Sports – Embrace the Absurd

A Tale of Two Icons

October baseball! The MLB postseason begins tonight and includes my Red Sox for the first time since 2021. It’s still the most selective and compact postseason of all the major men’s professional sports leagues – following a 162-game season that separated the wheat from the chaff. It extends the summer, and win or lose, it’s special. It’s baseball.

Public Education as a Metaphor for Opening Day

Opening Day of the 2025 baseball season is upon us. Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack, I don’t care if I never get back! But we do have to come back; and when we do, there’s a lot of work to be done in public education. Put me in coach. I’m ready to play today!

Writing To The Rubric: Gymnastics Edition

Order has been restored to women’s gymnastics. Team USA and Simone Biles have their gold medals. But as I watched the events unfold in Paris this week, I couldn’t help but feel that something important was missing.

A Long Time Coming

Too bad I used “Party In The USA” as the title of my last post, because we are certainly partying in our part of the USA. The Boston Celtics are back on top of the basketball world – where they lived comfortably for the first three decades of my life.

It Was Always In The Cards

The first day of spring. Easter. Opening Day!

All full of hope and the promise of renewal and rebirth.

Reflecting on Opening Day’s past, however, reveals that my future was there, staring me in the face all along.

The Content of Their Character

We have reached the point where MLK Day may be the least controversial of all of the federal holidays. I wouldn’t have predicted that back in 1981, and I’ll take it as a positive sign. Even if there is still much more work to be done.

Win Some. Lose Some. Learn A Lot.

Another baseball season has come to an end. 162 games to gather information about the strengths and weaknesses of teams, managers, coaches, and players. Information to inform decisions and lots of conversations about what to do next. Who could ask for anything more?

For Everything There is a Season

Opening Day! Baseball may have long since lost its revered position as the national pastime, but still nothing compares to Opening Day of the baseball season – even when it occurs in March, which as any baseball fan knows it never, ever should, but we’ll save that rant for another day, because… It’s Opening Day!Continue reading “For Everything There is a Season”

July 4th – A Day to Take Stock

Growing up in Boston – the cradle of liberty, the birthplace of the American Revolution – the meaning of The Fourth of July was crystal clear. It was a day of celebration and remembrance, yes; but also, a day with an eye toward the future, a day to take stock of the three things mostContinue reading “July 4th – A Day to Take Stock”

Parting Thoughts on Tokyo 2020

The medals have been earned and distributed and the flame has been extinguished, bringing an end to the 2020 Summer Olympics – an Olympics, it goes without saying at this point, like no other. Like every Olympics since I began watching the Games in the summer of 1972, however, Tokyo 2020 generated images, impressions, andContinue reading “Parting Thoughts on Tokyo 2020”