Category Archives: Sports

Boston Strong

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Steve Mitzel

001On April 15, 2013 I scrambled out of Boston in the biggest hurry and the most confused I’d ever been in my life.  At 2:35PM I had just finished my 4th Boston Marathon and was basking in the glory of not only my 3 hours 51 minute finish, but the $16k I had raised for the Dana Farber Marathon Challenge. 

No matter how many times I do it, crossing the finish line at a marathon is about the biggest natural high one can get in life. It was a pristine, beautiful day and I had not a care in the world as … Read More… →

“Fabberglasted” – Local Legend of Baseball and Fertilizer, Rod Allen

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Kevin Walsh

MarioRod

I blame Justin Timberlake. Without the Super Bowl wardrobe malfunction with Janet Jackson, there wouldn’t be such a long delay of live television broadcasts–and I could just turn down the set and have the radio playing.

Anyone unfortunate enough to watch a Tiger game beside me knows that I’ve got a collection on my phone’s note-pad.  It’s a three year-old assembly that was created as a little therapy.

The title of the list: “Rod-isms.”

Rod Allen is a former Tiger who batted .333 for the club–for his 15 games.  At an ’84 reunion of the last World Series champions in the Motor City, I was very … Read More… →

Uncle Richie Reaches Home.

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Robert Phillips

smile 5

This past weekend, I flew back to Philly to go to the latest of the three funerals I’ve had to attend over the past few months. My paternal grandmother was the first in the series, having passed last September; a good friend of mine “went home” just before Christmas, an event I wrote about in these pages already (My Fading Accent); and this time, it was the funeral of my Uncle Richie. Frankly, with no disrespect intended, I was not very close to him, although he was a steady presence of my life. I don’t write to cremate Richie or to praise … Read More… →

The Sissy Factor: Pitino’s Duck-and-Cover & NFL in Court

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Kevin Walsh

Pitino

There was an interesting moment during Rick Pitino’s obligatory handshake-walk at the end of Monday’s exciting NCAA championship game.  As the pyrotechnics began with a bang, Pitino did what I also did 12 hours away.  It was the instinctive “duck and cover” move that probably sent us up a tree a million years ago and kept our species alive long before we developed 30-round magazines for our rifles.

Of course, the next day on talk radio, a significant percentage of calls were comparing Pitino’s Barney Fife to John Beilein’s Dirty Harry-stroll-through-the-chaos.

Read More… →

A Not-Love Letter to New York

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Robert Phillips

new york and philly

I grew up near Philadelphia, the birth place of the nation, the 5th largest city in the country, with a vibrant and still growing culinary, arts and theatre culture. But to a typical New Yorker, Philly is still New York’s largest suburb.  That attitude led me to jealously dislike the city the way a little brother may dislike a much more successful big brother. Imagine being Don Swayze when your brother Patrick brings up “Dirty Dancing” for the millionth time.  Imagine being Fredo when your little brother says, “Who’s the Don again, big brother? You? Uhm, no, that … Read More… →

Tiger Stadium: What Makes a Ballpark

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Kevin Walsh

 

TigerStadium_ext

I’ve often wondered about the emotional hitching post that is a ballpark.  And when anyone says “ballpark” we all know that it’s not referring to any other sports field besides baseball.

I only live a few miles from five little league fields that I spent five summers of my childhood praying that the ball wouldn’t be hit to me in right field.  (That, of course, was in the final two innings, when the coach decided it was safe to take me off the scorebook.)  After a brief try at second base where I smoothly fielded a grounder and sent it … Read More… →

Opening Day: A Benchmark or 1/162 of a Season?

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Kevin Walsh

OpeningDay

“I have measured out my life with coffee spoons…”

–T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

I always liked that mileage marker that Eliot used.  For many of us in education, we measure our lives in years teaching–or perhaps by an unforgettable group of students (good or bad!).  My sister Katie, a managing editor of weekly magazines for over 20 years observed that teachers at least had closure, that there is time to take a step back and assess what’s been done.  When Katie was finishing one magazine for print, the following two weeks’ magazines were well under-way.

And … Read More… →

“Reporters Apology” by Melanie McAleer

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Joe Maguire

The following poem was written by Melanie McAleer (posted by her son, Joseph Maguire)

Reporters Apology

REPORTER’S APOLOGY

(after viewing a Senior Womens’ Tennis Tournament)

I was sent on this assignment,
Nothing promised to be duller,
Without the thrill of homicide
Nor a fight for race or color;
I wondered why my editor
Had given me this task,
But being true reporter
I went, and didn’t ask;
After all a Senior Woman
Was a female with a shawl,
And I couldn’t quite envision her
Connecting with a ball;
… Read More… →

“Cobbler and the Cowboy” — My Grandma’s Poetry

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Kevin Walsh

 CobblerAndCowboy

66 years ago, this poem was proudly cut from the newspaper and placed in a scrapbook.  My grandmother, Melanie Vier McAleer died just two and a half years ago at the age of 94–an accomplished woman by any standard, winning a national doubles championship in tennis for women over 70.

But her greater love, one that stayed with her through her entire life, was poetry.  She was a regularly featured writer in Detroit papers throughout my mom’s childhood in the 1940s and 50s.  Her whimsical style and clever insight into the human condition was spot-on.  I remember being flattered … Read More… →

The Netflix Workout

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Kevin Walsh

NFlixWorkout

It’s like a dream-come-true.  For $7.99 per month I can catch up on the 47 TV series I’ve missed and “not-ready-for-HBO” movies–the films that didn’t make a ton of money but they’re what I might have seen at the theater at a matinee or if someone else offered to pay.

I was a typical Netflix customer when it arrived on the scene.  I was too lazy to get in the car to drive to Blockbuster so I’d order a DVD, wait three days for it to arrive and then promptly set the little white sleeve on my TV for two or three weeks, hoping to get … Read More… →