For about 20 years — from the mid 1960s to the mid 1980s — Pete Rose was my favorite baseball player. He was never the most talented guy in the game, but he had the most amazing drive and desire to succeed. No one would ever compare him to Willie Mays or Mickey Mantle, but …
“I see skies of blue and clouds of white, the bright blessed day and the dark sacred night, and I think of myself what a wonderful world.” There is so much beauty in this world. All you have to do is look for it. For me, the beauty I have found can be covered with …
Do you remember the first book you read as a kid that wasn’t written for kids? If you go to the trouble to follow my writing on this site, the odds are pretty good that you consider reading as one of the more rewarding things you do. You probably started young. I don’t know of …
The Washington Commanders? Seriously? It probably wasn’t the worst of all the possible choices, but it sure seems to me that there’s only one possible response to the once-proud NFL team’s choice of a new nickname. Meh. So the former Washington Redskins, winners of three Super Bowls but essentially irrelevant in this century, have announced …
If I weren’t as old as I am, and if there weren’t other people I was responsible to, I would probably give up on the United States of America. I’m not sure where I would go. Canada always seems like the easy choice. In most of the country they speak the same language we do, …
‘Cause we’ll all stick together and you can take that to the bank. That’s the cowboys and the hippies and the Rebels and and the Yanks … If you’re familiar with the early 1980s, you might remember the Charlie Daniels Band and the song, “In America.” After all the division of the ’60s and into …
When it comes to protecting voting rights, it’s time. for Plan B. It’s apparent there will be no support for voting rights from Republicans, and without Senators Sinema and Manchin supporting a care-out in the filibuster, Democrats alone cannot get it done. So Mitch McConnell will hold sway at least for this year. So what …
Random musings for a winter Sunday afternoon: In a world of rapidly increasing weather disasters, it seems somehow silly to complain about the weather here, south of Atlatna, today. It isn’t a monsoon, a blizzard or a hurricane. The temperature isn’t 20 below zero and there are no tornados or tsunamis. It’s 35 degrees out …
If you’re looking for one of the most important rules of sports journalism, it’s that you cannot be a fan. It’s why after being a sportswriter from 1978 through the first part of 1996, it was probably 15 years before I could really cheer — even inwardly — for the teams I grew up following. …
IF YOU WANT TO COVER SPORTS, YOU CANNOT BE A FAN Read More »
“Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.” Who would have thought legendary football coach Vince Lombardi would turn out to be one of the great villains of modern American history? Too much? Maybe, but Lombardi’s quote has been used to justify all sorts of bad behavior in the name of winning, and the fact is …
