Ponderous thoughts I was pondering ...

No, these aren't the King Philip Warriors. They're the Edmonton Elks of the CFL.

Ponderous thoughts I was pondering after wiping a few tears from my eyes while watching Jimmy Kimmel's sincere and emotional monologue upon returning to the ABC airwaves last night ... 

** Big changes are coming north of the border, as the Canadian Football League will be making some radical alterations to their peculiar brand of pigskin coming soon.

The most noticeable change will be in the fields themselves. The CFL, over the next two years, will reduce the size of their fields in the hope that a shorter playing surface will spur the teams into scoring more touchdowns, and fewer field goals.

Instead of the current 110-yard layout -- and who wasn't just a little puzzled by that yard line marked "C" on those fields? -- the CFL field will be reduced to the American distance of 100 yards. And the CFL end zones, currently an expansive 20 yards each, will be trimmed to 15 yards each. That's still plenty of room for a spritely wide receiver to run around in all day until he gets open for his quarterback, but the field-goal kickers will hate it. The CFL will also move the goal posts from the goal line to the end line. 

So, if your team stalls at the 20-yard line, your kicker will no longer have a 27-yard chip shot to post three points on the board. And unlike American football, where that kick covers 37 yards to be successful, the extra yardage will make the CFL kick traverse 42 yards.

Those are huge changes for the CFL, which has jealously guarded its uniqueness since its founding in 1958. But it's not the first time that our neighbors from the Great White North have had to fool around with field dimensions.

Back in the early 1990s, before the CFL and NFL finally reached a cooperative agreement that pumped much-needed revenue into the former (and basically saved it from oblivion), the Canadians get the bright idea that the path to salvation was to expand southward -- to establish CFL franchises in American cities that were unserved or lesser served by the NFL and hopefully seize upon the apparent thirst for more football that was sweeping our nation.

The first such effort came in the 1993 founding of the Sacramento Gold Miners in California's state capital. The next year, three other American cities joined the mix -- but as a result of shaky finances, facility issues and tepid fan interest, teams moved from city to city willy-nilly before the expansion effort was scrapped after the 1995 season.

Baltimore QB Tracy Ham led a winner.

By the time this grand experiment ended, CFL teams had played from home bases in seven American cities -- Sacramento, Baltimore (which had just lost the Colts to Indianapolis), Las Vegas, Memphis, Birmingham, Shreveport and San Antonio. Plans to add five more teams (including Milwaukee, Houston and Miami) were scrapped when the expansion bubble popped.

Only one of those teams, the Baltimore Stallions, accomplished anything. Originally named the "CFL Colts" but forced to shed that identity by the NFL, the Stallions averaged nearly 30,000 fans a game at the old Memorial Stadium and won the Grey Cup championship in 1995. When expansion pooped the bed at the end of that season, most of that team's organization was shipped up to Montreal to undertake the revival of the Alouettes franchise, which had been discontinued.

Many of you may not know this, but there was a brief flirtation with Foxboro Stadium as a potential CFL host site. But no matter how they tried, they just couldn't find a way to squeeze anything close to a regulation CFL field (especially its 65-foot width) into that small footprint without demolishing parts of the stands on all four sides. As it was, four of the teams playing in the U.S. had to play with shorter end zones because the stadiums could not accommodate 150 yards of playing surface from endline to endline. 

There will be a few more changes to the CFL game once these are implemented. The between-plays play clock will be increased from 20 to 35 seconds, and the beloved "rouge" -- the one-point benefit for kicking the ball out of the opponent's end zone, will become much harder to achieve. Someone will actually have to field a missed field goal or a punt in the end zone and take a knee to get one lousy point. 

But there will still be only three downs instead of four, 12 players on the field for each team, and the chaos of unlimited motion before the snap. Pass the Labatt's and the poutine! It will still be recognizable as the CFL, eh?

It has not been said whether all of this will change again once Donald Trump makes Canada the 51st U.S. state. Maybe the next step will be a franchise in Greenland.

** My favorite moment of Jimmy Kimmel's monologue on Tuesday was when he said he had been asked by Disney to read a statement. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a note, looked at the camera and said with a straight face, "To re-activate your Disney-Plus and Hulu account ..." 

