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WPCNR VIEW FROM THE UPPER DECK. By Baseball Bailey. August 9, 2007: Barry finally belted the big blow, number 756, to far more tumult than the original Babe did when he hit his 714^th in 1935 before a few thousand fans in Pittsburgh.

Barry’s Blast was an electrifying humpback line drive in the first five rows of bleachers at AT & T Park. And the homerun crown was passed to a new homerun king. Congratulations to Mr. Bonds who drove for his goal despite the controversy, the criticism, the negativism that has stalked him for a decade.

However, the Babe’s achievement so far and away above and beyond what hitters had achieved at the time in the 1930s still has to be viewed as the magical figure.

 

Mr. Bonds has surpassed the original breaker of Ruth’s record, Henry Aaron who did not attend the Bonds Watch. Neither did the Commissioner of Baseball, Bud Selig. Since no one has definitively proved Mr. Bonds took sterioids, though the circumstantial evidence is damning, the failure of Selig or Aaron to attend cheapens the achievement.

However Henry Aaron’s statement about the blast of how it inspired others to achieve their dreams is what the game is about.

Mr. Aaron, facing fierce racial threats when he pursued the Babe had his demons as he pursued the record. Mr. Bonds has his. Barry and Hank still had to hit them.

However the homerun in Ruth’s time was an achievement. A far greater achievement than today. 

 Today homeruns are just 4 singles strung together, aided and abetted by organized baseball’s chemical alterations to their game.

What do I mean by chemical?

1.       The baseball was juiced in the mid-90s to hype fan interest again after the 1994 baseball strike. Tom Seaver proved this on television, comparing a baseball from his era the 1970s to today’s. Consequently, Mr. Seaver has not gotten much work as a commentator. I saw Mr. Seaver compare the cores of the 1969 baseball with the baseball the late 90s. Seaver noted and showed graphically with a pencil to show how tightly wound the core was compared to the ball of this day. He also showed how sunken the seams were on the modern baseball. Seaver said this made the ball less aerodynamically resistant.

 

2.       The ballparks were shrunken. As the new wave of ballparks developed – Camden Yards, Jacobs Field,  Turner Field, The All-American Ballpark, The Ballpark at Arlington, Coors Field, PacBell Park, the new Detroit Park, power alleys were shrunken, foul lines shortened, foul territory shrunken.

The combination of shorter fences and livelier baseballs, (pitchers have said throwing today’s ball is like throwing a handgrenade), set up a situation where the ball would when hit reasonably squarely, would carry farther and have less distance to travel to clear the fence.

Hitters in the Babe’s era had big ballyards to clear: The Polo Grounds, Shibe Park, Comiskey Park, Muncipal Stadium, League Park, Forbes Field, Griffith Stadium, Yankee Stadium (the biggest park of all), Navin Field (later Briggs Stadium), Sportsman’s Park. The only parks remaining from yesteryear are Wrigley Field and Fenway Park.

So right away, Mr. Bonds has a large advantage over the Babe. Henry Aaron played one more year than the Babe…who pitched the first five years of his career, splitting time in the outfield, and the Babe had to hit a dead ball for the first five years of his career. The Babe hit 49 homers in his first five years in the bigs. He was up for a cup of coffee with the Red Sox in 1914, appearing in only 5 games, then 42,67,52, and 95 and 130 from 1915 to 1919 respectively. Taken into perspective the Sultan of Swat hit 665 of his 714 homeruns in his final 15 years, averaging 44 a year. Aaron, in his first five years belted 140 from 1954 to 1959, and in his last 18 years hit 615. The Babe was the more prolific belter, after a slow start.

Mr. Bonds had a dramatic surge in the 90s in his production, coinciding with baseball’s doctoring of its baseballs and shortening its fences. Going into 1995 season, with 10 years in the bigs, Barry had 259 homeruns after the shortened 1994 strike season. In 1995, before he began receiving the personal training of Greg Anderson, Bonds in his first full season after the strike hit 33 homeruns.

