Much to recap. Since the surgery, it feels like I have a built-in excuse, and I guess I’ve been using it. And thank you for not getting on me too badly about it. But Jewball is about pushing through and putting aside the excuses. What our forefathers did is an exemplar to us descendants. Well, we are all the descendants of one Alan Milchman aka The Oracle of Jewball. The man who started it all. Who started a football game in Flushing Meadows Park, Queens thirty years ago. A game that was played in all weather with no excuses. Whether a two on two or a three on three. It wasn’t a game with tremendously skilled players – they weren’t. Or a game on a great field – it wasn’t. Or a game that was extremely popular. None of that. So why did it survive? How can we possibly explain the fact that Alan – whom I had never met before – came down with his daughter, Aliza, to watch 30 supremely talented Jewballers play our double header Turkey Bowl on a turf field over two decades after he handed the game to Rabin and hung up his cleats? Where he was recognized and welcomed as our founder? I actually think I know. I was telling some of the guys about the legend which Alan was able to confirm in person. When Jewball began, before Zada’s docs, and Whatsapp Ins, and email Ins, and phone calls, and simply showing up, there was The Oracle’s answering machine. Every Saturday night the tape started blank. And a player would call and say “Bradley in.” And Alan would re-record the tape to count Bradley and himself. And Mike would call and say “Mike In” and Alan would erase the tape and re-record to count Bradley, Alan, and Mike. And Rabin would call…Each player would then know how many were in and the hope was that eventually the count would reach 8, maybe 10 and there was enough for a decent game. I think about that answering machine. The hishtadlus that it represents. I think about all the other pick-up games of the time and of all time, and I cannot imagine that there was another Commissioner with that kind of dedication and vision. I picture him erasing the tape and re-recording each time, saying the names. I imagine Alan waiting for the phone to ring and being filled with hope and joy and possibility each time it was a Jewballer on the line saying In. What would have been a stupefying chore to others was an instinctual obligation to him. An obligation. A mitzvah. Taken upon himself with complete faith. What he was doing was exceptional. And maybe he didn’t know why at the time. But I believe that his extreme hishtadlus on those Saturday nights is what merited us our longevity and success. Without that answering machine, the game dies in utero. Rabin is never brought down. Spira is playing somewhere else. I never play the game at all. So, how could I not get to work on these recaps with that kind of inspiration staring me in the face…
eek 5 began with a premature League game to accommodate a former MVP’s return from the wilds of Florida. Prime was back in the fold under the wing of Pray’s Birds. But Prime was not the only MVP coming back to Jewball this season after an absence. The man named MVP and with the trophy to prove it is back from the wilds of Illinois and returns to lead his Crocs in a League campaign. It was Crocs v. BOP to kick off the 2023 League Season. A week after losing both the field and my bicep tendon mid-game, we were blessed to have WMS all to ourselves and the sun was shining. It turned out to be a great day for Jewball.
