Ponderous thoughts I was pondering ...

That's me on the left, charting a football game from the old Memorial Park press box.

Ponderous thoughts I was pondering while awaiting the promised downpours that may transform my yard from the consistency of your Shredded Wheat breakfast to something that's once again green and full of life ...

**As I drove past Memorial Park in Mansfield earlier today, I noticed something was missing.

Even from the distance between Park Street and the field where the Mansfield High football team had played from the 1930s until the opening of Alumni Field behind the high school in 2001, I could see that our old press box was gone.

I'm not sure when it was demolished, but it had to be fairly recently. Indeed, just a few weeks ago I drove past the old ballyard where I once played varsity baseball and noticed how badly the press box had fallen into disrepair.

That's not the first time that had happened, however.

When Memorial Park was first built as a Work Projects Administration development at the height of the Great Depression, several stone-and-mortar structures were constructed ringing the baseball diamond and football field to serve as locker rooms and restrooms. The largest structure was a giant bandstand behind the south end zone of the football gridiron -- and all of these structures remain in place today, nearly 90 years after the park's opening.

Permanent bleachers were not part of the original plan because the field was to be used for both football and baseball. The east sideline, which served as the home side, featured assembled (and frequently replaced) grandstands built of steel and wood, while during football season, temporary stands were erected in the midst of the baseball infield to serve visiting fans, and then disassembled at the close of the football season.

In the 1950s, the park added a large manually-operated scoreboard behind the north end zone, and a small wooden press box that was elevated behind the home stands. But by the time I reached high school in the fall of 1968, the manual scoreboard had long since been abandoned, and the old press box was torn down for being both unsafe and an eyesore.

The town's recreation department, which operated the field independently of the school department, sank some money into the field at about the same time. A new electronic scoreboard replaced the rotting structure in the north end zone, and a free-standing press box was built with a cinder-block foundation and three separate rooms to house the clock operator and public-address announcer, media members and home-team coaches. And it was all painted in spiffy Hornet green.

I remember feeling great pride that, as a fledgling sports reporter for the weekly Mansfield News, I would have a chance to view the field from a brand new perch once the 1969 football season began. I was actually hoping to be the public-address announcer as well -- yes, I had the voice for it even then -- but the athletic director gave that job to his son instead. That was my first introduction to nepotism.

But it didn't take long for my euphoria over having a new base of operations to be dashed.

A few weeks into the season, a group of burnout punks -- and we had a lot of those in Mansfield back in those days -- decided to take out their insecurities on the brand new press box. They absolutely trashed it -- kicking holes in all of the particle board and plywood walls, ripping out electrical connections, stomping holes in the floorboards, pouring out the contents of several beer cans everywhere, and the pièce de résistance -- several of these sub-human slugs went as far as to defecate repeatedly in all three of the rooms.

The only thing these louts couldn't damage was the cinder-block foundation.

It was feared at first that the new structure would have to be declared a total loss and then razed, but the town bit the bullet and rebuilt it. They even used sturdier building materials the second time around to serve as a deterrent to future vandalism by the punks that roamed the town under the cover of darkness. Increased police patrols in the vicinity of the park also helped.

Eventually, I got to use the new press box before completing my high school career and heading to college. It was later named for the former athletic director that gave his son the announcing job -- and in retrospect, I wouldn't have had the ability to handle it and to chart the game for my newspaper coverage anyway -- and it served the Hornet football team and the town's youth leagues for many years. Even after the high school team departed after the 2001 season to an artificial-turf facility behind the school itself, the press box continued to serve its purpose.

Decades ago, a holiday game at Memorial Park.

There have been times over the years when I wish the Hornets could still play at Memorial Park. Like Community Field in North Attleboro, it was a relic of a bygone era, but a majestic one. All those stone structures gave it the look of something out of antiquity, although none of them were very energy-efficient and not well-insulated against temperature extremes. I always thought that it could have been re-envisioned with artificial turf and new lighting and permanent stands.