 

 Bonds, after five years in “The Show” had hit 117 homers by 1991, leading the Babe by 51 homers After ten years Bonds had 292. Both modern sluggers well ahead of the Babe’s pace. Over his last 17 years Babe, hit 665 into the seats compared to Bonds hitting 464 in his last 10 years. Bonds prodigiously upped his homer output, as did the Babe. The Babe was also helped by a livelier ball in the 1920s.

Ruth also had three poor years in those last 17 seasons, hitting only 35 (1922), 25 (1925),34(1933), then tailing to  22 and 6 in 1934 and 1935. My point being that the Babe was hitting them out in deeper ballparks, with a harder to drive baseball.

Bonds also had 1,375 more official at bats than the Babe (9,774 to 8,399). But Barry’s blasting since 1995 has been phenomenal – 464 homeruns –an average of 45 a year, when in his first decade in the bigs he averaged 29.

Still in the 10 best years of the Babe—1920 to 1930 the Sultan of Swat, playing less games than Mr. Bonds and Mr. Aaron blasted 516 out of the yard against grizzled ornery take no prisoners pitchers —outhomering Bonds 516 to 462 In his prime years.

Conversely it says a lot about Mr. Bonds consistency and his ability to double his homer output with help from a lively ball, shallower ballparks, lousy pitching and better conditioning. Actually Mr. Bonds body and Babe Ruth’s body are similar with similar swings if you observe the photos.

The numbers that the Bambino puts up are beyond respectable. Here we have Mr. Bonds and Mr. Aaron eclipsing the Babe numerically, but in perspective, the Babe is still awesome, despite his womanizing, his hot dog addiction, his cigar-smoking habit, his hard-drinking.  The Babe’s contemporary sluggers —Jimmie Foxx(534), Mel Ott (511)Lou Gehrig (493), Hack Wilson(244), Al Simmons (307) – do not touch him.

Some other factors in the Aaron-Bonds-Ruth comparisons on numbers

When I was a young fan, old fans then talked about how good the pitching was in the 20s and 30s compared to the pitching in the 1950s. However, they had a point – the relief pitching just was not a big factor in the 20s and 30s. Starters went all the way mostly. But they were ornerous. Nasty. They threw all sorts of pitches with a bigger strike zone: curves, changes, spitballs, emery balls The Men in Blue gave them the letters strike, the knees strike, the corners. Sure there were bad pitchers then, most of them on the 1930 Philadelphia Phils who hit .315 as a team and finished last, their team ERA was 6.71 runs per game. But not many. Most teams had 3 solid pitchers in the Babe’s day.

In Aaron’s time, the 50s and 60s and 70s the pitching was still strong and there were pitchers in better shape, and closers to contend with. 

However in the last ten years, pitching was changed to favor the hitter, in the following ways:

1.       The strike zone was closed down dropping from the letters to the belt and knees. The high strike was no longer called. The corners were still in play. This forced pitchers to throw more down the middle in the wheel house and gave hitters more leeway as to where to expect the pitch when pitchers fell behind on the count. This is evidenced by the vast number of homers on 2-0 counts and on first pitches.

 

The caveat here is today’s pitching is far thinner than it was in Aaron’s day or in Ruth’s day as a player. Pitchers reach the big leagues today and they are learning on the job and their mistakes are homers – not singles or doubles.

 

The pitching started to really go south in the mid-90s when pitch counts came into vogue. The six inning start is now considered a quality start. Very suspect middle relief is then relied on – and this is when a lot of shots get hit. But anyway this is a completely other column.

 

My point is the Sosa-McGwire-Bonds home run era is a far more conducive environment to hit homeruns. Baseball has taken on the element of a pinball game with all the homers.

 

Bonds at the present pace may blast a hundred more because the pitching is so horrendous.

 

Nonetheless, he still has to hit them, regardless of whether the fences are shorter, the pitching less competent.  He is doing it and has done it. If baseball or authorities ever tie him directly to steroids unequivocably I have to think about the asterisk issue, but so far they have not.

 

You could say that the Babe with his massive chest and fast bat was a model for Bonds.

 

I wrote this because the Babe will never be forgotten. When you think homerun, you think Babe Ruth, and the achievements of Mr. Aaron and Mr. Bonds pay homage to the once and future home run king. The Sultan of Swat.

