Larry the K's Lineup

Luminaries such as these were lit for cancer survivors and victims during Slam Cancer events held in 2021 and 2022 at Attleboro's Balfour Riverwalk Park. Hateful graffiti was found there recently. Earlier this month, and within days of Hamas’ brutal terrorist attack on Israel from the Gaza Strip that has led to a wider war that has already caused thousands of civilian deaths on both sides, antisemitism reared its ugly head in Attleboro, MA. First, the city’s only synagogue, Congregation Agudas Achim, was the target of a bomb threat --- one of many such threats that were emailed to Jewish synagogues and temples in Rhode Island and across New England in the wake of Israel’s response to the Hamas attack. Second, just days after, it was revealed that hurtful antisemitic and racist graffiti had been discovered at a popular city downtown park, the Balfour Riverwalk Park. It evidently had been scrawled there about a month before it was reported to police on Oct. 6, but it became known a...

  Versions of this column, which I wrote on Monday (Oct. 9, 2023) --- two days after the horrifying and deadly sneak attack into Israel by Hamas, the Palestinian terror organization --- were published online at Jewish Rhode Island of Providence, RI, on Tuesday (Oct. 10, 2023) and on Wednesday (Oct. 11, 2023) in The Sun Chronicle of Attleboro, MA. The indiscriminate killing of hundreds Israeli civilians --- including women, children and babies --- by Hamas was disgusting, and now has sadly triggered a much wider war by Israel on Hamas --- something that the terrorists likely expected, and in a perverse way, probably wanted. Hamas, after all, would like nothing more than to put Israel in a bad light. The terror group also desperately wants to foment yet more antisemitism in a bid to achieve their goal of wiping out Israel and making Jews worldwide a target for violence and hatred. Nonetheless, the entire situation is a massive blow to any chance to achieve Middle East peace. The w...

NOTE:  This column was published in The Sun Chronicle of Attleboro, MA in the Sports section on Tuesday, Oct. 3, 2023. Here is the link to the column on the newspaper's website :  https://www.thesunchronicle.com/sports/local_sports/larry-kessler-unexpected-death-of-wakefield-was-a-mound-loss-that-hit-hard-for-sox/article_a827e239-2c26-56ee-a16b-369034295ba4.html   Baseball fans 65 and older feel bad enough whenever an iconic player, such as Baltimore Orioles great Brooks Robinson dies, as he did last week at the age of 86. But when players you watched as recently as 12 years ago --- and whom you saw only a few weeks ago as part of the NESN game coverage ---- die suddenly, then the only reaction is shock and profound sadness. That was my how I reacted Sunday when, after turning on the pregame Red Sox show, I learned that Sox knuckleballer and broadcaster Tim Wakefield had died earlier Sunday of complications from a seizure, according to published reports, following surg...