Alas, poor Norah, I barely knew ye.

Norah O'Donnell reads several newspapers a day to prepare for work.

I received several messages of condolence this week regarding someone that did not die.

The messages came mostly from my friends and current and former contemporaries in local journalism circles, who assumed (tongue in cheek, of course) that I would be distraught over the announcement that CBS Evening News anchor Norah O'Donnell would be leaving her post behind the anchor desk after the presidential election and assuming a new role at CBS News as a senior correspondent.

As an aside, I have to chuckle at the reference of "senior" in regard to Ms. O'Donnell, who is only 50. But then I remember that in the last decade of my employment at The Sun Chronicle, my job title was actually "senior sports writer" with the rank of an editor, even though I had just entered my 50s as well. Besides, 50 is when you become eligible for your AARP card, so I guess it's appropriate.

Anyway, many of my friends are fully aware, and probably amused, by the fact that I have had a longstanding "crush" on Ms. O'Donnell (to whom I will respectfully refer for the remainder of this missive by her first name to cut down on the number of keystrokes). I'd like to think of it more as a reflection of my admiration for her professional accomplishments, and less as a creepy obsession with a famous woman, but I can't control how others will perceive it. After all, my computers do feature the photo appearing at the top of this post (I believe it was taken for a magazine feature story) as the wallpaper screen.

I will admit, she's easy to look at. I'd be lying to you if I tried to deny that. It was probably helpful to some extent in her professional career arc, which rose over a 28-year span from roles as chief Washington correspondent for MSNBC, White House correspondent for NBC and then CBS, co-anchor of CBS This Morning, and finally the anchor and managing editor for the most highly regarded of the three original networks' evening news telecast, the CBS Evening News. TV, as they say, is a visual medium. I, on the other hand, have always had a face for radio.

But the fact is that her résumé describes a rise to the top that is based upon a high level of professional accomplishment, and should definitely be held up as a shining example to young women entering the news business. Unlike the recipe for success at the so-called "most watched" news network in the country, Fox News, Norah advanced through the television news ranks without dying her hair blonde, pushing her chest out of her blouses and exposing every inch of her legs. She did it by being a damned good journalist, and that's why she worked at legitimate and respected media outlets and made it to the top of the mountain. She is, and pardon the archaic gender reference, an old-fashioned newsman.

Unfortunately, the role of anchor for the CBS Evening News just doesn't mean what it once did in the eyes of the viewing public.

I started watching TV when the 6:30 p.m. national newscasts lasted only 15 minutes. Not long after, there were only two legitimate choices if you wanted to be informed -- the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite and the Huntley-Brinkley Report on NBC, anchored by veteran newsmen Chet Huntley out of New York and David Brinkley in Washington.

Walter Cronkite

The kingpin, of course, was Cronkite -- the veteran radio newsman that cut his teeth reporting from London in the 1940s alongside Edward R. Murrow during the horrific aerial bombing campaign by Nazi Germany. Cronkite succeeded Douglas Edwards in 1962 as the anchor of the evening TV news and became over his 19-year tenure in the job "the most trusted man in America."

Cronkite was not only trusted, he also was influential. He did a series of reports about the Vietnam War following the Tet Offensive in early 1968, and concluded his findings with an editorial revealing that military leaders believed the war could not be won. Once that hit the airwaves, Americans by the millions turned against the conflict -- leading then-President Lyndon B. Johnson to supposedly remark, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America."

By the time I entered print journalism, all three networks had traditional nightly news telecasts. But eventually, new technology would create new opportunities. CNN (Cable News Network) was founded in 1980 by Atlanta-based billionaire Ted Turner as a 24-hour news network, a service he believed the three legacy networks could not provide. Australian news magnate Rupert Murdoch countered with Fox News in 1996, giving voice to conservative pundits whose job it was to attack the supposed liberal slant of CNN and the mainstream print and broadcast media. NBC teamed up with Microsoft founder Bill Gates to create MSNBC not long after, giving a legacy network a prominent place in the growing cable market. And over the many years that followed, plenty of imitators have risen and fallen in a news market that now includes direct satellite access and streaming from anyone with a camera and a microphone.

As a result, many Americans today get their news whenever, wherever and however they want it -- always available and with whatever slant is preferred. It doesn't have to be accurate, fact-based or agenda-free. If you're stupid enough to believe anything Jesse Watters, Sean Hannity or Alex Jones says as "news," nothing I can say or do will convince you that you're being sadly misinformed.

Which brings me back to the topic of Norah O'Donnell.

I was first introduced to her on my treadmill.

No joke -- and by "introduced," I mean seeing her on TV for the first time. Sadly, I've never met her in person.

When I lived in North Attleboro, I had a treadmill set up in front of a television set in my apartment. I would run (very slowly) on it at the same time almost every day, and watch news programming while trying to ignore the pain in my knees. Back then, there was a program on MSNBC called "Watch It!" hosted by Laura Ingraham -- long before she became a shrieking, smarmy shill for the MAGA movement on Fox News, of course. It was a fairly concise, and only slightly conservative, presentation of the day's events that included check-ins with NBC News correspondents when the news of the day warranted them. Norah was a frequent contributor to the program as NBC's Washington correspondent, and her reports were always superior to just about anything else on the program.

Fast forward ahead to 2012, when I had grown tired of the overly chatty Today show on NBC and wanted something with a little more of a harder news edge as I started my day. At the same time, CBS revamped its morning show (renaming it CBS This Morning) and created a three-person anchor team led by master interviewer Charlie Rose and former local news anchor and Oprah Winfrey confidant Gayle King. Norah became the third anchor after tweaking to the show replaced original co-anchor Erica Hill, bringing along her street cred as CBS White House correspondent to the hard-news role among the troika.

Norah interviewed "Billions" star
Maggie Siff on CBS This Morning.

I loved the show. Rose, as he did on his long-running PBS program, conducted probing and insightful interviews of newsmakers and celebrities. King provided the pop-culture fluff expertise (as well as her Oprah connection). And Norah was there to be the hard-news interviewer when controversial guests from the political world tried to stonewall the panel.

It was a worthy experiment, and it made some ratings gains against the competition of NBC's Today and ABC's Good Morning America. But it also had its drawbacks. Rose was showing signs of losing his fastball as he entered his 70s, and King's presence was often insufferable, as she would frequently interrupt Norah's interviews and inject her own lightweight opinions into them.

Then, in 2017, news reports revealed that Rose had a 20-year history of sexually harassing co-workers, and he was fired from his role as CBS This Morning co-anchor. The news hit Norah particularly hard, as her reporting style meshed well with Rose's famed interviewing skills. When she and King returned to the program a few days after the shocking news, she read a statement that said in no uncertain terms that Rose's behavior could not be tolerated in the modern workplace.

The show foundered from that upheaval, going through a plethora of temporary co-anchors and losing ground in the ratings. But by 2019, Norah had already established herself as the rising star at CBS News, and that's when she was chosen to succeed Jeff Glor as anchor of the evening news in an effort to raise the program from a distant last place in the Nielsen ratings.

Almost immediately, Norah wielded extraordinary power over the news division. The nightly telecast was moved from New York to Washington, in part to accommodate her family life (she is married to Washington restauranteur Geoff Tracy and they have three children), at the same time claiming that Washington was the best location to get the pulse of the nation and have rapid access to big national and world stories breaking in the nation's capital.

Norah became CBS' lead anchor in 2019.

Almost as rapidly, the tone of the nightly newscast changed -- and not necessarily for the better.

As a long-time news viewer raised in the Cronkite era, I always believed CBS to be the most serious in tone of the three network newscasts. Even through the anchoring tenures of Dan Rather, Bob Schieffer, Katie Couric, Scott Pelley and Glor, I saw CBS as the harder-news option among the three. But when Norah took over, there were obvious changes -- more feature material, lighter-toned pop culture stories and a strong emphasis upon features and stories about groundbreaking women.