Priceless.

Oh, and I did pick up on Kimmel's reference to another famous moment in late-night talk show history, when his first words to the audience were "As I was saying before I was interrupted ..."

On March 7, 1960, "Tonight" host Jack Paar returned to the NBC stage after a month's absence, having walked off his show in protest over the network's censors cutting off a telecast because of a joke that included a reference to a W.C. (water closet, otherwise known as bathroom). It took a month of very public negotiations for Paar to return, and those were the exact same words he said when he stepped through the curtain to begin his monologue.

Drake Maye: He's improving.

** Please, people, enough with all this panic over Drake Maye and the Patriots' 1-2 start. It's way too early to jump off the Zakim Bridge.

Yes, that was a pretty bad performance on Sunday against the Steelers, sloppy and a little on the undisciplined side. But you must remember, Bill Belichick was 5-11 in his first season with the Patriots. Nothing good happens overnight.

It has been my experience to see that young players improve significantly between their first and second years in the league. Maye has done that. The rest of the team has to catch up, and this is with an entirely new coaching staff. To me, the entire operation appeared to be more organized and more proficient than it was a year ago. Let it all come together.

Tom Brady isn't walking through that door. And if he was, he'd be wearing Armani and Ray-Bans -- and would still be part-owner of the Las Vegas Raiders.

Matt Patricia was never this close.

** Speaking of Bill Belichick, how embarrassing must it be to be him? His North Carolina team absolutely sucks and he looks like a fool to have his granddaughter -- er, his young girlfriend, Jordon Hudson, racing over to comfort him at the end of each miserable loss.

Oh, to be a fly on the wall in those meetings of the UNC regents, when someone says, "What the hell did we spent all this money for, to get some geriatric fool who keeps his hot young piece of (expletive deleted) on the sidelines?" While that may be a bit of a knee-jerk reaction, I have to wonder if those with less of a fixation on Ms. Hudson's physiology might be wondering if indeed, the one-time greatest coach of all time has lost his marbles. Ask someone that watched the Patriots over his post-Brady tenure, and they knew all along that North Carolina was getting less than advertised.

And let's face it. The 2000-18 Bill Belichick would not have had his wife or girlfriend on the sidelines with him to usher him off the field. 

Try retirement on for size, Bill. It's far less stressful. And while it may cost you the hot young piece of whatever, maybe Linda Holliday will take you back. At least she's more age-appropriate.

** I'm not ashamed to admit that I voted for Kamala Harris in the last election. I would have voted for a roast beef sandwich from Arby's if I thought it had a chance to defeat Donald Trump and prevent what our nation is going through at this very moment.

Harris' tell-all book is bad for her party.

But I am not a fan of the former vice president trashing her party in her recently published book, a diary of her brief time on the campaign trail after replacing President Biden at the top of the ticket. Any thought that she could return as the Democrats' nominee in 2028 have been dismissed upon her admission that she dismissed Pete Buttigieg as a potential vice-presidential nominee because she believed that a ticket with a black woman and a gay man could not beat Trump.

She may have been correct -- intolerance was definitely a key factor in the 2024 election -- but that's not the sort of thing that Democrats need to hear or to speak out loud as they seek unity and strength to mount the most important challenge ever to a sitting president (and yes, I believe that if Trump is still alive, he will try to run again in 2028).

By the way, at the same time Jimmy Kimmel was returning to the airwaves on Tuesday, Stephen Colbert had California Gov. Gavin Newsom as his guest. I was able to catch about half of the interview, and it was clear that Newsom is preparing for a run as a centrist candidate for the presidency -- not necessarily rejecting the Democrats' left-wing power brokers, but trying to open the doors to those on the right that have grown weary of Trump's politics of vengeance.

I'm not necessarily enamored with Newsom -- after all, he was married to Kimberly Guilfoyle for five years, which could indicate a lapse in judgment -- but given that the electorate is still reluctant to elect a qualified woman, and some of the Dems' most qualified individuals are seen as too progressive to make inroads in the red states, he may be emerging as the front-runner for the nomination this early in the process. What he says, and how he intends to reach out to supporters and detractors alike, is of great importance to our nation.

