Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game tonight in Pittsburgh is the first All-Star Game held in the new ballpark in this once proud baseball city. It is, however, the fifth time Pittsburgh will host this showcase of baseball talent. There are hopes that the return of the game to Pittsburgh will help to renew baseball interest [...]

It?s a longstanding assumption among sport historians that gambling is an essential part of sport?s appeal. In all likelihood, bets have been placed ever since the first competition. It is also generally conceded that if there were no gambling, there would be a marked decline of public interest in sports. The gambling industry in America is [...]

It is the biggest non-event in sport. It saturates the sports talk shows, the sports pages, the sports magazines, the sports web sites. It is the orphan adopted and promoted by ESPN and turned into a television monster. It is the sports version of Let’s Make a Deal, as audience members dress up to catch [...]

Each time I hear the name Keith Hernandez I am taken back to March of 1989 when, at the New York Mets’ spring training facility, Darryl Strawberry threw a punch at the first-baseman. It was one of those forgettable moments, except for the line that someone got off about the incident: “It was the first [...]

Last week, The New York Times published two stories concerning the eligibility of tennis players to participate in NCAA competitions. The point of contention has arisen over a very high number of international players who have been dominating championship play over the last few years. Last year in the NCAA national championships, 38 of the [...]

March is going out like a crazed lion. The Final Four has offered excitement at the level of delirium, while off the court the dark underside of intercollegiate athletics had found numerous modes of expression pointing to levels of madness of another kind. Although the three cases examined here are considerably different in both seriousness and [...]

Welcome to March Madness ? or, rather, the Madness that is March. I will not use “March Madness” because CBS Inc. and the NCAA Inc. own the phrase “March Madness,” and I wouldn’t want to face a lawsuit for using this copyrighted phrase. So in deference to CBS, the NCAA and their all-star team of corporate [...]

As the second week of the Winter Olympic Games begins, the surprises continue to mount. Some are true surprises while others are simply a tribute to the slim margins of difference among elite athletes. Still others are rooted in the misplaced expectations of the press. By the end of the second Sunday of the games, the [...]

Here we are only five days into the Winter Olympic Games and already there have been several disappointing and magnificent moments. From the departure of Michelle Kwan to the always beautiful and astounding pairs skating, this Olympics is off to a very fast start. For many watching the NBC version of the games here in the [...]

Sunday is Super Bowl XL in Detroit. In the Roman Empire, the XL denoted the number 40. In a fortuitous parallel within the American Empire, the XL carries the meaning “Extra Large.” No doubt Super Bowl XL will be both extremely large and as decadent as one would expect of a Roman orgy in the [...]

It seemed like such a good idea, one whose time had finally come. Then, in one sweeping ruling, the Bush administration dealt what could be a fatal blow to another of Bud Selig’s dreams: Cuba is not welcomed to take part in the World Baseball Classic. The international tournament, scheduled to take place March 3-20 in [...]

At the end of its 36th season, ABC’s Monday Night Football — an institution of historical significance for broadcasting and American popular culture, as well as sport (scroll down to see Entertainment Weekly’s top 10 MNF moments) — passed into history, sort of. Though not disappearing entirely, when it returns next fall, it will migrate [...]

Several years ago the good people at the Miller Brewing Company put together the Miller Lite Survey of Sport in America. The survey, greeted by many with a roar of disbelief, found that bowling was the most popular participatory sport in the nation. We are now about to enter the Bowling Zone, a 16-day run of [...]

Last weekend, when I heard the news of the death of Sen. Eugene McCarthy, not long after hearing the news of the death of Richard Pryor, I thought how appropriate it was. McCarthy spent much of his Minnesota political career living in the shadow of Hubert Humphrey, the titular head of the Democratic-Farmer Labor Party [...]

Apparently the NCAA is so busy monitoring offensive school mascots that it has nearly forgotten about the issue of minority football coaches. The Black Coaches Association reminded the NCAA last month that during the past year black football coaching hires in big time programs failed to reach 1 percent. Seventeen of the 30 institutions that [...]