A Gambler's Empathy

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Incorrect officials' calls have been a big back story in this year's NFL season. Come Mondays, newspaper headlines in various NFL cities have blared outrage over Sunday's inept calls, a few of which have, in hindsight and further video review, proven to actually have changed the final score. But the rants and raves were at an all-time decibel this Monday...

NASCAR Nation Fades

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Obama's Moment

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New York City Marathon

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The New York City Marathon runs this Sunday and it's an odd thing. It's odd that, while the event has grown hugely in participant numbers (some 40,000 this year, compared to the few 55 maverick souls in the inaugural year, 1970) and has attracted bigger and bigger crowds each year (some 2 million line the neighborhood streets now, offering tastes of their Italian or Polish or Vietnamese goodies as the runners stream by), but whereas the event used to be televised nationally, its coverage is now a mere one-hour packaged highlight show, offered only in the New York area...

Jack Kelly a Diamond

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his past weekend marked the annual Head of the Charles Regatta. When I saw some photos of the 8,000 rowers in various boats, gliding down the Charles River on a crisp, quintessential New England October day, with some 300,000 people watching and cheering from both shores, I got to wondering about the history of rowing...

A League of Their Own

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A League of Their Own was the popular 1992 Penny Marshall movie, basically a comedy, based on the real-life All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. While the history of the league was portrayed at least somewhat accurately via the film's storyline and a few of the characters came through with at least a semblance of similarity to the real people, one thing that the movie lacked was a recreation of the extraordinary athleticism of those women ball players...

Clutch

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It's one of the magical monikers of sports. "Mr. October." It came about thirty-one years ago, during the sixth game of the World Series between the Yankees and the Dodgers. Yankee super-slugger Reggie Jackson clobbered three home runs and when his teammate Thurmon Munson was being interviewed after the game about the pressures of post-season play...

FedExCup Faulty

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Since the Yankees aren't playing post season this year, I'm not avidly rooting for any one team but I must say that it would be sweet indeed to see Joe Torre go all the way with his Dodgers, especially after he was not even a mention in the Yankees' own goodbyes to their stadium. That Torre and Don Mattingly were treated with such disregard was shameful and it would be justice indeed if Torre reminded the Yankees what a superior manager he is, heading down that old familiar home stretch, this time out wearing Dodger Blue...

ARod in Stripes

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Let's start with the all-Sunday-long farewell to Yankee Stadium. From Paul Simon to Henry Kissinger to Babe Ruth's 92-year old daughter, fans and players of both today and yesterday, and cultural heavyweights spoke poetry about their lifelong memories of this special place. I admit I cried several times on Sunday as the televised tributes ran one after the other...

Phelps Post-Games

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Let's check in with Michael Phelps, shall we? How's his life going nearly a month after winning his historic eight gold medals at the Beijing Games?...

US Open Finale

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I've said it before and I'll say it again. Now that the U.S. Open has ended, so should the professional tennis season. The last Grand Slam of the year culminated in swirling drama in New York. On the women's side, the two best tennis players of our era, despite rankings that erroneously indicate otherwise, sisters of a close-knit family, Venus and Serena once again met as they had at Wimbledon. That grass-court final was an epic display of sublime athletic gifts as well as a compelling showing of mutual affection and respect. Older sister Venus prevailed at the All England Lawn and Tennis Club so it was storybook touché at Arthur Ashe Stadium when this time around younger sister Serena won the slam and the attendant $1.5 million...

Beijing Summed Up

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Murmurs had been growing louder over the past decade or so that the mystique of the Olympic Games had lost its luster. Widespread drug busts of such champions as Marion Jones had supposedly disillusioned us. Young people couldn't connect. They'd rather be watching the X-Games.  The average age of the Olympic viewer rose almost ten years, to the upper 40's, from the 1992 Barcelona Games to Athens four years ago. But three forces combined in Beijing to catapult the Games once again high into widespread public consciousness...

Olympic Pride

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Those who have been privy to the dress rehearsals for the Opening Ceremonies of the Beijing Olympic Games, to get under way for real tomorrow, say the pomp and pageantry driven by leviathan national Chinese pride is beyond what we in the West could possibly understand, much less generate...

Too Young for Games

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Swimming and Track & Field are the marquee sports of every summer Olympic Games but gymnastics is known as the jewel of the whole spectacle--notably women's gymnastics. The television schedule purposefully orchestrates women's gymnastics into the heart of prime-time viewing. And if you think back over the years, you'll remember several women gymnasts as the key protagonists of many different Games...

A Drug-Free Beijing?

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I've often wondered how former Olympic athletes feel right about this time, on the eve of yet another Olympic Games. Do they wallow in nostalgia, national anthems taking them back to distant memories of zeal and triumph? What about the ones who underperformed? Do they anguish every four years, reliving what could have, should have, would have been when their one and only time was upon them?