In the first hour of the game, though I was at Hewlett scoping the field just in case, Yaron was reporting that BOP v. Crocs was shaping up to be a brilliant show. Early on it featured a deep reception by Dobs and a Dobs TD, as well as a mind-bending one handed catch by Zinn. Crocs had the lead and were competing. But of course I show up and Crocs went the way of all my teams. Underdogs can’t win when I’m around. And so Pray began throwing TDs to everyone not named Prime and Snow began throwing passes to everyone not on the Crocs and after 5 picks by BOP and 5 TDs thrown by Pray, the game was out of hand. Snow and the Crocs have a ton of talent and are expected to compete, but they start the League Season 0-1. BOP begin 1-0 and the Jewball goes to Pray for the 5 TDs thrown, plus his 3 picks (2 of which he ran back for scores).
The 945 Games that followed the League Game were not short on epic storylines themselves. Returning from the wilds of Ramat Bet Shemesh, Zez mad his annual return to Jewball – always straight from the airport. I will always maintain that our greatest virtue is that we are always a home for our Vets. If you give enough to this game, and earn Vet status, we will always welcome you back as a conquering hero. No matter how long. No matter how far. And Zez is a Jewball hero and a real life hero. An absolute honor and privilege to have our gunslinger back on the field and firing.
And firing he did. His first TD was a classic Zez rushing TD from the QB slot and his second TD was bullet to Legs in the back in the endzone. The returning warrior was poised to get the W and the Jewball. But (and I feel like I’ve written this a few times already) tis’ the season of Mighty and the Vet goes off for 2 scores in regulation and the score is tied. Zez could have won it in regulation but Logan dropped a sure TD. After Mighty went for hat trick and gave Yaron the lead in OT, it was Zezzy with a drive to at least end in a tie, but his team betrayed him again. Beast couldn’t haul one in that may have gone for a TD, and Zez leaves with nothing but an immeasurable store of love, respect, and admiration – and while Zez is always intent in the W, I have feeling what we provided will do. Jewball to Mighty for all the points (plus a pick).
On the other side of the field was Perla v. Pray in a game where the Randomizer tried to make it hard on Pray. Though he had the number 1 draft pick in Zinn and a cavalcade of Jewball stars, Perla was given Kut, BK, Storm, Dax, Daxxy, Tom and Dobs. As formidable a team as ever assembled. I got into it a little bit with Perla from the sideline when I though the offense was stalling. Here’s my take. No one should be embarrassed on the field. At the same time, no one should be immune from being embarrassed on the field. It’s kind of what we do. Just ask the longest tenured Jewballer, Dr. Duckball Assman. Maybe then….I need to be more careful about the level of it and to who. Regardless, I apologized to White and he has to know it comes from only one place: I want him to be great. I want him to kick Pray’s ass. And Yaron’s ass. And especially Dachs’ ass. I’m an underdog guy. My favorite team this season not named Cronies is of course Purple Cobras. I love a great story. At the same time, we here at Jewball need competitive, quality, fun football – week in and out. And when it comes to QBS, if X isn’t going to do it, Y will. Pray ended up winning the game. Perlas was down 5-2 and mounted a heroic comeback, but dropped the contest 5-4. Perla holds the ball too long, but we still need to recognize the line play of Spira and Salem, going for 8 sacks in total (4 apiece). Jewballs to that dynamic duo.
Week 6 and Turkey Bowl….(and I guess Week 7) to follow….onward! No excuses!

