Local People

New Canaanites Play Key Roles in ‘Mike and the Mad Dog’ Documentary, Premiering Thursday on ESPN

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New Canaan’s Ted Shaker two years ago set a professional goal that had eluded five or six producers before him: Get two of sports radio’s iconic personalities and former collaborators to participate in a documentary about their pasts, their immeasurably influential show, their complicated relationship and rather public “breakup.”

Starting around 1982—the year Shaker and his wife, Sheryl, moved to New Canaan—he had served as executive producer of “NFL Today” at CBS Sports and then the entire sports division, and in the course of his 19-year career there he hired a brilliant St. John’s University graduate named Mike Francesa, first as a researcher and then as a football and basketball analyst. In May 2015, Shaker traveled to Long Island to visit Francesa at his home there—the men had been in touch occasionally in the intervening years, such as at Jim Nantz’s California wedding in 2012—and after securing a ‘Yes’ to participate in the ESPN documentary film, returned home for a breakfast meeting at New Canaan Diner with an equally gifted though dramatically different kind of sports commentator—longtime New Canaan resident, Christopher “Mad Dog” Russo. “He [Russo] in fact said somebody was talking to him about doing a documentary about them, some other guy, so I guess people had been around him, and I said, ‘Well, Mike [Francesa] said he was going to do it,’ and he was surprised by that,” Shaker recalled. “[Russo] said, ‘Let’s do it,’ though it’s funny—he was skeptical that it was going to happen.”

It did.

News

Town Committee to NC Lax Association: Mandatory ‘Fields Usage Fee’ Is Separate from Your Generous Contribution To Dunning

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Though generous, New Canaan Lacrosse Association’s contribution to the re-turfing of Dunning Field cannot stand in or otherwise alter a mandatory fee that all youth sports organizations pay the town for the maintenance of athletic fields, officials said Monday. The volunteer committee that oversees youth sports in New Canaan at its regular meeting decided to defer to the Board of Selectmen on a request from the NCLA to waive a mandatory $20 per-player, per-season fee for fields maintenance. Lacking a quorum, the Youth Sports Committee stopped short of a formal vote on the matter at its regular meeting. Yet committee members said they’re unconvinced by the NCLA’s reasoning that a $100,000 contribution to the Dunning that drained its resources means the organization may forego paying the “fields usage fee” until its funds are replenished. “They are separate issues,” committee member Sally Campbell said at the meeting, held in Lapham Community Center.

Around Town

Did You Hear … ?

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The town is seeking to settle an appeal filed by the owners of a Lukes Wood Road home after the Planning & Zoning Commission last year denied their request to allow higher-than-allowed pillars for a gate at the end of their driveway. At a special meeting of P&Z on Sept. 22, town attorney Ira Bloom said that under a “reasonable compromise” reached with the town, the pillars—which already are in place at 309 Lukes Wood Road and stand about six and seven feet above grade, given the slope of the land, against the four feet allowed by the New Canaan Zoning Regulations (see Section 6.5.C.3.a on page 126 here)—will remain. However, Aris and Patricia Kekedjian have agreed to move certain trees, replant others, forego installing any fixtures atop the pillars and remove an upper piece of their driveway gate, Bloom said. P&Z commissioner Jack Flinn called the plan “more than adequate” during the meeting, held at Town Hall, and the commission voted unanimously to support it.