105 years ago today, WJZ first went on the air from a shack on the roof of a Westinghouse factory in Newark. It soon moved to New York and eventually became WABC 770, a local radio giant and one of the most influential stations in the country. WABC's most notable era began in 1960, when it became a Top 40 music station. A few years later, program director Rick Sklar built what became known as Musicradio 77 into the most listened-to station in America. Sklar’s formula was revolutionary if obvious in hindsight. A short playlist, the biggest records played over and over, jingles and, perhaps most importantly, personalities who became as familiar as the hits. Ron Lundy greeted listeners with “Hello Love,” Dan Ingram owned afternoons, Cousin Brucie broadcast from the Beatles’ hotel at the height of Beatlemania. By the late 1970s, FM was taking an increasing share of the music audience. On May 10, 1982, Ingram and Lundy hosted WABC’s final hours as a music station. After a montage of its history, the last record was John Lennon’s “Imagine.” Here’s a snippet from a WCBS-TV report on the final day of Musicradio 77.

Sinatra is a fascinating paradox. After his vocal chords hemorrhaged in 1950, Sinatra the artist emerged and the paradox begins. Paradox because Sinatra’s voice was never the same–it has lost its beauty and sweetness; but, at the same time, he also became a much better singer.

The Frank Sinatra Show premiered on CBS 76 years ago today. It was not a ratings success and arrived as Sinatra’s career was already sliding from the heights of the bobby-soxer years. Bulova Watches sponsored it but pulled out after 13 weeks. Other sponsors came and went. The competition didn’t help. In its first season, Sinatra was up against Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows on Saturday nights. CBS moved him to Tuesdays for the second season, where he faced Milton Berle’s Texaco Star Theater, then the No. 1 show on television. Then came an unlikely competitor. Bishop Fulton Sheen’s Life Is Worth Living premiered on DuMont in 1952 and became a surprise hit, with Sheen standing in front of a blackboard and talking about faith and morality. The publicity around Sinatra’s affair with Ava Gardner did not help. The Frank Sinatra Show was canceled in 1952. That same year Columbia Records dropped him and his longtime agency let him go. He was 36. This was the bottom. It was not the end.

America & The House Next Door The first time I understood what America meant, I was standing on a beach on Long Island. My grandfather had come to America as a Hungarian immigrant fleeing the Holocaust. He arrived speaking little English. He installed carpets in hotels, built a business carpeting many of them, and changed the circumstances of his family. By the time I was a boy, he owned a waterfront house. It had pear trees, boats and a beach. I thought of it as the trophy of his success. A few years later, a heart surgeon bought the house next door. He was African American, a rarity along that beach. I was eight years old. I didn’t have the language for what I was seeing. I knew only that people treated the doctor with great respect. He had devoted his life to becoming exceptionally good at helping other people. We shared a beach. In the evenings, he would go fishing, and I would be his assistant, grabbing lures and handing him clips. We fished together. My grandfather and the surgeon gave me two versions of the same lesson. My grandfather had crossed an ocean with almost nothing and built a life. The doctor had become one of the most skilled people in the most demanding profession I could imagine. People respected him for what he could do for them. I did not think of this as politics. I did not think of it as capitalism. I thought it was how the world worked: a person’s beginning did not have to determine the ending. That belief shaped how I saw my own life. It also shaped how I understood America. The idea America has offered the world is simple and powerful: people can change their circumstances through creativity, intelligence and hard work. Birth matters. Luck matters. The obstacles are real. But they do not have to be the final answer. For generations, people around the world have looked toward America as a place where that possibility could be tested. They came carrying different languages, histories and hopes. They believed their children might have choices they did not. That belief is larger than any one family. It is a promise to every child who has been told that their starting point defines their future. America’s importance to the world has never rested on its wealth or power. It has rested on the example of human agency: the ability to make something, learn something, serve someone, and change the shape of a life. That promise is not automatic. A waterfront house does not prove that every person has the same chance. A heart surgeon’s success does not erase the barriers he crossed. My grandfather’s achievement does not make his journey easy. The point is that their lives were not fixed by where they began. They could act. Their work could matter. Their choices could open a future. That is the fundamental promise we have to preserve—and make real for more people. When institutions close paths to opportunity, when tax policy targets people who generate active income, and when concentrated power turns the economy into a system of extraction, children stop believing that effort can change anything. When voters are given increasingly awful choices, that loss reaches beyond one family or one country. It weakens the foundational idea people everywhere have looked to America to represent. I think about those two houses on the water. One held the story of an immigrant who built a life after surviving catastrophe. The other held a Black doctor who had devoted his life to saving people. I was a boy on the beach between them. They made the American promise visible to me. The world does not need America to be perfect. It needs America to keep proving that a person’s circumstances can change—and that what a person creates for others can change the course of a life.