It’s hard to look back on this past Sunday. I don’t want to look back. Not yet. Just forward. First to Monday, when I get this bicep reattached. Then to the 6 weeks of healing. Then to the 4-6 weeks of rehabbing. Then to the day I can return to the field with you all and finish the game I started. Because the game I started went like this….
No one was on the field at Woodmere Middle School when 28 of us Jewballers descended. Prime was back. The sun was shining. Was probably almost 60 degrees. I was feeling light, and fast, and healthy. Pray was my QB.  If you didn’t look at your phone to see how effed up the world was, you’d think….what could be better than right now?
I’ll tell you. Three completions with Pray in the early going and a defense locking down Dachs and his very talented core of receivers including Storm and Zinn. The last of these completions a gorgeously designed play with Stella setting the pick and Jordan crossing behind him from the slot to the out and up…and Pray lofts one just far enough to make it worth the sprint toward the ball. There is nothing like that feeling of seeing a pass in the air and knowing that it’s a good pass – a perfect pass – but it only works if you – the receiver – makes the effort to         get there. And it was in fact worth the effort. A TD. Stat, count it. I look over to the other field and I see Yaron and Mighty putting up points. Me and Mighty scoring TDs on WMS turf. It’s 2009 again. Pray to Jordan almost put up a second score, but a slightly underthrown fade to the right corner of the endzone was picked by Dachs, and the score remained Pray 1, Dachs 0. On the next play, with Dachs taking over from the 5, a quick pass to Ernie on Dach’s right on the outside and it’s mano a mano with Jordan. Ernie trying to get as many yards as possible. Jordan trying to limit the damage. I did something I’ve done a thousand times before. Grabbed him with the left arm, pulled the flag with the right. But, just as it happened with Goldberg on Thanksgiving about 6 years ago….the strength of my adversary overcame the biological limits of my physical body. Tendon snaps, arm is done, game is done. People are sympathetic, but I know how it goes – it just sucks for the players on the field. One person has to rotate. The flow is thrown off. The game is tainted. But, wait, it gets worse.
I look over and see Fox on the sideline as well. He’s hurt. He’s out for the game. When it rains…
Right about then, a very nice guy walks on the field. He is the soccer coach for WMS. He still owes me a video of Mighty racing some kids (though we got it later from Zada). He tells they have permit for 9:30. He says we can stay till 9am. When it rains it pours.
There are few things more important in life to get you through a travail than a productive goal. So, in a way it was a blessing. Instead of watching from the sidelines wondering and worrying how bad the injury was, I had a field to build on the grass. I built it. It was awesome but sucked at the same time. I knew Spira would eventually find a flaw, which he did. But the dimensions were perfect. It was trial and error and wound up in the only spot you could build a field on a patch of grass of that size an shape and with the obstacles it presented. The problem was it was diagonal to every reference point around it. So it was a mind eff of a field. Which isn’t good. Also, there was only one of it. So, at 9am, when Yaron v. Gronk and Pray v. Dachs needed to finish their games, they had to share. 15 minutes each on the grass. It was that kind of day for Jewball. But….Jewball is a long story. You take the good with the not as good.
I believe both games entered their 15 minutes of “overtime” with tie scores. Gronk had thrown 2 TDs to Stats, 1 to Ross, and 1 to Dax. And he had 4 picks. Jewball was his with the W. But Yaron was intent on fixing his early season losing streak. He has been throwing the ball well, but just not doing enough to get Ws. That’s why God created Mighty. To get men Ws. The Mighty one catches 2 scores and adds a third via P6 (along with a bonus pick for good measure). Dude was feeling himself! Yelling at soccer kids, challenging them to races, challenging them to leave the field at the end of their game 8 minutes early.  Yaron and Mighty (along with DK, Bert, Rook, Zada and injured Fox) take a close game from Gronk 5-4. Jewball to Mighty for the show he put on.
Pray and Dachs came in to the 15 minutes knotted at 1s. As Pray described it, the wait between games and the switch to grass killed his team’s momentum. Well, may be true, but why didn’t it kill Dachs’? One team has to want it more. One team has to execute better to wrestle the W from the jaws of L. And Dachs did that. Dobs and Beast performed at the line with 5 sacks between them. Zinn had 2 picks and 2 TDs, the final picking icing the already iced game, which was a one handed bit of insanity streaking across the endzone to steal a TD. That’s some dark magic. But, the game was surely turned with Dachs up 2-1 and Pray beginning a drive with ten minutes left from Dachs’ five yard line. A screen to Prime that went the way of the duck and bounced off Prime’s cleats….into Storm’s arms in the endzone. It more or less put the game away in stupefying fashion. Absolutely brutal.
Game 2 was all Yaron and Gronk and not enough Perla magic. This is the game where BK doesn’t factor in the stats, but it’s really all about him. BK takes himself out, The Rook gets his spot, but the The Rook has cleat issues, so The Kid jumps in for The Rook for BK….and the game will forever be remembered as the one where Gronk humbles The Kid. There will be no bragging or big talk after this one. It wasn’t even so much Gronk toying with our young rook, but more like pretending he wasn’t there. It’s crazy that we have Gronk as a QB when he’s probably a top 3 receiver in the League. But, anyway, enough about Crony problems.
Perla always battles. He hasn’t won in a bit, but he’s always right there. His teams (both day and night) just need to take one more step forward to start being a real threat. Right now, they are performing like high grade speed bumps. They slow you down for a bit, but in the end you get past them anyway. The game was close for a while, with a deep ball to Jack for a score and a sliding grab in the corner of the endzone to Prime, but Yaron and Gronk just kept pouring it on. Perla’s team basically had no answer for Gronk and that was the difference. Gronk loaded up the stats line with 3 scores, a pick, a P6, and a sack. That’s Jewball material. He gets it.
As for me, I’m out for 10-12 weeks. But in the age of the Enlightenment, there are many ways to contribute to Jewball. And I will do what I can to stick around the game. I pray and I Pray. Will be back on the field as soon as possible. Gotta work hard. Gotta Ern it. No pun intendoned.

