THE YELLOW BIRDS: WORTHY ADDITION TO THE GREAT WAR NOVEL
May 20th, 2013Like everyone else, I’ve read countless books about the Civil War because it is our collective war. I read A Farewell to Arms (World War I) because you have to read Hemingway and I own up to having contributed to the canon of useless Papa thesis scholarship. I have delved into the seemingly endless list of immortal [...]
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SCORING CHAMPS AND CHAMPS: RARE BEDFELLOWS
May 3rd, 2013The scoring battle between Carmelo Anthony and Kevin Durant provided an interesting subplot to the 2012-13 season, and Knicks fans were no doubt ecstatic when their guy prevailed. Uh, be careful what you wish for. A look at NBA history reveals how infrequently scoring champions come from championship teams. Or, put another way, championship [...]
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BEHIND THE INTERVIEWS: THE ELUSIVE POP
April 23rd, 2013Sometimes the stories that involve the most reluctant interviewees turn out to be the best stories. One of the most famous pieces in Sports Illustrated history is Frank Deford’s 1978 masterpiece about Jimmy Connors that he wrote without the cooperation of the tennis star. Here’s the link: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1094013/1/index.htm I am not suggesting that the [...]
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LET’S TRY THIS AGAIN–IT’S MADNESS AND MAGIC BUT IT’S NOT SUPERIOR TO THE NBA
April 8th, 2013To reiterate something I wrote a couple years ago, something for which I am still taking heat, the quality of play in college basketball is NOT better than that in the NBA. (http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/writers/jack_mccallum/03/16/ncaa.nba/index.html In fact, it’s not even close. College basketball is an extremely flawed product, and anyone who takes a hard, detached look [...]
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DAD, HAMMERIN’ HANK and the ’57 BRAVES
April 1st, 2013All over America hundreds of old bastards like myself are writing nostalgic ruminations about Opening Day and the renewal of spring and green grass and the smell of peanuts and the first time they saw Mickey/Willie/Stan/Whoever and all that. Thousands more—millions more perhaps?—who are not writing down their ruminations are boring to tears their [...]
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