Good morning. Have you had breakfast?
Growing up, breakfast was no big deal in our house. To me, it just mostly served to forestall school, valuable daylight wasted between playing the next seasonal sport — baseball, football, basketball — beginning shortly after 3 p.m.
There was no one special at breakfast, nothing like when Tony the Tiger appeared in commercials to declare to the kids at the kitchen table that Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes are “Grrreat!”
In fact, I only know two fellas who can claim that breakfast was special, as per those at the table. One is Tom Werblin, the son of Sonny, the other is Ralph Wimbish, who used to edit this column.
Years ago, Ralph and I were walking down a hallway at The Post when conversation turned to TV and race. Ralph is black. I told Ralph that as a kid, the first black family I ever saw in a TV commercial was Yankees catcher Elston Howard’s family, in an ad for Gulden’s mustard.
Without a sniff of exaggeration, Wimbish flatly said he’d often have breakfast with Elston Howard, who was a steady houseguest in his parents’ Florida home.
“What? What! More! Tell me more!”
Ralph’s folks were a prominent family in segregated St. Petersburg, Fla. His father was a physician, and both he and Ralph’s mother were founders of the regional NAACP. His mother became the first African-American elected to the city council.
Then, because black and Latin ballplayers were denied lodging in the hotels that housed big league teams during spring training, Ralph began to recall those players who accepted the Wimbish family’s invites to spend spring training in their home.
Elston Howard, Bob Gibson, Bill White, Don Newcombe, Curt Flood, Wes Covington, Hector Lopez. Those who only appeared in televised games and on baseball cards appeared with Ralph at his breakfast table!
Other such houseguests included Cab Calloway and Althea Gibson. “Pass the butter, please.”
Ralph recalls Howard accepting his invitation to play baseball with the neighborhood kids, and the time Gibson spanked him, earning Dr. and Mrs. Wimbish’s ire.
In 1964, Ralph became a Cardinals spring training batboy, perhaps the first black batboy in Cards or even MLB history. He recalls playing pepper (How many now know what a pepper game was?) with Flood and the pitcher Ray Sadecki.
As I stood in frozen awe, Ralph spoke it all as if it was his second nature, which I suppose it was.
Ralph Wimbish holding a jersey given to him by Elston Howard. Antoinette CampanaAll that time, I was having breakfast with my twin sister and older sister. “Get your own butter.”
In semi-retirement in North Carolina, Wimbish has written “Heroes,” recounting stories and characters from his days and nights as a kid in Florida and a well-traveled newspaperman. For all the pestering I laid on Ralph, not until reading “Heroes” did I know he had worked editing the Rome Daily American in Italy.
In his book, he remembers Yankees slugger Hank Bauer, a muscled, granite-faced, highly decorated World War II Marine sergeant — a Leatherneck with a leather neck — as a family favorite for his respectful treatment of blacks and his opposition to segregation.
Then there’s the chapter about playing golf with Angelo Spagnolo, an amateur who, at the famed TPC Sawgrass in Florida, shot 66 — on the 17th hole.
The other Breakfast Clubber, Tom “T.D.” Werblin, I came to know and cavort with — don’t try that at home, kids — when he was an executive with the New York Cosmos international superstar soccer team and house of residual calamities.
He grew up at a time when his father, Sonny, already a famous entertainment agent, had entered the sports business as a Jets founder — green became the team’s color as it was his favorite color — as a co-owner of Monmouth Park and then as the unshakable gentleman who ran Madison Square Garden.
T.D. sat down to breakfast with houseguests, including Phil Silvers, Jackie Gleason and Mr. and Mrs. Eddie Fisher. Mrs. Fisher was Debbie Reynolds. Some sleepover breakfast celebs were temporarily tapped out, having gone bust gambling.
Again, I was stuck with my sisters; they stuck with me.
At the Werblin home in Florida, Sonny flew in Joe Namath and his Alabama coach — the deity, Bear Bryant. It was late 1964 and Sonny was in the process of making game-changing history, signing Namath to that gargantuan, record-smashing, three-year $427,000 contract to play for the Jets as the AFL’s No. 1 pick in the 1965 draft. He was selected 12th by the Cardinals in the NFL draft.
While Sonny and Namath strolled the garden, chatting, young T.D. was assigned to host and babysit Bryant. T.D. had Bryant all set up with his favorites: bourbon, a bowl of black olives and a cigar. He had a regimen — a belt of bourbon, a bite of black olive, a pull on his cigar.
But as the bourbon kicked in, Bryant lost his place. He followed the bourbon by bypassing the olives to pop the lighted end of his cigar in his mouth. Next thing T.D. knew, the legendary Bear Bryant was on all fours, vomiting on the carpet.
So what’s for breakfast?
Transfers easy, for players
Thursday, CBS’s website alert carried a college football headline that read, “Ranking the Top 100 Transfers.”
Yup, top 100 hundred transfers, meaning there are now many more to choose from. And someone actually ranked the top 100? Oh, yeah, we’ll keep a close eye on that.
It remains one of those dubious NCAA dodge ball, loophole oddities that full scholarship basketball and football recruits — so many enrolled despite academic deficiencies — can so easily transfer while regular students must first sweat whether their academic credits will be accepted, lest they’re denied acceptance or forced to transfer at a loss.
ESPN’s loaded with college experts yet none can — or dare — explain this? Or is reading and writing just ignored? That’s the problem with big-time, big-ticket college sports. That stench is real. And it stinks.
NBA’s growing season
COVID-19 delays aside, if Nets-Celtics runs seven games, their Eastern Conference first-round series would end June 5. Knicks-Hawks would end June 6.
The seven-game, 1970 Knicks over Lakers Finals, played nearly every other day, ended on May 8.
Prediction: This postseason’s desultory pace, despite much of it being dictated by national TV considerations — TV money — will only add to “loss of interest” numbers, helping result in more rotten TV ratings.
New English as a second language: Pulled over the other day for making what the cop said was “an illegal right turn.”
“Not anymore,” I protested, “it’s now an undocumented right turn.”