But because it was under the auspices of the recreation department and not the school department, I suppose there always would have been conflicts over its use. Alumni Field is fully controlled by the school department, and while it has its flaws -- notably, an east-west alignment that creates harsh sun angles in early evening, and its piecemeal design dictated by surrounding wetlands -- it's not subject to inter-departmental conflict. Recently, the town underwrote the final pieces of a gradual expansion of grandstands that took more than 20 years to complete, and added a modern digital scoreboard, and the resulting stadium is as good as any in the area.

But I'll miss that old green press box at Memorial Park. It was my first "home" as a journalist. More proof, indeed, that you can never go home again.

** Sad news to report, amid the nostalgia that has characterized this column so far. I have just learned of the passing of William S. Bruno, 91, who was a well-known figure around Mansfield since his high school days, and the uncle of my close friend ("brother from another mother," as I call him), former classmate and current broadcast partner for Mansfield and King Philip basketball, Alex Salachi.

Willie Bruno, MHS Class of '52.

"Willie," as he was most popularly known, was a 1952 graduate of Mansfield High, where he played baseball and football at a high level and captained and quarterbacked the Hornet football team in 1951. He worked for a while at the clothing store in town that was owned by my father and his three brothers, but he also had the "writing bug," so he started to work as a part-time sportswriter for the Mansfield News in 1952.

He only did that gig for about a year before he was inducted into the U.S. Army in April 1953, but he made it a memorable one. Willie had a natural and engaging writing style and the experience of having been a legitimate athlete. His boss at the News, Dick Yager, said young Willie didn't have much of an idea what newspaper operations were like when he first started, but that he was a quick study and became ultra-productive in the role.

One of Willie's crowning achievements at the paper before he left was a multi-part series highlighting the accomplishments of some of Mansfield's greatest football teams of the more distant past. That underscored his respect for the town's history and the past accomplishments of talented athletes whose feats of glory might have been forgotten under the shifting sands of time.

"Now, wait," you may say. "How do you know all this? You weren't even born yet!" That is true, I entered this existence on Jan. 7, 1954, a year and a half after Willie graduated from MHS. I grew up knowing him primarily as Alex's genial and sports-minded uncle. But when I started working at the Mansfield News in 1969, I made it a point to research back editions (thanks to a sparkling new microfiche reader in the office) so I'd have an idea of what came before me -- and so I wouldn't fall into the trap of writing about mundane accomplishments as if they were the greatest thing that ever happened in our sleepy little hamlet. 

Still enjoying games in his 90s.

When I saw Willie's writing and realized that he also appreciated the context of history, it indicated to me that I may have been on the right path. And knowing that he did good work as a young man fresh out of high school, he inspired me to reach for a similar level of accomplishment, if just a little bit earlier in my life. Indeed, I consider him one of the major inspirations for what became my life-long career.

Willie went from the Army to Bridgewater State College and then entered a career in education. He became a teacher and then an administrator in several neighboring communities, and served for quite some time on the Mansfield School Committee and the town's School Building Committee. He eventually retired to the coastal town of Mattapoisett, where I could always contact him if, in my later career as the 500-pound sports gorilla at The Sun Chronicle in Attleboro, I needed to dig up some factoid of local sports history that eluded my own searches.

I offer my deepest condolences to my friend Alex, for whom Willie became more than just a mentor after he lost his own father during his college years, as well as to his wife Ann Marie, daughters Julie, Beth and Maria, sons Paul and David, and the entire extended Bruno family.

** I seem to be missing the point of the change in college sports these days. The specter of "Name, Image and Likeness" (NIL) benefits certainly has changed the game, and not necessarily for the better. 

Admittedly, college athletes have been taken advantage of for many years. Their performances, fueling the rise in popularity of their sports, raked in billions of dollars for their institutions without returning anything to the so-called amateur athletes that made it all happen. Now that's no longer an issue, but probably because we don't produce too many high-level Division 1 athletes in these parts, I haven't really taken the time to measure or grasp exactly how significant those benefits are.

