined.

But even before I offered Vinatieri's name in nomination, there was already support for him in the room. New head coach Mike Vrabel had visited the suite to thank us for our participation in the process, and before he left, one of the committee members asked him which former player would have his support.

Vrabel stopped in his tracks and thought for a moment, then spoke. "Oh, Adam. Adam, of course," he said, also commenting on Vinatieri's reliability and toughness.

Several other players were nominated over the course of the meeting, and it was not at all surprising that Edelman would be nominated in his first year of eligibility. But the discussion quickly turned to whether Edelman's more recent popularity would give him an advantage among younger fans, and thus shut out the player that just about everyone in the room believed to be the most worthy candidate for this year.

Parcells: Finally in.

We were reminded by those in charge that our job was to nominate individuals because of our belief in their worthiness, and to not be concerned about whether that person would be voted in by the fans. That's a situation we've faced several times over the years, because we put Bill Parcells on the ballot so many times, knowing full well that bitter fans would claim that his negotiations with the Jets during the weeks before Super Bowl 31 automatically discounted his actual value to the franchise. 

And you know what? If team owner Robert Kraft hadn't finally given in and put Parcells in the Hall as a "contributor," we probably would have put the Tuna on the ballot again. And again, and again, and again.

When the time came to vote, I put three names on my ranked-choice ballot -- Vinatieri, Mankins and wide receiver Wes Welker. I had a feeling I was going to lose that last battle, however. Welker has far better statistics as a slot receiver over his tenure with the Patriots than Edelman, but fans still wrongfully blame him for "dropping" a pass Brady threw that could have made a big difference in the outcome of Super Bowl 46 against the Giants. I and many other media members that were there in Indianapolis have contended for a long time that the ball was thrown behind Welker, and it was almost a miracle that he even got a hand on it.

The folks in charge always say that the votes of the committee are almost always borne out by the results of the popular vote. That's hard for me to confirm because we never see the results of either vote, but I don't mean to suggest any dishonesty on the part of the Patriots' organization. It's probably true, although I have little doubt that when there's a challenge between a player from an earlier era and one from more recent times, the recent player has the advantage.

But I'll also cite one circumstance where I believe the voting was unfairly influenced by events that transpired during the balloting. 

During the 2015-16 offseason, the NFL Draft also coincided with the voting period for the Patriots Hall of Fame. The nominees selected by the committee were Raymond Clayborn, Kevin Faulk and Mike Vrabel. The voting period and draft also coincided with the ongoing battle over "Deflategate," the controversy about whether Brady had illegally reduced the air pressure in the footballs he used in the previous season's playoff game against Indianapolis so he would have more control over throwing the ball.

Brady had already been suspended for four games in the coming 2016 season by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, but the veteran quarterback took the league to court trying to get the suspension reversed, and it all was literally the talk of the nation.

Kevin Faulk makes his case for Brady.

So, during the draft, Faulk was invited to announce one of the Patriots' picks during a portion of the proceedings that would receive the full attention of the national viewing audience. As he took the stage, Faulk opened his jacket to reveal a Tom Brady No. 12 jersey, sending a clear message of his support for his QB. Needless to say, the next day, Faulk's recorded vote on the Internet-based Patriots Hall of Fame ballot absolutely skyrocketed -- something that was later and very quietly admitted by those administering the vote.

I don't think I ever voted to put Faulk on the ballot in the first place; he was a good soldier and a very capable third-down back in his later years, when he stopped fumbling the ball in crucial situations, but in retrospect, I believe James White was much better in the role over the full range of his career. In any event, I believe Faulk joined the Hall of Fame fraudulently because of his publicity stunt during the draft.

Edelman's case is different in that I feel he is much more enshrinement-worthy. But I just wish that it could have been put off for a while. Vinatieri will now have no chance to outpoll Rob Gronkowski next year when he gets on the ballot -- in fact, I'm not even sure what the point of a meeting will be, because anyone else we put on the ballot will be sacrificial lambs to the star power of Gronk. 

BB and Jordon Hudson.

And not long after that, Bill Belichick will be on the ballot. Right now, I don't think either Robert or Jonathan Kraft will be willing to consider Belichick as a "contributor" given the contentious nature of their relationship with him in the waning days of his tenure. And no matter what else goes on with Bawdy Bill and his 24-year-old squeeze and personal manager, Jordon Hudson, in the weeks to come, none of that will derail Belichick's entry to the Patriots Hall of Fame. In fact, if social media posts are any indication, Belichick has become even more of a hero among the thirsty incels in Patriot Nation that worship not only his coaching, but now his swordsmanship with the young ladies.

And as is usually the case in situations like this, Vinatieri's chances may wane the farther from his Patriots' career he gets -- unless there's a circumstance like 2017, when Clayborn broke through because he had lesser competition from players from the more modern era. I may not even be around when that time arrives.

If it sounds like I'm bothered by this, you're absolutely correct. I am.

In a way, the Patriots Hall of Fame could be considered an artificially manufactured thing. After all, it's for a team that experienced one-third of its history with actual glory, and about two-thirds of its history in abject futility -- yet there are now 37 members in its shrine, including a former cheerleading coach. Several of its earliest Hall of Fame members wouldn't even get a second look today. And nobody seems to care a lot that players like Michael Haynes and Nick Buoniconti played at least half of their careers elsewhere and were actually better players with their later teams. 

It's already been discussed, and summarily dismissed, that deserving players will be passed over because of logjams in the fan balloting, It's been suggested that some provisions should be made for multiple inductions. But aside from Kraft's own choices, or the selections by a senior committee members' panel that rarely meets to consider players more than 20 years post-retirement, that just isn't going to happen.

So we're stuck with the procedure. The nominating committee may have its flaws, but at least it attempts to give a broad cross-section of those "in the know" a chance to have their say. There are current and former writers and broadcasters on the panel -- although, sadly, much fewer of the older crowd than when the committee was first formed -- as well as former players and coaches and team officials. There are a lot of qualified people in that room, but at the end of the day, we still have to trust our work to the fans that have the motivation to actually vote, and personally, I'm not sure that the cross-section of voting fans is as all-encompassing and knowledgeable as the people that give them the three-name ballot in the first place.

I don't see any of that changing any time soon. 

So we will likely continue to see deserving players slip through the cracks for years to come -- with the only hope for correction coming from the fact that 2018 through the present have produced absolutely no players worth considering in the future. We may need that gap, all the while hoping that Vrabel, Drake Maye and some of the interesting talent that has come on board lately will start to restore the Patriots' fortunes to past levels of excellence.

But I'm not holding my breath waiting. At 71, I can't afford to.

MARK FARINELLA covered the Patriots for The Sun Chronicle, The Patriot Ledger of Quincy and the Associated Press at various times from 1977 through 2019. And he hopes he won't be getting a phone call from the folks at Patriot Place saying he broke too many rules here to stay on the Patriots Hall of Fame Nomination Committee.