That is, of course, if Trump doesn't invoke martial law before then, and suspend all elections to facilitate his coronation. 

Bill Parcells

** I was not able to attend the ceremony in which Bill Parcells and Julian Edelman were inducted into the Patriots Hall of Fame, but I did listen in my car through the magic of streaming audio. I am very glad to see that the angst over Parcells' departure to the New York Jets has finally given way to a full appreciation of his value to the health, welfare and future of a moribund franchise that was destined to depart for elsewhere.

It was very poignant when Parcells said to the assembled crowd that he would always have warm memories of his time here, and that in retrospect, maybe there were some things that he could have done differently at the time. Personally, I believe there were things others should have done to facilitate the desired result as well, but that's all water under the bridge. The fact is, I'm glad that Parcells lived long enough (and me as well) to experience the moment when those "others" acknowledged that they could have done things better as well.

** There will be a good game on North TV's Community Channel this Friday as the 3-0 King Philip Warriors visit the 3-0 Foxboro Warriors at Jack Martinelli Field, a 7 p.m. start. The game will also be fed to cable systems in Wrentham and Norfolk as well as to North Attleboro and Plainville, and streamed at community.northtv.net.

These teams always seem to be unbeaten or close to it when they meet for their annual non-league contest. Doesn't matter if they're not in the same Hockomock League division, they play like it's for all the marbles. Join Del Malloy and me for all the action if you can.

Until next we meet, then ...

MARK FARINELLA, a long-time fan of CFL football, is happy that the King Philip Warriors wear uniforms that resemble those of the old Edmonton Eskimos (now Elks). Contact him at theownersbox2020@gmail.com, eh?

Darkest before the dawn, but the late-night talk shows persist.

Jimmy Kimmel's late-night show returns to the airwaves on Tuesday night.

The good news of the day came at mid-afternoon today, when the Disney folks announced that Jimmy Kimmel was going to return to his late night talk-show on ABC on Tuesday of this week, his suspension for comments made in the wake of the assassination of right-wing firebrand Charlie Kirk apparently served.

Kimmel is not my first choice for late-night entertainment, but he has been a solid second in my book to Stephen Colbert's show on CBS. Sadly, and it's sad because I have been an ardent fan of NBC's Tonight Show since Jack Paar hosted it in the early 1960s (I'll explain later), Jimmy Fallon's version is a distant third. In fact, I'd rank Seth Meyers' Late Night show in the 12:30 a.m. slot on NBC ahead of the suck-up fest that Fallon has turned Tonight into.

Late night TV has been a staple of my existence since I was a wee child. I've always been somewhat of a night owl, and there were many times over my formative years when I knew I could sneak into the "television room" of our house, find my parents sound asleep in their chairs, and I could sit in front of the 25-inch General Electric TV and watch the near-neurotic Paar, his sidekick Hugh Downs (later of "20/20" fame), and their stable of celebrities.

Johnny Carson was political at times.

When Paar imploded and NBC plucked a rising talent named Johnny Carson off a game show that aired afternoons on ABC (it was originally called, "Do You Trust Your Wife," I believe), I was there to see it happen. For years, Carson was the only game in town -- and those who bemoan his departure by claiming he was never political, that's just not true. Johnny had his moments, especially during the final death throes of the Nixon presidency. But it didn't seem in those days that political discourse needed to be the staple of entertainment. Nixon certainly provided the fodder for comedians, but at the time, it seemed as if he was a mere anomaly in American governance -- and once he was gone, we'd all get back to normal.

Sadly, that was just the tip of the iceberg. Today, our government is stacked from top to bottom with crooks, racists, misogynists, xenophobes and reprobates. Instead of the best and brightest, this nation has put the worst and darkest into its highest offices. And among many in media and entertainment that have attempted to stem the tide, individuals such as Colbert, Kimmel and Meyers on network TV and John Oliver and Jon Stewart on cable offerings have advanced to the front line of our defense.

And now, Donald Trump is trying to rid us of them all. 