 

I leave you with this description of the Babe on one of his great days in 1928, beating the great Lefty Grove  in the eighth, and snapping Lefty’s 14-game winning streak on September 9 and to send the Philadelphia A’s two and a half games behind the Bronx Bombers on  – taken from Lefty Grove: American Original by  Jim Kaplan:

 

The Yankees had tied the score…Been handed two runs, really.What more? Ruth, with his wonderful sense of theater, bunted on the first pitch – foul by inches. Just think of it: Babe Ruth giving himself up to move Gehrig ninety feet. Or beat out a bunt. The Babe was saying simply this: I can beat you every which way, busher.

 

Ruth took a ball. Then on a 1-1 fastball – mano a mano—combat, you give me your best, I’ll give you mine – Ruth homered deep to right to give the Yankees their final 5-3 margin. Not even old Ty Cobb, popping out in his last official at bat, could bring the A’s back….

 

Vidmer (Richards Vidmer, a Times sportswriter) fleshed it out: “His big bat swung, a crackling sound split the tense silence. A ball sailed high and far toward the bleachers and then the thunder broke loose. A scream of delight went up from the multitude that echoed and reechoed while the mighty busters of the Bronx trotted around the bases. Straw hats rained on the field, mingling with the torn and tattered bits of paper that had fluttered down when Gehrig had driven in the tying run with a single a moment before. The Yankees had beaten back the enemy for the third straight day.”

 

Then in his last days with the Yankees in 1934, the Babe was playing for the Yankees for what turned out to be the last time in Fenway Park. A crowd of 46,000 turned out in the Fens to see the Yankees and the Sox play two. The Babe went 2 for 6. When he left after his last at bat, this is what happened:

 

Whitman wrote in the Boston Herald:

 

Spontaneously and as one man, the huge crowd, all the way around the field, stood up and applauded. There was little shouting. It was hand clapping, steadily swelling in volume until the big fellow was lost to sight as he entered the Red Sox dugut – the one he first entered as a major leaguer twenty years ago – and passed out of sight to the intimacies of the Yankee clubhouse under the grandstand.

The Red Sox said there were tears in the Babe’s eyes as he passed through the dugout on the way out because he was touched by the mass applause.

 

On opening day in Boston after being signed by the Boston Braves in 35, before 20,000, an aging Babe who could hardly run around the bases faced “King Carl” Hubbell of the old New York Giants and blasted a solo shot into the Braves Field bleachers…in May in Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field, the Babe was hitting .180. He was doing nothing at the plate, but somehow the old magic returned. The Bambino belted three majestic homeruns at Forbes Field, one over the double decked grandstand in right, but basically had to walk around the bases.

 

That was the Babe, rising to the occasion more often than not. Leaving us laughing, crying, remembering always.

 

In the final paragraph of Babe Ruth and The American Dream, Ken Sobol writes why The Babe will continue to be the once and future home run king:

 

Death is a fact of life, a serious matter that has to be faced eventually, and the central ignigma of Babe’s fifty-three years was that he always found such things beyond his grasp. Year after year, his associates watched him, wondering when he would grow up, expecting that he would eventually have to learn to face facts as they themselves had to learn, that he would start behaving in a manner consistent with the adulation he received from millions of worshipful kids, but he managed to fool them all. He just stayed Babe Ruth – a wary, self-centered, exuberant, ignorant boy who by an accident of physical coordination happened to be the most exciting figure of his time.

 

So kudos to Mr. Bonds and Mr. Aaron, for in Mr. Bonds achievement, he ironically is upstaged by The Babe.

 

The Babe would have been there, his arms around Mr. Aaron and Mr. Bonds, talking hitting, saying “Hiya Keeds.”

 

Yes, definitely The Babe would have been there.

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WPCNR SCHOOL DAYS. By John F. Bailey. August 7, 2007: Superintendent of Schools Timothy Connors reports that the decision to clear the woods on the Havilands Lane side of the White Plains High School Campus was unauthorized today. Connors said Mike Lynch, Administrator of Buildings & Grounds, had unilaterally made the decision to add a field without telling anyone about it.

