The Final Score

Quite a day for one of your TFS bloggers yesterday.

Assigned to cover the Giants, I was expecting a nice, easy day when word filtered over at about 1:45 of the arrest the night before of Giants starting right tackle Kareem McKenzie for DWI.

McKenzie was at practice and in the locker room, but left before the news was revealed by the Bergen Record, or Record of Hackensack, or whatever they call themselves now.

(Personal aside: I turned down the Bergen Record for a part-time job in 1989 and chose instead to stay at the Daily Record of Parsippany even though it was a longer commute from Brooklyn and less money. I just didn't get a good feeling from The Bergen Record. I'm sure it's better now.)

So your TFS blogger drove over to the Little Falls, N.J., police department to talk to the engaging Lt. Salvatore (Sammy) Calafiore, who was very helpful in giving me details of the incident. En route I taped a Tom Coughlin appearance on my tape recorder on WFAN because Tom wasn't available to those of us at Giants Stadium after the news about McKenzie broke.

This is my second encounter with a police chief since baseball season ended. The first was the highly quotable Chief Hall of the Harrison, N.Y., police department, who talked about the Isiah Thomas overdose incident.

So that's enough for one day, right? Well, then I got home and found a message from an anonymous tipster who told me a third NYC marathoner had unfortunately died on Thursday. But the message did not say who the person was.

So I called the NY Road Runners people and they confirmed that a third marathoner had indeed died on Thursday after collapsing in the Nov. 2 race.

Very sad. I'm sure I'll get e-mails from the running people about how I'm besmirching their great event again. How nice it would be if those same people spent as much time thinking about the (now) three men who have died as they have about Newsday's coverage of the deaths.

After all this, I was very happy to read TFS and take my mind off the serious stuff I had just reported on.

Staple's FridayList! Love it. Rieber Groupie debating 505! Awesome. Baumbach pointing out how Chris Botta got a little too giddy after the Islanders' win over Ottawa and Botta biting back! Terrific.

Thank you, TFS bloggers and commenters, for keeping the fire going while real life intruded on this sports fan's day.