‘Damn Yankees’ again

October 15, 2017

I was a child of the 1960s when rooting for the New York Yankees was not like rooting for the proverbial U.S. Steel but more like rooting for a company forever on the brink of going belly up. How bad were the Yanks of the late ’60s and early ‘70s? Put it this way: The team would have some of the extra players dress in street clothes and fill in the seats behind home plate at Yankee Stadium to make it look like someone was actually at the games. (Ah, the Horace Clarke Era. No offense to Horace, a lovely, hard-working and decidedly mediocre second baseman who became the face of those wilderness years, 1967-73.)

We can remember those days fondly, because as every Yankee fan knows the trajectory of the Bronx Bombers – like President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s view of the arc of civilization – has, despite some zigzagging, been ever upward. ...

Champions (of a cause)

February 20, 2017

“Should professional athletes be allowed to use their status to talk about things more important than the games they play?”

That is the question that Jay Caspian Kang asks in his most recent “On Sports” column for The New York Times Magazine.

It’s a rich, juicy question, because it goes to the heart of our ambivalence toward outspoken athletes, artists, entertainers and other public figures who are not public servants. ...

Russell Wilson ‘Passes the peace’

March 29, 2015

It’s been a quiet offseason thus far for the NFL – particularly given the fireworks of the regular season and playoffs (everything from Ray Rice to Deflategate).

But quiet isn’t necessarily a good thing. The NFL still has to decide what to do with Minnesota Viking Adrian Peterson, who pleaded no contest to taking a switch to his 4-year-old; and Carolina Panther Greg Hardy, who had his conviction for domestic abuse overturned; not to mention Deflategate.

Let me make a bold prediction: Peterson and Hardy will be back, and Deflategate will be swept under the rug, because basically the NFL prefers what Simon and Garfunkel would call “the sound of silence.”

One person who is not remaining silent is Seattle Seahawks’ quarterback Russell Wilson. On The Players’ Tribune site started by Derek Jeter, Wilson, who describes himself as “a recovering bully” despite his “Goody Two Shoes” image, wants to talk about domestic violence and then do something about it. ...

Oh, captain, their captain

September 29, 2014

How do you fall out of love?

Does it happen all at once? Or subtly over time until one day you realize that your heart no longer skips a beat when you look at the box score?

I had loved the New York Yankees and, by extension, all of baseball from the time I was about 6 years old. That’s when I first saw the old, old Yankee Stadium, all blue and white. To me, it looked like a wedding cake. The first time I walked inside and saw the field fanning out to embrace infinity, I had only one thought: “I belong here.”

Over the years, I had many memorable moments there – particularly watching the magical teams of the late 1970s – and I would go on to write about the Yanks during their magnificent run at the end of the 20th century.

But also over those years, I found myself so emotionally invested in the Bombers that I couldn’t take their defeats. Then my Aunt Mary, my beloved Tiny, who would’ve been 92 on Oct. 1, became fatally ill, and even winning became painful. Indeed when the team won the World Series in 2009, the gulf between its euphoria and my despair seemed unbreachable.

After that, Tim Tebow and Colin Kaepernick happened to me, and I made the journey that America has...

Donald Sterling, Derek Jeter and the better part of valor

April 29, 2014

When I was a young reporter, a columnist asked me casually about a recent holiday. The next day, I read all about it in her column, to my surprise – and chagrin.

I was reminded then of something that I had learned as a child but had momentarily forgotten: Never say anything to anyone that you wouldn’t want to see in print.

My indiscretion was pretty innocuous. I revealed nothing beyond a ham and a turkey (literally) – which is more than we can say for Los Angeles Clippers’ owner Donald Sterling. He’s accused of spewing the kind of racism and sexism that harks back to the 19th century. But then, I guess you can’t really expect discretion from a man who maintained a wife and a mistress simultaneously.

Let’s be clear: Harboring the kind of thoughts Sterling apparently does – admonishing former mistress V. Stiviano not to appear with black men at Clippers’ games – is morally wrong. But this is not a post about harboring such thoughts, which I think are a failure of our culture and our educational system. It’s about communicating such thoughts.