Sunday Morning Coffee — April 20, 2025 — Sunday Morning Scramble

By Roy Berger, Las Vegas, NV.

Good Sunday morning and a very Happy Easter to everyone celebrating today. May your holiday be joyous and peaceful. And to our Jewish readers welcome back from unleavened purgatory with the Passover holiday ending this weekend. It’s time to put that unused matzah back in the cupboard and let it get good and stale for another year. Now we can again enjoy all our native fare: bagels, rye bread, shawarma, pizza, cannolis and fajitas. And lest on this April 20 we forget our friends in 24 states where the sale of cannabis is legal; hope they have a wonderful, carefree and munchie-filled 4/20 day and remember nothing about it tomorrow.

Easter weekend is typically slow in Vegas but not this year. Some 180,000 visitors are expected to flood the Strip for two nights of Wrestlemania and the dozens of related events. Good seats at Allegiant Stadium for the mayhem are upwards of $1,000. Putting that into perspective — it’s a much better value than the hotel resort fees.

From what we saw a week ago, is there any question why Masters Sunday is my favorite Sunday of the year? It didn’t disappoint. Not for a second. As good as Rory McIlroy was for most of the final round was as bad as Rory was for part of his round. The result was an epic television watch. Rory and Justin Rose in a sudden death playoff was not only greatness but total class. Rory may have snagged the green jacket and career Grand Slam, but the game of golf and golf fans were the real winners.

Bingo or keno anybody? The Nevada legislature assured its residents the state will once again remain one of five in the country not to offer a state lottery. A proposed bill died in chambers without a hearing. Along with Hawaii, Alaska, Utah and Alabama, if you just want to scratch off a ticket or play the national Powerball or Mega Millions games in our state, you’ll need to do it with a drive to California. This in spite of a poll showing 71% of Nevadans favor a lottery. However, the casino lobby in Carson City is too powerful to overcome. And the casinos want all disposable monies to wind up in their till instead of at a convenience store. Sadly, Nevada is a jurisdiction that so badly needs new funding for education but once again it’s not to be.

Not related but incredibly ironic: according to LendingTree the top four most expensive states for grocery bills in the country are Utah, Alaska, Hawaii and Nevada. All non-lottery states. I tried but just can’t find a tie-in.

Do you think when we tell the kids of today they sound like a broken record, they have any idea what a broken record sounds like?

Name change? Doesn’t paying your income tariff sound so much more American than paying your income tax?

Some stuff you just can’t make up. If you think President Trump is only consumed by tariffs, you are so wrong. Two weeks ago he signed an executive order rolling back a federal regulation he blamed for poor water pressure. According to The Wall Street Journal upon his signature the president said, “No longer will shower heads be weak and worthless. We will make America’s showers great again.” Selfishly, he added, “I like to take a nice shower to take care of my beautiful hair. (These days) I have to stand under the shower for 15 minutes until my hair gets wet.” It’s a problem I don’t have.

What ever happened to that guy? With the emergence of baseball superstars and headline makers Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani the one name you never hear anymore is Mike Trout.

No Major League Baseball player has accomplished this since 1901, but on April 9 Emaarion Boyd, a Miami Marlins minor leaguer playing in Beloit, Wisconsin, stole six bases in a game without getting a hit. Boyd walked, reached on a fielder’s choice and was hit by a pitch. He stole second and third base each time.

Something had to give for a couple of New York college baseball teams. When Yeshiva University in Upper Manhattan and Lehman College of the Bronx got together on April 8 to play a Division III doubleheader at least one painful streak was about to end. Combined, the teams had lost 141 games in a row. Yep, 141. Lehman 42 and Yeshiva 99. The last time Yeshiva, a private Orthodox Jewish university, won a game was in 2022. And oh the opening game of the double dip was a good one with Lehman eking out a 7-6 victory thus entering the second game on a one-game winning streak. For Yeshiva it was their 100th loss in a row. However, Lehman’s fortune and Yeshiva’s agony would end as the Maccabees, for the first time in three years, put it all together for a 9-5 win in the nightcap. Bottles of Manischewitz were sprayed like good champagne; shots of Mogen David were pounded by all. Yeshiva was the home team this day, but they don’t have a home field, so they wander looking for sites. This classic was played in Teaneck, New Jersey, on the Fairleigh Dickinson University campus. Perhaps the most amazing part of the afternoon was not that each team finally got a win, but 500 people were in the stands watching proving you never turn down an opportunity to see a good train wreck.

