The Mile High Curse Of The Bambino

The Mile High Curse Of The Bambino

Boyles - hotdogger 6-15It’s always best to open with a joke: What do your Colorado Rockies and evangelist Billy Graham have in common? Answer: Both can make a stadium full of people stand up and scream, “Jesus Christ!”

Baseball curses are legendary in American’s pastime. Most of the curses are the result of greed, disrespect or questionable decision making on the part of the owners. However, it generally lies squarely on the fans.

The most legendary baseball curse is the “Curse of the Bambino.” The story goes something like this. There once was a great baseball team named the Boston Red Sox (aka your Colorado Rockies before the greedy Monfort family kicked the hot dog vendors off of their land). The Red Sox won the first ever World Series in 1903. For the next 10 years, like the New England Patriots, they won it five more times. They owed most of later success to Babe Ruth, aka “The Bambino.”

And then in 1919, the Red Sox traded the Babe to the New York Yankees. It was 86 more years before the Red Sox won the World Series in 2004. It has been talked about many times, as baseball historians laughed up their sleeves, that the Sox ownership used the Bambino money to finance the Broadway musical No No Nanette. Everything was attempted to defeat the curse, including the fans in Boston trying to “reverse the curse.”

Joke: Why can’t the Colorado Rockies use the Internet?

Answer: They can’t get three w’s in a row.

So last year the city of Denver suddenly began forcing a 20-plus-year-old ordinance keeping hot dog vendors (hard-working men and women, as opposed to the Monfort family themselves) away from the ball park. For some very interesting reasons those rules have been ignored since the beginning of the opening of Coors Field.

If you remember, as Gomer Pyle always said, “Shazaam” — that happened very suddenly. Afterwards, the Monforts spent 10 million dollars on the ballpark’s new rooftop deck and then unveiled their food and beverage area. I know that this sounds just like a coincidence, but mark my words — I searched on the Internet to find then Denver Public Works spokeswoman Christine Downs who said, “for whatever reason, we lost part of that agreement and allowed vendors to come in. They stopped the vendors when the food deck opened.” So as you go and take the family unit to see your Colorado Rockies, you can no longer grab a cheap hot dog, or for that matter, any food items on the street. You must pay the Monforts.

Another legendary curse is the “Curse of the Colonel.” Thirty years ago, a team called the Hanshin Tigers won the Japanese world series in an upset over the Seibu Lions. Fans were celebrating and running over a bridge overlooking a local canal. As luck would have it, there was a life-size statue of Colonel Sanders standing in front of a nearby KFC. The crowd seized it and threw the Colonel into the river in honor of MVP Randy Bass. Their losing streak continues to this day.

In 2009, Japanese divers were sent into the canal and retrieved the corpse of the Colonel. Lions fans were hoping that recovering the Colonel would break the curse. Tough saké. Their losing streak continues. It is now known in Japan as the “Curse of the Colonel.” If you are paying attention at home, it’s a food curse.

I began this last year placing the hot dog curse not on the players, and not on the fans, but on Dick and Charlie. I guarantee that your Colorado Rockies will win again. All those fun-loving owners have to do is allow the hot dog vendors to return to Coors Field much like the swallows to Capistrano or the buzzards back to Ohio. Winning will begin again.

But if the Monforts don’t let the hot dog vendors return, our curse may last as long as the legendary Billy Goat Curse placed on the Chicago Cubs which continues to this very day. In 1945 the owner of the Billy Goat Tavern, William Sianis, tried to bring his pet goat Murphy to Wrigley Field for game 4 of the World Series. Sianis and Murphy were both enjoying the game when the owner, PK Wrigley, who was a member of the lucky sperm club, threw them both out claiming the goat smelled. The billy goat left, and it’s been downhill for the Cubs ever since.

As you can see, curses are real — in baseball they are more real. The Monforts are acting like a Gambino Crime Family protection racket. This is a shakedown. Suddenly those regulations were enacted. What — the Monforts aren’t greedy enough? A lesson in life: always follow the money. It used to be cool getting water and peanuts for two bucks, sitting in the $5 Rockpile seats. Take me out to the ball game. The Monforts won’t play ball with the hot dog vendors. And luck won’t play centerfield for Dick and Charlie.

You gotta love it, and the curse will continue until that magic moment when the Monforts allow the hot dog vendors to return. Mark my words, all of you fans, the gentle giants of the beef industry (as the Monforts have been named) are never going to field a winning team for Rockies fans. Boston broke the curse in 2004. It’s going to be a long time before the Rockies break theirs.

