Boston, MA
John Boston | Your Baseball Cap Screams What You Are
Editor’s note: The following “Best of Boston” column was originally published Aug. 11, 2023.
I am probably the absolute last person to write an essay on dressing up. Except for a gorilla suit and my cherished Wilt Chamberlain No. 13 wife-beater basketball jersey, I could easily go the rest of my life with three pairs of denim ranch jeans, matching three snap-button blue denim Western shirts and a red T-shirt underneath for pizzazz. Oh. Throw in underwear, socks, $1,200 cowboy hat, boots and a barn coat.
A cultural alarm ding-a-linged for me years ago. That’s when men started donning clown shorts that weren’t really shorts, per se. They ended mid-calf, giving the wearer a most comical suntan line. These mini-pants were adopted from the inner-city gang look, which came from those serving 15-to-life in the pokey. In a blink, CPAs and corporate attorneys were wearing the ghetto-strut pants-ette that oft exposed hairy butt cracks. (Band name.) Did it make the wearer look like Clown No. 4 or room-temperature IQ 11-year-old lookout on a Stingray bicycle in a drug deal?
Yes.
Did it stop brain surgeons from wearing this idiotic fashion statement? No.
When did we guys start dressing like extras in a Mad Max movie? I’m guessing it was in the 1960s and it probably started quite innocently with the baseball cap.
Prior to the ’60s, men wore fedoras or snappy, small-brimmed straw hats in the summer. In the late 19th century, men wore hats to shade themselves from the sun and also as fashion statements. They were also symbols of social distinction among men. When I was a kid, you didn’t wear a baseball cap unless you were a grease monkey, the Maytag repairman or batted behind Joe DiMaggio.
Farmers might be to blame. In the 1930s, they started wearing caps with artsy fertilizer company patches. I still own an old John Deere tractor topper I’d defend with my life. Still. Back then, a hat with a logo or message was way too bold, too strangely counterculture for most. Somehow, in a blink, everyone’s wearing baseball hats. Even women. In the early pages of my lifetime, you just never saw a woman wearing a baseball cap. It would be considered — well. Like you were the overly muscled third basewoman on the all-girls and gravel-voiced Love That Knows No Name Bakersfield softball team.
It was around the ’60s when we started advertising who we were on our caps and T-shirts. Well. We advertised not so much who we were, but who we wanted to be.
Much as I ride horses, can’t play polo. Well. Adeptly. That doesn’t stop several million squeaky clean yuppies from donning snooty Ralph Lauren baseball hats with the polo player logo. It sends the message, “I Am Athletic, Master Over Large Animals & Effortlessly Rich.”
Strange thing? No one stops these people in malls or grocery stores, yanks their caps off by the brim, slaps them lightly and announces: “No. No, you’re not…”
As evidence of a life not lived, I read several interesting papers on the social status and history of hats. “Hat tipping” is steeped in the elaborate custom of doffing one’s head covering in deference to someone of a higher social caste. Or, to a lady. While men’s hats, like the old mountain cave bear skull, were symbols of social status, women’s hats were symbols of conspicuous consumption and badges indicating rank. It’s not like being silly is a brand-new aspect of the human condition. In the 19th century, men sometimes wore their big old hats — INDOORS — all day. Funny, too. Male hat fashion usually rose from the ground up. For example, the round black bowler hat was, and still is today, a symbol of British bourgeoisie. But the Charlie Chaplin bowler started in the mid-19th century as a working-class helmet of hunters and groundskeepers.
A hatless man, way back when, was rarer than a brontosaurus. Every guy wore a hat. Or, a fly-attracting animal skull. With feathers. We live in polarized climes and today, the message you sport can scream volumes, from Oakland Raiders deviant to “Proud Grandma.”
What kind of knucklehead-ette would advertise something like that? Aren’t grandmothers, by nature, supposed to be proud of the family tree that skips a generation? I confess. I’d like the shake the hand of a grandma wearing “My Daughter’s Eefus is Currently Rotting in Penitentiary For Perversion Against Small Animals.” Cripes. That’s like 94 letters and spaces. That’d set you back like $200 getting said hat embroidered at the mall. Plus, it would be an exercise in futility as the message going out to the world would be in prescription-bottle-sized type.
Forget Climate Change. The demise of America will come from wearing prison shorts with beer bellies plopping over them. We don’t so much look into people’s eyes anymore but rather, at the small billboards that shade their noggins.