Recently, however, I heard that a female basketball player from a nearby community was recently recruited to a middle-of-the-pack Division 1 school, and she was given $80,000 as well as a new Jeep in addition to her scholarship. And to be honest, I'm not sure the young lady in question is that impressive of a recruit.

We're all going to hell in a handbasket.

** OK, I gave in and went to see "Fantastic Four: First Steps" at the theater even though I never really had much interest in that Marvel franchise during its heyday. I bought a few FF comic books in the 1970s and only recently benefitted from the experience by reselling them for about $100. 

Kirby and Pascal: Bor-r-r-ring.

The best thing I can say about the movie? I won't have to see it again.

Sure, it was a novel idea to make it a period piece in a parallel universe, but that wore thin quickly. The increasingly overexposed Pedro Pascal (Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic) spent the whole movie either looking concerned, or brooding, or basically playing a wimpy second fiddle to Vanessa Kirby (Sue Richards/Invisible Woman). The Thing and Human Torch had their moments, and they turned the Silver Surfer into a hottie, but the little robot was a pain in the ass. And what did Natasha Lyonne’s character have to do with anything? Waste of a quirky talent.

To me, the movie was just one big gimmick. Both this one and DC's James Gunn-authored "Superman" have turned to the so-called Silver Age of comics for inspiration, when stories were far too exaggerated to be even remotely believable. I'll give props to MarvelStudios for creating an alternate universe in which the kitsch of the 1960s was merged with elements of science fiction that the FF's presence might have influenced, but having grown up in the '60s, I found it too unreal to be relatable.

But hot damn, that product placement! Too bad they don't serve Canada Dry in the Showcase Cinema's drink dispensers. Or maybe they do. I was too pissed off to look when my Cherry Coke Zero button malfunctioned halfway through my cup and I had to complete the choice with Pibb Xtra. Ugh.

All in all, I have yet to see any reason to believe that the FF will be any better as a lasting film franchise this time around, although the desperation move of turning Robert Downey Jr. into Dr. Doom will draw some suckers into the next movie. 

I understand John Malkovich’s scenes were cut from this, and my guess he won't be terribly upset as long as the check clears.

**OK, time to shuffle off. I've got a very important missive in the works for next week, so keep an eye out for that. In the meantime, let's get those Epstein Files out there once and for all!

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

The Owner's Box, Ep. 59.

Here's the new "album cover" for my six-year-old audio podcast.

Sometimes, and I really don't know why, I get away from my podcasting duties. Such was the case over the past seven months; part of the reason was my work schedule through late May, but I've had plenty of time to sit down at the microphone and transcribe my thoughts for global consumption.

I finally got around to it on Saturday afternoon, but in a novel way. 

Thanks to some new equipment I've procured over the past year -- a new headset, a new and more portable mixing board and a new laptop computer that is compact enough to use remotely but powerful enough to record my audio podcasts -- I took advantage of a beautiful day in the neighborhood to set up an outdoor "studio" and record Episode 59 of The Owner's Box.

It went off seamlessly ... save for the fact that I kept referring to it as "Episode 57" throughout (I edited out those references after discovering my error). I have a whiteboard in my home office on which I record the current number of both my audio and video episodes, but I forgot to update the audio number last December for the two podcasts I recorded then. Shame on me.

It's a solo episode, in which I talk about the summer basketball leagues going on in our area, my thoughts on Patriots training camp and the Red Sox, and my current efforts to turn old comic books into cash by selling them to collectors. I also mention that many of these old books have relevance to the spate of new superhero movies being released this summer.

Here's a link. Hopefully it will be the harbinger of many more to come -- including some in which I can take the show on the road, as was my original plan for this summer.

Ponderous thoughts I was pondering ...

Foxboro's Alaysia Drummonds, left, will be returning to the Warriors' lineup.

Ponderous thoughts I was pondering while bemoaning the transition of my backyard from a lush, green carpet to an expanse of Shredded Wheat in just the short span of two hot, dry weeks:

** It's July, and that means the return of one of my favorite summertime activities -- summer leagues for the local high school basketball teams.