 

Cleared Wooded Area at High School. New Homeplate looking down new first baseline. WPHS Tennis courts are to the right. Fill from football field would be used to bring up the field to grade.

Connors said,  “One of our employees felt that we should take advantage of the soil being taken up from the football field and try to create another softball field. In his enthusiasm to do that, he moved forward with having some trees taken down. The difficulty with that is no one was aware of it, neither the Board or the Administration or the neighbors knew about it.”

Connors said, “I think his intentions were good. But our communications with the neighborhood were poor and then people didn’t know about it.They didn’t know what was being done. And, actually the persons coming in to remove the trees removed more than was anticipated and that concerned all of us. We put a stop to it. We’re looking at how do we look at the need for the baseball field and at the same time trying to make some adjustments that will enable us to plant some trees to help to restore the nice area that was behind those 4 or 5 houses.”

Connors said the official who made the decision was Mike Lynch, Administrator of Buildings & Grounds: “He intended well, but you don’t do those things without communicating. We’re going to work to resolve those issues.”

Asked what the plans were for the fill to start. Connors said “Part of the agreement with the contractors is that they take it away. He was just trying to capitalize. His intent was a good one. But there should have been some dialogue about it.”

He said he did not know how many trees were taken out. Connors said they were major-sized trees and it was “a shame to lose them.”

He said the  damage to the Varsity Softball field could be fixed with ground crew work by next season. Asked what the next step is on the cleared land, Connors said:

“We have to plan out exactly what they’re doing. I have promised the neighbors we would come back and tell them exactly what our next steps are. As soon as they have a plan to me, I’ll share it with the neighbors and I’ll share it with the Board. I don’t have a timeline when we’re going to get back to it.”

Asked when work on the field would resume, to have a field by next fall, Connors said, “Certainly cleaning up that property and doing that is the short term goal and we’ll get that done.”

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WPCNR COMMON COUNCIL CHRONICLE-EXAMINER. August 6, 2007: The Common Council approved the construction of a glass enclosed gallery/café on the former site of 189 Main Street tonight, 7-0, over the objections of the North Broadway Civic Association, allowing Louis Cappelli, the developer of the concept to expand to the full footprint of the previous 189 Main Street building.

Louis Cappelli, the Super Developer showed the council interior of the project and described it to the chamber audience: 

 “We’re talking about being able to walk in on the groundfloor. We’re talking about putting a glass elevator on the corner of Main as you first walk in. We’re talking about building a glass bridge across and we’re talking about having dining below from a café point of view. We’re talking about putting crazy little things like glass floors in so that people get the feeling of open space.This 30 feet high. This would be a picture wall that would have some sort of viewing on it. There would be some sort of gallery here we could put together with the Arts Council, or with other suggestions you might have as to what this wants to be. Some are talking about the heritage of White Plains and other things,and we’re open to that.  This would be a mixture of gallery, a mixture of dining, downstairs would be a mixture of again café, and you’d be able to go up to the roof and be able to have some outdoor dining on the roof.”

The council saw an overview of the proposed building and an interior view, but did not ask about how the building would be entered, how large the café was going to be and how much of the site was going to be covered by the café, and how many it would seat.

Another question not asked was whether the new gallery/café to be home to Via Quadronno, the “world-class” Manhattan coffee house, would have an entrance from the Ritz Carlton hotel across the new Court Street extension.  No details showing entrances and floor levels of the extent of the café  in the subterranean level of the new structure were shown during last night’s meeting, prior to the voted approval.

Mr. Cappelli added that he plans to put a wall structure to shield the view of William Street from the hotel, and that he had already spoken to owners of 185 Main about adding that structure, which he said he would be showing the Council in the future.

Malmud said though the process by which the project came to the council was “clumsy,”  “I like it very much.” The balance of the council was also enthusiastic about the project, each praising its uniqueness, and forgiving the jumpstart the project had made in the interest of meeting the October 10 opening of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. Councilman Benjamin Boykin emphasized that during the work session on the project, he was assured by Corporation Counsel Edward Dunphy the construction done on the project so far was legal.

