The World According to Gillespie

BASEBALL'S HALL REQUIRES FAME    This column originally appeared on Wicked Local The names of the 2018 Baseball Hall of Fame inductees will be released this week and the selection process remains one of the most hotly debated issues in contemporary sports. Much has been made about the well publicized letter of complaint submitted by former Cincinnati Reds second basemen and current Baseball Hall of Famer Joe Morgan regarding the apparent sentiments of former major leaguers currently in the Hall of Fame and the ever-growing potential that they might be forced to share the stage with suspected PED users. Statistical milestones in baseball were once well earned. I remember Carl Yastrzemski taking what seemed like months attempting to reach hit number 3,000, and when he finally grounded that ball into right field off of Jim Beattie and the dreaded Yankees, it meant something. And 400 home runs? Who among us hasn’t hit 400 home runs? OK, I haven’t, but Mark Teixeira and Alfon

BOSTON NEEDS THE HERALD       This column originally appeared on Wicked Local I t was recently announced that ownership of the Boston Herald will soon fall into the hands of GateHouse Media, which hopefully does not mean the end for a paper that has served Boston well for over 100 years.   I do not remember a version of the Herald as early as the 1800s, but I do remember the Boston Herald American, which was one of two primary newspapers distributed in the Boston area during the 1970s along with the Boston Globe.   The Herald was the newspaper that showcased the colorful Peanuts comic as part of its Sunday edition.   In 1984, all of that changed when the Herald was purchased by Rupert Murdoch and became more of a tabloid publication in the style of the New York Post – also owned by Murdoch at the time.   Although the paper always seemed to be the junior publication to the more traditionally assembled Boston Globe, the Herald (for anyone who has ever lived in the city or re

CANCER COMES UNEXPECTEDLY This column originally appeared on Wicked Local. My wife asked me if I would like to go to her doctor’s appointment with her.  Although I would be forced to take the morning off from work, it was something that was clearly important to her, so in a show of support I agreed to join her.   (My wife sometimes measures loyalty and commitment through a willingness to accompany her to medical appointments.) She was scheduled to get a routine mammogram, a relatively simple procedure that would hopefully leave us the rest of the day to have lunch and possibly do some light-hearted shopping.   I had already poured through roughly ten pages of my book, Bill Pennington’s expose on late Yankee icon Billy Martin, by the time she reached out to me via text message.  “So they just did another mammogram x-ray and now I wait to talk to the radiologist.  They said I could have them bring you in for the results but it’s a little weird with all females back here with ho

TYING IT ALL TOGETHER   This column originally appeared on Wicked Local. The necktie is probably one of the most pointless articles of clothing ever invented. Historically speaking, the tie emanated from Croatia which is sometimes referred to as the Mother Country of the necktie (which really makes me want to review my last go-round at Epcot).   The story goes that a group of apparently well-dressed Croatians (I’m thinking Steve Martin and Dan Aykroyd playing two wild and crazy guys in the 1970s) went to Paris in 1635 to see King Louis XIII.   The style-conscious Parisians were so impressed by the colorful scarves worn by their visitors that they quickly went to work borrowing the idea, wearing their own version of scarves ‘a la croate’.   This colorful piece of clothing soon evolved into the cravat, and then somehow over time became the modern necktie.   The point of the necktie remains a mystery.   Succinctly pontificated by journalist Linda Ellerbee, “If men can run t

MAURA S. DOYLE SEEKS RE-ELECTION TO POST AS CLERK OF THE SUPREME JUDICIAL COURT FOR SUFFOLK COUNTY (Originally published in the Boston Post-Gazette   2000) By Jay Gillespie Maura S. Doyle is campaigning to uphold her position as Clerk of the Supreme Judicial Court for Suffolk County.                   A graduate of both Northeastern University and Suffolk University School of Law, Doyle, who credits the influence of the late Boston attorney, Abner Sisson, had made her presence known in the Massachusetts legal community and beyond.   After practicing as a civil litigation attorney for 11 years, Maura Doyle became a Supreme Judicial Court Assistant Clerk in 1992.   In 1996, the Justices of the Supreme Judicial Court unanimously appointed her Clerk of the Supreme Judicial Court for Suffolk County.   On November 3, 1998 Maura Doyle became the first woman ever to be selected Clerk of SJC.                   “It was very difficult when I came here in 1992,” says Doyle, who ha