Over the last few years, I have gravitated more to the girls' basketball league at Franklin High School run by the Panthers' long-time head coach, John Leighton, because most of the local schools have chosen to compete there rather than at Mass Premier Courts in Foxboro. Nothing against MPC, I'm told -- but some of the coaches believed that the competition level in the girls' league had dropped in recent years, with some of the larger schools dropping out to play elsewhere, leaving smaller schools with less-developed talent pools to be manhandled by the power programs that remained.

At Franklin, most of the top programs in this corner of southeastern Massachusetts are represented.

Hosting site: Franklin High's two courts.

Six Hockomock League schools will be represented, including four-time state champion Foxboro (and a semifinalist last year), Mansfield, Oliver Ames, Attleboro, North Attleboro and host Franklin, which will field two teams. The Tri-Valley League is represented by Kristen McDonnell's Norwood team as well as Medway, Medfield, Bellingham, Millis and Hopkinton. The Bay State League will send Walpole and Natick into the fray, and let's not forget Bishop Feehan (playing under the monicker "Rock Ball"), which has been to three straight Division 1 title games.

Starting this Monday and running through Aug. 6, there will be eight games played twice a week, four each on the two 84-foot courts inside the Franklin High gym, starting at 5 p.m. Teams will play by unique summer-league rules, which include 20-minute halves of running time, clock stoppage only inside the last minute of play, and usually only one free throw on what would be a two-shot foul situation. It's all to keep the games moving so four games can be played on each court during a four-hour window.

And of course, the teams' regular-season coaches can't be on the sidelines for the summer games. That's beholding to an archaic (and totally outdated) MIAA rule that prohibits varsity coaches from coaching their own teams out of season. But that rule was amended several years ago to allow coaches to watch from the stands without actively coaching, which is how I can have enjoyable conversations with people like Foxboro's Lisa Downs, Mansfield's Heather McPherson and Feehan's Amy Dolores during the games.

The competition is usually pretty good, although not all of the varsity players can show up at every game. Some are still active in their summer AAU programs, or participating in camps for the other sports they play, or just enjoying some serious beach time. But I'm generally pleased to see the level of commitment these kids have to give up some of their personal time to play summer ball with their winter teammates-to-be. And this is really where the process begins for the coaches to see how the holes in their teams caused by graduations will be filled when play begins in earnest five months from now.

On Monday, the games I'll be most interested in seeing are in the 6, 7 and 8 p.m. slots -- Feehan vs. Franklin White at 6 (Court 1), Mansfield vs. Natick at 7 (Court 2) and Walpole vs. Foxboro at 8 (Court 2). Of course, I announce Mansfield's games on Mansfield Cable Access, and do occasional games for Foxboro and Feehan on Foxboro Cable Access and North TV respectively.

The games are open free of charge to spectators, with Court 1 the usual varsity court as you first walk into the gym, and Court 2 the adjacent one, Be forewarned -- sometimes the stands are not open on Court 2 because exercise equipment is set up in their place to accommodate early football workouts. It pays to bring a small folding chair.

Here's a link to this year's schedule: Franklin Summer League

** As good as I might think this Red Sox team can be, my optimism has been crushed repeatedly this year by the abysmal performance of their bullpen. So many strong games by the starters, particularly Garrett Crochet, have been wasted because the procession of rag-arms sent to the mound after the sixth inning can't hold a lead.

Crochet: Wasted so far.

And where the hell has been the run support for Crochet? I found it hilarious, though, that in a recent game, when the Sox got him eight or nine runs early on, he had one of his worst efforts and gave up five runs, although he did manage to salvage the win. 

One more gripe -- when things start to go wrong, this team tends to fall apart entirely, especially the defense. Wild throws and dumb decisions quickly turn a salvageable situation into utter chaos.

By the way, I wasn't upset when they traded Rafael Devers. Disappointed, yes, but more in the player because I felt he had become selfish and a distraction. His performances in San Francisco since the trade have not changed my opinion any. In the long run, with a little more enlightened roster building, the Sox should be better off.

