Sports Saturday I bicycle virtually everyday to the college where I work, about a mile and a quarter from home. Unless it’s raining or snowing, motorists can see me pumping along, my pants tucked into my socks, my necktie blowing in the wind, my backpack weighed down with laptop, lunch, and the Longman Anthology of British […]
Tag Archives: Sports
Imagination Unleashed: Children on Bikes
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Learning the Bicycle", Bicycling, Children, It, Stephen King, Wyatt Prunty Comments closed
The NFL as Chicago Slaughterhouse
Sports Saturday Football season has begun, with a full slate of games scheduled for tomorrow. The good news is that the seven-month drought known as offseason ends for fans of America’s most popular game. The bad news is that, once again, young men will go back to permanently damaging themselves as they fling their […]
Neruda and Ted Williams: A Fantasy
Sports Saturday My colleague Israel Ruiz in our Spanish Department is an enthusiastic baseball fan. He is also Puerto Rican and I have learned a lot about the Puerto Rican love of baseball from him. For instance, did you know that Puerto Rico is second only to the Dominican Republic in providing active Latin American […]
Never Favre from the Madding Crowd
Sports Saturday He’s baaaak! The fabled quarterback who has played more consecutive games than anyone in the history of football, the prima donna who each offseason plays maddening games with the football world about whether or not he’s retiring, the holder of virtually every scoring record who last year had his best season ever, the […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Bull", Archy and Mehitabel, Brett Favre, Don Marquis, Football, Peyton Manning, Ralph Hodgson Comments closed
Where Are the Players of Yesteryear?
Sports Saturday Mais où sont les neiges d’antan? François Villon There’s not much going on in the sports world at the moment. Soccer’s World Cup now seems like a dream, the last major golf tournament has been played (with Tiger magic seemingly on indefinite hold), and football, basketball, hockey, and tennis’s U.S. Open await in […]
Stephen Strasburg Is Pitching Hope
Sports Saturday There is nothing like a brilliant rookie pitcher to breathe life back into the game of baseball. Living less than two hours from our nation’s capital, I’m in the midst of the unbridled excitement over the Washington Nationals’ Stephen Strasburg. Strasburg had a bad outing as he came off Injured Reserve this past […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Baseball, Robert Coover, Stephen Strasburg, Universal Baseball Association Comments closed
Absolutely Nothing Beats a Triple
Sports Saturday Last Sunday was a very good day for Colorado Rockies player Carlos Gonzalez. He hit for the cycle (a single, a double, a triple and a home run), a feat that has occurred only 291 times in the history of baseball. Furthermore, the home run was of the walk-off variety, occurring in the […]
Using Beowulf to Defend Lebron
Sports Saturday Lebron James has been taking a lot of heat recently for joining the Miami basketball team. (Did you catch the pun?) This past trading season was termed “the Lebron Sweepstakes,” and teams from around the country trekked to Cleveland to play court to “King James.” James made the occasion particularly gaudy by persuading […]
Poker Adventures of a New York Novelist
Sports Saturday This past week my novelist friend Rachel Kranz was visiting after having busted out of the World Series of Poker tournament in Las Vegas. She made it to Day 4 (out of 9), which was pretty good considering that she has only been playing for three years. Still she was upset, as good […]
