Kudos to Chrome

March 31, 2016

While American Pharoah is busy making babies, our old friend California Chrome is busy winning races.

CC – who won the 2014 Kentucky Derby and Preakness – earned the richest prize in horse racing, taking the $6-million Dubai World Cup on March 26. The win makes him the all-time moneymaker at $12.4 million. (And he could add to that by entering January’s $12 million Pegasus Championship, which would alternate between the Santa Anita and Gulfstream parks.)

But the real winner here may be Victor Espinoza, who rode the Pharoah, of course, and rides CC as well. ...

When it comes to the NFL and concussions, denial runs deep

March 26, 2016

The first thing I thought about was “The Dying Gaul.”

That poignant Roman marble – a copy of a late Hellenistic work that depicts a Celtic warrior wounded on the ground – was precisely what I flashed on when I saw the photo of Steve Young on the front page of The New York Times March 25.

It was as if it were yesterday – if yesterday were 1999. Young, then the quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers, lay crumpled, seemingly lifeless after a concussive hit on the field. The photo accompanied the story headlined “NFL Concussion Studies Found to Have Deep Flaws.” ...

Are women Trumped by gender, still?

March 21, 2016

It’s intriguing – though infuriating might be the better word – that Our Principles PAC should have to release an ad with actresses mocking Donald Trump’s sexist comments on women at precisely the moment that a new study shows women’s presence in male-dominated professions being heralded by a decrease in salaries.

The moral in each case is the same: To be a woman in the 21st century is still to be devalued.

And, by extension, so are so-called feminine qualities and professions, such as compassion and the arts. These are viewed as weak and decorative at best.

But why should this be, given wave after wave of feminism? ...

‘Sudden Death’ and the fiction racket

March 15, 2016

On a recent trip to Jacksonville, Fla. via Delta, I had a disquieting thought. The flight attendants were so friendly, so generous with their drinks and snacks that I felt guilty about the scene in my debut novel “Water Music” in which an officious flight attendant denies tennis star Evan Conor Fallon an extra package of nuts, precipitating an international incident known thereafter as “Nut-gate.”

Mulling the gracious treatment I have always received while flying, I wondered how fair and realistic I had been with Nut-gate. Mustn’t fiction reflect life?

Then while at the beach house my sisters had rented on Amelia Island, I read the introduction to Alvaro Enrigue’s intriguing new novel “Sudden Death” (Riverhead Books, $27, 261 pages) – about an imaginary 16th century tennis match between the Italian painter Caravaggio and the Spanish poet Francisco de Quevedo – in which he writes something that buoyed me so much I felt as if I had made a new friend: ...

Whither Kaepernick in the game of musical quarterbacks?

March 13, 2016

So I’m sitting in a sports bar in Tallahassee that has, according to my nephew James, 59,000 TVs, most of them tuned to college basketball, this being March madness. But a few are checking out the NFL Combine and the new prospects like Ohio State defensive star Joey Bosa, all glorious 6 foot, 6 inch, 276 pounds of him.

But there was no time to measure his defensive pulchritude as the networks quickly moved on to the game of musical quarterbacks. With Peyton Manning retired from the Denver Broncos, Brock Osweiler would’ve seemed to have had a lock on the job, but no, he bolted – a favorite verb of sportswriters – to the Texans. The Broncos then traded for Mark Sanchez, formerly of the New York Jets and Philadelphia Eagles, but no one thinks he’s a permanent first-string solution (except probably Mark Sanchez). ...

Sharapova’s suspension leaves questions unanswered

March 12, 2016

The admission by tennis star Maria Sharapova that she has tested positive for the banned drug meldonium offers its share of ironies.

Sharapova – the world’s most financially successful female athlete – has always benefited both by her talent and her looks.

But what looks good on the outside is not necessarily healthy on the inside. Sharapova – a Russian who trains in the U.S. – has a history of irregular EKGs and a family history of diabetes. There are conflicting reports about whether the drug, also known as mildronate, can actually alleviate those conditions. Its reputation as a performance enhancer stems from its ability to increase blood flow. ...

The shirt off his back (we wish): Mr. Darcy’s singular garment is coming to America

March 10, 2016

At a time when the news – foreign and domestic – seems so terrible, here’s something to gladden the heart of many a lady (and more than a few gentleman):

Mr. Darcy’s shirt is coming to America.

Yes, the shirt that is for women what the wet T-shirt contest is for men will be part of “Will & Jane: Shakespeare, Austen, and the Cult of Celebrity,” an exhibit opening in August at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington D.C. (And, I need not add, we are so there.) The show will feature the shirt – one of several used, given the need for a fresh one for each take – that Colin Firth wore as Mr. Darcy in a key scene in the 1995 smash BBC miniseries of Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice.” ...