Seventy years ago this week, in 1955, Ray Kroc opened the first McDonald’s franchise in Des Plaines, Illinois. Burgers were 15 cents, add cheese for another four, fries, coffee and a Coke a dime each.

And speaking of Coca-Cola, for the first time in decades Pepsi no longer trails Coke in second place in sales. Pepsi dropped to third, overtaken by Dr Pepper.

I love this one. On April 7 while the Yankees were in Detroit to play the Tigers, Yankees outfielder Cody Bellinger ordered chicken wings from room service so he could stay in his hotel room and watch the NCAA basketball championship game. He got sick. Food poisoning. So sick he had to be taken out of the line-up the next day. As a punishment to the wings industry, Bellinger said “ I will not eat chicken wings for five years.” Pretty severe. At least baseball is straight enough with fans to detail why a player misses a game, though this has to be a first. If Bellinger were a hockey player the media is only told the player has an upper or lower body injury. In this case I’m not sure which it would be.

Happy 90th birthday last Wednesday to Mr. Lonely, the great Bobby Vinton. In fact, Mr. Vinton is the answer to an obscure pop music trivia question. This one is so good it might have been a winner back in the day on the old Seattle KMPS trivia radio segment ‘Stump Phil.’ Vinton’s hit There! I Said It Again reached number one on the Billboard 100 in January 1964 and was atop for four weeks. It was the last U.S. number one hit by an American singer before the onslaught of the British Invasion. The Beatles I Want To Hold Your Hand replaced it on February 1, 1964. It stayed there for seven weeks finally knocked off by another Beatles tune— She Loves You. And one more piece of trivia: I Want To Hold Your Hand became the bestselling Beatles single worldwide with over 12 million copies sold.

Alex Ovechkin is now the all-time leading regular season goal scorer in the National Hockey League. Two Sundays ago Ovi tallied his 895th goal topping Wayne Gretzky’s 894 which has stood the test of time for 26 years. Ovi tallied two more to end the season with 897. Their careers never overlapped- Gretz retired in 1999; Ovechkin’s rookie year was 2005. However, they did play against some common opponents including 11 goalies they each scored against. Arguably the best of all time, Hall of Famer Martin Brodeur, gave up seven goals to each.

The Stanley Cup playoffs, the best in any sport, began this weekend for what will be two great months. Incredibly it’s been three decades, 1993, since a Canadian team won the Cup. This year’s field of 16 includes five teams from the great North— Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Winnipeg and Edmonton. Montreal had a great season but will do well to win a game or two in the first round against Washington. Ottawa runs into a very solid Toronto group but could make the series a long one. Edmonton has underachieved all season but will be a very tough out and could go deep. The team I really like is Winnipeg who finished the regular season with the league’s best record. In the 25 or so Vegas Golden Knights games I saw this season, Winnipeg was the most impressive of any team to come into our arena.

Never mind, we’ll just set the Betamax. That’s the reaction of hockey fans in the Twin Cities. The good news is their Minnesota Wild (nee North Stars) clinched a Stanley Cup playoff berth on the second to last day of the season — their reward was a trip to Las Vegas to begin a series against the Golden Knights. The not so good news is tonight’s game starts at 9:15 pm Central and Tuesday night is slated for a 10:15 pm Central puck drop, both on ESPN, shutting out from watching just about every school kid and early to rise parents. No matter the sport, fan sensitivity will always finish a distant second to network demands.

And finally, one of our favorite Easter stories. During a children’s Easter service the priest asked the kids if anyone knew what a resurrection is? A six-year-old boy raises his hand and says: “I don’t know exactly what it is, but I do know if it lasts more than four hours you are supposed to call your doctor.”

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I’m proud that Medjet is sponsoring Sunday Morning Coffee. I spent 20 wonderful years with Medjet in Birmingham, Alabama, and can tell you unequivocally they are the standard-bearer for medical assistance membership programs. A talented staff, who cares about its members, is at the forefront of the company’s success. Whether you are traveling for business or pleasure, domestic or international, a Medjet membership should be an important part of your travel portfolio before you leave home. Check out the Medjet website at medjet.com or just tap on the Medjet logo and you’ll be able to get a look at Medjet’s services, rules and regulations, pricing, and an overview of the organization. And remember, any opinions expressed in Sunday Morning Coffee content or comments belong to the author and not the sponsor. Safe travels with your Medjet membership! — Roy Berger