GAMES at WMS

8am

Game A

Dark

Colors

Dachs – QB
Dobbs
Beast
Kid
Zinn
Storm
Ernie

GAME B

Colors

Yaron – QB
Rook
Mighty
Zada
Bert
DK
Fox

Dark

Gronk – QB
Kut
Ross
Dax
Waldo
Stats
O

945

Dark/Orange

Perla – QB
Prime
Salem
BK
Pray
Spira
Jack

Colors/not Orange

Bron – QB
Storm
Zada
Tom
Sherrif
Gronk
MK

Jewball is the island. We don’t let the outside in. We don’t let the drudgery of the real world permeate the white (or yellow) borders of our turf paradise. But, for as long as most of us can remember, we have called ourselves Jewball. A lot of voices out there might have us question the integrity of our name. Without minimizing how difficult it is and has been to be a member of other tribes and backgrounds, it’s not easy right now to be a Jew. I guess then – since we are all one under this banner – it’s not easy right now to be a Jewballer. I have opinions and thoughts and philosophies about what is going and where it might go, but I’m smart enough to know to keep them to myself and to not listen to those of others. Let’s just stay strong. Stay together. Get through this abysmal era one game at a time. It’s interesting that the Jewball season mirrors the season of this war. We are in Week 4 of the war. We are in Week 4 of Jewball. I pray that very soon it will just be some week of Jewball with no anchors attached and our hostages are home and the rockets stop falling and the missiles stop falling and the sky stops falling and there is lasting peace and security for all.
Because of all this madness, we missed our Draft Party (although the TBI version was superb), and I missed my chance to post a season opening monologue. It’s too late for it now. It would normally be an effusive welcome back in the form of praise for all that is Jewball. An ode to our history and traditions – and generally just expressing appreciation for the moment. You know what? Everything may be going to hell, but my money is on civilization pulling through (call me a psychotic delusional optimist), so let’s go ahead and put the blinders on and appreciate. A Jewball season is a sacred thing. The start of it is a holiday. We celebrate the reunification of the world we have built over the decades that this league has existed. Built over decades but flourished beyond even the Oracle’s prophecies over the past five years. We emerged from a Dark Age where Jewball found itself in exile, playing in Croton, to outlasting Croton, and enter the Revolution. And just when we thought we could not achieve a higher plane of existence – because the football was so damn good and we had ourselves a turf field and no one to interfere – we realized that Jewball was not a season, but that….Jewball was life. And I say that in as un-cult like a way as possible. We ascended to our current incarnation. We are in the age of Enlightenment. Where Jewball is a universe without (many) boundaries. It’s on the field, it’s off the field, it’s on days of joy, and days of heartbreak. With too many permutations to name, but they are all awesome. So, if you just got here – you missed a lot, but you came in at a really good time. Thank you for being here. Not just the Rookies, but all of you. In times like these, you sometimes need to remind yourself why life is so precious and so worth living. So worth sticking around for. So worth wading through the muck of it all. I’m sure we all have different individual answers. But, I know that for me Jewball is right up there.
As of this writing, I did not watch TBI yet. Week 1 seems like a long time ago. I didn’t write a recap for my game. It was the only game I followed that week – Dachs v. Gronk. I left the game and headed for the airport. Dachs wasn’t himself. He wasn’t with his choice receivers and nothing was clicking. Daxxy got hurt and the gameplan changed. Gronk was just fine after basically a year off. With Goldberg dominating in the clutch and putting up 3 scores, he gets a Jewball and an extremely strong start to his season. He made some great plays this past Sunday as well.
