Sports
New York fans who grew up with Brooklyn Dodgers face a tough choice in this World Series
Even now, after all these years, Norman Siegel is conflicted. He was born in Brooklyn, raised in Brooklyn, and he firmly believes his childhood passion for the Brooklyn Dodgers set him on a course to becoming a civil rights attorney.
Now it’s the Los Angeles Dodgers who’ll be playing the New York Yankees in Game 1 of the World Series Friday night, this after knocking off the Mets in the National League Championship Series. And it so happens that Siegel, who turns 81 in November, transferred his loyalties to the expansion Mets in 1962, five years after the Dodgers moved to the west coast.
Should a loyal Mets fan root for the Yankees in the World Series? On the other hand, how can a native of Brooklyn root for the team that abandoned Ebbets Field?
This will be the 12th time the Dodgers and Yankees have met in the World Series, and it’s the fifth meeting since the Dodgers relocated to Los Angeles. To gain some perspective that can only be provided by a true Brooklynite, I spoke with Siegel. I spoke with Abby Tedesco, 90, who participated in the big celebration in front of the Hotel Bossert on Montague Street that October afternoon in 1955 when the Brooklyn Dodgers toppled the Yankees in Game 7 of the World Series for their only pre-Los Angeles championship. I spoke with Shaine Kay, age 51. Not yet born when the Dodgers moved away, even he has feelings on the matter.
Norman Siegel had sports in his blood. His father, Benjamin Siegel, had played some semi-pro basketball back in the day, and he was a hearty Dodgers fan. Benjamin Siegel was a union foreman for Supreme Printing Co., on Varick Street in Greenwich Village, which meant daily trips into Manhattan, but he still found time for trips to Ebbets Field, often with Norman at his side.
Norman Siegel was a fine student at New Utrecht High School and later at Brooklyn College and NYU School of Law, but it’s nothing compared with the education he received at Ebbets Field. Going to Brooklyn Dodgers games, he said, “sensitized me to the concept of racial equality, which led me to become a civil rights lawyer. And I’ve been doing that now for 54 years.
“Ebbets Field was my first exposure to people who were Black in significant number,” Siegel said. “Sitting with Black people in the bleachers helped make me be comfortable rooting for a team that was racially mixed.”
The Dodgers made history in 1947 when their general manager, Branch Rickey, broke baseball’s longstanding color line by promoting Jackie Robinson to the big leagues. Soon other Black players would come along. Roy Campanella. Don Newcombe. Joe Black. Siegel saw all of them.
“For 75 cents you could sit in the bleachers,” Siegel said. “We didn’t high-five anyone in those days, but whenever anyone on the Dodgers did something, whether it was Jackie or Pee Wee Reese or Duke Snider, we’d get up and applaud. Sometimes I would look at the other people, they were Black and White. So whether it was Preacher Roe or Don Newcombe pitching, we usually had four Whites and five Blacks or five Blacks and four Whites, or something like that, but we were all together. It was we shall overcome.”
“I celebrated in ’55, of course, when we finally beat those damn Yankees,” Siegel said. “And I was devastated in ’57.”
Norman Siegel with a photo of several Brooklyn Dodgers greats (Courtesy photo)
With his law degree, and with what he learned growing up at Ebbets Field, Siegel went south to work for the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project. In 1985 he was named executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. Now living in the Upper West Side in Manhattan, he’s on the board of directors of the Jackie Robinson Foundation. He is a New Yorker, through and through, and the Dodgers have now been Los Angeles’ team for almost seven decades.
So … Dodgers or Yankees in the World Series?
“People have been asking me what I’m going to do,” Siegel said. “I’ll know for sure when the the first game starts.
“But when I see that uniform, with ‘Dodgers’ across the front, it wins me over.”
Abby Tedesco has no conflicts about which team she plans to support in the World Series.
It’ll be the Dodgers.
It’s a Brooklyn thing.
Abby is living in Lido Beach on Long Island now and has a summer place in the Berkshires where her family runs an animal sanctuary, but to talk to this spry, upbeat woman about growing up in East Flatbush is to talk about those many happy treks to Ebbets Field to watch the Dodgers.
Abby’s biggest takeaways? She especially enjoyed the slaphappy band of Ebbets Field musicians known as the “Dodgers Sym-Phony,” and as a youngster she’d marvel as the volume of peanut shells that collected on the ground during the game. “We’d be eating peanuts all day, and what a mess we’d leave,” Abby said. “I don’t know how they got them all picked up.”
