Nick Cassano was bored out of his cranium. All of us had been. Bear in mind? Bear in mind the very center of the pandemic: no place to go, nothing to do, an infinite blur of binge-watching TV reveals and staring out the window?
It was mind-numbing for lots of us.
Nick Cassano figured he’d had sufficient.
“I might solely sulk within the adverse for therefore lengthy,” Cassano says. “I wanted to seek out one thing to do.”
For years, two of the largest elements of his life had been easy ones: baseball (on the time COVID hit, the Nyack Excessive graduate was taking part in baseball at Montclair State). And making his family and friends chortle.
“I say this humbly,” he says, “however I used to be at all times type of the humorous man.”
Nick’s father, Eric, remembers when Nick was a child, he was a bit quiet, a bit small, and all of the sudden someday was doing drop-dead impressions of his uncle.
“He went from not talking for days at a time,” Eric says, “to speaking like a 25-year-old.”
So Nick determined to make a quick video of a bit that had been percolating in his head and making him chortle, about Italian fathers and non-Italian fathers when their child desires to exit. He taped it. Edited it. Posted it.
And the subsequent morning, he wakened, checked out his cellphone.
“One million individuals had considered it,” Nick says.
So he responded precisely as you would possibly anticipate.
“He advised me he deleted the app,” Eric says. “It freaked him out a bit.”
However the father knew the son was on to one thing. At a time when individuals had been determined to seek out the humorous in life once more, Nick had managed to seize precisely that. He reloaded the app and made just a few extra movies — lots of them sports activities themed, such because the beer-bellied highschool coach getting exasperated attempting to get his gamers to take heed to him.
There’s a daily sequence of non-sports characters — the pizza man twirling “pizza dough” that’s actually a rest room towel, the bagel-shop man, and an infinite sequence of homages to relations and pals whose quirks translate to some awfully entertaining stuff.
Some are riotously humorous. Some simply make you smile. All do what they’re purported to do: deliver a snippet of laughter into what can typically be a decidedly unfunny world.
And he’s a success. He has 1.5 million followers on TikTok (@nicky.cass1) and 1.4 million on Instagram (@nicky.cass). He works on the vignettes from about 8 a.m.-10 p.m. each day, produces about 5 new ones every week, and has sufficient in his catalogue that every week there’s 40 or 50 that he reposts.
And the best way these items work, individuals discover. A yr in the past, the Arizona Diamondbacks and Texas Rangers each invited him to spring coaching to speak to their groups. When he confirmed up on the D’backs camp in Scottsdale, supervisor Torey Lovullo requested Nick what he meant to say.
“I’m gonna make ’em chortle,” Nick mentioned. After which he did. He advised the pitching workers he was a mental-performance therapist, walked them by way of a meditation, mentioned, “think about your finest baseball reminiscence, and now think about you’re lined in pink feathers like a flamingo.” Quickly all the workers of the longer term Nationwide League champs had been flapping their wings.
Nick isn’t particularly obsessive about the place this goes for him. He talks of residing an entrepreneur’s life, saying, “I simply wish to be the absolute best model of myself as a result of a rising tide raises all ships. If I might be at my finest, I’ll deliver out one of the best within the individuals I care about most.”
He laughs.
“If I can stroll right into a retailer and be capable of purchase all of the natural hen and steak I can,” he says, “that’s all I would like.”
He’s an enormous fan of the “Boomer and Gio” present on WFAN and a substantial sports activities fan, although he tends to root for particular person gamers — Christian McCaffrey, Adam Fox, Logan O’Hoppe — greater than groups and says, “I’m not throwing stuff on the TV.”
His father interjects: “Nicely, except the Giants are on.”
Eric is greater fan of New York sports activities, a die-hard Mets fan, and he laughs when it’s identified that for the reason that Rangers and Diamondbacks each made it to the World Collection final yr, possibly the Mets would possibly wish to latch onto the good-luck appeal.
“Hey,” Nick says, “the Mets might use a few laughs.”
Vac’s whacks
Here’s a terrific hoops learn for you, popping out this week: “Pipeline to the Professionals: How D-3, Small-School Nobodies Rose to Rule the NBA” by Ben Kaplan and Danny Parkins. Belief me.
5 weeks after he suffered a extreme coronary heart assault, Darryl Strawberry has obtained medical clearance to journey once more, and he went again on the street this week to proceed his ministry work. “I’ll take it straightforward although,” he says. “I must be prepared for my massive day.” The Mets will retire his No. 18 on June 1.
As blissful as you had been at any level this week, you couldn’t have been any happier than Patrick Mahomes the second the Chiefs picked Xavier Worthy.
I see some Philly of us attempting to equate Joel Embiid’s takedown of Mitch Robinson with an analogous transfer by Donte DiVincenzo towards Kelly Oubre Jr. in a mini-brawl final month on the Backyard. That’s just like the deep thinkers who posted movies of David Wright sliding exhausting into Chase Utley the day after Utley nearly murdered Ruben Tejada with a grimy take-out.
Whack again at Vac
Joe Gregorio: Is DJ LeMahieu the brand new Jacoby Ellsbury or Aaron Hicks for the Yankees with the never-healing damage?
Vac: When he’s proper, there are few Yankees I take pleasure in watching greater than him, so I certain hope not.
Joe Benigno: You recognize I like ya, bro, however you possibly can’t depart Sport 5 of the ’70 Finals off your checklist of finest MSG finishes. Knicks got here again towards Wilt and the Lakers with out Willis Reed. Greatest Knicks sport I ever noticed.
Vac: I defer to the gentleman from New Jersey and ask
for a do-over.
@LGBrandon93: Needed to point out one away win that we had been reminded by the “Brunson Bounce” — the 1999 Allan Houston 1 over 8 bounce in Miami over the Warmth. You at all times keep in mind the nice bounces. You neglect the finger rolls!
Vac: And that, in a nutshell, pretty summarizes sports activities.
Walter Farley: Somebody wants to inform the group that one can’t chant F-Embid at a sport children are attending. That’s a brand new low in style.
Vac: The Backyard has lots of fantastic traditions. This isn’t one in all them, and it began with Trae Younger just a few years in the past. We’re higher than this.