So what do you call 40 millionaires sitting around a television watching the World Series? The Colorado Rockies. Love it. Live it. Learn it. And remember it as the fall classic heads your way in the years to come — play ball!

— Peter

The Mile High Curse Of The Bambino

Scientology

It is not often that I can save readers of the Glendale Cherry Creek Chronicle literally hundreds of thousands of dollars of their life savings but this, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages, is the time. I recently received a mailer at my home sent to me courtesy of the Church of Scientology. I read it carefully. They are going to save my life, straighten out my misguided view of the world, and, as they say in show business, clean up my act. Now because I’ve been on the Scientology list of treasonous people, I’m more than hip to the theology of the Commodore’s church.

Boyles xenu 5-15But if, for some unforeseen reason, you or any of your family members are big enough idiots to respond to that mailer, wander into 2340 Blake Street in downtown Denver, or make that phone call, you will be grifted into one of the great cons run in this country in quite a while. (With the exception of Barrack Obama’s life story, the truth about the Clintons and how there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, this pooch ranks right up there with Elvis ain’t dead, 9/11 was an inside job, and the innocence of Patsy Ramsey.)

Folks, have you seen the HBO documentary titled Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief? Damn. The excellent documentary demonstrates that Scientology is a dangerous, frightening, aggressive attempt to lure people into a cult, clean out their wallets and destroy their families. It comes from a book by Lawrence Wright about his life in Scientology. I’ve been jerking the Scientology people around on the radio for as far back as I can remember. But in everyday Scientology, as you have to pay to receive the beliefs of the church, I will save you the money.

Now if I wanted to go and become a practicing Roman Catholic, I would simply go to my closest Catholic church and ask the priest to give me religious instruction or at least tell me what the church believes. And the same is probably true in Judaism, any Protestant denomination (with the exception of snake handling — I think that takes a little work), or if I dare walk into a mosque and ask the imam. Those things aren’t that tough but Scientology has a price tag. So, this is what they believe.

Centuries ago in a galaxy far far away (I know, it sounds like Star Wars), there was a really bad character called Xenu, an evil dictator. So 75 million years ago, the galactic confederation had 26 stars, 76 planets, including Earth which was then known as Teegeeact. If you have gotten this far in the column, I have just saved you thousands of dollars, because you don’t get to know that until you get over certain Operating Thetan levels. The planets were overpopulated, the evil Xenu was about to get kicked out (much like Richard Nixon), so he plotted and eliminated these people with the assistance of a psychiatrist. Have you ever been to any form of demonstration and seen a guy in a suit and seen a sign that says Psychiatry Kills? That, my friends, is a Scientologist.

So, Xenu paralyzes these people, freezes them and ships them to earth where they go down into volcanos. (That’s why on the cover of L. Ron Hubbard’s Dienetics, their Bible, there is a picture of the volcano.) But to top it off, hydrogen bombs are put into volcanos, all detonated at once. So now these souls, known as Thetans, were blown up in the air. Captured by the evil Xenu, they were sucked into vacuum tubes and people were taken to movies, forced to watch 3D movies and forced to watch TVs for 36 days. (I’m not making this stuff up.) And they are probably now in your body, and you’ve got to get rid of them. Groups of rebels known as the Loyal Officers overthrew Xenu and locked him away into the electronic trap from which he has not yet escaped. Some of these clowns believe this is in the Pyrenees on earth.

The cost of learning all of this so far is about $6,500. See the savings you made by reading the Chronicle? These people are dangerous. You can watch the HBO documentary, read dozens of books about them and they are recruiting people through the U.S. Mail and national TV ads.

I kind of rest my case, but if you are willing to contact me at KNUS radio and hold a couple of tin cans wired to an old E-meter, I will be willing to get those bad Thetans out of your body and you’ll live the rest of your life clear.

You just got a quick overview of Scientology. Have any of them contact me and tell me this column isn’t true. The good news is Lisa Marie Presley has left the cult, just as her father has left the building. See you sometime later here on Teegeeact.

In the words of the late great Jackie Gleason, “homina, homina, homina.”

— Peter

The Mile High Curse Of The Bambino

The Attack On The Denver Police Monument

Blasting With Boyles

Michael Jackson said settlements out of court do not equate guilt. How many protesters have been arrested in Denver since the Democratic National Convention, Occupy Denver and the attacks on the police monument? Remember, we’ve had two people arrested for a protest on the Denver police memorial for fallen officers. These were “Paid Protesters” — now known as “PPs.”