 

 

 

 

In other action, the Common Council adjourned the hearing on the 1133 Westchester Avenue hotel proposed by Robert Weisz and referred two competing affordable housing proposals out to Boards and Commissioners for comment. The two housing proposals seek to hike the percentage of apartments a developer of a multi-family building has to set aside as affordable units from 6% to 10% as well as increase the cash buyout levels a developer has to pay if they choose not to build the affordable units.

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WPCNR STAGE DOOR. From Pia Haas, Westchester Broadway Theatre. August 5, 2007: WBT opens it’s revival of  Little Shop of Horrors this Thursday evening for a through September run.  “Little Shop” is a zany, fun filled, Faustian tale about a timid florist shop worker who raises a plant that takes a carnivorous delight feeding on human blood.

 The Man-Eating Plant of Little Shop of Horrors. 

Photo by John Vecchiola, Courtesy, The WBT

Composer Alan Menken and writer Howard Ashman, based the hilariously creepy musical on the low-budget 1960 cult film The Little Shop of Horrors. The movie, directed by Roger Corman, included a 23-year-old Jack Nicholson amongst a cast of unknowns. The catchy musical score, composed by Menken in the style of 1960’s rock -‘n- roll, doo-wop and early Motown, includes  several show-stoppers including “Skid Row,” “Somewhere That’s Green,” and “Suddenly Seymour,” as well as the title song “Little Shop of Horrors”.

 

Seymour Krelborn, a quintessential nerd who mops floors in Mr. Mushnik’s failing skid row flower shop, is broke, shy, and hopelessly in love with Audrey. He begins to nurture a “strange and interesting new plant” which has the magical ability to draw in customers and the attention of the girl of his dreams. Soon, Mushnik’s Flower Shop is a success and Seymour is a local celebrity.

But there’s something very peculiar about the horticultural oddity – it thrives on the kind of plant food that is not always easily available – human blood. Soon the plant, which Seymour has named Audrey II, grows into a giant, ill-tempered, R&B singing carnivore who offers Seymour fame and fortune in exchange for feeding its growing appetite. It finally reveals itself to be an alien creature poised for global domination!

Little Shop of Horrors is directed and choreographed by Ardsley’s Patricia Wilcox.  Ms. Wilcox returns to WBT after directing and choreographing last year’s terrific production of “Aida “.  Eric Santagata portrays the love-sick Seymour who risks all for the girl of his dreams, Audrey, played by Julie Connors.  The voracious plant will be brought to life by two performers. Puppeteer /designer, Bill Diamond will be encased in his foam rubber cocoon of a puppet every night swaying and lip-sinking as it rants, bellows & rocks out with the fabulously ominous voice of Terri White.  

 

Bob Arnold is the miserly florist shop owner, Mr. Mushnik.   Gary Lynch will make us squirm in our seats as Audrey’s sadistic dentist boyfriend. Kimberly Hamby, Talana Deshaies, and Jalynn Steele will be the Ronnettes, a skid row Greek chorus of sorts, and David Patrick Ford, Joel Briel, and Molly Mastrangelo, round out the cast in various roles.

 

      Set Design by George Puello and Steve Loftus, Costumes by Gail Baldoni, Lighting Design by Andrew Gmoser, Sound Design by Jonathan Hatton, Stage Management and Properties by Victor Lukas, Associate Producers are Lisa Tiso and George Puello. Assistant Choreographer is Michelle Weber. Puppets built and operated by Diamond Studios,

 

Little Shop of Horrors had its world premiere on May 6, 1982 at the WPA Theatre before settling into a long run at the Orpheum Theatre, opening July 27, 1982 and playing for 2209 performances   This original production, directed by Ashman, was critically acclaimed and won several awards including the 1982-1983 New York Drama Critics Circle Award,  the Drama Desk Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award, and the London Evening Standard Award all for Best Musical. When it closed, it was the third-longest running musical and the highest-grossing production in off-Broadway history. Seymour Krelborn was played by Lee Wilkoff and  Audrey was played by Ellen Greene

 

In addition to the original off-Broadway production, the musical has been performed all over the world. The musical was also made into a film in 1986, directed by Frank Oz, starring Ellen Greene reprising her role of Audrey and Rick Moranis as Seymour & featuring Steve Martin as the dentist.. The Broadway revival of Little Shop of Horrors, directed by Jerry Zaks, opened in October of 2003 at the Virginia Theatre in New York  with Hunter Foster as Seymour and Kerry Butler as Audrey. Hunter Foster was nominated for a 2004 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical for his performance. The closing Broadway cast included Joey Fatone and Jessica-Snow Wilson.