Granted, women probably are the most underrepresented demographic in the world of news. And it's probably the vestigial remnants of male privilege that still reside deep within me that prompted me to consider the sudden increase in coverage of women's issues as disproportional over the course of a 30-minute telecast. I'm sure many would disagree with me, and they are probably correct to do so.

I've come to regard the NBC Nightly News as the current hard-news leader (except for the constant promotion that telecast has of the network's special-event programming, like the Olympics), and I see ABC's telecast as Fox News Lite, with a somewhat sensationalistic tone and a reliance upon the old trope, "If it bleeds, it leads."

But all three programs are practically irrelevant in today's news landscape. People are hardly watching any of them anymore. And the CBS Evening News on Norah's watch failed to make a dent in the ratings. I watched loyally for about a year after she became the anchor, but gradually, my viewing became more sporadic as daily life imposed itself upon the 6:30-7 p.m. window. Most of the daily reporting also shows up on my Facebook feed, so I could pick and choose what and when I wanted to see.

Following the announcement of Norah's departure and reassignment, CBS will return the show to New York (more cost effective) and change the format to closely resemble the news division's stalwart 60 Minutes, emphasizing longer story segments and investigations. As she is already a frequent contributor to 60 Minutes, Norah will likely contribute frequently to the new version of the nightly newscast in her new role as a modern-day Barbara Walters.

Norah reporting from Helsinki.

It's not like she didn't try to make a larger impact. CBS put Norah out front from the very start of her anchor tenure. They put her in military aircraft during rescue or reconnaissance missions, at the scenes of weather-related disasters, in Minneapolis during the unrest that followed George Floyd's death at the hands of local police, overseas for important summit meetings -- and she was relentless in her pursuit of the facts behind sexual harassment of female cadets at the country's military academies, winning prestigious awards for her reporting. 

She was the lead anchor for political coverage. She also revived an old Murrow-era standby called "Person to Person," a show that appeared on CBS News' online site that featured her interviewing celebrities with a lighter tone to give her some pop culture cred. And she went public with her skin cancer diagnosis and was an advocate for early detection and treatment.

She gave it a good five-year college try in the big job. And her legacy may be that of being the anchor of the last traditional nightly newscast CBS produced. That's far more a reflection upon the American viewing public and its short and dubious attention span than it is upon her performance in the job.

Before I close, I will admit to a certain level of disappointment that my path has never crossed with Norah's, even though we've come close on occasion.

Norah was born and raised in San Antonio and spent her formative years as part of a military family, living in South Korea for a few years. She later attended Georgetown University -- but somewhere along the way, and heaven knows how, she became a huge fan of the New England Patriots. She's attended several games over the years -- occasionally as a guest in Robert Kraft's private box -- and she's even reported stories here, including an in-depth look at Tom Brady's TB12 training facility at Patriot Place while she was a co-anchor on CBS This Morning.

I was on the Patriots beat at the time, of course, and I didn't know until after the fact that she had conducted an interview at the training facility on a day when I was attending to the usual daily coverage at the stadium. 

Now, there is no way that I would have tried to weasel my way into her interview session. That would have been totally unprofessional. But what if she might have wanted to drop in on a daily Bill Belichick press conference just out of curiosity, given her abiding love for the team? I definitely would have mustered the courage to introduce myself and express my respect for her professional accomplishments -- and hopefully keep it polite, dignified and nowhere near as creepy as it may sound. After all, for heaven's sake, I'm sure I would have remembered that I was a grown man 20 years older than her, and that I've been around celebrities all my professional life without acting like a gushing idiot.

I'm pretty sure I would have. Pretty sure.

Anyway, I offer my best wishes to Norah O'Donnell as she embarks upon her new responsibilities at CBS News following the election. And I repeat what I said earlier in this post -- if you, dear reader, are a young woman entering journalism or know one that is, please take note of how Norah O'Donnell took every step up the ladder, with professionalism, an unimpeachable work ethic, and a dedication to excellence worthy of the legacy of titans of the business such as Walter Cronkite. Embrace her as a worthy role model.

Ponderous thoughts I was pondering ...

The fresh catch of the day was hornpout sushi for this young eagle.

Ponderous thoughts I was pondering while trying to keep my wits about me during a period of national insanity:

** Given all that has transpired in recent days, it goes without saying that I would try to retreat to my own little patch of nature -- i.e., my own backyard -- to shut out the noise and try to recover a sense of normalcy.

For a while, I thought I succeeded. Despite the high temperatures of the week, I went out to my favorite camping chair and waited for my bunny friends to greet me. And I was not disappointed on Monday.

People that have read this space before are aware that I have a warm spot in my heart for bunnies. I know some of you are dismayed about the overabundance of the furry things in the past couple of summers because they do tend to be voracious eaters, especially of unguarded family gardens. But that was my mother's thing, not mine. What she planted years before her death in 2015 is still growing strong, and the bunnies generally leave it alone. But in my backyard, there is a wealth of fresh and juicy grass and the vines on my fence, which they enjoy nibbling at.

These little guys aren't afraid of me.

This year's crop of bunnies has been particularly fearless (no pun intended) where I'm concerned. They have come to accept me as part of the landscape -- the big guy that sits quietly in his chair and sometimes starts snoring -- so they aren't as skittish as one might normally expect from wild rabbits. There are two little ones, probably siblings and both with a tiny little diamond of white fur on their foreheads, that will hop over and sit about 18 inches from my feet. I'll say hello, but as long as I don't make any quick movements, they'll be content to watch me for a while before sticking their noses back in the grass to chow down.

I don't feed them human food; it's not good for them. But they seem so happy and content to partake of the backyard grass, I don't need to feed them anything. They might be spooked by low-flying helicopters or the planes making their low passes overhead on their way to a landing at Mansfield Airport, but for the most part, they seem to feel safe when I'm on the watch.

But yesterday was another thing. 

Usually, the buns are out and foraging in the shaded parts of my lawn by mid-afternoon, then they run rampant after 6 p.m. But just one "diamondhead," as I call it, was out, and it was sticking very close to the shrubbery near my garage. It didn't take long for me to see the reason why.

Perched high in a neighbor's dead maple tree whose branches extend out over the pond was an immature bald eagle, and it was scanning the area for its meal.

At first I thought it was a big hawk, because I've had adult bald eagles perch in that tree before, and they look just like the tattoos on the chests of those idiots attending the MAGA convention in Milwaukee. This one was smaller, and the coloration was different, but I quickly got the binoculars and camera, took a close look at the avian visitor and then did the obligatory Google search. From what I could tell, this was a young eagle that had yet to attain the full white-feathered coloration of its head, and its distinctive beak had not yet changed from a dark shade to the bright orange of mature adults. 

I've posted a few photos for you bird enthusiasts to tell me if I'm correct or not.

Anyway, I could tell this eagle was searching for food, so I walked closer to the fence next to the tree when it was perched, probably about 40 feet above me. The bird started chirping a warning to me. Then I walked a few steps closer. More warning chirps. And when I got to the fence, the eagle took flight -- only to return not long after I went back to sit in my chair. 

And thus began the waiting game. It was not going to swoop into my yard while I sat there, and the bunnies sensed that, but the two that were present in the yard by that time chose to stay very close to natural cover.

After about an hour of that, the eagle grew weary of the standoff. It soared out over the pond -- and returned a few minutes later with a trophy gripped in its talons. It had swooped down and plucked a sizable catfish (we call them "hornpout" around here) out of the water.