Boyles 4-15So as we’re told, about 200 people marched from Lincoln Park to police headquarters on 17th Street. The number of PPs isn’t clear but the damage done was more than adequate. These PPs trashed the equivalent of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, the Vietnam Wall, and the WWII monument. The names on that wall of the men and women, minorities and Anglos, represent men and women whose lives were taken protecting the citizens of Colorado.

To understand why they would do this is beyond my level of comprehension. I’m not the smartest guy in the world but pouring paint on the names of the fallen, desecrating the American flag (later to be denied by police spokesman Sonny Jackson — but more on that later) and writing “F*** the cops” on the back of the memorial is below my IQ level.

Now as we know, Matthew Goldberg, 23, and Robert Guerrero, 25, are out on $5,000 bail. Two days after the attack, Denver police spokesperson Sonny (Santino) Jackson, a onetime 9News cameraman, told a gathering of the Denver press that Old Glory was not desecrated, and that no names of officers were papered on the sides of the police building and the monument to be marked for harm.

Because of my radio show and individual police officers sending us photos sent with their cell phones, we were instantly able to disprove Santino’s claims. On our website, we had pictures of the defacing of the memorial, the flag on the ground, names of the officers that they wanted damaged and one particularly beautiful picture of a Denver police car burning beneath which they had printed “Sometimes dreams do come true.”

Sonny did have his Ron Ziegler moment (you all remember Ron, Tricky Dick Nixon’s spokesperson), and then Brian Maass at Channel 4 obtained a video taken out of the window at police headquarters showing these protesters and one man kneeling down taking red paint out of a backpack and dumping it over the top. These brave men were wearing bandanas to hide their identity. (Dude, where is your strength of conviction?) As Brian Maass said, “This memorial bears the names of dozens of fallen officers,” and from Brian’s video we learned that Denver police officers were inside the building with the doors chained and were looking out the window watching it happen.

For the life of me I don’t how the men and women of the Denver Police Department were able to maintain their cool. Later that week, Mayor Hancock appeared on Mike Rosen’s KOA radio show telling Mike’s audience that it happened so quickly that it was over before we knew it. We are told that that same line was used for Denver’s Mayor Hancock by the girls at Players and Sugar.

So Sonny Jackson lied about the incident to the mainstream press. In fact, on the following week when a vigil was called for people to come to the memorial on a Wednesday, the chief, the mayor and Sonny Jackson went there glad-handing individuals, thanking people for what they do. Hell’s bells. They are the reason it happened. And, of course, like the cover of Sports Illustrated, the Mayor comes out and says, “I support Chief White.” That came the day after the cops’ union asked for White’s resignation. I don’t understand how this city works. I don’t understand how principal media in this city works. These lies and actions of the administration have gone on unchallenged. The mayor will get re-elected. The chief will keep his gig. The television stations will continue to tell you how great it is that Peyton Manning has taken a pay-cut, that Dinger should remain as the Rockies’ mascot, and the hot little weather girl will tell you, “Danger, weather is coming our way.”

What I believe we are seeing in Denver is the Fergusonization of the media. We are witnessing the Denver media turn Jessica Hernandez into Michael Brown of Ferguson, Mo. When they first spoke with the people who they were led to believe were Jessica’s parents, they needed an interpreter. Now they appear in The Denver Post speaking English. We have come to a fork in the road. Michael Hancock is running virtually unopposed, the police are the bad guys, and the thugs are the good guys.

So on May 3 we do our second NC1 Honor Run, a motorcycle event we now do annually, named after Sergeant Dave Baldwin, Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department, killed in the line of duty. This year we are raising funds for John Adsit, the Denver police officer who was hospitalized December 3, when he was protecting hundreds of students from East High School as they marched on the high school chanting a hoax, “Hands up! Don’t shoot!” It never happened. Another fabricated anti-cop statement.

So the next time you are being burglarized or robbed call the ACLU.

— Peter

The Mile High Curse Of The Bambino

A Suicide Pact With Ourselves Political Correctness — A Little Song, A Little Dance

Peter - Lev Trotsky 3-15I was shocked and appalled to read the letters to the editor following my January column on Sand Creek in this newspaper.

One reader told me I was much better as a drunk. Dude, it’s been 30 years since I had a drink. Another letter writer declared that the next issue of this ‘“rag’” will go directly from his mail box to the dumpster because of my column. Finally, a learned physician wrote that ISIL would applaud my reasoning and compassion. The point I was trying to make was political correctness and the John Hickenlooper apology tour only goes so far.

The attacks came under the auspices of political correctness. Let’s review a little history.