Our dear Orange Führer isn't doing it with his lame executive orders, but he has figured out how to use leverage to get what he wants. In recent months, both Paramount, which owns CBS, and Disney/ABC required federal approval of deals that would result in huge mergers of media companies. And since both required the approval of the Federal Communications Commission because the mergers involved over-the-air broadcasters (cable companies and streaming services are not governed the same way), Trump could exert influence by sending his lapdogs out (such as FCC chairman Brendan Carr) to threaten the networks and their parent companies with holding up or nixing the deals if they didn't get Trump's harshest critics off the air.

Colbert: Canceled.

So in May, we learned that Colbert's Late Show on CBS would be canceled following 10 years as the successor to David Letterman at the end of a year's time. Almost immediately, Paramount's merger with Skydance was approved. Paramount's excuse was that the Late Show was losing millions of dollars. The Late Show, meanwhile, was the highest rated of all the late-night offerings.

And then ABC used Kimmel's monologue of a week ago, maybe a little insensitive in content immediately following the shooting death of Kirk in Utah, as an excuse to placate the enraged MAGAts by suspending the host of 20 years "indefinitely." I've heard those comments over and over, and I have yet to hear exactly what warranted his suspension.

But then again, I've bitten my own tongue countless times in recent days, holding back my true feelings about the late Charlie Kirk -- partly out of respect for the dead, partly out of fear of retribution in some manner or another. And I will continue to do so.

I will say this much. This country was founded upon the premise that free speech, especially about topics of political import or governance, was absolutely essential in the quest to create a truly free society. It was so important to the Founding Fathers, they made it the first official alteration of the document they created to govern our nation.

In my mind, there's free speech, and there's irresponsible free speech. Both are protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution, and no one deserves to lose their lives over their opinions -- no matter how reprehensible they may be. An assassin's bullet was the ultimate transgression, and cannot be accepted as anything but that. 

But at the same time, a president that instructs his minions to attack, restrict and even incarcerate his critics in media and entertainment, calling their commentary "illegal" even though it fairly reflects assessments of the outrageously miserable results of his presidency, is just as guilty of violating the rights of Americans that count every day upon the protection of the nation's laws as a deranged young man on a rooftop with a rifle.

I'd like to think that Disney/ABC had a sudden attack of testicular fortitude in its decision to reinstate Kimmel. More likely, however, it was the bottom line. Disney stock lost billions of dollars of value in the wake of Kimmel's suspension, and individual customers tied up the phone lines for hours canceling their subscriptions to the streaming service Disney+. This will not please the Orange Führer, and while I have yet to see any comments from him while I'm writing this, I can't wait to read the latest eruption of Mount Mango on "Truth Social."

At least something good has come of this, however. As the only one of the four late-night shows that is based in Hollywood, Kimmel gets better A-list entertainment guests. Especially when Marvel has a new movie out, as Marvel is a part of the Disney empire, the casts will always appear together on Kimmel's show. Colbert's shows tend to be a little more political or highbrow in nature, and sometimes, you just need a little more good, old-fashioned entertainment. And Fallon has made a silly circus out of the format, which makes me regret even more that NBC couldn't have had the stones to keep Conan O'Brien in the job.

Meyers: Fellow Wildcat.

But when it comes to powerful political commentary mixed expertly with humor, Kimmel holds his own with the brilliance of Colbert and Meyers. The latter two both graduated from Northwestern University, where brilliance comes naturally -- and, coincidentally, it also happens to be the alma mater of the author of this blog. In any event, Kimmel is always a solid option for my late-night viewing.

There has been talk that the future of talk shows of this sort may not rest with the over-the-air networks at all. Perhaps some benefactor could opt to create a new entertainment network, and that operation could use talents like Colbert, Kimmel, Meyers and O'Brien as anchors of a streaming service that wouldn't be beholding to the FCC.

Maybe all this won't be necessary once Trump is out of office and remembered only as a rank shitstain on the clean white sheets of America. But the Orange Führer's plans are to install himself as the first American king, the Constitution be damned. So if these next few years are going to be trying times for our nation, I'd rather be led by individuals that can plainly state that the emperor has no clothes -- and make me laugh while they're doing it.

We're going to need the laughter.