I was stunned -- not that it caught a fish, I know they do that, but that we actually still had hornpout in Fulton Pond. When I was a little kid, I might have been able to catch tiny sunfish and an occasional bass in that pond, but the hornpout lurked in the shallows and were too smart, swift and slippery to be hooked by amateurs. Years later, in the wake of summer droughts, decades of industrial waste and a major dredging, I was genuinely surprised to see that hornpout still exist in the pond.

The eagle kept the fish grasped in its talons for quite a while. It steadfastly refused to budge even when four large crows decided to stop by and harass the bigger bird, hoping it would drop the fish to the ground below. No such luck. Finally, about an hour after the catch, the eagle started ripping it asunder to nibble at some tasty catfish sushi. 

Protecting its dinner from view.

I'll spare you the details. I watched it all through the binoculars, and the best one-word description I can find is "rending." Starting at the head and finishing at the tail fins, the eagle ripped and pulled at the catfish, devouring the tasty bits and flinging the less savory pieces to the ground. It took almost two hours for the meal to be finished, but once it was, the eagle did not fly off. It sat triumphantly on the dead branch, still looking over every inch of my lawn and waiting for the bunnies to come out en masse before darkness fell, as they normally do.

So again, I walked close to the tree. More warning chirps, and then flight. But when it came back, it returned to a higher branch. Again I tried to prod it into flight, but this time, the eagle knew it was safe from my sorry attempts to look menacing. I could tell it was looking down upon me and thinking, "Nice try, fat boy, but this is MY HOUSE!" I didn't even get a warning chirp.

Eventually, it was too dark for my human eyes to see anything more than a few feet away, so I gave up the vigil. This morning, the eagle was gone. I only hope that the hornpout meal was enough to sustain it last night.

** Another means of diversion for me this summer has been summer basketball at Franklin High, where veteran coach John Leighton has assembled 16 girls' teams from the Hockomock League, Tri-Valley League and Bay State League. Summer basketball is a valuable part of the team bonding process, even if some players that would be members of their winter high school teams may be absent because of AAU participation, injury rehab or just plain summer fun.

All that being said, one can still glean tidbits of information from what's on display, and here are some of those:

-- Back-to-back state champ Foxboro is not done yet, even with a few big holes to be filled with the graduations of Cam Collins, Izzy Chamberlin and Erin Foley. The whole team has not been present for much of the summer league so far, but I was certainly impressed with what I've seen of returning sophomore guard Alaysia Drummonds, who may give the Warriors a good portion of what Collins took with her to Rider University. I've also been impressed with the efforts of senior forward Ava Hill, who has been a strong rebounder and has her 3-point range back, and she's even had to bring the ball up because of missing personnel. 

-- I like a lot of what I've seen from Mansfield, especially senior Ella Palanza, who appears to have a greater level of control over all of her skills. A lot of the young players that brought the Hornets to an 18-5 record last year are showing progress, too. But the Hornets really need to focus upon finishing their plays. They run at a fast pace and execute well -- until they shoot, and that aspect of their game needs better focus. Expected in summer ball, hopefully fixed by December.

-- Bishop Feehan has lots of holes to fill after their state D1 title season, but you couldn't ask for a better anchor than senior guard Charlotte Adams-Lopez, who recently received a D1 offer from Brown. Coach Amy Dolores has some height coming up in the ranks, and I expect Feehan will make the necessary progress to make a run at another Catholic Central League title and postseason success.

-- I haven't seen a North Attleboro game in person yet, but the Rocketeers have two teams participating in the league, which shows that second-year coach Ashley Kepaa has created new enthusiasm in the program. I'm sure I'll get to see them soon.

-- Another school with good participation and enthusiasm is Attleboro. Avery James is already playing at a high level, and Tia Williamson looks stronger and more agile in the paint. There is some intriguing talent among the Bombardiers, so it might pay to keep an eye on their progress heading into a new season.

** I saw in the Globe's business pages that a store I often frequented over the years, You-Do-It Electronics in Needham, recently closed. That place was not only the first stop for serious electronics enthusiasts, but a gimmick nerd's paradise as well. I bought any number of digital recorders and microphones there over the years to help me in my news-gathering efforts because I knew it was the one place where I could stay on the cutting edge of affordable technology.

Sure, some things were miscalculations on my part -- does anyone remember mini-discs? I still have three recorders and a whole pile of the tiny recordable cassettes -- but if it was new and I thought it could help me get a clear recording from inside a scrum of reporters around a player, I bought it at YDI.

Sorry to see it go.

** I don't feel compelled to comment upon what happened at former President Donald Trump's rally in Butler, Pa., last Saturday. It is what it is. But it changes nothing in my mind.

I am still fully committed to voting for President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in the November election because I believe in an America governed by people of good conscience and compassion. And if that isn't the ticket, I'll still vote Blue for the aforementioned reasons.

I will have more to say about the choices available to the American public once the conventions are history.

** Please, Major League Baseball. Go back to having all-stars wear their regular uniforms for the game. Those abominations chosen for this year's game looked as if they'd been hanging for far too long on the cut-rate rack of children's pajamas at Marshall's. Simply awful.

** The Patriots released their list of assistant coaches this past week, and I think they have more than 25 of them. Some high school teams don't have that many players. Way too many coaches for a 48-man gameday roster.

Catch you on the flip side, folks.

Mark Farinella has yet to declare his backyard a national wildlife sanctuary, but he would if he could. Comment on his posts at theownersbox2020@gmail.com.

Film Review: "Trophy Kids."

Leland Anderson produced and wrote a film about abusive parents in sports.

This is sort of a follow-up post to the recent one announcing the passing of former Attleboro High School basketball star Leland Anderson, who lost his battle with lung cancer at 43 a few weeks ago. 

As I mentioned in that post, about a decade ago Anderson served as a producer and co-screenwriter for a documentary film called "Trophy Kids," made while the former Attleboro athlete was living in Santa Monica, Calif. It first appeared on HBO in 2013, and is currently available on Prime Video. It also served as a springboard for another limited series about the topic.

I had not seen the film before, even though I had known about Anderson's participation in it since Peter Gobis wrote about it for The Sun Chronicle not long after it was made. But, given Anderson's untimely passing, I decided to finally take a look at it last night.

Well, it was absolutely chilling. 

It was a brutally honest look at the excessive pressure that can be put on high school-aged kids when their parents lose their perspective and try to create superstar scholarship athletes out of their children. The film really drives home the fact that these overbearing parents have no regard at all for what emotional and psychological damage they are doing to their kids.

It was a hard thing to watch in 2013, I'm sure. And the lessons within are still valid for parents in 2024 and beyond.

The film is set in the greater Los Angeles area, involving six young athletes and five parents that are unrelentingly driving their kids to achieve at a high level. It has a frightening degree of access to each family, and in each case, viewers are not spared the warts and all. From the moment when we are introduced to each family group to the finish, the parents' obsessive drive to push their children to greatness escalates to the point where we observers are screaming at the screen for the parents to lighten up and let the kids just be kids.

I know I was. 

Here's the lineup:

** We're first introduced to the father of a freshman football player at Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana, a promising wide receiver and safety who is locked into a very aggressive daily training and practice regimen by his father, who played for the University of Washington.

** Next is a promising young basketball player at Redondo Union High School, a 6-2 shooting guard that has stopped growing -- to the great disappointment of his runty New York-transplant father, a stereotypical figure that could have been lifted from the pages of a script for "The Sopranos."

** Alongside that ghastly stereotype at Redondo Union is a seemingly less irritating father of the team's point guard, who is battling injuries and having a hard time keeping his starting job. As we learn over the course of the film, the father is blaming all of his kid's problems on the 11-year-veteran coach of the team, and he is quietly plotting to convince the school board to fire the coach.

