Jalen Green is the best high school basketball player in the country, and he’s going to jump straight to the pro’s rather than cool his heels in college for eight months while waiting to play in the NBA. Isaiah Todd, a five-star recruit who had previously committed to Michigan, made the same decision earlier this week. […]
Those of us who are not economists or epidemiologists are in the midst of a moment in history we find difficult to understand. We don’t want any more people to dies of the Coronavirus. That much is easy. If social distancing helps keep our neighbors safe, it’s a small price to pay. The word “mitigation” is used […]
The great Paulie Balst moved to Atlanta in the mid-1990s, and that meant a group of friends felt compelled to visit not long after. Julie, Ryan, and I came from Indianapolis. Ross and Julie Sheffield rolled down from Chicago. There might have been others. Who knows? This was a substantial group with substantial appetites that […]
The pitch from a teammate we called Guido cut toward the inside corner as I tried to see something that might give me a hint as to which direction Marty might hit it. With a runner on second with one out in a game we led 3-2 in the bottom of the seventh inning, I played […]
Harry Caray was the king of Chicago in 1991, so when a friend offered me a chance to have my three-year-old son meet him at Goose Island Brewery, I jumped at the chance. There were four things Ryan would watch on TV when he was little – Indiana University Basketball, Michael Jordan, car commercials, and […]
Just as Americans respecting social distancing guidelines will hasten a return to normalcy, professional and collegiate sports leagues, franchises, and programs need to use this time to ensure their continued profitability and existence. Meetings and teleconferences are being held at the headquarters of teams and leagues all over the country trying to mitigate the longterm […]
Don Knotts played Barney Fife on the Andy Griffith Show for five years in the 1960s and won five Emmys for his work. He was on top of the world as one of the most beloved comedic actors in TV history – then. By the 1990s, Knotts career had plummeted to the point where he […]
In the early 1990s, I was immersed in trying to learn how to improvise. Second City was the home of improvisational comedy, so I took classes there and tried to find out as much about it as I could from those who earned a living doing it. That led me to U.S. Blues, a bar […]
One of the greatest basketball players in the history of the game, Oscar Robertson is also one of the more irascible and unpredictable. He is generous in spirit, but after a lifetime of slights, he can smell another one a mile away. I have crossed paths with the Big O on two occasions, and both experiences […]
Live sports, please come back! Whether or not there are fans in the stands, I don’t care. After spending an hour on Sunday watching the world championship of a team video game called Rocketball, I am ready to watch real people play real games in real time. Earlier this week, I watched a computer simulation […]
