What would Sandy do?

I come from a family of avid & yet moderate Red Sox fans.  What does that look like?  Well, during the regular season it is Red Sox all the way.  & this years post season, they rooted for the Yankees because they are the same division.  That's right, no rabid saliva streaming "Yankees must die" rants.  It is just we would rather see the Red Sox lose, after all they choke with such style, than the Yankees win but if it is going to be the Yankees well it is going to be the Yankees.


Some of my fondest baseball-listening memories are of listening to Yankee games on the radio (baseball is just better on the radio).  Fondest retrospectively anyhow.  At the time, Phil Rizzuto's rambling about nothing happening on the field for inning after inning could get old. He would yak yak yak & then get around to giving the score, which was nowhere near what it had been.  I still remember the day he & his co-broadcaster (I think it was Bill White) disagreed about something & the other guy asked if Rizzuto was going to have some of his Money Store buddies talk with him.   Lately though, the Yankee I have been thinking about is Sandy Koufax.  & wondering what he would do.

Within days of the final exam date being assigned for A's class this semester someone observed it fell on one of the nights of Chanukah, neither the first nor the last, but one of the other six.  There was concern what this might mean for those students who could not be asked to sit an exam during a religious holiday.  This was a kind of funny concern, especially  1) Chanukah begins the day before exams begin & ends the day after exams end;  there is no such thing as an exam being given this semester that is NOT on a day of Chanukah & 2) of the three professors responsible for this particular large lecture, two of them are Jewish.  So far the administration has not suggested they sit out exams as well.

Sandy Koufax, for those of you not in the know, missed the opening game of the 1965 World Series because it fell on Yom Kippur.  So we know what Sandy did.  Still, what would Sandy do?  Because  Yom Kippur is a very big deal & Chanukah is just plain not as important.  Also, Sandy made it to the second game of same series; he did not sit out the whole thing.

So what to do for the (potential) student who says he cannot take this (or any) exam because of  Chanukah?  The clincher might have to be: what did he do for the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th & 7th nights of Chanukah last year?

I had to look it up, but for those nights of Chanukah in previous years, one of the two Jewish professors in this fable kept his office hours, attended his lectures & even proctored an exam.  If anybody did not take that one because it was Chanukah, he never mentioned it. 

//One of my brothers has a special name for the Red Sox:  Lords of the Rookie Mistake.  Someday I will write a novel & that just might be the title.