Bronx Weekend News Roundup, Oct. 25

The Bronx Bombers cleaned out their clubhouse yesterday after a painful loss to the Texas Rangers ended their season Friday night.

Speaking of the Yankees: Grim LeRogue, the, um, eccentric fan who was arrested for storming the field at a game, says it was just a booze-fueled and harmless publicity prank. (Interesting side note: some of LeRogue's statements to police--including bizarre rants about Bobby Brown, Whitney Houston and Osama Bin Laden--are oddly similar to a letter the Norwood News received last week.)

A 25-year-old man was found shot to death in his Olinville apartment on Saturday, one of five separate killings that took place across the city this weekend. 

6,000 cyclists rode through the borough yesterday at the annual Tour de Bronx. This years' event was held in honor of beloved community advocate Megan Charlop, who was killed in a biking accident in March.

Volunteers across the city planted thousands of new trees in their parks yesterday, with 3,500 planted in Van Cortlandt park alone.

Director Gary Weis talks to BlackBook.com about his documentary "80 Blocks from Tiffany's." The 1979 film, which chronicles street violence in the South Bronx of that era, is being released on DVD this month.

An enraged man smashed about eight cars with a 20-pound pick-axe on a street in Co-op City Friday morning. He was arrested shortly after.

A hit-and-run driver who struck a pedestrian in Fordham on Friday was caught by police on an unrelated drug-bust yesterday.

An argument with officials and the opposing team had Lehman High School football coach Michael Saunds pull his players from the field on Friday, with just a few minutes left in the game.

Eva Moskowitz, whose Success Charter Network runs schools in Harlem and the South Bronx, argues the need for more charter schools on the Upper West Side.

South Bronx native Misra Walker was one of six people to receive the environmental Brower Youth Award for her campaign for a shuttle bus to Baretto Point Park. 

A Bronx related-bit at the end of this piece on Democratic conference leader John Sampson: investigators are looking into the Democrats' hiring of Sen. Pedro Espada's son, Pedro G. Espada, last year. According to the Daily News, The Legislative Ethics Commission is investigating whether the younger Espada got the $120,000-a-year-job--which he quit last August--as a means to get his father to end the Senate stalemate.