I must confess. I’m guilty of donning a cap with a put-up-your-dukes political message. A while back, 80% of our weasly Not-So-Much local paper-shuffling social justice warrior donkey girl scouts high school trustees abolished our noble and cherished Indian mascot for Hart High. The craven little weenies.
A pal of mine recently gave me a baseball hat with “Hart High Indians” embroidered boldly in front. I wear it to the local Piggly Wiggly in hopes that I may bump into one of the woke district cowards. I probably wouldn’t lightly slap them upside the head with my chapeau. I live in Los Angeles County where it’s the only felony that comes with a lengthy prison sentence. But, I’d give the unlucky trustee my best backwater evil eye. I’d wave my hat in the air, then commandeer the grocery store’s PA system to announce:
“Price check on craven little weenies, Aisle Six …”
Hm. Craven Little Weenies.
I think that was the name of the band that played at Saugus High’s last prom or the logo for my next fetching baseball sombrero…
The hat-wearing John Boston is Earth’s most prolific humorist and satirist. Visit his website, johnbostonbooks.com, and instead of back-to-school clothes, buy, for yourself, your kin and your children, his books.
Boston, MA
David Pastrnak, Bruins earn 3-2 overtime victory over Nashville
The Bruins may not liked how they got to the end result on Tuesday night at the Garden, but results are all that matter right now.
For the second night in a row, the B’s could not protect a lead that they held after 40 minutes. But unlike the verdict in Manhattan, the B’s were able to get the full two points on the table in overtime.
It took just 15 seconds into OT.
Mark Kastelic won the opening faceoff and Charlie McAvoy skated with it into the offensive zone. Marat Khusnutdinov jumped on for Kastelic and, after some razzle-dazzle, McAvoy sent a backhand pass toward the top of the crease to David Pastrnak for the redirection goal for the 3-2 win. It was an all’s-well-that-ends-well kind of night for Pastrnak, who took a costly penalty late in the second period that helped Nashville get back in the game.
The day was an interesting one for the B’s.
The schedule gives and it takes away, and Tuesday was a night when the B’s were at a distinct disadvantage. Because of flight issues related to the winter storm, the B’s could not fly out of New York on Monday after their overtime loss to the Rangers and were forced to bus back up to Boston, arriving back home around 1:30 pm on Tuesday.
The Preds on the other hand, last played on Saturday afternoon and chartered into Boston on Saturday night to beat the blizzard.
The team chefs arrived with meals at Hanscom Airport to help the players fuel up. Skills coach John McLean, who doesn’t travel with the team, also went the airport and shoveled out the entire traveling party’s cars, no small task with the amount of snow dumped on the region.
“We owe him a couple of beers,” said Morgan Geekie. “It takes a village and everybody stepped up today no matter how it was. Happy we could get the win.”
With all the help they did get, coach Marco Sturm wasn’t going to allow his players an out if they did lose in OT.
“It doesn’t matter if we lost the game or whatever. That shouldn’t be an excuse,” said Sturm. “Guys were ready to go today. You’re not always perfect Our third was definitely better than (Monday). Couldn’t close it but guys came back and showed character and at the end of the day, we need to take all the points we can get….I’m just happy the way the last couple of weeks went.”
Dating back to their New Year’s Eve win in Edmonton, the B’s are 11-2-1 in their last 14.
Despite the travel complications, the B’s were the ones to score the lone goal in the first period, which came off the stick of Sweden’s newest Olympian, Hampus Lindholm. The defenseman took the puck down from the left point to the circle and sent what looked like a harmless shot toward the net. But working the net front after winning the faceoff back to Mason Lohrei, Fraser Minten went for the tip and missed, but that seemed to distract Juuse Saros enough to allow the puck to get behind him for the 1-0 B’s lead at 13:16.
They made it 2-0 early in the second period, thanks to the simmering stick of Geekie. Pastrnak first danced around Roman Josi just inside the Nashville blue line and then shoveled the puck along the left boards to Geekie. Geekie took a few strides toward the net and, from the bottom of the circle, snapped a shot that beat Saros off the far post and in. It was Geekie’s 30th goal of the season and fourth in three games while Pastrnak extended his point streak to eight games.
Though the game was a snoozer, the B’s appeared to be in full control. That is until their season-long problem raised its ugly head again – penalties.
Late in the period, Pastrnak took a bad slashing on Josi in the neutral zone. It was the B’s fourth penalty to that point and, this time, the Predators made them pay. From above the right dot, Josi’s low shot got under Jeremy Swayman’s glove with 35 seconds left in the period, changing the complexion of the game just like that.