** Up next is the father of a 9-year-old girl that is somewhat of a golf phenom. The dad has no talent of his own, but when he's not standing right next to the coach he hired to help the girl grow in the sport, he is caddying for her during tournaments. His constant negativity often reduces the girl to tears during the course of competition.

** Our final parent is an evangelical Christian mother of middle-school-aged twin boys, who she believes she can transform into championship-level athletes with a constant regimen of training and the power of prayer. She might be the most annoying of the lot because of her proselytizing and passive-aggressive presence in the life of her twins.

In each case, the young athletes eventually fail to reach the desired level of immediate accomplishment as set by their parents, and the conflict between being driven to succeed as opposed to being normal kids makes all of the young athletes victims of a very insidious form of child abuse.

The young football player eventually cracks under the constant boot-camp pressure. During a visit to his mother, who divorced the father and lives in Seattle, the father explodes in a torrent of rage when the son finally sheds his intense fear and tells the old man that he's had enough of the constant brow-beating. After that, the son moved back into his mother's home and went to high school in the Seattle area, where he would be free of the pressure to be turned into the superstar athlete that his father failed to be. Justus Moore graduated from high school in 2015 and did not play football after that.

The shooting guard's father is eventually banned from his son's games because of the constant invective-laced commentary he spewed from the sidelines about the officials, the coach and players on the opposing teams. Freed of his father's embarrassing presence, Derek Biale plays well enough to earn a Division 2 scholarship at a school in Colorado. The father claims at film's end that he will go to all of his son's games in Colorado, home and away. The younger Biale is now a fitness instructor and AAU coach in the Phoenix area. 

Meanwhile, the Redondo Union point guard threatens to transfer to another school at the end of his junior season unless his father can get the coach fired. The scheming father is successful at that, and the kid stays. But the kid certainly acts in interviews as if he's buying into his father's refrain that his shortcomings were the fault of the coach and others, and not possibly because of his own limitations as a player. In other words, he appears to have been brainwashed by his father's influence. Ian Fox eventually played at Fullerton College and is now a real estate agent in the Los Angeles area.

Amari Avery is the most successful of the Trophy Kids.

The young golfer, whom we see in tears and pleading for her father to stop berating her, continues to play. The next year, her father was not allowed to caddy for her in regional tournaments. Her name is Amari Avery, and she is still a golfer; she was member of the Class of 2026 and women's golf team at the University of Southern California, and was rated among the nation's top 10 amateurs, but decided last year to leave school and turn professional. Hopefully her life course has since been a lot happier than what was depicted in the film.

And the tennis twins seemed to be the ones least negatively affected by their mother's constant presence. They entered high school the next year and made the junior varsity tennis team. But they were also very reserved and their social development appeared to be hindered by being smothered 24/7 by Mom and Jesus. Blake and Tanner Suard now play something called "beach tennis" in Southern California. They never made it to Wimbeldon.

As I said, it's a chilling film. It's a classic tale of how damaging it can be for parents to become so vicariously involved in their children's competition, they are trying to erase their own failed lives and replace them by claiming their kids' accomplishments as their own.

I won't speculate why Leland Anderson would have involved himself in this project. But I'm glad he did. If I had my choice, I'd make it required viewing for every parent of every high school athlete before the very first day of competition every year. 

I've known many wonderful parents over my half-century of local sports journalism, and I've also known my share of insufferable ones. When you're a parent, you have two choices of direction on the day when your child decides to become an athlete, and Anderson's film pulls no punches in illustrating what the wrong direction is.

Anderson scored a lot of points and won a lot of games at Attleboro High, and was one hell of a basketball player. This film, however, may be his best legacy.

Trophy Kids (2013): Directed by Christopher Bell. Produced by Leland Anderson and Christopher Bell. Executive Producers: Peter Berg, Jake Wood. Written by Leland Anderson, Christopher Bell, T.J. Mahar. 107 minutes.

The Owner's Box, Ep. 56.

Coach Amy Dolores brought Bishop Feehan its second state title last season.

We're back on a basketball court for the latest episode of the best little audio podcast in Massachusetts, The Owner's Box. You'll be able to tell because of all the buzzers, whistles and squeaking sneakers in the background.

I took a ride to Franklin High School for the first night of the Franklin summer league, and that's where I was joined for an interview by Amy Dolores, the coach of the defending state Division 1 champion Bishop Feehan Shamrocks.

It's Amy's first appearance on the show, and we hit upon a wide range of topics -- what it has meant to her to be a part of the Feehan community since 2003 (and the head coach since 2019), how her team rallied from the disappointment of losing a state title game in 2023 and brought home the title this past season, and of course, the growing attention being given by sports fans of all ages to the women's game as Caitlin Clark and the rest of the impressive rookie class make their impact upon the fortunes of the WNBA.

I also take some time later in the episode to look back at the career of Attleboro High star player Leland Anderson, who died recently of lung cancer at the far-too-young age of 43.

It's 51 minutes of audio that will make you mad, sad and glad all in the same click of a button. I hope you'll enjoy listening to it.

Leland Anderson, 43.

 

Former Attleboro High star Leland Anderson (34) as a PC Friar.

The Attleboro area sports community lost one of its titans this past week with the death of former Attleboro High basketball standout Leland Anderson, 43, of lung cancer.

Full details are still lacking, but a post Sunday on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter) by Anderson's former coach and Attleboro's athletic director, Mark Houle, provided sufficient confirmation of Anderson's death. It has since been further confirmed by other sources.

"I am saddened to hear of Leland Anderson's passing," Houle wrote. "My prayers go out to Leland, his family and teammates. He had an amazing personality and passion for basketball. (Attleboro's) all-time leading scorer and leader in our 1998 State Championship season. RIP #34."

Leland Anderson

Anderson, a 6-foot-8 frontcourter with superior shooting range for a big man, finished as, and remains, Attleboro’s all-time leading scorer of either gender with 1,629 career points in 74 games starting in his freshman season (1995-96). Although he played center for most of his high school career, he was even more comfortable playing away from the basket and was projected as a potential 3 or 4 player in college.

A three-time Sun Chronicle all-star (1996, '97, '98), Anderson reached the pinnacle of his high school career in his junior year. He scored 674 points (27.0 per game) that season, and he and fellow junior Derek Swenson (17.8) were the driving forces behind the Bombardiers' 25-1 record, Eastern Athletic Conference championship and eventual victory in the Division 1 state title game against Central/West champion Milford.

In that title game at the then-Worcester Centrum on March 14, 1998, Anderson scored 29 points and had 14 rebounds, Swenson scored 11 of his 16 points during the second half, and Jason Case, a senior co-captain, came off the bench to total seven rebounds and four assists. The Bombardiers used a 15-point run at the start of the second half as the springboard to a 63-58 victory, earning Attleboro its first state title in 55 years.

The victory had added significance because, just 10 days earlier, a horrible natural gas explosion destroyed a house on George Street. Two well-known city workers, Lawrence Poncin and Bernard Hewitt, perished in the explosion. Their deaths cast a pall over the city as the MIAA Tournament began, but Attleboro High's victory in the title game was credited with restoring joy to the city's residents in the wake of the tragedy. A complex of athletic fields off Oak Hill Avenue was named in the memory of Poncin and Hewitt.

Anderson also played AAU basketball for the BABC program led by famed coach Leo Papile, and that drew a lot of national attention to a player that might otherwise would have been overlooked because of the suspect level of his high school competition in the EAC. The result was Anderson being recruited by national power Michigan before his senior year.

The 1998 Attleboro title team.

But that's when Anderson's fortunes started to reverse themselves. Five games into his senior season, he suffered a painful thigh contusion that resulted in the formation of calcium deposits, and he was advised to sit out the remainder of the season. The Bombardiers did their best to overcome the loss of their leading scorer, reaching a sectional final against Bridgewater-Raynham at Taunton High before bowing out of the tournament, three wins shy of a repeat championship.