Eva Marie Saint RIP, 4th July 1924 – 6th October 2026

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They had 5 straight #1's, a break, then 4 straight #1's and a #2. Total 12 #1's. Best girl-group ever.

Happy World Teachers’ Day!

Ladies and gentlemen, our seven-time China Open champion: Novak Djokovic! 🏆 @DjokerNole | #ChinaOpen

Before “I Hear a Symphony,” the Supremes had five straight No. 1 singles. Then “Nothing but Heartaches” peaked at No. 11. For almost anyone else, that was a hit. Berry Gordy expected more. He sent a memo calling for Top Ten records from every Motown artist and No. 1 records from the Supremes. Holland-Dozier-Holland, the team behind all five No. 1s, went looking for something different. Lamont Dozier later said the idea for “I Hear a Symphony” came partly from movies. A main character would appear on screen and have music of their own. What if the main person in your life did too? “Whenever you are near, I hear a symphony.” It went to No. 1. Easy to see why.

The NFL rarely suspends its officials. Yesterday, it suspended two. Jeff Seeman got two games for appearing to curse at Cardinals tight end Trey McBride on camera. Adrian Hill got one game for yelling at Vikings linebacker Eric Wilson. Officials are graded for missed calls. They generally are not suspended for them. These suspensions were for conduct, after the video was already public. Maybe there is a second benefit. The next time fans complain about a missed call, these suspensions are already on the record as proof that officials are not above public accountability.

Belongs in every baseball fan's library:

During a rare open practice at Assembly Hall years ago, Bob Knight criticized a poor pass by saying, “Al Gionfriddo couldn’t have caught that ball.” No one reacted. Knight tried again. “Johnny Bench couldn’t have caught that ball,” he said, and there was some nervous laughter.

Damon Runyon first became a major figure as a sportswriter, covering baseball and boxing for the Hearst newspapers. He helped change sportswriting by looking for characters and human stories rather than simply describing the action. More notably, he created a fictional version of Broadway that became part of America’s idea of New York. His stories were set around Times Square and Broadway, populated by bookmakers, chorus girls, hustlers and gangsters with names like Nathan Detroit, Harry the Horse, Benny Southstreet, Big Jule and Nicely-Nicely. They spoke in a language that was unmistakably Runyon’s, a mixture of street slang and exaggeratedly formal grammar. “Runyonesque” became an adjective. Guys and Dolls came from this world. The musical drew its characters and stories from Runyon’s writing and took its title from one of his story collections. Runyon died in New York in 1946 at 66. Jimmy Breslin captured the man behind the words in his 1991 biography, Damon Runyon: A Life. It was a fitting assignment. One great New York newspaperman writing about another.

Young jazz wunderkind from the '80s now a senior jazz statesman; kudos Saw him years back in Omaha, admired his lack of ego: He sat in the middle of the ensemble and was generous in directing attention to his young colleagues One young string bass player got remarkable expression from the instrument using a technique new to me

RT @saribethrose: And many say this was the true beginning of the 1960s decade.

Today in 1962, a little-known Liverpool group released its first single, “Love Me Do.” It peaked at No. 17 in Britain and was not released in America until 1964. The No. 1 song here was “Sherry” by the Four Seasons. 16 months later, “I Want to Hold Your Hand” was No. 1 in America.

Great documentary about this: youtu.be/j6qW-ZKxZss?si=9a4Y…

I always loved how Jackie stood there to ensure that Thomson touched all bases while the other Dodgers just walked off the field. Perhaps hoping for a repeat of the 1908 "Merkle Boner".

And when Thomson hit “The Shot Heard ‘Round the World”, the on deck hitter was a rookie outfielder named Willie Mays.

Gore Vidal, the late novelist, essayist and public intellectual, was born 101 years ago today. In 1968, ABC paired him with William F. Buckley for the Republican and Democratic conventions. The network was a distant third behind CBS and NBC and could not match their coverage. It needed something else. Vidal and Buckley were accomplished writers and intellectual opponents. They also despised each other. Vidal’s novel Myra Breckinridge had been a sensational bestseller earlier that year, and Buckley used its sexual content against him. In their first encounter, Vidal said he had based Myra’s polemical style on Buckley. Over ten debates, the exchanges grew personal. During the Democratic convention in Chicago, with antiwar protesters and police clashing outside, Vidal said, “As far as I’m concerned, the only sort of pro- or crypto-Nazi I can think of is yourself.” Buckley answered: “Now listen, you queer. Stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I’ll sock you in your goddam face, and you’ll stay plastered.” The confrontations drew viewers and gave ABC something its competitors did not have. They also showed that political disagreement could be turned into television spectacle. The arguments were about politics, but also war, sex, race and American culture. More than half a century later, the issues have changed. The format hasn’t.