Well, the name's Michael Edward Patrick Fornabaio, born Michael Edward Fornabaio (After way too long of a Religious Education that really didn't teach me much religion, I was confirmed Patrick) in The Bronx, NY in 1975.
I love The Bronx--particularly the Van Nest section, where I was born and my Dad grew up, and the Throgs Neck section, where my Mom grew up and my Aunt and Uncle still live. My family, unfortunately, tore me away from the Borough and the City that I loved and moved me to Orange, CT.
(My family is great, by the way, even though they uprooted me and destroyed my life. Heh heh. Just kidding, gang.)
The only thing that ended up good about it is that I was thus able to attend Hopkins School in New Haven, quite possibly the best damn high school in the world. OK, I'm biased, deal with it. (The Hopkins Summer School is also on the Web, BTW.) There I studied constantly (yeah right), wrote for The Razor (an excellent student newspaper, except when my sports editing brought it down), and played right field for the Junior Varsity baseball team. I wore number 17 in honor of David Cone in my senior year (OK, because it and 16 were the only extra-large jerseys, too), and have ever since as often as possible in every sport but hockey; it's one neat coinkydink that my Columbia e-mail address made me mef17 (at GeoCities, it's by choice and for convenience...).
I then moved on to Columbia University, a pretty nice place in Manhattan, the second greatest borough. I got to to write for the Columbia Daily Spectator, for whom I got to hang out with athletes, take road trips to exotic locales like Ithaca, N.Y., and do statistics, for those folks and for the athletic department. For instance, see the stuff I've done with the fencing team.
Academically (what's that?), I was a history major, because it's about the only thing besides baseball and hockey that actually interests me. I'm kidding, of course. Mostly.
And then I got out, won my freedom, got the little piece of paper that signified the peace treaty between the Board of Trustees and me.
Now I'm a staff writer for the Connecticut Post in Bridgeport, Conn., covering the Bridgeport Sound Tigers of the AHL.