#MIDDLEBURY #SPORTS
By Mark Vasto
There are foolish things to do … like, say, hitting the snooze button one too many times or eating too much chocolate or having unprotected sex. None of those things, however, comes close to the most foolish thing you can do: trying to drink a coffee on an Atlantic City Jitney bus.
For the uninitiated, the “Jitney” is a small bus that seats 13 people and costs $2.25 per trip around town. According to folklore, “jitney” meant “nickel,” and that’s what it used to cost to ride throughout town. It also should mean “zero shock absorption” or “hits every pothole dead on.”
Atlantic City, you may have heard, has an image problem. The city used to have 16 casinos, and through attrition, now has seven. It’s a small town, out on an island, with about 40,000 residents. It has one of the largest unemployment rates in the country, and nearly one-third of the town makes ends meet under the poverty line. There are more strip clubs than grocery stores.
On the plus side, it’s where the boardwalk and salt water taffy were invented, and it’s the longtime home of the Miss America pageant. When you play Monopoly, all of the street names are real Atlantic City streets. And, yes, it still has plenty of casinos, the booze is free, and it hosts world-class entertainment (Frankie Valli and bunch of other big shots call it home) and some of the best restaurants and shopping in the world.
One of the town’s great hobbies is chatting about what can be done to “revitalize” the place. Ideas abound. A water park in one of the old casinos, legalized marijuana or a Ferris wheel are always bandied about. Some want to attract college campuses and others want to legalize prostitution. As if the town needed more vice.
What Atlantic City (AC) really needs is sports. I was lucky enough to score tickets to a boxing match at Bally’s the other day. Five fights for $50, ringside seats because the woman I met outside had comps and extra tickets. It was great. And it didn’t take long for a few of the old-timers in the audience to reminisce about the old days … when Mike Tyson fought his way to belts in the 1980s, when MMA started up in the ’90s.
This is a town with great transportation: a train and bus hub and a great airport where flights can cost as little as $9. It boasts an empty minor-league baseball stadium, and despite all of the competition with one-off casinos in Philly, Delaware and Connecticut, those places are boring. No, in order to revitalize AC, the city has to turn to the other side of gaming: sports.
Evander Holyfield is starting a boxing “league” and plans on marketing it and conducting fights in AC. Dana White has plans to bring the UFC back to town. Rumor has a horse park coming to town. Now, if only the state can get its act together and legalize sports betting – a no-brainer – it will reap untold benefits. This has to be done.
Atlantic City may be Mos Eisley come to life, but that shouldn’t mean you can’t bet on the Rangers-Flyers game. Give it a whirl, AC … it won’t be the first time you dared to be different.
Mark Vasto is a veteran sportswriter who lives in New Jersey.
(c) 2017 King Features Synd., Inc.