Injuries continued to plague Anderson when he arrived in Ann Arbor, and he missed a stretch of 10 straight games early in his freshman campaign because of back problems. He played in just 16 games as a Wolverine, averaging 2.1 points and 1.4 rebounds, with a career high of 8 points against Western Michigan on Nov. 27, 1999.

Anderson transferred to Providence College after that. He sat out a year per the NCAA rules of the time, but injuries continued to dog him once he donned the Friars' uniform.

He played just 40 games for the Friars, averaging 2.7 points and 1.6 rebounds in the 2002 and 2003 seasons, hitting a career-high of 14 points against Virginia Tech in 2002. He left the team following the end of the 2003 season despite having one more year of eligibility.

He moved to California and played semipro ball briefly in Long Beach, Calif., for the Hollywood Fame of the American Basketball Association, a developmental league that was sort of a last-chance opportunity for players trying to work their way up to the NBA. He also flirted with professional wrestling in the WWE, but achieved a different level of fame as a documentary filmmaker.

Anderson is listed as one of the three screenwriters (with Chris Bell and T.J. Mahar) of a documentary film called “Trophy Kids,” directed by Bell, that appeared on HBO in 2013 and is currently available on Prime Video. Here is the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) synopsis:

“From the director of ‘Bigger Stronger Faster’ comes an intense look at overbearing parents in sports. The film asks the question ‘Do we want what's best for our children? Or do we just want them to be the best?’ Parts of this film were used in the premier of Peter Berg's HBO series State of Play.”

Anderson holds the second-highest single game performance in Attleboro High history, hitting 42 points in a game during his junior year.

Anderson's death is the second to strike deeply at the heart of the Attleboro High basketball community in recent years, following the passing of Rebecca Hardt in August 2022. Hardt, who was 46, finished with 1,221 career points (fourth overall at AHS) from 1990-94. Hardt's death came only a short time after the passing of her father, David, who was a top athlete at AHS in the 1960s and a high draft pick of the New England Patriots as a tight end out of Kentucky. Dave Hardt's career tragically ended in the first game played at Schaefer Stadium in Foxboro, a preseason game against the New York Giants, as he suffered a severe knee injury on a half-opening kickoff.

The Owner's Box After Dark, Ep. 57

There's always room for more video podcasts, so I produced another one earlier this week and am finally getting around to putting up links. Here's After Dark 57 for your enjoyment.

It's a simple episode, in which I talk about how I almost landed myself in YouTube jail -- just watch the episode, it will explain everything. I also talk about my latest medical checkup (99 percent good news!), the new "swag" that really takes my branding to the next level (aren't I really sounding like an influencer now?), and my expectations for another great few weeks of summer basketball locally.

It's all from the friendly folks at Duck and Cover Productions, where we put the "con" in content. At least I'm not asking you to pay money for it.

The difference between wearing a sports uniform, and earning it.

Once the rarest of rare items, team jerseys are now available to just about anyone.

I had an interesting "discussion" the other night with a friend that used to work in sports media many years ago. I'd call it an "argument" instead of a discussion, because it did get a little emphatic at times, but I'd prefer to call my interactions with my old friend "discussions" to avoid the connotation that there may have been ill feelings involved. I like her too much for that.

The "discussion" revolved around how modern-day fans of pro sports teams have what I believe to be too much investment in their teams, and that they don't really understand that there should be more of a separation between professional athletes, who have earned their status on the fields of play, and those that can only experience the athletes' success vicariously.

The topic came up because, in a phone call, she sounded a little surprised that I did not bother to watch the Celtics' victory parade through Boston following their 18th NBA championship. I told her that I've never been interested in such things, probably because most of Boston's championship parades happened during the period of my life when I was a professional sports journalist, and the rule of thumb for that was to maintain distance between being impartial and having a rooting interest.

The closest I ever got to participating in one of those duck boat rallies was after one of the Patriots' early Super Bowl victories, when I arrived home at Logan Airport at about the same time as the rolling rally was making its way through the streets of the city in 20-degree cold. Fortunately, the parade was nowhere near the tunnels and Southeast Expressway headed southbound, and thus I avoided being trapped amid the merriment.

My bosses never asked me to cover one of those things, probably because they knew I disliked being in the midst of unruly crowds -- and also because I had made it clearly known that I thought those events were not appropriate for serious journalists to cover. I wasn't even remotely interested in playing catch with Tom Brady as his duck boat rolled by. I didn't feel any need to make myself part of the story. Besides, I'm pretty sure I would have dropped the pass.

If that sounds a little snooty of me, so be it. At least I'm consistent. I believe in the separation of Church and State, and I believe even more in the separation of the playing field and the cheap seats.

One thing that really irks me is the proliferation of replica pro sports uniforms in the stands -- and, it goes without saying, in the streets along these championship parades. Nothing rubs me the wrong way more than seeing a 350-pound man in his 50s trying to squeeze into an undersized Tom Brady replica No. 12 shirt for which he probably paid a dollar a pound. But I'm equally miffed at looking down from the press box into a crowd of 60,000 people and seeing maybe four-fifths of those people wearing some sort of replica jersey.

I'll tell you why.

Me in my Post 93 uniform.

I earned the right to wear two sports uniforms in my lifetime -- the baseball uniforms of Mansfield High School and the Foxboro Post 93 American Legion team. And, given the limited scope of my abilities, I had earned both by the skin of my teeth.

My first Mansfield varsity uniform was a hand-me-down that dated at least to the early 1950s. I was one of just three players relegated to uniforms that weren't even as current as those worn by the JV team, because the school ordered too few uniforms and I wasn't as good as the players that were told they could wear the new uniforms. The only saving grace was that my uniform was No. 9 -- Ted Williams' number. 

The next year, I earned one of the "real" varsity uniforms, and wore it proudly. I'd like to say I made No. 12 a Boston-area icon long before that skinny kid from Michigan did, but at least I wore it -- sort of like Steve Kuberski's No. 33 for the Celtics before the Hick from French Lick made it his.

For the Post 93 team, I wore three uniforms -- Nos. 11, 19 and 23. I got to keep No. 19 after my last season because the Legion post was buying new uniforms for the next year, and I had that for a long time before giving it to someone that needed something warm to wear for a cold night on the Cape. I never saw it again.

Point being, I earned those uniforms. 

I grew up a Red Sox fan first and foremost, and yes, I hoped that someday I'd grow up and be able to wear one as a member of the team. The Talent Gods ruled otherwise, and I accepted my fate, entering a new career in sports journalism knowing that it was not my place to be wearing the uniforms of the people I covered. The only way I hoped I could reach across that divide was that, on the day I retired as a beat writer covering the Patriots, I hoped they would present me with a jersey with my name on the back and the number stemming from the number of years I covered them. I never would have worn the shirt, but I would have framed it and hung it in a place of honor.

Alas, that tradition ended a long time ago. The last reporter I know to have been given a jersey was the late Dick Cerasuolo of the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, who covered the Patriots from their inception in 1960 to his retirement at the start of the 2000 season. When I retired in 2018, the Patriots got me a cake and a football autographed by all of the media members on the beat at the time. Like Brady's footballs, I sometimes have to pump up that ball a little to keep it at an acceptable PSI level.

But I will admit, when I was in high school, I spied a small ad in The Sporting News, which I used to buy religiously, that piqued my interest.

It was from the KMPro Co., a hat manufacturer in Boston that provided most of the major league teams with their official caps. They were offering the real caps, not cheap replica knock-offs, for sale -- the same caps as worn by the players, sized for personal fit, for the ungodly sum of $20 (including shipping) in 1970. That would be about $175 today, adjusted for inflation.