Week 3 started off in classic Jewball fashion. Love changing fields on the spot. It’s an ugly situation, but always handled with grace, and elegance, and faith. It’s so much easier now with smart phone and whatsapp. Imagine pulling it off in the olden days. That was handled by leaving Klink or B-sh or BD by the field to redirect everyone to some location…where we also didn’t know if it would be open. The best was when you go to that new location and Jesus or Rabin or Ike were standing there to send you on to the 3rd location. I’ll tell you something….we always found a field. Always. Even if it was pathetic…we lay the cones down somewhere and played. This past Sunday was not so bad. Hewlett had lacrosse, we were told. Re-rout to Woodmere, and by the great gods of Jewball it was empty and nary a security guard in site. We are subject to the fates for the next 3 weeks, and then permit season begins.
The games were actually very good – in terms of competitiveness. Unfortunately, for those who love Jewballs and Ws, neither game had one. Both ended in ties. The only thing less fun than recapping a tie is recapping a blow-out.
Game 1 looked like it was going to be a blow-out. Dachs, reunited with Dax, and finding nice chemistry with Ross and Vegh, went up 3-0 early. Pray had a really good team and Pray is really good so it was tough to watch the lack of fight that was being put up. He was joined by Beast, Steve-O, Daveo, Blitz, Goldberg, and Mighty. Honestly, I don’t remember exactly where things turned. I know there was a sequence where Pray scored (gonna guess to Mighty) and on the next drive Dachs threw an ill-advised cross body pass that fell short and Pray picked it, flipped to Steve-O, and a few plays later Goldberg caught a fireball from Pray in the back of the endzone (after having dropped a similar pass a play earlier). All of a sudden, Pray was back in the game. Offense prowess let to defensive dominance and after another TD to Mighty and a Daveo P6, Pray was leading 4-3! Dachs got back to using his bro at will to gain yards, but even more-so – unwilling to take chances – began running for huge chunks of yards. The game went back and forth in the final half hour and was knotted at 9:30. People had to go. The chippiness was getting chippier, calls were being made and not respected, respected was being called but not made, made was being respected but not called – it was just a mess. So, after Dobbs ran one in with Steve-O maybe getting him at the 1, and Mighty scoring a TD after a flag guard call by Ernie (who had a sparkling comeback game – good on ya, mate!), Dax saw the arguing proliferate and he had enough. He’s not hear for the bad vibes. He assessed and said he was done. And he was right. We gotta fight that urge, people. I gotta fight that urge. Bad vibes have always been a part of Jewball, but at the same time they have no place in it. People tell me that it’s about the rules. Better rules. Clearer rules. Are you joking? You’re not, but I wish you were. This isn’t about rules. Callers are gonna call. Arguers are gonna argue. Protesters are gonna protest. Chumash players are gonna chumash play. All we can do is remind and ask and beg…(each other and ourselves)…don’t make bad calls. And if you made one, take it back quickly. Don’t make calls for people. Don’t make calls from the sideline. Don’t make calls from the field if you aren’t playing and just filming (Jordan!). And if a call is made and stuck to – even a horrendous one – for the good of Jewball and so that Dax doesn’t feel dirty when he goes home – respect the horrendous call as if it was a good one. Don’t argue. Don’t even say, Coooooomeee Onnnnn.
Game 2 was less exciting than Game 1, but still well played and ended with neither side claiming victory. Perla proved himself once again resilient. Coming back from a 2-0 deficit. Yaron was on fire in the early going, slinging majestic needle threading passes to the Ice Man and Jack. But Perla is a never say die type and he surrounded himself with gamers like the Sherrif, BK, Tom, Storm, Rook, and Legs. None of those dudes are folding. And so they battled. Perla hit BK deep over Jordan for a score. Hit Tom deep to get close to endzone and punched it in. Game was tied. Perla almost took the lead but floated one to Legs in the endzone and Jordan managed to pick it. Yaron and the Ice Man scored again, but so did Perla and BK. So there you have it. A recap. May they continue. God should bless us. Our families. Our great Jewball family. God should see what we have done here at Jewball and are doing and how we conduct ourselves and operate with pure love and respect and humanity and in that merit bless this world of His, which is currently on fire.

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