Abby Tedesco with a photo of the memorable 1955 Dodgers. (Courtesy photo)
But it was Abby’s father, Moe Moskowitz, who wore the Dodger pants in the house. “He wasn’t just a Dodger fan, he was a crazy Dodger fan,” Abby said. “If he was watching a game the Dodgers could have an 8-0 lead in the eighth inning and he’d be saying, ‘It’s too close! It’s too close!’ Sometimes he’d get so nervous he’d turn the game off and read about it in the paper in the morning.”
Moe Moskowitz was in ladies’ corsets. “My father managed a chain of 15 stores owned by my uncle,” Abby said. “The company was called Corsetorium. They used to say, ‘Of course it’s Corsetorium!’”
Dashing about from corset shop to corset shop kept Moe busy, but not too busy to take the family to Dodgers games. The family home at East 54th Street and Lenox Road was only a couple of miles from Ebbets Field.
“Jackie Robinson lived not too far from where we lived,” Abby said. “My father would pile all the kids in the car and we would drive past there all the time to see if we could spot him out front and wave hello. We never did see him, but we’d keep going.”
When the Dodgers toppled the Yankees in the 1955 World Series, Moe again piled all the kids in the car. This time the destination was the Hotel Bossert.
“He knew the Dodgers would be celebrating there, and he wanted us to be part of it,” Abby said. “And we just stood there, watching everyone come in and out of the hotel. That was exciting.”
What wasn’t so exciting in the Moskowitz house was what happened two years later, when the Dodgers announced the move to Los Angeles. Moe was all worked up — even more so than if the Dodgers had an 8-0 lead in the eighth inning — but he got over it. “He went from being a crazy Dodgers fan to being a crazy Mets fan,” Abby said.
Moe Moskowitz passed away in 1992. He lived to see the Mets win two World Series championships, twice as many as were won by the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Abby isn’t as big a baseball fan as her father was, but, yes, she rooted for the Mets to beat the Dodgers in the NLCS.
She’ll be rooting for the Dodgers — the Los Angeles Dodgers — to beat the Yankees in the World Series.
“Even though they beat us, I want them to beat those damn Yankees,” Abby said.
And then there’s Brooklyn native Shaine Kay, too young to have even stepped inside Ebbets Field. Moreover, he admits he hasn’t been much of a baseball fan “since I was little.” And yet there’s a Brooklyn Dodgers beat to this heart, partly because of the relationship he had with his grandfather, the late William Kelleher, but also because of that time he met Dodgers icon Duke Snider — the Duke of Flatbush himself! — at an autograph show.
“My grandfather was a big Dodger fan, and my uncle — his brother — was a New York Giants fan,” Kay said. “I heard all the stories about the rivalry they had, and them cursing each other out at the dinner table.”
Like many Brooklyn Dodgers fans, Kelleher eventually transferred his loyalties to the Mets. Kay, on the other hand, had mixed loyalties: He became a Yankees fan as a child but maintained a fondness for former Dodgers shortstop Pee Wee Reese through the stories his grandfather would tell him.
Kelleher died in 1988. Kay drifted away from baseball. He eventually moved to Long Island, and then one day he ventured into a flea market that was selling odd sports souvenirs. Wouldn’t it be swell, he told himself, if there happened to be a Brooklyn Dodgers jersey with Pee Wee Reese’s No. 1 on the back?
What he found was a Brooklyn Dodgers jersey with Duke Snider’s No. 4 on the back.
“The place was going out of business, so I got it dirt cheap,” Kay said. “About a week later, my friend calls me up and says, ‘Get down to the comics store and bring your jersey.’ I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ He says, ‘Duke! Duke! He’s at the comic book store and he’s signing autographs.’ I said, ‘Who?’ And he says, ‘Like the jersey you just bought, idiot! No. 4, Duke Snider, is signing autographs.’”
Shaine Kay with his #4 Duke Snider Dodgers jersey. (Courtesy photo)
Kay gathered his Duke Snider jersey and went to the store, paid $20 to get in line, and presented himself to the Hall of Fame Dodgers center fielder. That’s when somebody stepped in and told Kay that Snider was only signing baseball cards or baseballs that had been purchased at the store.
