As TigerBlog mentioned last month, he got his father a Mahomes jersey for his 91st birthday. Now it has entered his regular Sunday routine, which includes watching his favorite player and hence his favorite team.
TB isn't sure why his father has become such a huge fans of Mahomes and the Chiefs. For his entire life, FB has only ever rooted for New York teams — dating back to when he was the rare New York Giants fan in Brooklyn.
Oh, and before TB gets into that, he wants to say that he is 100 percent sure that is FatherBlog in that photo. Have there been times he's gotten that wrong?
The first media guide TigerBlog ever did (if you don't know what a media guide was, TB thinks there might be some in the Smithsonian) had a huge picture of then captain Carl Teter on the very first page. Ah, but there was one slight issue — it wasn't Teter in the photo. The same is true of the picture on the cover of the final game at Palmer Stadium back in 1996.
It was supposed to be Dick Kazmaier. It looked like Dick Kazmaier. It said "Dick Kazmaier" on the back of the photo. The player was wearing No. 42. Turned out it wasn't Dick Kazmaier.
TB brings this up to offer an apology for posting the wrong clip during the field hockey team's win over Temple Sunday. The clip was supposed to be of Clem Houlden's goal off a penalty corner, only it was the corner before the one she scored on a few seconds later.
When you're in the business of putting out tons of content in public, mistakes will happen. Fortunately, unlike with media guides and game programs, at least they can be corrected these days. TB apologizes for this error. There will almost surely be others at some point; TB will say his average is still pretty good.
Okay, back at the New York Giants, the ones who played baseball at the Polo Grounds. FatherBlog has told the story often about how he was a Giants' fan in Brooklyn, where everyone else was a Dodger fan. He said that in the 1951 playoff between the Giants and Dodgers (after they tied for the National League pennant; somewhere in the Smithsonian there's also something that explains that until 1969, each league was its own division and the winners simply played in the World Series).
When the Giants and Dodgers tied in 1951, there was a best-of-three playoff, won in three games by the Giants when Bobby Thomson hit his legendary three-run home run in the bottom of the ninth of Game 3 for a 5-4 win. FatherBlog said that he had bet all of his friends on the series and paid off when the Giants were down 4-1 entering the ninth; he had to scramble to get all his money afterwards.
Baseball in October has been as much a part of the fabric of Americana as anything. There were decades when Major League Baseball (and boxing, for that matter) were way bigger than the NFL, and the history of the sport, especially this time of year, is filled with legends.
Will the 2026 Chicago White Sox be added to that list?
The White Sox defeated Cleveland 4-3 yesterday to take a 2-0 lead in the best-of-five Divisional Series against the Cleveland Guardians. That's four straight postseason wins for Chicago, all of which have been on the road.
The series moves to Chicago for Game 3 tomorrow at 4 and Game 4 (if necessary) Thursday at 5, with a possible deciding game back in Cleveland Saturday.
The White Sox are of course managed by Princeton baseball and basketball alum Will Venable, who already has a World Series ring as a coach with the Texas Rangers in 2023. What Venable continues to do with his team is just extraordinary.
If you consider that in four playoff games the White Sox have won 10 percent of the number of games they won all of 2024, the year before Venable took over. They went from 41 wins two years ago to 60 last year. This year the record was 84-78 in the regular season and now 4-0 in the playoffs.
TB watched the game yesterday. It was clear just how controlled Venable was the entire game, from the time the team fell behind 2-0 in the first inning through its sixth-inning rally to take the lead.
When Venable was at Princeton, he was the same way. Steely eyed. Focused. Measured. And ultra-competitive.
How far can he take this? Hey, nobody imagined the team would still be playing this deep into October.
It'll take nine more wins for Venable's team to win the World Series. Why not them, right?
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