It’s a little difficult really to think about anything but baseball right now.

I think there’ll come a time when people have long forgotten about trendy stuff like Labubu’s and Global Warming, but they will still be talking about the World Series of 2025.

I’ve nothing new to add to the conversation other than to say this.

I bleed Blue Jay blue.

I was at the very first game at Exhibition Stadium in a snowstorm on April 7, 1977. It’s a bamboozling statistical anomaly that half a million people will swear on the life of their mother that they were in attendance that day, but the hard reality is there were only 44,649 of us actually there to witness Doug Ault’s two timely home runs lead the nascent Jays to a 9-5 come from behind thriller over the White Sox.

This 2025 squad is my favorite Blue Jay team of all time. If this group of guys didn’t capture your heart, see your cardiologist. You just might be missing a piece. This is a special group of teammates. This kind of camaraderie usually only exists in foxholes. It’s that rare. And the fact that they fell short in the 11th inning of the 7th game doesn’t diminish their efforts at all. Not a bit.

So, I’ll leave the analysis to the professionals, and I will not criticize John Schneider’s blatant bullpen malpractice throughout the series (I mean seriously, bless Yesavage’s cleated boots for all he accomplished this year, but why the hell was he thrown to the wolves in the seventh inning of a close game 7). There, I said it.

I watched Game 7 with a thousand strangers at the Sports Book in The Seminole Hard Rock Casino in Hollywood, Florida. We weren’t strangers for long, I’ll tell ya, bonded by this extraordinary shared experience. We high-fived, we buried our heads in our hands, we even started a “Let’s Go Blue Jays” chant only to be drowned out by the greater number of good-natured Dodger fans. It was really fun.

I was in Florida for business and personal reasons – I surprised a client by showing up for his opening night in a play in Jupiter, Florida (great!) and saw my oldest brother, Michael, in the nursing home where he currently resides (not great).

Some back story.

When I was 20 and 21, I lived in Hollywood, Florida for a spell. I was working for Michael, selling dreck on the phone, and living in a shithole apartment off the beach with no stove and nothing in the refrigerator except two cartons of Newport Lights menthol cigarettes in the freezer.

Friday and Saturday nights, my buddies and I always showed up at the Dania Jai Alai fronton, sometimes for a splashy dinner with our dates, sometimes just to hang, and cheer on our favorite Jai Alai superstars like “Juaristi”, “Asis” and “Joey” (The Cuban Comet) before we headed off to The Limelight Supper Club in Lauderdale where the house band was Kool & The Gang! They were the freakin’ house band! We hung out with them! SSSELLLLL-a-brate good times, COME ON!

Alas, Dania Jai Alai no longer exists, having gone derelict in the 90’s and then resurrected and (beautifully?!) restored as “The Casino @ Dania” several years ago. So, it was warmly nostalgic for me to go back there for a little $200 poker tourney on Friday night while watching the Blue Jays cough up Game 6.

Less warm and nostalgic when I bubbled out in 13th place, just two spots short of making the money.

What else is new.

I did get to play with this cute dog, though. The owner was a tough cookie, with a flagrantly foul mouth. At one point I thought she was going to get in a fistfight with another player. And I feared for the other guy. But her dog is real cute.

Saturday I was at The Hard Rock for a $400 buy-in tournament. Only 82 entrants but a healthy 30K prize pool. Long story short, I made final table and ended up in 8th place for a modest $1050 payout, notable only in that I really needed to cash in a tournament. It’s been a while.

Here’s the hand I went out on.

Final table, 8 players left. Average stack is about 250K and I’m very light with about 80K. Big Blind is 4K and is about to be 5K. UTG + 1 shoves preflop with the only stack lighter than mine, about 50K. The player to his left, chip leader at the table with about 400K calls. I’m next to act and I look down at two red Jacks, the best hand I’ve seen in literally hours.

What would you do?

My friend Jim Hess says it’s an insta-fold. Jim has a World Series of Poker bracelet which is precisely one more WSOP bracelet than yours truly. Still, I beg to differ. And I did differ! I shoved my 80K stack.

And I felt I made the right move when they both flipped over AK making me a 65% favorite to triple-up!

An Ace on the flop squashed that idea.

I had to settle for 8th place and a $1050 prize.

But then I got to watch the ballgame with super drunk Americans. That’s kind of a win, right?

Today’s travel tip: Best sandwich in South Florida? La Sosta on Polk Avenue near the Hollywood Circle. Try the “Il Vegetariano Freddo” on ciabatta. You’ll curse all the time you’ve wasted your whole life on other food.