Je me souviens: Les Expos.

So, I bought one. But I didn't buy a Red Sox hat, nor that of any more tradition-rich team. It was the tri-color chapeau of the Montréal Expos, still a relatively new expansion franchise, selected because I just thought it was the coolest thing ever. It had the full leather forehead strap and the delicately woven embroidered logo -- the latter of which caused no limit of consternation to those that, unfamiliar with the Expos, couldn't figure out what the "elb" in the front of the cap meant. 

I loved that cap and wore it a lot. And when a rainstorm shrunk my cheap woolen Post 93 cap well under my 7⅜-inch hat size, I started wearing it in my Legion games. I was proud to wear that hat, even though it would still be about five or six years before I would see Les Expos in person.

I also bought two "Starter" satin warmup jackets in the late 1980s, one for the Chicago Bears and one for the San Francisco 49ers, because they reminded me of my high school letter jacket (which I had outgrown) for their comfort and warmth. A few years later, I had "outgrown" those (mostly in the belly area) and I gave them to my father, who didn't follow pro sports and just enjoyed having nice jackets to wear in his retirement years.

And that's the extent to which I ever wanted to wear pro sports paraphernalia. I got my share of free hats and shirts and other knick-knacks from the Patriots in 42 years of covering them. I put the key rings to use and maybe stashed a t-shirt away for work around the yard, but most everything else I gave away. I've bought a few baseball caps in later years -- a blue Expos cap to replace the worn-out tri-color, an Orioles' cap bought at Camden Yards, a few Washington Nationals hats because I loved their use of the old Senators' "W" on front (but those are now on the shelves because red caps look too much like MAGA identification). But when I bought a traditional Red Sox cap after their first recent championship and wore it to a Patriots' training camp practice, I took so much shit from my fellow reporters that I stashed it away and don't even know where it is today.

I have never bought a replica jersey for any team, however, and I would never have worn it in public even if I did. It would seem the same as sacrilege. I didn't earn that jersey from giving my blood, sweat and tears to the team it represents. I have no right to it.

Does this guy really think
he played for the Chargers?

Growing up, I saw those uniforms as the ultimate symbol of achievement. They were the rarest of rare things, not to be worn by mere mortals. And I still feel the same way today. It turns my stomach to see someone that would require two seats on an airliner wearing Brady's jersey, knowing that the most athletic thing that individual does is raising a fork to his mouth.

A few years back, Sports Illustrated did an article on the topic of how attitudes have changed over the last 40 years over public accessibility to authentic pro uniforms. The writer spoke to numerous researchers and psychologists and came away with the conclusions that fans have a burning need to feel invested in the teams they support because of the high cost of following them. Whether it's season tickets (a small fortune), game-day parking and concessions, or even as simple as the markups to your media bills for viewing packages, fans feel the need to take their loyalty up to another level and to personally identify with those teams by wearing the same uniforms -- as if they are also members of the teams because of their personal investments in them.

I keep trying to tell fans that the teams really don't love them the same way in return. The teams USE them. They take the money gleefully and often promise a return on the investment by promising championships, but those promises are rarely fulfilled. And if things turn bad, fans will boo despite their professed love -- and players will say harsh things to the media about how their fans should support them more. It's just human nature.

What's more, the prices go up every year, and the fans foolishly dig deeper and pay. 

I'm not one of those people who will tell you that people should not be spending money so that billionaire owners can pay their players millions of dollars to play a kid's game, and then have the owners coercing taxpayers to spend more money for their billion-dollar stadiums. If I was, I wouldn't have had a job for 42 years. Sure, it sounds like a horrible misappropriation of funds, especially when food costs too much and other basic human needs are ignored because they can't get funding. Here in Massachusetts, we reached a compromise with that cycle because Robert Kraft had to spend his own money to buy the team, and then a lot more of his own money to build the stadium and later renovate it, although he did get a good chunk of change from the state to fix the parking lots. All that helped make Kraft a much richer man that he already was, but fans got their desired return from their investments in the form of six Super Bowl championships and two decades of consistent contention for championships.

A lot of people elsewhere in this nation get bilked out of their money by team owners, but at least the Patriots have given them something back. But it's always short-term love. Just think back to how fans roasted former coach Bill Belichick on social media and sports-talk radio every day during the 2023 season, which was the direct opposite of "In Bill We Trust." And if Jerod Mayo struggles this fall, the cycle will turn back in the other direction faster than Belichick's new 24-year-old galpal can spend his money.

These guys really look foolish.

My feeling about replica uniforms is simple. Buy them for the kids, not yourself. You look like an idiot wearing the uniform of a man in his 20s that has incredible athletic gifts, where the best you can do is get through an afternoon of lawn-mowing without spraining an ankle. But the book of life for your kids has yet to be written. It's OK for them to idolize their sports heroes. Maybe if you're really lucky, your kid will be so inspired that he or she will become one of the 0.03 percent of all high school athletes that will go on to become a professional. And if not, at least you did something nice for your son or daughter and didn't embarrass yourself in front of them in the process. 

Speaking of social media and sports-talk radio, here's another thing that grinds my gears.

I could never last in a job as a sports-talk host, and here's why. Too many times when I happen to be listening -- probably because I got in the car and had forgotten to tune away from the station that had the play-by-play the night before -- I hear callers try to make their points about the teams they are either praising or damning by using the personal pronoun "we." As in:

Host: Jocko in Malden, you're next.

Caller: Yeah, first time, long time. Thanks for taking my call. Yeah, why is Pavetta giving up so many homers? We have to get rid of him. We're not going to win these close games if he can't stop giving up dingers. It's killing us!

Notice how that was phrased. The caller used "we" as if to imply that he was somehow involved in the management decisions of the Red Sox or as if he was or had been a member of the team. My first reaction would be to immediately stop the caller and ask him to pull out a copy of the latest Red Sox media guide and show me exactly where his name appears in the listing of management or on the all-time team roster.

And I'd be fired for it, as being elitist scum. Which I am. I just don't believe anyone is entitled to use a personal pronoun in regard to a professional sports team unless you were actually employed by it. And that doesn't include a job as a beer-pourer at a concession stand on the third level of Gillette Stadium.

My friend did not agree with me. I'm sure she thinks I'm as scummy an elitist as I am in real life. But I covered the Patriots for 42 years and I'll never use "we" to refer to my association with that team. It will always be "they." And rightfully so.

That stance of mine did once result in a rather humorous (at least to me) episode quite a few years back, however, and now I'm ready to reveal it.

Long before he had a radio show of his own on WBZ-FM, former Boston Herald writer Michael Felger frequently guested on WEEI's "The Big Show" hosted by Glenn Ordway, who was recently inducted into the Mass. Broadcasters Hall of Fame. Ordway used a rotating crew of guest hosts, and as Felger had been a host on a small station with an even smaller signal after leaving the Herald, he returned quickly to the 'EEI fold when the other station ended its locally-based programs.

Now, I was not a big fan of Felger's when he was on the Patriots beat for the Herald, for reasons I won't get into here. But one day, as I was listening to Ordway's show, Felger let loose with an unmistakable personal pronoun when referring to the Patriots, and that went right up my backside.

Felger: What's this 'we' stuff?

But I had a way of calling him out for it without getting too personal.

In those days, Ordway's show had a segment called "The Whiner Line." Fans could call that station at any time of day and leave a recording with whatever pithy and anonymous comment they had in mind, and Ordway and his staff would choose the best and air them at the end of his show every day.

So, I prepared myself. I've always been able to mimic other voices, so I cranked mine up about five octaves and cleared my throat enough times to make my voice sound as if it was the product of a six-pack-a-day smoking habit. Then I applied the thickest Boston accent I could muster, and I dialed the number.