“Obviously I know it’s a bad penalty and I apologized to the group and moved forward,” said Pastrnak.
To make matters worse, the B’s lost Elias Lindholm to an upper body injury off a faceoff late in the period and he did not return. Sturm did not have an update after the game but said the centerman would be getting some tests on Wednesday.
In the third, the B’s had a great chance to regain the two-goal lead when Casey Mittelstadt, from behind the net, found a wide-open Viktor Arvidsson a the top of the crease, but Saros stoned him.
And with 6:43 left in regulation, the Preds tied it. After matching roughing minors, Nashville scored on the ensuing 4-on-4 when Nick Blankenburg used the extra room to roam free out high and he beat Swayman with a long shot under the blocker.
It stay deadlocked after 60 minutes. It got unlocked 15 seconds later. On the winner, another non-uniformed member of the B’s had another big assist. The plan, as usual, was for Kastelic to take the opening draw and jump off the ice. This time Khusnutdinov was set to jump on. Only problem was, he was missing a skate blade.
Equipment manager Keith Robinson heard assistant Matt Falconer yell out “Khusy needs steel!” As soon as Robinson snapped the blade in, Khusnutdinov jumped onto the ice and joined the weave in the offensive zone, dropping the puck for the circling Pastrnak, who then executed the pretty give-and-go with McAvoy for the winner.
As Geekie said, it takes a village.
Loose pucks
Hampus Lindholm will be going to the Olympics after all. Due to the injury to Jonas Brodin, Lindholm was named to Team Sweden on Tuesday, where he’ll join Bruin teammate Elias Lindholm. Other Bruins going to the Games in Milan, Italy will be Swayman and McAvoy (USA), Pastrnak and Pavel Zacha (Czechia), Henri Jokiharju (Finland) and Providence Bruin Dans Locmelis (Latvia).
“Any time you put (the Sweden jersey), it’s such a cool jersey, it has so much history tied to it. I haven’t had any opportunity for the Olympis for me in my career, so it’s going to be a great honor to go there,” said Lindholm… Alex Steeves was scratched in favor of Mikey Eyssimont, who played his first game since Jan. 11…Nikita Zadorov, who missed Monday’s game with a lower body injury, returned to the lineup and saw 21:53, second most on the B’s to McAvoy’s 27:14.
Boston, MA
Families of two killed in US boat strikes near Venezuela file wrongful-death suit in Boston – The Boston Globe
The lawsuit against the federal government was filed Tuesday morning by lawyers from the political advocacy group American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of Samaroo’s sister, Sallycar Korasingh, and Joseph’s mother, Lenore Burnley.
Maritime lawsuits can be filed in any federal court in the US, the ACLU noted, and they said they chose Boston because of the long history of such suits here.
The complaint alleges the deaths amount to extrajudicial slayings, or the unlawful killing of an individual by a government.
“I miss him terribly. We all do,” Burnley said of her son, in a statement announcing the lawsuit. “We know this lawsuit won’t bring Chad back to us, but we’re trusting God to carry us through this, and we hope that speaking out will help get us some truth and closure.”
The strike that allegedly took both men’s lives came on Oct. 14, as they made the short journey to the island that’s only a handful of miles off Venezuela’s coast.
For Joseph, according to the lawsuit, it was to be a long-delayed homecoming. The farmer and fisherman had been in Venezuela since April for work, as sometimes happened with him. On top of that, the suit said, he had a hard time finding a boat back to the small fishing village on Trinidad’s north coast where he lived with his common-law wife and three children.
On Oct. 12, he called his wife to tell her the 20-mile boat trip was finally happening: He’d be back in two days, according to the lawsuit.
He’d be with Samaroo, a coworker and fishing buddy who had moved to Las Cuevas a year earlier after his release from prison. He was imprisoned for 15 years for his role in a killing, according to the lawsuit. Media reports say it was the homicide of a street vendor, but don’t provide further detail about what happened.
Samaroo told his sister he was returning on the Oct. 14 boat because he wanted to see their mother, who had fallen ill.
Neither man, their families and the Trinidadian government claim, was involved in the drug trade.
Korasingh, Samaroo’s sister, said he had “paid his debt to society and was just trying to get back on his feet again” when the strike killed him.
“If the U.S. government believed Rishi had done anything wrong, it should have arrested, charged, and detained him, not murdered him,” she said in a statement. “They must be held accountable.”
