Baseball now has five bright and shiny new saints to canonize when the tribe assembles for its annual rites of sanctification in the pastoral paradise of Cooperstown the last weekend in July. Beer will surely flow. Tears will be abundantly shed.... Read more
Clark Booth on Sports
Ordinarily, as if there were anything ordinary about the kingdom of Sport in these times, the subject of the week would be the NFL playoffs, that fierce if sometimes mindless celebration of pain and mayhem that has taken custody of the otherwise bleak... Read more
Eras ended and doors closed on history. It was a year of tumultuous transition. The class of 2016 is long on numbers and even higher in distinction.
Oft infuriatingly complex and willfully enigmatic, Muhammad Ali nonetheless transcended Sport.... Read more
Here’s a short list of points clearing the decks of what remains of 2016. Parting with this year won’t quite be sweet sorrow. There have been better ones:
• If 2017 is to be a significant upgrade, it will necessarily begin with the Patriots,... Read more
No matter what you may have read or heard in recent days, the most spectacular off-season antics in the checkered history of the Boston Red Sox occurred 69 years ago. They produced a thunderclap that rocked Baseball’s entire firmament, raising fears... Read more
It’s pushing a quarter century since Major League Baseball experienced its last and gravest labor catastrophe. But the lingering horror over the meltdown that aborted the 1994 season and the World Series just won’t go away. Hence an eerie dread... Read more
Awards season is upon us. With it comes all the usual conflict, controversy, and recrimination. In baseball, the dispensing of precious laurels is a venerated and hallowed process bloated with more than a century of precedent.
Blunders committed... Read more
Actually, Politics and Sport have long been interesting bedfellows. The union has been warm and cozy, if also controversial.
Not so long ago an ex-football coach from Nebraska, an All-American QB from Oklahoma, an all-pro wideout from Washington... Read more
As happens now and again – at least every decade or so – we get a World Series that sort of hits the national sweet spot and is not so much just a mere blistering tussle for sporting glory and treasure as a rare slice of Americana. So it was with the... Read more
Random thoughts and stray observations while waiting for the Indians and Cubs to finish off what has been arguably the nicest Fall Classic of this era.
That would be “nice” in the sense that for most of us (save for the more extreme zealots in... Read more
In its wisdom, the National Hockey League has proclaimed the 2016-2017 season its “Centennial” and will regale us with lavish commemorative moments throughout the fall, winter, and spring with hopefully the celebration being done and the music ending... Read more
Hard for the Nation to swallow no doubt, but the party continues without the presumptive guest of honor. So much for the giddy thesis holding that the Red Sox were the team to beat in this season’s prolonged and agonizing post-season festival, the only... Read more
Here are points to be pondered while awaiting the arrival of Sir Galahad on his high horse, fresh from the tanning salons of Spain’s Costa del Sol:
Gods Give Brady the Browns
And suddenly the need of Tom... Read more
Baseball’s September promise, which had been notably dim at best, proved worse than expected. The faint hope of at least one genuine race to the wire got smashed when the Red Sox mounted a magnificently mindless surge (11 straight and counting) that... Read more
Wonderful stuff, Sports: You just never know when the boom will be lowered on the gridirons of the National Football League.
Here were the good citizens of Patriots Nation comfortably settling in the armchairs of New England and calculating how... Read more