MARK FARINELLA wrote for 42 years for The Sun Chronicle of Attleboro, Mass., but he always wanted to host his own talk show. That's what "The Owner's Box" is for. Contact him at theownersbox2020@gmail.com.

Past and present merge at a Cape Cod cemetery.

The Shaw family in 1955; from left, Elaine, Lillie, Huck and Bob.

North Falmouth has always been a special place for me. It was a vacation spot, a getaway destination and even a personal sanctuary for almost half of my life.

In fact, it was where I was awakened to the sound of fighter jets going to afterburners early on a Tuesday morning in September almost a quarter-century ago, their destination being the airspace around Manhattan to protect a nation under attack.

I was in North Falmouth again Thursday morning, the 24th anniversary of the terrorist attacks upon the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and the purpose was to mourn a beloved relative. Thursday morning was eerily similar to Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001 -- almost unseasonably warm temperatures under a cloudless blue sky. It's as if the fates conspired to replicate the conditions of that near-perfect day when the jets took off from what's now called Joint Base Cape Cod (then Otis Air Force Base), only a few miles from the vacation home of my closest friend, for which I had the privilege of being an occasional caretaker when my friend was unable to be in residence there.

Robert Francis Shaw (1936-2025)

Thusday, the purpose was to say goodbye to my 89-year-old first cousin, Robert Francis Shaw, the son of my aunt, Lillie Farinella Shaw. If that name sounds familiar to residents of my hometown, it should. For many years, she and her son were owners of Shaw's Sporting Goods on North Main Street, a retail store that also served as a supplier of athletic equipment to many local high schools and colleges. That store still exists, in another location on Mansfield's main street and under different ownership as Grogan-Marciano Sporting Goods.

Bob Shaw was a good man, a kind and unfailingly honest man, as his eldest son Robert remarked during the funeral service at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Church in the Old Silver Beach area of North Falmouth. And he was a great friend and almost a surrogate son to my own father during an important time in both of their lives.

My aunt, Bob's mother, was the eldest of the five children of Carmelo and Gandolfa Farinella, who came to America from Palermo, Sicily, at the turn of the 20th century to seek a better life. Carmelo ran a bakery in the North End of Mansfield for many years, and his eldest sons (Santino, Frank, Tony) would hop on bicycles and deliver fresh bread to customers throughout the area. But in 1936, my uncle Sannie decided that the bakery life was not for him, and he opened a small clothing store on North Main Street named after him. In the years that followed, all four of the Farinella brothers (including the much-younger Charlie) would be involved in an enterprise that would become one of the town's most successful retail stores until its closing after more than 55 years in business.

Around the same time, Lillie's husband, a fellow named Huck Shaw, opened a small sporting goods store in close proximity to Sannie's on North Main Street. As I mentioned, that store became the go-to supplier of athletic equipment to schools throughout a wide swath of southeastern Massachusetts and neighboring Rhode Island.

Tragedy struck the Shaw family when Huck was killed in an automobile accident on U.S. 1 in Plainville in the late 1940s, when Bob was just reaching his teen years. Lillie took over the operation of the sporting goods store -- somewhat of a pioneer for women in business in that era -- and Bob came into the fold after his graduation from Mansfield High in 1955.

The business continued to thrive out of the tiny storefront on North Main across from Sannie's (now occupied in expanded form by Jodice Builders), and it was truly a family operation -- Lillie handling the books, Bob growing into a leadership role as the years passed, and his sister Elaine (a pioneering athlete at Mansfield High long before anyone even thought of the necessity of Title IX) behind the cash register.

Elaine would also die far too young and under tragic circumstances, leaving behind a daughter (Edon, who is now a pilot for Southwest Airlines). And as the 1970s approached, Bob found himself seeking change in his life.

He was married with two boys, but I believe he missed the influence of a father in his life. He may have found that in my father, who was just 17 years older than Bob, but with a wealth of life experience to share with someone willing to tap into it.

At this point, you may ask why my father needed a surrogate son with one of his own. It's a good question. I think the answer is that at an early age, my father and I started to have different life goals and interests.

