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Justified – and not

Gee, do you think Justify will be going to the White House?

The massive chestnut colt – huge, as a certain American president would say – secured the Triple Crown in decisive fashion Saturday with a win in the Belmont Stakes at Belmont Park in New York. Schooled by Bob Baffert, 2015 Triple Crown winner American Pharoah’s trainer, Justify is the 13th colt to win the Crown and only the second to do so undefeated (behind Seattle Slew, 1977). Neigh-sayers (I couldn’t resist) note that …

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It was a very ‘bad’ year

Well, we’ve rung out the old and rung in the new, and most of the people I’ve spoken with said it should only have happened sooner. (Or as one clever poster put it, “2016 – Y U no gone?”)

For him and others personally, professionally and publicly, 2016 was an “annus horribilis,” to borrow Queen Elizabeth II’s description of 1992 (the Charles-Diana separation, the Windsor Castle fire, don’t ask).

Certainly, 2016 would give many a year a run for their infamous money. The Zika virus, the continuing Syrian and refugee crises, terrorism, a rash of deaths among the greats of sports (Muhammad Ali) and entertainment (Prince) punctuated by the one-two punch of that sublime mother-daughter act, Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher ...

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The greatest

When you title a blog post, you’re supposed to make it as specific as possible – unlike necessarily a print headline – to draw attention to it. But I figure few titles are more intriguing than “the greatest.” Who is “the greatest”? The title is associated with Muhammad Ali, but really fans in every sport like to argue over who is the GOAT (greatest of all time) in their discipline.

You could say Michael Phelps is the greatest swimmer of all time and the greatest Olympian of all time with 28 medals, 23 gold – six of them (five gold, one silver) in Rio alone. You could say the New York Yankees are the greatest baseball team of all time with 18 division titles, 40 American League pennants and 27 World Series titles. Both Phelps and the Yankees are so far ahead of their competitors that it’s hard to imagine anyone catching up. ...

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In memoriam: Muhammad Ali (1942 -2016)

Kings and presidents die, and nobody cares, Muhammad Ali once said. But Joe Louis died, and everybody cried.

Are they crying now for Muhammad Ali, who died Friday in Scottsdale, Ariz. of complications from Parkinson’s disease? No doubt.

Boxers are perhaps the most poignant of athletes, for in a sense, they absorb the blows for the rest of us. Boxing, the novelist Joyce Carol Oates observed in her nonfiction work, “On Boxing,” is “America’s tragic theater.” ...

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