 

For Box Office information, times of performances call 592-2222.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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WPCNR’S The Sunday Bailey. News & Commentary By John F. Bailey. August 5, 2007: So The New York Times called me this week asking what I thought about the Marine Recruiting Office unpaid parking tickets, being pursued by the White Plains Department of Parking.

I told their reporter I thought the Marines should pay the tickets, but I had not been following the story since it had been played for laughs much to the Marines’ embarrassment – and the Commissioner of Parking himself had told reporters he had offered the Marines a  $50,000 settlement, about half on the dollars owed. It seemed like just another U.S. Government Bureaucracy Bungle.

Sounded fair to me, I told the reporter, but what I did not understand is why the Marine Corps refused to pay the tickets, that was the only mystery. That nagged at me.

So I made phone calls last week and found out, as Paul Harvey says, the other side of the story.  See if you think this is what really happened:

We  may have yet another embarrassment to the Delfino Administration which loves to squeeze dollars out of citizenry.

Talking to Marine Gunnery Sergeant Matthew Butler last week, I found out why the Marines don’t feel they should have to pay the tickets.

The city  allegedly was systematically shaking down the Marines at the Chester-Maple Parking Garage every month when checks from the Army Corps of Engineers paying for parking permits for the Marines’ cars were not credited in a timely manner by the City of White Plains due to the financial process.

It appears to be a cute little scam worthy of organized crime.  

According to Sergeant Butler, the Marine Recruiters would show up at the Chester and Maple office the first of the month to pick up the Parking Permits, and were told they had not been paid for yet, so they would not issue the Marines the permits to display, taking away the Marines armor against the White Plains Parking Bandits — the dreaded Citationaires. 

Since the recruiters had no other  place to park, they parked anyway at Chester & Maple – and each day it took for the check to clear – the White Plains Parking Enforcers wrote them tickets for parking we believe at metered space without a Parking Permit. A parking official says the Marines have to pay like everybody else.  Granted.

But if you know the cars always park there and usually have permits, why would you write the tickets just because you can?

White Plains, according to the Marines, was giving them tickets for space they paid for because the city could — technically.  The effect would be the same as if Mr. and Mrs. or Ms. White Plains paid for a parking space, got a quarter stuck in the slot and the time did not register (Parking Enforcement Officer comes along sees violated meter, writes ticket).

Trouble is they did Pay.

The Marines claim the city did not record the payments in a timely manner. The Marines assure me the Army Corps of Engineers issued the checks on time every month.

The Parking Enforcement Officers should have known the Marine vehicles were regularly parked at that garage every day. Come on! How cheap a money making scheme is that? No enforcer should have ticketed Marine cars which have been parking at Chester & Maple for years – regulars.

Isn’t that clever? You don’t process the checks on the books in time, and ticket the Marines probably $15-$25 a pop. This has gone on for years, according to Butler and previously it had been worked out (or perhaps forgotten). But Butler said the city never told them about it until last December.

The Marines told WPCNR that more than half the $94,000 owed stems from the tickets and late fees Marines received when the city would not credit the Army Corps of Engineers payments at one location – Chester & Maple Municipal Garage.

The Marine Recruiting Office ignored the tickets, Butler said because the recruiters felt it would be taken care of when the payments came in. But, even if this was a mistake on the Marines part, trusting the city (something no one should ever do in this town), why didn’t the city address the situation? The city claims they did and have been ignored. Sergeant Butler’s statement issued Friday shows why.

Like pick up the phone when they noticed this like a few years ago, instead of running up the tickets because the city could?

Could it be the city needed the money from the tickets which had been apparently previously just forgiven (but we are just speculating here that they were forgiven or ignored by the administration).

