It’s all about the money. “Money, money, money makes the world go round,” intones the comic in the Broadway musical. Money counts! Always has. Always will.
“Follow the money!” That was Ben Bradlee’s marching order to his hotshot pair of rookie... Read more
Years ago, “Wide World of Sport,” a classy ABC concoction, struck quite a note on behalf of the value and wonder of international sport every week. Even earlier, there was a motion picture narrated by the incomparable Spencer Tracy entitled “It’s a Mad... Read more
You know another baseball season is inching gingerly from its Sun Belt launch pad with customary glacial rapidity when early news out of Fort Myers reveals that five charter members of the local nine are already hors de combat before there’s been any... Read more
It’s charming to still think of spring training as the sweet and colorful sequel to “Song of the South” so celebrated back in the good old days of Norman Rockwell’s America when the lads would march off to the baseball camps every February whistling “... Read more
Long-term sufferers of this space may recognize this as a painful admission. But you have to hand it to those great Americans who annually deliver us the Super Bowl in all of its pre-fabricated glory. Just when you think they are out of tricks and have... Read more
Have heard it said over the years that columnists only resort to old-fashioned notes columns when they can’t think of anything else to do, or are too lazy to try. That’s dead wrong, says I. It’s your perfectly reasonable recourse when you have a dozen... Read more
Rockets are glaring all over the sporting map.
We have the Patriots suddenly stripped of the last pretenses of a fading dynasty. Was this the ultimate indictment of Bill Belichick’s alleged genius? He was supposed to win this one. In fact, he... Read more
What is it about Baseball’s Hall of Fame that makes it so compelling? We aren’t talking about “heaven,” at least per se, are we? Why do people get so stirred up every January when the baseball writers annually and clumsily do their thing and again in... Read more
How shall we best remember the abominable National Hockey League labor dispute that has devoured half a season, making a proud lodge stocked with admirable characters the laughingstock of all professional sport?
Try this: As the most pointless,... Read more
In retrospect, it has been an odd Patriots’ season.
Even back in September, when they were smarting from consecutive losses and the Coach was stomping the sidelines like Rumplestilskin in his tiresome harangue of the replacement officials, you... Read more
High among the vanities of this dodge is the specious notion that as the year runs out it’s possible to grade events that have transpired over the length of the calendar and even ascribe to them a lasting value. Or lack thereof, as the case may be.... Read more
During the week when the troubled football commissioner was posing on Time magazine’s cover for a story that wonders if he can save his game from its rampant demons, the Patriots were proving there’s no team in said game that’s better or nastier.
... Read moreNot even death and taxes rank a surer bet than the certainty that roughly a year from about this very hour the late Marvin Miller, who revolutionized baseball by making millionaires of its players, will at last be elected to its Hall of Fame.
... Read more
Long-term sufferers of this weekly rant well know that the composition of baseball’s Hall of Fame and, in particular, the process by which it is determined is a pet subject here. Be advised the Veterans Committee is about to do its “sometimes” thing.... Read more
The morning after the Yankees’ season ended so rudely in Detroit, I bumped into a chap of my acquaintance in the local supermarket. A retired civil servant from Queens, the fellow now bags groceries if only to fend off boredom, and on this occasion he... Read more