On Oct. 14, the news came in the form of a social-media post from the president of the United States.
Trump posted that he’d authorized a “lethal kinetic strike on a vessel affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization (DTO) conducting narcotrafficking” in international waters near Venezuela. “Intelligence confirmed the vessel was trafficking narcotics, was associated with illicit narcoterrorist networks, and was transiting along a known DTO route.” Six “male narcoterrorists,” Trump said, died in the strike.
If was the latest of what would ultimately be more than 30 such strikes on boats near Venezuela, whose leadership Trump has blamed for the influx of drugs coming into the United States. Ultimately, tensions escalated to the point that US military forces entered Venezuela and arrested its president, the dictator Nicolas Maduro, in a raid earlier this month.
In the Oct. 14 post announcing the strike, the president attached a video of the men’s last moments. A small boat appears to sit in the middle of the frame. Suddenly, a dart of light comes from off the screen above, striking the boat, which explodes into a fireball.
Joseph’s mother, Burnley, saw the reports of the strike on the news and called her son’s wife.
“They immediately feared that Mr. Joseph was aboard this boat, as the timing of the strike directly coincided with Mr. Joseph’s journey by boat from Venezuela to Las Cuevas,” lawyers wrote in the lawsuit.
They called his phone, but it was dead. And, the complaint said, “The line remains dead to this day.”
Their remains were not found. Both families have filed missing-persons reports and sought more information, but non has been available. Both families, according to the lawsuit, have held funerals.
As justification, Trump has said that the US is essentially in conflict with the large drug-trafficking organizations that smuggle drugs into the United States.
In the lawsuit, the families allege the strike was illegal because drug traffickers — even violent ones — do not qualify under international law as an entity that a country can claim it’s in armed conflict against. But even if that were the case, the suit claims, the government should not target civilians.
“As a result, even in the context of an armed conflict, the killings of Mr. Joseph and Mr. Samaroo would constitute a grave breach of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, and thus a war crime, making its perpetrators punishable under federal and international law,” the complaint states.
The lawyers are suing under the century-old Death on the High Seas Act, which allows family members of people killed in international waters to sue for wrongful death.
Ultimately, this suit is seeking unnamed monetary damages for the families. The complaint is not seeking an injunction ordering the government to change its behavior.
Sean Cotter can be reached at sean.cotter@globe.com. Follow him @cotterreporter.
Boston, MA
Blazers Have No Luck Against Celtics in Boston
The Portland Trail Blazers lost an ugly game to the Boston Celtics on Monday night, with a final score of 102-94. The game seemed over before it began as Boston took a massive lead early. Portland was able to make a couple pushes to make the game closer, but were never able to take the lead or seriously threaten to steal it.
The Blazers were led in scoring by Jerami Grant’s 19 points, 10 of which came from the free throw line. Toumani Camara added 18 points and Jrue Holiday had 14. Only two Blazers shot 50% or better from the field: Robert Williams (3-3) and Sidy Cissoko (1-2).
The Celtics were led by 23 points from Payton Pritchard, including buzzer-beaters to end both the first and second quarters. They also got 20 points from Jaylen Brown and 18 points from Derrick White.
Donovan Clingan finished the game with 9 points, 15 rebounds and 4 blocks. He made three of his four shots from inside the arc, but attempted five threes and made just one. His rebounding and shot-blocking abilities were on full display and he was very important for Portland’s pushes throughout the game.
Clingan’s effectiveness inside the paint takes a hit in Deni Avdija’s absence, as he doesn’t get quality shots. However, he was still efficient with the attempts he did get.
It’s hard to win games when you lose the first quarter 32-11. A 4-21 shooting performance from the field and 1-12 from deep in the quarter put the Blazers in a massive hole from the get-go. Boston didn’t do anything incredible, 54% from the field and 29% from three, but it was enough to go up huge on Portland.
It marked the second straight game that the Blazers set a season low in first quarter points after logging just 12 points in the first frame against the Toronto Raptors. They also set a new season low for points in a first half with just 37.
Portland just could not get the lid off the basket in this game. They shot just 42% from the field, 26% from deep and 67% from the free throw line. Without any consistency scoring the ball, every run quickly ended as the misses began to pile up.
While the Blazers played good defense throughout the game, Boston was able to win by just making a couple more shots and ride their huge first quarter to survive every push Portland made.
Portland stays on the road to face the Washington Wizards tomorrow at 4:00 p.m. PST.
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