One month does not a season make but it can provide powerful insights when the subject is baseball. Assumptions and projections amassed during spring training are invariably faulty. But after a month you can, or at least should, have a better grip on... Read more
Clark Booth on Sports
High among the tender memories of the good old days of sport are the college football drafts of that beguiling pioneering era of football that stretched from the late thirties into the early sixties. How sweetly simple and innocent it all was.
... Read moreIn romantic myth, the institution of Baseball is considered perfect.
Flawed mortals who mess with it may bring tarnish, even corruption. But the concept itself, being divinely inspired, is beyond the perfecting. It’s what you often hear about... Read more
Three things: First, the golf.
In the end, the very likeable “Lefty,” with a huge assist from his family, left Augusta awash in tears and charmed the nation. But it was a mighty strange week of sport amidst all the towering melodrama and it... Read more
The line, which has become fairly immortal, comes from that deep thinker, Mr. Eliot. That would be the poet, Thomas Stearns, better known merely as ‘T.S.’ – not the old Braves third baseman, Bob, who was rather more fancifully called ‘Mr. Team’ and... Read more
As has been noted a couple or three times here over the course of this notably long season, it’s painful watching these contemporary Bruins slog, stagger, and stammer their way toward a thinly grasped playoff post.
That’s especially the case... Read more
Through the long off-season of turbulent machinations the issue simmered, rearing here and there but never quite bursting forth in the banner headlines that have so blighted recent baseball summers. It had even been suggested that the public had tired... Read more
Here are some stray thoughts and wayward musings on various unconnected matters for you to consider while pondering what may be contemporary higher education’s central dilemma:
How amused might you be, my dear Mr. College President,... Read more
It wasn’t exactly an epiphany but suddenly late on a Sunday early in the unforgiving month of March it became stunningly clear that the winter here in balmy New England was just about over. At least in terms of our eternal sporting aspirations, that is... Read more
In the requisite song and dance awash in cheers and tears, the Winter Olympics end, leaving behind more questions than answers.
Chief of which is: “Are these glorious games any longer worth it?”
The music fades and all the marvelous kids... Read more
Of the major sporting consortiums, only the National Hockey League would ever close down at the height of its season even as the stretch-run to its playoffs was beginning. Can you imagine Major League Baseball taking a beach-break for a fortnight in... Read more
How many of the great unwashed football fans of America drenching themselves in margaritas while devouring a fifth bowl of clam dip would have bet the ranch that Peyton the Magnificent was in the process of marching his Colts to the equalizer with... Read more
Somehow the Yankees arrange one of these sly tricks every winter. Usually, they need a foil; a role often gleefully played by your pets, the Red Sox. But this year they managed it all by themselves.
They succeeded in making one of their own the... Read more
Maybe it’s just a by-product of the crankiness of the times. We’re adrift in an era that much favors whimpering and whining about everything. But as never before, gripes mount not just about who does or does not get elected to the Baseball Hall of... Read more
Notes from the passing parade while waiting for Conan O’Brien and Jay Leno to settle their differences with flintlocks from 20 paces along the East River at sunrise:
And to think some regard pro football as America’s premier blood-sport.... Read more