They say Duke Snider had great range when he patrolled center field for the Dodgers. He showed it again that day at the comic book store, going way out of his way on behalf of Shaine Kay.
“I was going to say, alright, I’m leaving, give me my 20 bucks back,” Kay said. “And then Duke Snider says to me, I was maybe 15 at the time, he says, ‘Any kid who knows who the hell I am, let alone owns my jersey, I’m signing his shirt.’ And he took a Dodger blue sharpie out of his own pocket and signed it.”
So, Kay’s rooting for the Dodgers in the World Series, right? In memory of his grandfather! In memory of Duke Snider!
“I’m rooting for the Yankees, mainly because they’re a New York team,” he said. “But I love the fact that it’s Dodgers-Yankees, again, just like it used to be.
“But when I go,” Kay said, referring to the day he dies, “that Duke Snider jersey is going in the box with me. The rest of my jersey collection, they can split it up. But the Duke’s going with me.”
(Top photo of the 1954 Brooklyn Dodgers: Hulton Archive / Getty Images)
Sports
Law firm fighting for women’s sports in SCOTUS battle comments on ruling possibly impacting SJSU trans lawsuit
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A law firm leading the charge in the ongoing Supreme Court case over trans athletes in women’s sports has responded after a federal judge suggested the case’s ruling could impact a separate case involving a similar issue.
Colorado District Judge Kato Crews deferred ruling in motions to dismiss former San Jose State volleyball co-captain Brooke Slusser’s lawsuit against the California State University (CSU) system until after a ruling in the B.P.J. v. West Virginia Supreme Court case, which is expected to come in June.
Slusser filed the lawsuit against representatives of her school and the Mountain West Conference in fall 2024 after she allegedly was made to share bedrooms and changing spaces with trans teammate Blaire Fleming for a whole season without being informed that Fleming is a biological male.
Meanwhile, the B.P.J. case went to the Supreme Court after a trans teen sued West Virginia to block the state’s law that prevents males from competing in girls’ high school sports.
The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) is the primary law firm defending West Virginia in that case at the Supreme Court, and has now responded to news that Slusser’s lawsuit could be affected by the SCOTUS ruling.
“We hope the ruling from the Supreme Court will affirm that Title IX was designed to guarantee equal opportunity for women, not to let male athletes displace women and girl in competition. It is crucial that sports be separated by sex for not only the equal opportunity of women but for safety and privacy. Title IX should protect women’s right to compete in their own sports. Allowing men to compete in the female category reverses 50 years of advancement for women,” ADF Vice President of Litigation Strategies Jonathan Scruggs said.
Slusser’s attorney, Bill Bock of the Independent Council on Women’s Sports, expects a Supreme Court ruling in favor of the legal defense representing West Virginia, thus helping his case.
(Left) Brooke Slusser (10) of the San Jose State Spartans serves the ball during the first set against the Air Force Falcons at Falcon Court at East Gym in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on Oct. 19, 2024. (Right) Blaire Fleming #3 of the San Jose State Spartans looks on during the third set against the Air Force Falcons at Falcon Court at East Gym on October 19, 2024 in Colorado Springs, Colorado. ( Andrew Wevers/Getty Images; Andrew Wevers/Getty Images)
“We’re looking forward to the case going forward,” Bock told Fox News Digital.
“I believe that the court is going to find that Title IX operates on the basis of biological sex, without regard to an assumed or professed gender, and so just like the congress and the members of congress that passed Title IX in 1972, allowed this specifically provided for in the regulations that there had to be separate men’s and women’s teams based on biological sex, I think the court is going to see that is the original meaning of the statute and apply it in that way, and I think it’s going to be a big win in women’s sports.”
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority appeared prepared to rule in favor of West Virginia after oral arguments on Jan. 13.
Slusser spoke on the steps of the Supreme Court on Jan. 13 while oral arguments took place inside, sharing her experience with a divided crowd of opposing protesters.
With Fleming on its roster, SJSU reached the 2024 conference final by virtue of a forfeit by Boise State in the semifinal round. SJSU lost in the final to Colorado State.
Slusser went on to develop an eating disorder due to the anxiety and trauma from the scandal and dropped out of her classes the following semester. The eating disorder became so severe, that Slusser said she lost her menstrual cycle for nine months. Her decision to drop her classes resulted in the loss of her scholarship, and her parents said they had to foot the bill out of pocket for an unfinished final semester of college.