I had broken away from the Catholic Church early in my teens, freed from the daily trauma of the repressive approach to education and maturation I experienced at Dominican Academy in Plainville. But my father was intensely devout -- and while he grew more aware of and disgusted by the abuses of faith that festered in the church, especially when nearby cases of sexual assault were exposed to the public, he still felt an obligation to worship in accordance to his personal belief in God, and my rejection of the dogma disappointed him.

I also never displayed any inclination to follow in his footsteps and join the Sannie's family as a potential second-generation owner. I had wanted to be a writer from an early age, and that was set in stone the moment I walked into the offices of the Mansfield News in August 1969 and told Howard Fowler, the editor, that I was the answer to his difficulties in finding a reliable high school sports reporter.

It's not that my father was disappointed at that; in fact, I clearly remember the pride in his eyes when he read the first article I had published in the town's weekly newspaper. But very few of the Farinella offspring showed any interest in continuing the store's operation and legacy into the future, and indeed, that may have been a huge factor in the store's closing upon the retirements of my father and my uncle Charlie.

So, with me doing my thing and raising my flag of independence, Bob Shaw and my father struck up a relationship that was mutually beneficial to both.

Having been diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes (which claimed my grandfather's life), my father found a kindred spirit in the quest for physical fitness in my cousin. He and Bob started a regimen of jogging; they would schedule long cross-country runs through the ancient trails up and down Taylor's Hill -- a picturesque trek through the virtually unspoiled Great Woods before Interstate 495 plowed through them years later. 

I actually ran those trails with my dad once, when I was still fit enough to do it, but it was a disaster. Tony and I became competitive and we turned it into a race for personal supremacy, and we were both so exhausted at the end, it became clear that I would not be a suitable running partner going forward. My father and Bob were never competitors during their runs.

About the same time, my father saw the need for additional income if he was going to put me through college, and thus save me the agony of having to pay college loans for decades. He and Bob came up with a life-changing solution; they took courses at the Lee Institute and got their licenses to sell real estate, and their successes at this "side job" have a lasting legacy in the Northwestern University degree that hangs in the middle of the awards wall in my home.

Bob Shaw, however, embraced it as more than simply a side job.

By 1973, he sold the sporting goods store to Peter Marciano, the brother of Rocky, the late heavyweight boxing champion of the world. Marciano would move the store to the site of the former Fuller's hardware store across from the North Common, and then take on former Patriots' quarterback Steve Grogan as a partner sometime later. Of course, I covered Steve's exploits for much of his career, and many years later, I got the opportunity to explain to Steve my family's background in his store while we sat at a US Airways gate at Philadelphia International Airport, waiting to board a connecting flight to Buffalo. 

Bob seized the moment to begin his own real estate business, and he moved his family to North Falmouth and became quite successful at it.

Still, one of my happiest memories of Bob came from his time in charge of the little store across the street from Sannie's. 

I had just made the varsity baseball team in the spring of 1970, and I needed to get some equipment. The staples such as jock straps and sanitary socks were easy to find in the retail store, but as I tried to find a bat to my liking, Bob noticed that I wasn't finding what I wanted among those on display.

"Come with me," he said, and he led me down the narrow stairway to a dungeon-like basement beneath the storefront. This was where he stored all the supplies usually earmarked for the schools that the company supplied.

Among the glistening new Louisville Sluggers in multiple boxes, I found the bat of my dreams. It was a 34-ounce Dick McAuliffe model, the bat designed for the former Detroit Tigers shortstop who eventually played for the Red Sox. It was long, probably too heavy by modern standards, and had a sanded-down knob at the bottom, which made it easier to find a place to choke up on the bat while swinging without having the protruding knob rub against your forearm. I asked Bob how much it cost; he said, "Forget it. It's yours." 

The A2000 -- still perfect after 55 years.

Grateful as I was, my attention was suddenly captured by a sight of beauty. Sitting on a shelf near the bat boxes was a glorious baseball glove -- the Wilson A2000, the flagship product of that famed American company. The A2000 was the most-used glove in the majors at the time, it cost the huge sum of $75 (the equivalent of $662 today) and it came in many iterations -- shorter webbing area for infielders, longer for outfielders -- and the one on the shelf had the largest webbing area of them all. Knowing that my fielding skills were suspect at best, I knew I would need all the help I could get from a glove. I pulled it from the shelf and slipped it over my left hand, and I knew I had to own it.

