Best Lupica bashing I've seen yet...

nice memory FHB - one of the all time great Lupica gaffs.

it's nice to see there are others out there who see what we do in our little friend luppy.

 

I'm gonna need someone to explain the wine and cheese thing, please and thank you.

 

Allrightythen.

Thanks, Boom.

 

I missed that, too.

 

he was trying to capture the spirit of the thing... pure poetry...

 

Here is the story:

TOWN BIDS GOODBYE TO
champion of children
[SPORTS FINAL Edition]



New York Daily News - New York, N.Y.
Author: MIKE LUPICA
Date: Sep 23, 2001
Start Page: 68
Section: SPORTS
Text Word Count: 1043



Abstract (Document Summary)



One of [Joe Coppo]'s best friends, a tough little guy named Jim Bulakowski, told a story about the Senior Babe Ruth team Coppo had coached six years ago, not because he had a son on it, just because the team didn't have anybody to coach it. Joe Coppo raised a hand at a meeting and said he'd take it.

"The first game he coached, one of the fathers comes up to him afterward and starts complaining that his son didn't play enough," Bulakowski said. "The usual stuff. Then he starts giving Joe a lecture about all the strategy things he'd screwed up in the game. Joe listens patiently, then he smiles at this guy. You could never wipe the smile off Joe's face. Finally he says to this guy, 'Do you know what the great Leo Durocher said once?' The guys says, no, he doesn't. Still smiling, Joe says, 'Baseball is like church. Many attend, few understand.' "

At the Presentation of the Gifts during the funeral Mass, Bulakowski and Piel Pennington, an old UMass quarterback, brought up wine and cheese and then the kids from the last baseball team Coppo ever coached, a group of 13-year-old All-Stars who played in a big travel league in the next town over, came to the back of the church in their pressed white uniforms. One carried the team's championship trophy to the front of the church, another carried a bat, another carried a glove that had belonged to Coach Coppo. A woman sang "Shine, Jesus, Shine" in a clear, strong voice. And all over the church all these other faces I knew from our town's ballfields, and gyms, continued to cry for Joe Coppo.

 

Sorry to pee in your punch bowl, but I'll make it not unanimous. Yes, I thought the piece was funny. Admittedly it's been quite a while since I worked with Mikey, but I had zero problems with him, and I was far from being a passive copy editor over about a year of dealing with him. I've heard the stories, read the bitching here over the years, but my firsthand experience was different, and I try to make up my own mind about people instead of letting others do it for me. Even if I were to accept the possibility that for some obscure reason I was among a select few that Mikey did not shit on, the constant piling on looks creepy.

 

Damn it.

That's a legitimate non-unanimity.