As a native Long Islander, I was able to witness firsthand the destructive Hurricane Sandy on Monday. Fortunately, my friends and family all emerged from the storm unscathed and without any major damage to their home. Many others were not so lucky.

New Yorkers have had their share of storm scares before in the past but NOTHING like this. We have our yearly nor’easters, blizzards and thunderstorms. There has even been the occasional tropical storm.

In the days leading up to any big storm there is always that group of people who take lots of precautions. They stock up on batteries and canned food and buy out Home Depot. They buy all the bottled water and create lines at the gas stations. Those people make it impossible to run any errand the few days prior.

Then you have the other group of people that mock those cautious people. (more…)

Spring Training is here! Major League Baseball players are reporting to camp and getting ready for the upcoming baseball season.

Meanwhile, sports writers follow the players down South in order to provide news to baseball fans across the country that are hungry to read about baseball after a long winter.

Yet we are still over a month away from any meaningful games so there really isn’t a lot to talk about.  There’s not much going on at Spring Training other than light jogging, pitchers fielding practice and soft tossing.  However, beat writers have to write about something while they are down in Florida and Arizona, so they find ways to turn just about anything into a 1,500-word press release.

I did this last year and found a number of ridiculous articles. So I dug deep into the MLB.com news archive again and found five more absurd articles that could hardly be called newsworthy.

John Axford Accurately Predicts Some of the Oscar Winners (more…)

This past week’s episode of How I Met Your Mother peaked my interest when I discovered the title of the episode was called “The Drunk Train.”

Many of you may have no clue what the Drunk Train is but as a native of Long Island, I am quite familiar with “The Drunk Train,” which is the last train home from New York City to Long Island on a Friday or Saturday night. It is affectionately referred to as the Drunk Train because just about everyone on the train has reached the peak of their drunkenness for the evening during the trip home.  Some of these people would definitely find that New York alcohol withdrawal treatment would come in handy.

In the episode, Barney and Ted decide they are going to hop on the Drunk Train in an effort to find slutty, drunk Long Island women to have sex with. The episode was a good idea in theory but the writers failed at portraying what The Drunk Train is really like.

Before I explain what the Drunk Train is really like, you must understand the underlying causes of the Drunk Train.

The Cause of the Drunk Train
The Long Island Rail Road has a very limited schedule after midnight. Typically there is a train to most stops sometime in the 1 a.m. hour. After that, there usually isn’t another one until about 4 a.m.

Not wanting to wait up to three hours for the next train to come at 4:00 a.m., all the Long Islanders leave whatever bar they were at and rush to Penn Station to cram onto a 1:45 a.m. train. Since just minutes ago many of these people were doing Jaeger bombs and shots of Café Patron, there was no time for them to sip on a glass of water and sober up a bit before heading home.

With all these inebriated people crammed onto a train, the ride home becomes just as much of an adventure as the night preceding it. (more…)

The recent interleague baseball match-up between my hometown New York Yankees and the Chicago Cubs gave me an excuse to make my first trip to Chicago this past weekend.

As I took in a pair of games at historic Wrigley Field, I started to learn why the Cubs haven’t won a series since 1908. Losing has become part of their appeal and their fans have embraced the concept of the “Loveable Losers.” I even saw some kid being interviewed on ESPN saying he’d rather be a Cubs fan than a Yankees fan because “it would be boring to always win.” I’ve been a Yankees fan my whole life. Trust me kid. There is nothing boring about winning.

Cubs fans and their relationship with Wrigley Field is like being in a bad relationship with a beautiful woman. They are blinded by its exterior beauty and can’t see the flaws on the inside.

On the exterior, everything about Wrigley Field looks amazing. The field has a quaint atmosphere of a minor-league park with its ivory-covered brick walls and auxiliary scoreboard. But what you’ll find in the interior are cramped seats, no video board and a trough in a disgusting men’s room where 50 men are pissing simultaneously. Oh yeah…and the team playing inside stinks.

But Cubs fans are blinded by Wrigley Field, just like a man would be blinded by dating a beautiful woman who brings nothing else to the table.

Every game is like a party for Cubs fans, where the outcome isn’t as important as having fun. Remember the crap your parents told you after losing a game in Little League, that it’s not important if you won or lost, as long as you had fun? It seems like Cubs fans live by that notion. The result is a side note to getting drunk and tossing beach balls around. I can see why Wrigley Field is called “The Friendly Confines”: Because the park is too small and their fans are wimps (except for the teenage girl that called my 63-year old father a “faggot Yankees fan”). Obnoxious Yankees fans were scattered all over that park, talking shit at every opportunity and most Cubs fans just sat there and took it. Even when the Cubs won on Friday, they failed to seize a rare opportunity to talk trash. Maybe that’s the difference between New Yorkers and Chicagoans. Perhaps they are just too polite to say anything.

As the team with 27 World Series Championships took two-out-of three from a team who hasn’t won a title in over 100 years, it became clear which city had the better baseball team. But when it comes to other important aspects, Chicago holds its own against New York City. Though I was only there a few days, I took in a good amount of the city and have drawn some key comparisons between Chicago and New York. (more…)

I’ve lived my entire life in New York.  As a proud New Yorker, I get ticked when I hear the numerous New Yorker stereotypes.  Here at Living with Balls, I’ve decided to put these stereotypes to rest.  For all you non-New Yorkers reading this, I’m going to teach you which New York stereotypes are true and which are false.

New York has the Worst Drivers
FALSE
New York has the BEST drivers.  You have to be a good driver to get around in New York City; otherwise you’ll get driven off the road.  Any schmuck can drive in a straight line down Route 80 with no traffic.  New York provides the most challenging driving situations in the country.  

Try maneuvering through the Long Island Expressway during rush hour when you are late for work.  Try navigating around bumper-to-bumper traffic on the Major Deegan when you are trying to get to Yankee Stadium by a 7:05 first pitch.  Try making a left-hand turn, while avoiding oncoming traffic and pedestrians in the cross walk, all while some impatient driver holds on his horn behind you.  It takes GREAT drivers to do this.

The only reason people think New Yorkers can’t drive is because there are so many of us.  The greater the number of people, the greater chance some idiot will be on the road.  We do have some idiots drivers but the percentage is no greater than any other state. (more…)