One of my favorite Bolsheviks is the young Trotsky who invented the term “politically correct’’as in all good Bolsheviks must be politically correct in the thoughts of Lenin. Note to letter writers, Trotsky, get it? Let’s further romp through history where all the good little Germans had to be politically correct in the thoughts of the Fuhrer and lest we forget the great Helmsman, the Little Red Book shakers. You kids all remember the Red Guard, everybody was lockstep in their thinking.

We have seen this performance before in history where no one dares to speak out. We all must think in the same manner and we all must be politically correct.

Today, political correctness is destroying big media, corporate America and the lives of a number of politicians.

Not to mention Common Core and what all your kids and grandkids are learning in school.

If you notice, the letter writers never said one thing about what I wrote but only that I was a drunk and a trash heap and a member of ISIL.

I did however get a couple of letters from pretty good historians who told me to keep up the good work.

When the left can control the language, as Orwell teaches us with Big Brother, false accusations can be made and charges rendered. We can now expect to have nursery rhymes, instead of ‘“Baa Baa Black Sheep,’’ changed to “Baa Baa Rainbow Sheep.” Remember there’s no such thing as black coffee now.

We have seen many things come your way including “global warming.” Now, when I speak against “global warming” I am called a denier, interestingly enough a term that was applied to people in the Neo-Nazi movement who said the Holocaust never happened. Starting to get the picture?

Cultural sensitivity and political correctness are wrecking this country. I’ve spent almost seven years and a number of these columns questioning who is Barack Obama. As you know, everything historians called bona fides, from a manufactured birth certificate to his college entrance papers, high school papers, social security and draft card numbers have been suppressed.

When I raised that specter (thank you Karl Marx) I’m immediately called a racist, a bigot and a hate speaker. Those are all politically correct charges but not one person supplies the bona fides. Are you getting now how the game gets played?

We are headed toward speech codes, state approved churches and temples and Internet that passes state muster and career ending truthful statements.

So really what is the purpose of political correctness in our society today? One of my favorite people, Pat Buchanan, charges political correctness is cultural Marxism. I can’t argue with that.

We now face a modern inquisition. And punish people who are not politically correct in the thoughts of the progressive left.

To all of you, you better stand to. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was right, they will come for you.

So I’d like to thank you on the behalf of the ‘“old drunk’” and dumpster diver and member of ISIL. You people scare the hell out of me. The time will come, as John Gotti said headed to the penitentiary, you’re gonna wish I was back.

— Peter

The Mile High Curse Of The Bambino

The Plague Years

I love medieval history. Disease was one of the greatest course changers in the history of the world. According to historians when certain diseases hit parts of the world, history is changed.

Boyles - Black Death 2-15One of the interesting parts of the First World War was the arrival of what was called the Spanish Flu. That killed more American soldiers than the Germans. By far. And in fact a lot of people believe the flu ripped through the trenches on both sides. Because as I’m sure some of you know, the Germans believed they were ahead in the war before the flu struck.

When the plagues befell Europe in the middle of the 14th century they came in waves. Black Death and Red Death.

Red Death was smallpox and Black Death was bubonic plague.

If you read the stories of Columbus and the sailors of the 15th century, when picking out crews they looked for pock marks on the faces of recruits knowing that meant they had survived the plague and could go on the ship.

Sea captains were under strict orders never to come into port when they knew they had plague on board and would hoist a yellow flag telling people on shore that they had plague on the ship.

Also since I’m a cat lover, medieval Christians during the heights of plague believed it was brought on by Satan and of course Satan’s handmaidens, witches. And what rode on the tails of those brooms and lived with witches? You got it, cats.

What did cats kill? Cats killed rats. What rode on rats? Fleas. What did fleas carry? The plague. Are you starting to get the picture?

When I was a little fellow growing up in Pittsburgh I got scarlet fever. I have dim memories of it and remind everyone this was before penicillin was available to the average working class person. Today we call it strep but it can become scarlet fever and of course affects almost no one because it can be stopped in its tracks by penicillin.

The old man’s first floor apartment was quarantined by Allegheny County. No one was allowed into the house and I think only my dad would go out to work. One of the stories that was told to me about my mother is the Allegheny County health officials wanted to put me in a ward someplace in a Pittsburgh hospital. A friend of my mother’s said to her, “If they put that boy in that ward he’ll never come off it.” Things were so bad I may have died.

So after stuff like that, being sick, or as we say under the weather, doesn’t seem to be much of a big deal.

I also remember when the announcement came that Jonas Salk had cured polio. Now people won’t believe this but I remember the church bells ringing. I remember people hugging in the street because polio had been put to bed.

