second only to the Dominican Republic in providing active Latin American players to the major leagues? (There are over 200 currently playing.) Among the greats have been Orlando Cepeda, Pudge Rodriguez, and the Alomar family (Sandy, Sandy Jr., and Roberto).
I’ve asked Israel, who is a poet, to keep an eye out for Latino baseball poetry. [...]
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 40-year-old [...]
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 [...]
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 Tuesday, but [...]
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 bottom [...]
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 ESPN [...]
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 competitors [...]
Sports Saturday
Mistah Steinbrenner—he dead.
So I imagine T. S. Eliot announcing the death of the legendary Yankee owner this past week. That’s because, if one goes by Eliot’s famous 1925 poem “The Hollow Men,” one could not say that “the Boss” was “Shape without form, shade without colour,/ Paralysed force, gesture without motion.” In fact, an adjective that [...]
The commentators called it an ugly game, but I found something compelling about Spain’s victory over the Netherlands in yesterday’s World Cup final. And after all, regardless of what happened earlier in the game, how can one argue when the winning goal–and a beautifully struck ball at that–occurs just minutes before the end of overtime?
The [...]
The incomparable Xavi
Spanish sports is having a great year. First of all, Spanish forward Pau Gasol was a major reason why the Los Angeles Lakers won their 16th championship in an archetypal series against the Boston Celtics. Then we were officially ushered from the Age of Federer into the Age of Nadal as Rafa followed [...]