Sounds like a scam on the Marines to me, doesn’t it? Whose brilliant idea was this any way to suddenly go after the Marines on these tickets during the budget crush year of 2006-2007? What a coincidence the city needed money in 2006-2007?

On the other unpaid tickets – the Marines say they cannot trace who was driving the cars at the time. On other hand – the city is really at fault there for not going after the tickets at the time, in my opinion – when they were issued. Someone should have run the registrations on government vehicles and told the Marines about it.

The Marines are at fault on those and just because they cannot find the drivers is no reason they should not be paid. The Chester Maple tickets are an entirely different matter if what the Marines say is the truth.

The Marine Corps assures me the Army Corps of Engineers paid the checks for the Parking Permits by the first of the month because they have a lease on the space with the city. The city denies having a lease.

So the city, instead of turning over the permits waited until the check cleared. You have to hand it to the city.  

They really stick to the rules where money is concerned, especially when they see an opportunity to make more money on the innocent — to make more money on meters where the time has been paid for.

I think a phone call to the Marines before the moneys got up to $94,000 might have been helpful, don’t you? Like maybe before it got up to $5,000, maybe?  Does anybody think in government?

White Plains may be the only city in America trying to shake down the Marine Corps.

The Mayor, who proudly wears his World War II American Legion cap in every Memorial Day and Veterans Day Parade, should not have allowed this to happen and get this far. He has been in office since 1997. Now in 2006-2007 his administration paints the Marines as scofflaws? And everybody believes that? And everybody thinks it’s funny?

The Mayor will be at the funeral of the first Marine from White Plains to die in Baghdad. He is a great patriot. A patriotic thing to do would be to intervene here and call off the parking pit bulls and reach an accommodation on this obvious overzealous enforcement maneuver.

It’s an embarrassment. A disgrace. The city should write off the losses – the Marines paid for the  garage space – all of it, they had an agreement and the tickets on the Chester Maple Garage were issued as a money-making dirty trick by the city.  The Marine story is they paid, and the city record-keeping created a situation that allowed them to ticket the Marine vehicles that had paid for the space. Really bad communication on the city’s part.

I have asked to get a copy of the agreement the Army Corps of Engineers has with the city. If there is no agreement, then the city may be technically correct on ticketing before the payment is in. If there is an agreement, then the city was treating the Marines disingenuously.  Even if the city is technically correct, by withholding the permits, it was not a nice thing to do, was it?

And speaking of shaking a person down on a technicality –

The Board of Elections and the Democratic City Committee were about to throw out Candyce Corcoran’s hard earned petitions – all of them—this week because the Board of Elections did not know how to tell candidates to fill out their own petitions.  The candidate asked the Board of Elections if she had to fill out a certain section. A Board clerk said no. She didn’t.

When she filed her petitions the geniuses who run the White Plains Democratic Party said “Ah Ha! Snerdley, we’ve got her now!” and filed an objection to deny all her 67 pages of petitions because she did not list city and county in the Witness Identification Information Section.

Trouble is the geniuses at the Democratic City Committee Headquarters – better known as the White Plains Politburo or is it Poliburro – weren’t even aware of the Nassau County decision in 2003 that ruled you could not throw out petitions if the address and city of the signature taker was already on the ballot.

Ms. Corcoran informed the Board of Elections who apparently did not know this decision either.

So let’s save some money folks and get rid of the Board of Elections.

This Sunday the Democratic Party “leadership” which issued this challenge has banana cream pies on their faces. Not only did they think it was all right to deny an office-seekers’ petitions on a technicality, but they thought they could. And felt no qualms about doing it.

It has been an embarrassing week for the Parking Bandits and the Democrats with No Clothes.

This is leadership?

What is so puzzling is the sanctimonious way the city told all who would listen that the Marines were scofflaws and the city was just seeking their money from the Marines, without explaining that most of the tickets were from the parking garage lease/agreement payment misunderstanding .  

And the self-righteous manner the Democratic Leadership felt it is perfectly all right to keep people off the ballot when their candidates were threatened.

Where are the editorial boards of the nation on this outrageous behavior?

Always keep your hand on your wallet in White Plains, the light fingers of the city may be about to lift it.