A Sunny End to September

For as bad as the weather was in the month of September it did end in grand fashion with a perfect fall weekend.  Hopefully it’s a sign of things to come for this month.

It was not a good Sunday for the local NFL teams as all three lost and it’s looking more and more like Giants and Jets fans are in for a long season.  As for the Eagles it’s probably a bit of a Super Bowl hangover but I still think they’ll win the NFC East.

Sunday was the final day of baseball’s regular season, sort of.  The Yankees finished up a weekend series with a loss in Boston but they’ll return to Fenway Park rather quickly if they beat Oakland in Wednesday’s American League Wild Card game in the Bronx.

The Mets ended a down season on an up note with a 1-0 win over the Marlins as Todd Frazier drove in the game’s only run with a double.

Toms River’s favorite baseball player ended an injury-filled season with the same .213 batting average as he did in 2017 along with 18 homers and 59 RBI.  Frazier does have a year remaining on the two-year deal he signed with the Mets last winter.

During the course of a 162 game season you think about those games lost which might not have seemed important at that time.  In the National League two of the three divisions finished in a tie which will force one-game playoffs today between the Brewers and Cubs in Chicago and the Rockies and Dodgers in Los Angeles.

Winners claim the Central & West titles while the losers meet tomorrow in the NL Wild Card game.

As some of you may know I am the public address announcer for Monmouth University football and Saturday the Hawks won a thriller at Kessler Stadium as they came from behind to defeat Wagner 54-47.

One of the big reasons for the Hawks win was their smallest player, 5’7 fifth-year senior Vinny Grasso of Toms River.  Between kick returns, punt returns, receiving and rushing the Donovan Catholic graduate accounted for 306 all-purpose yards.

Grasso and the rest of the Hawks have a bye week and then play their next two games at home on October 13 (Bucknell) and 20 (Campbell).  If you want to see exciting football on a Saturday afternoon then I strongly recommend a trip to the recently renovated Kessler Stadium. It’s well worth it.