When ESPN named its courage award after the late Arthur Ashe, they could not have made a better choice. World class tennis champion, educator and advocate for the oppressed, Ashe personified grace and dignity, especially during his final days.At the age of seven, Arthur picked up a racket for the . . . . Continue Reading »
He scored forty times in an eight-year NFL career, best known, now, for the touchdown he didn’t score, as the sun set over Yankee Stadium on Dec. 28, 1958. His wife of fifty-nine years, Joan, said that Jim Mutscheller, who died on April 10, wanted to be known as a man “who had led a good life,” for he was “quiet, humble, and so conservative that he’d eat crabs with a suit and tie on.”And therein lies a tale—and a yardstick by which to measure pro sports then and now. Continue Reading »
Sports are what men talk about when they really want to talk. Or at least that seems to be the case for many men, whose emotional lives are played out on big screen TVs and twenty-four hour media coverage of everything athletic. Whether it’s the suburbs, cities, or small towns, if you want to get personal with another man, you share commiserations about the home team over a communion of wings and beer. Continue Reading »
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