President Donald Trump’s Department of Education determined in January that SJSU violated Title IX in its handling of the situation involving Fleming, and has given the university an ultimatum to agree to a series of resolutions or face a referral to the Department of Justice.
Among the department’s findings, it determined that a female athlete discovered that the trans student allegedly conspired to have a member of an opposing team spike her in the face during a match. ED claims that “SJSU did not investigate the conspiracy, but later subjected the female athlete to a Title IX complaint for ‘misgendering’ the male athlete in online videos and interviews.”
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SJSU trans player Blaire Fleming and teammate Brooke Slusser went to a magic show and had Thanksgiving together in Las Vegas despite an ongoing lawsuit over Fleming being transgender. (Thien-An Truong/San Jose State Athletics)
SJSU Athletic Director Jeff Konya told Fox News Digital in a July interview that he was satisfied with how the university handled the situation involving Fleming.
“I think everybody acted in the best possible way they could, given the circumstances,” Konya said.
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Sports
Myles Garrett cited for speeding a ninth time, an elite pass rusher seemingly always in a rush
Myles Garrett is in a hurry to become the greatest pass rusher in NFL history. The Cleveland Browns All-Pro defensive end set the single-season sack record in 2025 and has cracked the top 20 career leaders after only nine seasons.
“I’m going to take that down, and I prefer I take it down in the next five years,” Garrett told Casino Guru News last month.
Off the field, however, his urgency to get from point A to B is a problem. He’s accumulating speeding tickets at an alarming rate.
On Feb. 21, Garrett was handed his ninth speeding ticket since his NFL career began in 2017. He was cited for driving 94 mph in a 70-mph zone on Interstate 71 between Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio.
The citation from the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office says Garrett was driving his green 2024 Porsche at 1:35 a.m., returning home after attending a Miami of Ohio basketball game in Oxford.
Body cam footage shows the officer telling Garrett that she kept the charge under 100 mph so that a court appearance wouldn’t be mandatory. Garrett reportedly still holds a Texas driver’s license — he attended Texas A&M — and told the officer that he did not have an Ohio license.
Cleveland Browns’ Myles Garrett wears a jacket displaying his girlfriend Chloe Kim before the women’s snowboarding halfpipe finals at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Livigno, Italy.
(Lindsey Wasson / AP)
The officer wrote that the famously affable Garrett was “kind and cooperative,” and that drugs and alcohol were not a factor.
Garrett’s need for speed flies in the face of his persona. He has written poetry since high school, peppers social media with inspirational sayings and donates time and money to several charities.
His girlfriend is two-time gold-medal-winning U.S. Olympic snowboarder Chloe Kim, for whom he wrote a poem he shared on social media: “You enrapture fools to kings, and exist without a peer, put on this Earth for many things, but our love is why you’re here.”
Verse hasn’t slowed his roll. On Aug. 9 he was cited for ticket No. 8, clocked at 100 mph in a 60-mph zone in a Cleveland suburb a day after the Browns returned home from a preseason game at Carolina.
Garrett’s seventh ticket followed a frightening crash in 2022. He flipped his gray 2021 Porsche 911 Turbo S off State Road in Sharon Township and he and a female passenger were injured. He was cited for failing to control his vehicle due to unsafe speeds on what had been a slick roadway.
A witness told a responding police officer that Garrett’s vehicle went airborne, took out a fire hydrant and rolled three times. Garrett sustained shoulder and biceps sprains and was sidelined for the Browns’ game that week against the Atlanta Falcons. His companion was not seriously injured.
Cleveland television station WKYC reported that in September 2021 Garrett was stopped twice in a 24-hour period — for driving 120 and 105 mph. The infractions occurred on Interstate 71 in Medina County, where the speed limit is 70 mph, and he paid fines of $267 and $287.
A year earlier, Garrett was cited for driving 100 mph in a 65-mph zone of Interstate 77 — again while driving a Porsche — and paid a $308 fine. He accumulated his first batch of speeding tickets in 2017 and 2018, and the police reports recite similar circumstances: Garrett driving well over the speed limit, cited without incident, paid a nominal fine.
