passing of baseball legend Tommy John<\/a>. Your back-cover headline \u201cGame changer\u201d was truly an understatement. His courage in 1974 to undergo that pioneering surgery that came to bear his name went on to extend the careers of so many major league pitchers. It shouldn\u2019t be forgotten that John battled stuttering early in his life as well. As a Yankees fan, I view him as the most prominent of all the pro athletes cited on the list of \u201cFamous People Who Stutter\u201d on The Stuttering Foundation\u2019s website. Academically brilliant, he was number one in his graduating class at Gerstmeyer High School in Terre Haute, Ind., in 1961, but school officials denied him the opportunity to give his valedictorian speech because of his stuttering. During his playing days and after, John made an effort to embrace nonprofit organizations that helped young children who stutter.<\/p>\nMichael Crisci<\/p>\n
Bionic promise<\/p>\n
Manhattan: To Voicer Earl Beal: I agree that Tommy John should be remembered for his remarkable, lengthy baseball career with 288 wins \u2014 a number we rarely see anymore. And teammates clearly liked him as a person. But I\u2019d like to point out the context of Dr. Frank Jobe\u2019s surgery. \u201cThe Six Million Dollar Man\u201d launched weekly in 1974, the same year as John\u2019s surgery. Anything seemed possible in medical science breakthroughs, from repairing a fictional astronaut to reconstructing a real-life ulnar collateral ligament (UCL). As the show states, \u201cWe can rebuild him. We have the technology.\u201d<\/p>\n
Adam Silbert<\/p>\n
Deviant fanbase<\/p>\n
Brooklyn: What bizarre world are we living in? Did Luigi Mangione fans hear his testimony? How do you cheer someone like that on? Yes, the healthcare system can be brutal, but to kill someone in cold blood? I just can\u2019t wrap my head around any of this.<\/p>\n
Mariann Tepedino<\/p>\n
Strategic scapegoating<\/p>\n
Dartmouth, Mass.: Undocumented immigrants, green card holders and naturalized citizens from certain countries who are living in fear of being detained, deported or consigned to detention centers are not going to show up at polling places. It\u2019s folly to claim that people living with constant anxiety would audaciously place themselves in jeopardy to cast a vote at a public facility. It has been the constant refrain of both Trump presidencies to fabricate a false threat from enemies here and abroad. Keeping his loyal base fevered, furious and fearful has to a large extent diverted their attention from their diminishing resources and personal safety and threatened constitutional rights. The allocation for increased ICE resources, electric shock gloves and increased recruitment is revving up the one war that satisfies his base and fortifies his belief that he\u2019s a winner.<\/p>\n
Betty Ussach<\/p>\n
Easily explained<\/p>\n
Holliswood: To Voicer W. Twirley: During the 2024 Trump rally at Butler, Pa., a large American flag was behind the stage. In the videos I watched, I don\u2019t see it being lowered. The iconic shot of President Trump in the aftermath was because of the camera angle. The Secret Service let him stand up after the shooter was down. As to your front-to-back theory, the FBI confirmed through forensic trajectory analysis that all eight rounds were fired exclusively from the rooftop where shooter Thomas Crooks was positioned. There were no shots fired from the front of the stage. As to blood on Trump\u2019s face, if you were in a kneeling position looking at the floor, you\u2019d have blood trickling down from your ear to your face. As for his ear growing back, it was a graze wound that required no stitches. It was a real assassination attempt, where an innocent bystander was killed and two others were injured.<\/p>\n
Gregory W. Chupa<\/p>\n
Victimhood claims<\/p>\n
Pleasantville, N.Y.: I find it ironic to hear from Palestinian-Americans calling for a lawsuit over discrimination at Columbia University on how they were treated after the Oct. 7 attacks. However, some of them didn\u2019t seem to mind when others were discriminating against students there that were either Israeli or Jewish. Then again, some only know how to dish criticism but can never seem to take it.<\/p>\n
Tal Barzilai<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shouldn\u2019t policing correlate with crime? Brooklyn: Re \u201cMamdani\u2019s failed promise on police reform\u201d (op-ed, Aug. 16): Talk about…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":324779,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[9,24,264,63,299,134,136,135],"class_list":["post-324778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-staten-island","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-county","tag-nyc","tag-opinion","tag-staten-island","tag-staten-island-headlines","tag-staten-island-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324778\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/324779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}