** I'll keep my political rants to a minimum. I just see the passage of Donald Trump's Big Ugly Bill as just another addition to the list of things that Democrats will have to fix once they re-take the presidency, the House and the Senate. And as the harm from Medicaid cuts and funding for social programs starts to grievously wound the GOP's MAGA base, that support will erode quickly -- starting with the 2026 midterms.

However, I do have one fear. Trump now apparently has the power to suspend elections by declaring martial law according to the provisions of the Big Ugly Bill. I have got to believe that if he attempts to take that step, all hell will break loose.

This country is in deep distress. Even if Trump should drop dead within the next year, that still puts the Maybelline Hillbilly, J.D. Vance, in the seat of power. And even if the Democrats regain control of the Senate and House and are able to impeach and remove Trump from office in 2027, you still have to deal with Vance to get to Hakeem Jeffries (who will then be Speaker of the House) in the line of succession.

My most fervent wish is to outlive all this and see the America I love restored to a nation that reveres freedom, liberty and inclusion. At 71, the odds may be against me -- but dammit, I will try.

** By the way, has anyone seen gasoline at $1.98 a gallon anywhere in the country? No, I don't believe so. Just another pile of bullshit that the increasingly addled Trump slings at the nation on a regular basis.

Of course, I own two cars for which regular gas is verboten. My two Panzers use premium, which is a 180-degree turn from the me that owned two hybrids in a period from the mid-2000s until 2019. The trade-off is that I drive half as much, or even less, than I did prior to my retirement.

** Great crop of bunnies this year in the backyard. These young buns are absolutely fearless and they have accepted me as one of their own. I guess they realize that I'm not a threat to them. They've seen how badly I walk when my knees are aching, and they know there's no way I could chase after any of them even if I wanted to.

Sometimes, there's nothing more peaceful and relaxing than sitting in the yard, watching these innocent creatures cavort around and nibble the grass while a cooling breeze wafts across the yard from the adjacent pond. 

** Have you seen that the American equivalent of Dr. Joseph Goebbels, White House string-puller Stephen Miller, has sued the Los Angeles Dodgers for alleged violations of Trump's executive orders regarding diversity, equity and inclusion? 

What a fucking asshole. Is it any wonder that his former classmates at Santa Monica (Calif.) High School regard him as the most hated alumnus of the school? Apparently, he was this much of a dick when he was a kid, too. 

How do people like this attain positions of power in this country?

** I've about had it with the approach taken by insurance companies to win your business without telling you how they do business.

Worst national offenders in my opinion are Liberty Mutual's campaign featuring "Limu Emu and Doug," the GEICO gekko and the Aflac duck, and I've also had it with Jake from State Farm. But the one that makes me hit the remote switch is the series of local ads on Red Sox games called "The Bostonians" for Plymouth Rock Assurance. There is nothing at all that would convince me to do business with a firm represented by a house filled with mascots or stereotypes trying to purport itself as a situation comedy.

I think that's one of the reasons why I chose Arbella to handle my car insurance. Their ads generally tell me about their service and how they will serve me, and when I have needed them to perform those services, they have followed through.

And no, I don't get a break on my insurance bill for mentioning that.

** Hey, King Philip football fans! Mark down Friday, Sept. 5, on your calendars. That's when I return to the microphone for North TV's coverage of live high school football as the Warriors take on the Timberwolves of Walpole High, a 7 p.m. start. 

I'm not sure where those games will be appearing, however. I'm told by my boss, Peter Gay, that we may have to shuffle around the North TV channels because of recent technological upgrades. But one way or another, we will be there for you and I'll let you know how and where once we get closer to the season.

MARK FARINELLA wrote for The Sun Chronicle of Attleboro for 42 years prior to retirement in 2018, but he's proven that there's no easy way to get rid of him, as he will begin his eighth season of high school TV sports announcing in the fall. Contact him at theownersbox2020@gmail.com.