I turned to Bob, and said, "Bob, I know you can't give me this glove for free. I wouldn't ask for that. I don't have $75 right now, but I swear to you I will pay it if I can have it. I absolutely have to have this glove." I reached into my wallet and pulled out three $10 bills, the product of a just-cashed check from the Mansfield News, to show my intentions.

Bob smiled and said, "Half-price." 

That glove is still mine. I used it (but didn't overuse it) in my struggles through two varsity baseball seasons and three in American Legion ball in Foxboro. It was later used for intramurals at Northwestern, beer-league softball in Attleboro, and later, for tossing the ball around with my friend's son in their North Falmouth yard. Now, it sits next to me at my desk as I type this. Its leather is still as soft and supple as the day it emerged from the Shaw's Sporting Goods basement in my hands. Wilson still makes the A2000 and they sell for around $300, but I've tried the newer ones on -- and aside from a little more padding in a few places, my glove is still superior to those.

I also thought I still had the bat, too. But after I told that story to Bob's younger son, Tommy, following Thursday's graveside ceremony, I recalled that I broke the Dick McAuliffe Louisville Slugger during a Legion game -- bad swing, barely put the ball into play, and I was entirely heartbroken upon its loss. I went home and sawed off the little knob at the bottom to save as a souvenir, but I don't know what happened to that.

Over the years, I would occasionally run into Bob during my vacations in North Falmouth -- usually at the small diner called "Talk of the Town" on Route 28A where I frequently breakfasted during vacation weeks or quick winter getaways. And on one of my trips to south Florida to cover a Patriots-Dolphins game, I dropped in on him at his winter home in Boca Raton. His wife, Joan, died in 2008, and was buried in their joint plot in a tiny cemetery in North Falmouth. Despite his loss, and several battles with medical issues of his own, Bob never lost the optimism that characterized him throughout his life.

One of my true regrets, however, is that we weren't as close as we could have been. I'll take ownership of that. There were many times over the years of his retirement when Bob would try to contact me by phone -- but, and this is unintentionally funny in a way, he would always unknowingly pick times when I absolutely could not answer. Those were usually when I was in a press box somewhere, covering a game. Whether it was in Seattle, or Dallas or Foxboro or practically all points in-between, or in the stands in the Albertini Gym at Mansfield High, the phone would ring and I'd be in a position where I could not answer. Sometimes we might be able to make contact afterward, but not as often as I could have or should have.

That came to mind as the tolling church bells at the parish of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton underscored the solemnity of the moment on Thursday. No matter what we do in life, sometimes it just seems like it's never enough. It's not necessarily that we run out of time, it's often a case of not using the time we have as well as we could have.

North Falmouth house under construction.

My connection to North Falmouth has also waned in recent years. The house that my friend built in 1979 and was a frequent destination thanks to his abundant benevolence (and his trust that I would not wreck the place) was sold a few years ago. New owners demolished the little three-bedroom structure and built something much larger. 

All that remains are photos and memories -- not only for me, but for another extremely close friend that would frequently visit while I was there. It became her sanctuary and a peaceful respite for her soul during the most severe of her two bouts with ovarian cancer. Thankfully, and through the wonderful work of the Dana-Farber Cancer Center, she has survived both.

And, of course, it was where I experienced a watershed moment for our nation. It was where I went for a few days off after the Patriots opened their 2001 season with a loss to the Bengals at what was then Paul Brown Stadium. I flew from Cincinnati to Chicago and then to Boston on Sept. 10, 2001, blissfully unaware of the plans that terrorists had for the next morning. I went directly to North Falmouth and woke up the next morning to the sound of the roaring jets in the sky above, thinking at first it was just another training exercise. Unable to fall asleep again, I got out of bed and turned on the TV in the living room -- and saw, to my horror, that the world had changed.

It all happened on a beautiful late-summer day, just like Thursday -- a date that will forever be etched in my memory as representative of loss.

MARK FARINELLA wrote sports for more than four decades for The Sun Chronicle of Attleboro, Mass. Contact him at theownersbox2020@gmail.com.