"Hey, Fel-GAH," I said. "What's this 'we' stuff? When did YOU play fah the Pats?" Click.

Very few calls to the Whiner Line made it to broadcast, but mine did the very next day. And Felger happened to be guesting in studio again, and his fellow hosts let him have it.

It was priceless. I laughed in solitude because I didn't dare tell others on the beat at the time, but the story eventually got out -- I really do have a big mouth -- and most in my circle of friends applauded my effort.

These days, I'd probably let that go. I'm no longer in the sports media, and I don't have to wage the us-vs.-them battle that it had eventually become. But I still get a little frosted when I see news anchors on the nightly telecasts wearing Celtics hats and acting like fans, crossing that imaginary line between journalist and participant. It's just not right.

Besides, I'd look pretty stupid wearing a Caitlin Clark jersey.

The Owner's Box After Dark, Ep. 56.

Gasoline marketing was an entirely different thing in the 1960s.

You may have heard Alex Salachi and me talking about the butcher shops and gasoline stations in the Mansfield of 60 years ago in our most recent episode of my audio podcast, The Owner's Box. But now you can see not only us, in all our seasoned glory, but also some visual examples of the Mansfield that no longer exists in this episode of my video podcast.

It's the first time that I've committed one of our "Mansfield Memories" episodes to video, and I think it came out very well. It's the first time I've been able to use a two-camera setup in recording one of my video podcasts, and I also insert several vintage photos from the archives of the old Mansfield News, courtesy of the Mansfield Historical Society, as well as some images from my own collection.

And don't forget my unusual commercials! I've found four gems for this episode, and you'll love them.

It's a lot of fun to look back at the changes in our community over the decades -- and it's almost therapeutic for Alex and me, we both having reached our 70th birthdays recently. We try to stay current with the world in our roles as the cable TV broadcasting team for boys' and girls' basketball at Mansfield High and King Philip Regional, but it's just as important to remain cognizant of the path we took to get us to this point in our lives.

Join us as we stroll through the mists of time!

(Blogger's Note: The link below is to an edited version of the original Episode 56. It was flagged for an unintentional copyright violation regarding one of the vintage commercials, but the offending commercial has since been removed. It's a shame, too ... it really should have been in the public domain after 64 years.)

The Owner's Box, Ep. 55.

When they weren't kidding about the "service" in the term "service station."

It's time for another "Mansfield Memories" episode of The Owner's Box, so Alex Salachi and I manned the microphones at Fulton Pond Studios to peer into the mists of old age and recall some interesting and informative aspects of our hometown's history and culture over the 70 years we've both been on this earth.

This time, Alex looks back at the many mom-and-pop butcher shops that met the unique needs of what was once a town populated mainly by Italian immigrants and their families.

And I take a look back at a town that once had only 5,000-9,000 residents, as opposed to today's nearly 25,000 -- but had more than 23 locations where gasoline was sold at retail pumps. There are only eight gas stations in the town today, five of them still at or very near to their locations in the 1950s and 1960s.

This is the audio only version of the podcast, but I have another surprise for you. In addition to the links you will find here, I will also be producing a video episode of "The Owner's Box ... After Dark" from this recording. Not only will you see Alex and me in all our splendor, but you'll also see vintage photographs of the locations and people we're talking about.

The video version will be out in a couple of days. But in the meantime, enjoy the audio version -- and let your imagination or memories fill in the blanks.

At loggerheads over a logo?

It was announced this week that my high school alma mater, Mansfield (Mass.) High School, has chosen a new sports logo. 

Mansfield High's new Hornet logo.

More accurately, it has updated an old logo -- bringing to an end a five-month process that allowed my school to embrace its 79-year history as the Mansfield Green Hornets while updating its look and protecting it from those that might abuse it.

As pictured to the right, the new Hornet is bolder, stronger, with a touch of confidence and cockiness that the old one lacked. And it's greener. Our hornet's face is now green and he's proud enough of his heritage and association with our school to be wearing the newly-designed "M" logo on his shirt. 

You can see the differences in the new Hornet and the older one (pictured elsewhere in this missive). I really liked the older one, which has been around the halls of Mansfield High for more than a decade, but it's a little more cartoonish than The New Guy. 

And the big problem, one of the driving forces behind the decision to make the change, is that the old Hornet wasn't ours. We didn't own his rights, and free agency where logos are concerned can be a costly proposition.

The former Mansfield Hornet.

The former logo is a slightly-altered version of the Yellowjacket logo that represents Georgia Tech on the national stage. Take out the yellow and throw in some green and silver tones, and bingo -- we had a logo that was a damn sight better than some of the faltering images adopted by MHS over the years that struggled at making a stinging insect a sympathetic figure and something you wanted to rally the troops around.

It's no wonder that, in the late 1970s, a group of enterprising students decided to paint a mural of the Incredible Hulk inside the James Albertini Memorial Gymnasium. The Marvel Comics character was depicted as bursting through the cinder block wall of the gym, with the banner "MHS Green Machine" above it -- and, following decades of being the doormats of the Hockomock League and reading headlines that relied upon tired clichés such as "Hornets stung" or "Hornets squished," Mansfield athletes tried to tell the world through the Incredible Hulk that they were tired of being regarded as insignificant insects. 

Over the last quarter-century, Mansfield athletics have been on a huge upswing. The football, baseball, boys' basketball, girls' basketball, soccer, lacrosse and track-and-field teams, and others as well, have become perennial league contenders. That's the product of better athletes and better coaching, but I also have to believe that the adoption of a common logo to represent Mansfield teams helped forge a shared identity.

Georgia Tech's Yellowjacket.

But it's very important to note here that, as I said before, the logo wasn't ours. It was really Georgia Tech's. And that could have led to the manufacture of bootleg logo attire for which Mansfield High would receive no income whatsoever, or the possible use of the logo in manners that would not represent the values of the Mansfield School System -- or even worse, prompt Georgia Tech to step in and issue a cease-and-desist order for unauthorized trademark infringement. 

The pro leagues and major colleges protect the use of their logos and trademarks, knowing that firm control means additional revenue. The NFL has a department called NFL Properties which enforces trademark protection quite aggressively, regardless of whether it's a current logo or something from a member franchise's past.

Case in point: Some time back, a liquor store opened in one of our local towns calling itself "Patriot Liquors." Now, the word "patriot" is in common use and the New England Patriots have no say over who can or who can't use it. But this particular store featured a sign that ripped off the team's old logo, the crouching "Pat Patriot" caricature created by artist Phil Bissell in the early 1960s, with just one difference -- the football that Pat was about to snap in his classic pose was missing.

That wasn't enough to avoid the wrath of NFL Properties, which started the process of legal action to stop the use of the Patriots' former logo. The issue met its own resolution when the liquor store went out of business.

You may also recall that many years back, Major League Baseball demanded payment from teams in the well-known summer Cape Cod Baseball League that used MLB trademarks and nicknames, forcing many of the teams to change their identities entirely. But more often than not, pro and college teams don't take offense when high school programs use their logos. Franklin High used the Carolina Panthers' logo on its football helmets for a few years before designing its own unique logo. Another local school briefly used Northwestern University's stylized "N" on their helmets, but quickly went back to a common typeface. I'm not sure if that school heard from Evanston, but it certainly was a quick decision.

And, of course, you have the current and ongoing controversy in Foxboro over the use of the Washington Redskins' former logo. We'll get into that issue a little further down in this missive.

Anyway, the process in Mansfield was swift and relatively painless. Since Insect-Americans do not seem to be offended by the use of a hornet as our logo, a panel consisting of school administrators, athletic department officials, coaches, teachers, students and community members (including me) was formed and asked to offer opinions as to how a "new" hornet should reflect the values that they believe were the best of what Mansfield represents.

