It was a fine note on which to formally launch another baseball season. Ryan Braun, erstwhile star of the Brewers and once highly regarded impeccable fellow, wriggles out of drug trouble with MLB’s PED Police, leaving everyone’s noses out of joint.... Read more
Clark Booth on Sports
With apologies to the poet: “Spring training begins. All’s right with the world.”
Well, maybe not so much if your team comes from Pittsburgh, Kansas City, Cleveland, or Queens. But the play’s the thing even if you have to read about it from a... Read more
There’s an inspiring sports story laced with the stuff that dreams are made of percolating in that most hard-boiled and unforgiving of settings, New York City. Consider the arguably even greater curiosity that it was incubated at that hoops-nutty jock... Read more
Maybe it should be arranged that for the foreseeable future – until at least either Tom Coughlin or Bill Belichick pack it in or Eli Manning and Tom Brady wander off to their ultimate reward in Canton, Ohio – we might have annual renewals of this thing... Read more
Here are some slices of this and that and stray observations to share while waiting for the pen-ultimate meeting of your Patriots and their Giants. As ever, one is reminded of the cherished hope of the late, great Dick Schaap who, while staring down at... Read more
No doubt you like the look and tempo of the hockey season so far. You are still feasting off that fabulous frolic last spring. The game seems healthier than it has been in a long time. Crowds are big. Revenues are up. The networks are even back... Read more
According to recent revelations by the BBC, the prize jury assigned to choose the winner of the 1961 Nobel Prize for Literature had among its nominees Graham Greene, Robert Frost, E.M. Forster, Isak (‘Out of Africa’) Dinesen, and Mr. Hobbit himself, J.... Read more
When the admirable Houston Antwine quietly departed this mortal coil the other day some strong and sweet memories of the way the game used to be were stirred among those of us privileged to have been around when the American Football League was winning... Read more
If, regrettably, for all the wrong reasons, 2011 was a landmark year in Sport. While no stats are kept on this subject, it’s reasonable to suggest there has never been another that featured more rancor, tumult, controversy, scandal, and downright... Read more
The clock winds down. Time to clear the desk of the last bits and pieces of a long and tumultuous sporting year while awaiting Santa:
With the on-going Tim Tebow phenomenon being a fine place to start. There hasn’t been a more genuine and... Read more
Winter baseball amuses us. The winners and losers are out-numbered by the suckers. Everyone is an all-star. Hustle begets illusion. Here in the land of the Bean and the Cod we know all about that stuff. What you see is not often what you get, but it is... Read more
Hereabouts in this quirky outpost called New England, there are more important jobs, like governor or archbishop, and more prestigious ones, too, like music director of the BSO, chief of staff at MGH, or Harvard’s Lord High Mikado over-seeing... Read more
It’s that time again. As the opening number in baseball’s biggest off-season gala, the annual Winter Meetings, we are about to be presented with another immortal or two from the considerable ranks of worthies long ago passed over by the baseball... Read more
Here are more stray thoughts and random wisecracks on a gamut of sporting matters. Our cup runneth over these days, there being no limit to the stuff that baffles, befuddles, or bemuses (with apologies to Lorenz Hart).
Beginning with the... Read more
It was sometime in 1966 that Peter Fuller – another good man and great promoter of the manly arts – brought Joe Frazier to town. It was a couple of years before Joe made it big, so nobody knew much about him, and I recall being surprised when Peter... Read more