The piddly fines certainly aren’t a deterrent. Garrett, 30, and the Browns agreed to a four-year contract extension in March 2025 that made him the highest-paid non-quarterback in NFL history at the time. The deal pays the seven-time All-Pro more than $40 million a season and includes more than $123 million in guaranteed money.
He set the NFL single-season sack record with 23.0 last season, surpassing the 22.5 accumulated by T.J. Watt and Michael Strahan. Garrett has 125.5 career sacks, averaging 14 a season, a pace that would enable him to break Bruce Smith’s career record of 200 in five years.
“That is definitely on my mind to go out there and get,” Garrett said. “That’s a goal I’ve had for years now since college.”
Garrett has declined to discuss his driving habits.
“I’d honestly prefer to talk about football and this team than anything I’m doing off the field other than the back-to-school event that I did the other day,” he told reporters after ticket No. 8 in August, referring to a charity appearance.
“I try to keep my personal life personal. And I’d rather focus on this team when I can.”
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Former ESPN broadcaster Keith Olbermann once again incited backlash on social media Wednesday after he called late legendary college football coach Lou Holtz a “legendary scumbag” in an X post on the day Holtz was announced dead.
“Legendary scumbag, yes,” Olbermann wrote in response to a clip of Holtz criticizing former President Joe Biden in 2020 for supporting abortion rights.
Olbermann received scathing criticism in response to his post on X.
“You’re a scumbag that needs mental help,” one X user wrote to Olbermann.
One user echoed that sentiment, writing to Olbermann, “You’re the real scumbag here. Lou Holtz had more class, integrity, and genuine decency in his pinky finger than you’ll ever show in your lifetime.”
Another user wrote, “You’re a grumpy, lonely, Godless man. All the things Lou Holtz was not.”
Keith Olbermann speaks onstage during the Olbermann panel at the ESPN portion of the 2013 Summer Television Critics Association tour at the Beverly Hilton Hotel July 24, 2013, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images)
Olbermann has made it a pattern of sharing politically charged far-left statements that are often combative and ridiculed on social media, typically resulting in immense backlash.
After the U.S. men’s hockey team’s gold medal win, Olbermann heavily criticized the team for accepting an invitation from President Trump to the State of the Union address. Olbermann wrote on X that any members of the men’s team who attended the event were “declaring their indelible stupidity and misogyny,” while praising the women’s team for declining the invitation.
In January, Olbermann attacked former University of Kentucky women’s swimmer Kaitlynn Wheeler for celebrating a women’s rights rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court during oral arguments for two cases focused on the legality of biological male trans athletes in women’s sports.
Former Notre Dame football coach Lou Holtz listens before being presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the White House in Washington, D.C., Dec, 3, 2020. (Doug Mills/The New York Times/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“It’s still about you trying to find an excuse for a lifetime wasted trying to succeed in sports without talent,” Olbermann wrote in response to Wheeler’s post.
In 2025, Olbermann faced significant backlash after posting (and later deleting) a message on X aimed at CNN contributor Scott Jennings, that said, “You’re next motherf—–,” shortly after the assassination of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk.
Holtz was a stern supporter of President Donald Trump, even saying in February 2024 that Trump needed to “coach America back to greatness!”
Near the end of Trump’s first term, shortly after former President Joe Biden defeated him in the 2020 election, Trump awarded Holtz with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award of the United States.
After Holtz’s death was announced Wednesday, several top GOP figures paid tribute to the coach on social media.
Those GOP lawmakers included senators Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala.; Todd Young, R-Ind.; Tom Cotton, R-Ark.; and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.; representatives Greg Murphy, R-N.C.; David Rouzer, R-N.C.; Erin Houchin, R-Ind.; and Steve Womack, R-Ark.; and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis; Indiana Gov. Mike Braun; U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon; and Rudy Giuliani.
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Lou Holtz, former Notre Dame football coach, addresses the America First Policy Institute’s America First Agenda Summit at the Marriott Marquis July 26, 2022. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc)
At the time of publication, prominent Democrat leaders have appeared silent on Holtz’s passing, including prominent Democrats with a football background.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who worked as an assistant high school football coach; Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., who was a recruiting target for Holtz in 1986 as a college prospect; Rep. Colin Allred, D-Texas, who played in the NFL; and Rep. Kam Buckner, D-Ill., who played football for the University of Illinois, have not posted acknowledging Holtz’s death.
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