About 8-10 years ago, when I was spending a lot of money collecting autographed baseballs, I would often jump at the chance to buy offbeat ones.
Ones that weren’t baseball people.
I bought one signed by Jane Fonda, as well as balls signed by Richard Petty, Grace Slick, Samuel L. Jackson and John Elway.
I had another one that seemed interesting at the time, but now it just seems sort of goofy. I’m pretty sure it had been signed right around the time of the 2001 World Series, and it had two signatures — Yankees manager Joe Torre and New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
In the weeks after 9/11, Giuliani was known as “America’s Mayor.” He carried himself with true dignity, and I thought he gave one of the best possible quotes when a reporter asked him what he thought the death toll from the terrorist attacks would be.
“Almost too much to bear.”
Sadly, 21 years later Giuliani has become your basic national joke. Ever since his 2020 post-election press conference outside a landscaping firm next to a porn store, it’s nearly impossible to think of Rudy without laughing.
He may have literally hit bottom with the release of “Confidence Man,” New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman’s book about Donald Trump. One anecdote in the book has Trump screaming at Giuliani after Rudy apparently took a relatively nasty dump in an Air Force One bathroom.
“Rudy, that’s fucking disgusting!”
Well, the former mayor is 78 years old, well past the age when people don’t want to go anywhere near the bathroom after you’ve used it. Giuliani apparently never heard of the “courtesy flush.”
Sadly, Rudy apparently ignored what many people learned long ago, that if you associated yourself with Donald Trump, you end up covered with slime that never washes off.
Apparently Trump hasn’t even been paying Giuliani for the legal work he has been doing. Some of the other lawyers who have been working for him recently were intelligent enough to demand payment in advance, but Rudy isn’t really in a position to do that.
It really is a shame to see America’s Mayor sink so low as to become an object of Trump’s ridicule.
I wonder if I can get anything for that autographed ball.