WHAT THE BIG DIG WOULD LIKE NORTH END RESIDENTS TO BELIEVE (Originally published in the Boston Post Gazette    June 2, 2000)                                                                                                                                                 By Jay Gillespie                 A few days following my story concerning the eventual removal of the sign restricting a left turn from Cooper Street onto North Washington, I was approached by Paul Santilli and invited on a tour of the Big Dig parcel that is currently under supervision of J.F. White Contracting.   Santilli is the Community Relations liaison between J.F. White and the North End.   On May 22 nd , I met up with Mr. Santilli on Cooper Street.   It was from there that we began our excursion into the depths of Boston’s nationally recognized and justifiably criticized Big Dig Project.                   In a previous article, I inferred that workers on this site were either reluctant to speak to inq

ITALIAN JAZZMAN SPARKIE MIELE – AN ORIGINAL BOSTON TREASURE (Originally published in the Boston Post Gazette   May 19, 2000)                                                                                                                    If you have been to Hingham’s Tosca restaurant, the Marriott Copley’s Terrace Lounge, or the Mill Wharf at Scituate Harbor, you have had the pleasure of seeing and hearing one of the most authentic jazz acts in the Boston area, Sparkie Miele.                   Spartaco Silvio Giovanni (Sparkie) Miele is an inspiration, demonstrating the intrinsic value and result of a lifetime spent pursuing a passion.   Miele is a master of jazz, a crowd pleaser who has never wanted to do anything but make music.   He speaks and plays with great enthusiasm as if his life in jazz is just beginning, but the world has been hearing the music of his horns for decades.                   Sparkie Miele was born and raised in East Cambridge, one of eight

CITY PLANNERS NEVER PROMISED NORTH END RESIDENTS A ROSE GARDEN (Originally published in the Boston Post Gazette     May 5 , 2000)                                                                                                             By Jay Gillespie                 Traffic in Boston will never be a bed of roses, at least until the underground artery project is finished and urban planners have planted the proverbial garden (which in the language of bureaucrat means parking lot) where there is currently a series of Big Dig headaches.                   For those of you who are following this ongoing story, the sign dictating that drivers are restricted from taking a left turn from Cooper Street onto North Washington Street has finally been removed by the city.   If you are a southbound commuter, this means that you are no longer forced to take a sightseeing excursion into Charlestown before you can head south on the expressway.   Unless you are a huge fan of the contem

AMERICA'S DEVELOPING IMMUNITY TO BASEBALL FEVER       This column originally appeared on Wicked Local. THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GILLESPIE AMERICA’S DEVELOPING IMMUNITY TO BASEBALL FEVER “Baseball Fever.   Catch it!” was the promotional public service announcement that Major League Baseball employed during the 1980s.   Baseball has recently expressed growing concern about its increasing lack of viewership, particularly among kids.   Major League Baseball executives convene around boardroom tables seeking to uncover the mysteries of dwindling viewership, and in the process, have made or begin to make changes to the game that will only whittle away at our national pastime eventually destroying the very fabric of what made baseball great in the first place. Challenging plays is both time-consuming and ridiculously unentertaining.   Baseball is a game measured on the imperfect human judgement of umpires.   Challenging calls brings the game to a complete stand-still, while

HARVESTING TRUTH FROM THE FARMER'S ALMANAC       This column originally appeared on Wicked Local. Many people still rely on the wisdom of the Farmer’s Almanac in order to obtain predictions about such things as the weather and tides.   Who amongst us hasn’t heard that the coming winter is supposed to be significantly snowier than last winter - “ according to the Farmer’s Almanac ?”   I know what you are thinking.   There has got to be a better way to get this information.   However, you are not alone if you still lean on predictions from the Almanac.   The Old Farmer’s Almanac, in fact, is currently #1 on the non-fiction best seller list (at least at the time of this writing), meaning that there are more people currently reading the Farmer’s Almanac than there are reading What Happened by Hillary Clinton or The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump by Bandy Lee (with a foreword by Donald Trump).   Ok.   Perhaps that’s not surprising, but the apparent popularity of the F