Cracking wise with idle musings on a leisurely Labor Day while waiting for the drive to the baseball wire to become feverish. The gun sounds for the last lap, but we may be in for a disappointment. At last check we had precisely one valid race,... Read more
Clark Booth on Sports
Mind you, I’ve no idea how good a puck-chaser Harvard-boy Jimmy Vesey is or how much he’ll impact the NHL. Happily, I retired about 40 years ago from the sorry business of predicting how great the hugely publicized but untested phenoms of sport may... Read more
The bar for the Rio Olympics was set so low only an unmitigated catastrophe could have rendered the 2016 Games a failure. In fact, the glass-half-full crowd will have no problems delivering a joyful verdict –overflowing with cheeky “I told you so”... Read more
Now that we have survived the turgid melodrama of A-Rod’s weepy farewells, one assumes it is safe to return to the pennant race, or at least to what’s left of it.
Two things were made clear by the experience of the Yankee prodigal’s last sting... Read more
You gotta hand it to the Yankees, Mates, no matter how tough a swallow that may be for you. They’ve done it again.
Bumbling along in their most miserable season in a quarter century, bracing for an interminable and tedious re-build, answering... Read more
Here are some random observations and stray quibbling looking for a place to land while we await shoes, cleats, spikes, sneakers, whatever to begin dropping in Rio:
•••
Should we add to the hyper fears about the quadrennial opus... Read more
With the days dwindling down to a precious few, there’s no more ducking the obvious question: Why in a world rendered asunder by madness and folly surging all over the map do we need the fragile, flawed, increasingly endangered 2016 International... Read more
Maybe it’s just that the Dog Days have arrived early this summer, but it seems to me that a vague inertia grips the local sporting landscape. We are caught between fact and fancy. There is much ado, but it’s mostly about nothing. Pretensions are lofty... Read more
With the end of the fiscal year approaching (why do they always bang out in July?) it’s time to clear the decks of last stray bits and pieces. Like for example:
• Has the folly of leaping hilariously to rash conclusions – a common contemporary... Read more
In the week the incomparable Gordie Howe bid farewell amidst much tender reminiscing of the game he once exemplified, the National Hockey League season finally came to a merciful end, with the Penguins waddling off with their fourth Cup. To think: It... Read more
Over these too many years, one has rarely (never?) used this space to plug any product (save for the odd hockey team). But there’s an exception to every rule, even one firmly in place near a half century.
So with no further apologies we hereby... Read more
If we were brinking on October, not June, and the regular season were to end tomorrow the Red Sox, with the AL’s best record, would be bracing for an epic clash against the Cubs, with the NL’s best record, and all the sporting world would be their... Read more
In a season widely conceded to them back around the end of last year, the Chicago Cubs are somehow exceeding expectations. That’s no mean achievement, especially for a luckless and, more often than not, lackluster outfit that has won nothing in 108... Read more
As we attempt now and again, it’s time for a “Nobody Asked Me, But …” sort of column with a deferential nod as well as apologies to the late, great Jimmy Cannon, the legendary New York sporting scribe and stylist who not only devised but also perfected... Read more
So, we don’t have the Celtics to kick around anymore this spring. But they’ll be back on the firing line in a half dozen weeks with a gaggle of draft picks, one of which, with any luck, should be among the vaunted top-three, plus lots of pad in their... Read more