My dad's letter sweater
(Class of 1937).

Also brought on board was a fellow named Jeff Eagles, who runs a design firm out of Canton that has worked with high schools, colleges and pro teams in designing dynamic new logos. Among his clients are the Vegas Golden Knights and the Florida Panthers of the NHL as well as recent rebrandings for Attleboro High and Canton High. 

Eagles did his homework, looking through archival photos dating back more than 120 years to see how Mansfield represented itself. Old Townies like me knew that the inspiration for the nickname came not from an insect, but from a student vote in 1945 that reflected the popularity of the radio serial "The Green Hornet." Second place, by the way, was "Marauders." But I didn't know that it was in 1909 that the Mansfield High baseball team adopted green as its primary coloring for the lettering on their uniforms, and green and white gradually became the official school colors.

In the many meetings of this panel, several options were presented. Some of the Hornets weren't very good at all. One version looked like the Hornet had been exposed to massive amounts of gamma radiation (you have seen the Marvel movies, right?) and became The Hulk -- totally 'roided out and dripping with far too much testosterone to accurately represent Mansfield's girls' teams. 

The laughable "Bucky Hornet."

That version reminded me of a horrible attempt to create a similar logo back in the 1980s by then-athletic director Vincent Messina, who fancied himself as an artist. Sensing that student sentiment was turning away from most portrayals of a hornet as a pest that should be eradicated, he created the ludicrously bulging "Bucky Hornet" logo you see at right. Well-intentioned as it was, it was clearly the worst logo ever to represent the school and an immediate target of ridicule.

The chosen iteration really was the best. It still features that feisty stature and that sly smile that says, "I'm ready to whip your ass." It's modern and a little angular, but it's relatable, too. It enjoys being from Mansfield, as indicated by the logo shirt it's wearing. And he's totally unique to Mansfield, which means that the Mansfield School Department has total control over how and when it can be used.

I posted photos of it online today, and for the most part, reactions have been very positive. Some still say they want to go back to the old logo, but that just isn't going to happen because of the trademark issue and the desire of Mansfield school officials to have control over its branding. I, too, liked the old logo -- but I fully understand why it had to give way to something new that we can call our very own.

One other aspect of this rebranding is that Mansfield now also has a standard font for use on its uniforms. The word "Mansfield" will also appear framed by arches above and below, which are symbolic of the train line that runs through the center of town (a major factor in the town's industrial growth in the late 1800s) and the underpasses that were built in the 1950s to help keep Mansfield a hub of transportation in the region. This rebranding will also re-emphasize green and white as the official colors of MHS athletics, and hopefully eliminate the overuse of black alternate uniforms that have led us astray from our athletic roots.

Even the letter "M" has a subtle change. You will notice at the top of the letter that there are little points that penetrate inward from the serifs. That is to make the top left and top right serifs appear to separate from the base of the letter, symbolizing the wings of a hornet. They were much bigger in earlier designs, but many of us started to see the letters M and V on top of each other (as if this was a new logo for Martha's Vineyard), so the design was altered.

As far as I can tell, the whole process has been accomplished without rancor and ill feelings. The biggest point I made during the procedure (and I was quite the pain in the ass about it) was that I didn't want to see Mansfield adopt uniforms that had dark green numbers on the green shirts, as Canton High has done on its road basketball uniforms. That color combination practically renders the numbers invisible from a distance -- and as a 70-year-old basketball announcer, I need to be able to see those numbers. 

For his part, Jeff Eagles said that while he came up with the designs for Canton's rebranding, he did not recommend that color combination for the Bulldogs' uniforms. Hopefully that message was delivered loud and clear to my friends at MHS.

And that brings us back to the travails of the Foxboro Warriors.

You may recall that last year, the School Committee voted to eliminate future use of any Native American imagery in logos representing the school, while at the same time reaffirming "Warriors" as the nickname. Fearful of threatened state legislation that would ban all Native American-themed nicknames and logos, the committee acted in a manner that it hoped would preserve the popular nickname, which has been in use since the 1950s, while sacrificing the use of the former Washington Redskins' logo which was first applied to Foxboro football helmets in the 1980s.

Many schools in Massachusetts and elsewhere have changed their representation similarly, or chosen entirely new identities, rather than facing the possibility of being forced to change if one of the many attempts to legislate against Native American imagery finally succeeds. King Philip Regional High School recently dropped all Native American imagery for a simple logo with the letters K and P interlocking, still keeping the Warriors nickname, with nary a peep of protest. It was done quietly and with absolutely no fanfare, and no one was the wiser that it had happened.

Foxboro probably would have been wise to take the same approach. Instead, the school committee meeting was filled with angry Townies claiming that the loss of the Redskins logo -- which had been ripped off from a pro team and would later become the most disgraced image in all of logodom -- would be the worst thing ever to happen to the town. It was, in a word, embarrassing.

But the vote was taken and the decision was made -- a decision that would cost a couple of incumbents their places on the committee in the next election. But before that happened, a committee was formed to create a new logo -- and that committee's mandate came due this past week.

Much like Mansfield's, the Foxboro panel was populated with a cross-section of school officials, private citizens and students. From all indications, it worked very hard and very judiciously to feel the pulse of the community about this hot-button issue, but all the while having to buck widespread opposition to anything but the old Redskins logo.

This could be Foxboro's new logo.

The panel had 16 designs submitted to it. The first to be eliminated were those featuring a fox as the central element, because most feedback indicated that Foxboro residents polled didn't identify with the animal as representative of the community. Eventually, four "finalists" were selected and the apparent winner is the one you see at right. It wasn't my favorite, but it's not much better or worse than any of the others. In this instance, the logo's central element is a half-blue, half-gold helmet which, I think, is supposed to represent warriors of ancient times, Greek or Roman themes coming to mind. I, however, tend to be stuck in my Marvel Comics mindset, and what I see is the image of the helmet worn by Magneto, master of magnetism and the arch-villain and nemesis of the mutant X-Men. If you don't know what I'm talking about, go on demand and play "X-Men: Days of Future Past." I prefer Michael Fassbender's version of the younger Magneto to Ian McKellan's portrayal of the older Magneto in the original trilogy, but you will see both of them in the role in this movie.

The school board voted 3-2 to accept the design and send it on for some final tweaking, which may involve removal of the "W" on the helmet, changing it to more of a side view, and a few minor changes to the type fonts. But you can bet that there will still be cries of objections to the procedure, no matter what they finish with. 

I also think the Foxboro board made a mistake by not establishing the logo and the "Warriors" nickname as the standard for the entire school system, as Mansfield has done. Elementary schools in Foxboro have their own nicknames and imagery, and they don't become Warriors until Grade 9. That just doesn't make sense to me, but hey, I haven't been a Foxboro resident since 2015, so I really have no say.

I can't say much more, opinion-wise, because I still have great friends in Foxboro and they are very nice to let me call games played by the girls' basketball team on Foxboro Cable Access (including their last two state championship wins). I've tried to tell them that this is for future generations and not their own, but they don't want to accept that. And I've tried to understand how they feel, but it's tough for me to do so because my town chose an insect to serve as its mascot, and not the indigenous peoples of this land who were massacred in the name of Manifest Destiny.

Maybe if those Mansfield kids in 1945 had been really faithful to the radio serial and chose the Green Hornet's Asian sidekick, Kato, as their mascot, we'd have been in a world of hurt today from the Asian community over our use of a distasteful stereotype to represent our athletic teams. 

But they didn't, and thank God for that.

Mark Farinella has been designing sports uniforms and logos just for fun since the 1970s, and no one has ever seen any of his designs. But he always makes a point of analyzing every uniform he sees during a televised game. Contact him at theownersbox2020@gmail.com.