When I was in the fifth grade a kid up the street from us got polio. The panic that ran through the neighborhood was unbelievable. I make jokes today on myself that I can’t swim and a couple of reasons are that people believed you could get polio from swimming pools and that the river, which was close to the old man’s house was the wellspring for polio.

My dad never had a quarter for us to go swimming at a public pool and of course we were never allowed by the river. Because of polio I can’t swim.

In the last three or four months everybody I know is sick. In fact the publisher of this paper is also sick. I’ve been sick. And other people are talking about how everyone they know is sick.

You know we’re all going to get over this just as soon as this weather breaks (my mom used to say that).

But one of the things I think we can look at with pride is all the stuff that used to kill us, all the stuff that used to threaten us pretty much has been put to bed.

So now what do we have? We have obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart attacks, diabetes, and all kinds of cancers.

But the little guys, like my grandson Liam and Chuck and Julie’s son Rev, will never have to worry like we did when we were little kids or some medieval Englishman about what was waiting for him in the shadows.

We do have good food. We do have clean water and the kinds of things that threatened my childhood will never threaten my grandson’s.

Be thankful. And that guy sitting next to you at work? Tell him to cover his mouth.

— Peter

P.S.: I’ve been sick since Thanksgiving.

The Mile High Curse Of The Bambino

Sand Creek Apologia

I could almost hear Brenda Lee’s voice belting out “I’m Sorry” when Governor John Hickenlooper addressed a group of Native Americans on the steps of the State Capitol in November.

On behalf of everyone reading this and those of you who are not, John Hickenlooper apologized for you to native people for the massacre that occurred on November 29, 1864, in a place on the eastern plains that’s now known as Sand Creek.

Boyles - I'm SorryHe told the representatives of the Cheyenne people and Arapaho people that not only was he sorry, but he was in fact very, very, very sorry. For good measure he also apologized to a Navajo guy according to The Denver Post and about 20 other American Indian students as well as some kid who inadvertently happened to be walking down toward the City and County Building. Hickenlooper, helpfully, added that this is a healing process for everyone. OK fine.

I think it’s only fair that I make a list of people I want to apologize to and things I want apologies for.

Let’s begin with my apologies to the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As they in turn apologize to the citizens of Nanking who then apologize to the people in Tibet who are also apologized to by any of your sub-continent Indians who are apologized to by any member of the British royal family or who are apologized to by our gallant allies the Pakistanis who then must apologize to the Bangladeshis who are then apologized to by the Persians (what you call your modern day Iranian) who then apologize to the Shah of Iran who should apologize to his father who he helped overthrow because the old man was getting into bed with the Nazis. Of course the Nazis should apologize to everybody.

On the other hand the CIA should apologize to the people of Iran for overthrowing a clean election and reinstalling the Shah. And while we’re at it the British should apologize to the following people; the Irish, the Scottish, the French, the Welsh, the Cornish, any number of people who came to this country and had to kick their ass out.

And lest we forget the Hong Kong Chinese, the entire Mandarin class of mainland China (for introducing them to that fun loving drug opium), any number of tea merchants who they also had terminated and while we’re at it I believe the Japanese owe a universal apology to the citizens of Nanking and the entire peninsula of Korea and North Koreans to South Koreans. Which leads us to any number of Manchurians who have been had by Russians, Japanese, Mongols and Mandarin Han Chinese.

How about those French apologizing to Huguenots, any numbers of people who lived in Italy and hey, how about that Napoleon. Shot the nose off the sphinx, a couple of apologies to the Egyptian people.

The Italians should apologize to the Ethiopians and what about Hannibal? Somebody owes him big time.

And while we’re at it how ’bout those Romanovs? Yeah, they sure got theirs. Who apologizes to the Romanovs? Do you expect Putin to apologize to Nicholas and Alexandra? And the family. Can you see where this is headed?

This column could grow greater than the size of this entire newspaper. However, in the politically correct environment that Hickenlooper apologizes in, the only people who need to apologize are Anglo men. Everybody else is a victim. But when you really think about Hutus and Tutsis, when you think about Cortez and the Aztecs, when you think about Pizarro and the Incas or anyone historically who dared fight Zulus in sub-Saharan Africa, shazam, their fish was fried.

Now I realize there’s a lot of really great historians who read this. Those of you get the point of the column. Those of you who are offended by the column do a little bit of reading and I apologize to you.

I’m still waiting for an apology from Bob Beauprez for running such a horrible campaign.

So please send an email to newspaper@glendalecherrycreek.com telling me who you would like an apology from, and I will print them.