Clippings: Here comes the 10:42, right on time!

I’m in church when the Amtrak train, the Ethan Allen Express, rumbles by on Sunday mornings. It used to be at 11:05, right near the end of the service during the last hymn or the closing words. The schedule has changed: now it goes by at 10:42, right in the middle of the sermon or reflection. Every Sunday.

In January, I got a call from my college friend Greg: “Hey Karl, want to see Cooper Flagg in person?” he asked. “Heck, yes,”  I said.

Here’s the setting: The cavernous Virtue Field House at Middlebury College, 10 a.m. on a quiet Sunday morning early in the fall, the football season. Some 40 to 50 young men, all dressed similarly, shorts and t-shirts with “Middlebury Football” lettering, … (read more)

October 1975: I was a young secondary school teacher in Cleveland at University School, teaching English and coaching baseball and basketball (yes, I’m that old).

When Middlebury College women’s volleyball team defeated Manhattanville College in the 2023 NCAA postseason tournament it gave Middlebury volleyball coach Sarah Raunecker 500 wins exactly for her career at Middlebury.

Some time ago, at a Reunion event at Middlebury College, I saw an older fellow sitting by himself. His badge said he was in the class of 1957. I had a question I wanted to pose to him. I introduced myself and asked, “Who was the most prominent athlete on … (read more)

The baseball, this magical orb, the actual baseball, Angell’s small miracle of design and utility, has not essentially changed in nearly a century.

I must begin this column with a correction, a mea culpa. In my last column, about golfer Keegan Bradley who was born in Woodstock and spent his early years there, I declared that he was the “most prominent and accomplishment sports figure from Vermont on … (read more)

Who is the most prominent and accomplished athlete or sports figure from Vermont on the national or international stage? I have my own candidate.

My second night at Middlebury in the fall of 1963, I was roused from my bed after midnight and dispatched with the other freshman men to serenade the senior women from the lawn in front of Forest Hall. That night, I stood behind the biggest person I had e … (read more)

If you are a basketball fan, you probably know the name “Cooper Flagg.” This past basketball season, he was the best high school player in the country.

Bill Walton died at 71 on May 27, not an age where you can say he was cheated in life, but it does seem he died too young. He was making such a joyful noise in the world.

I didn’t think it would ever happen. Practically speaking, I didn’t think it was possible: that is, that the brilliance of Black baseball players during the 60 years of baseball’s segregation at the highest level could ever be officially acknowledged in t … (read more)

Have you been to Cooperstown? Recently? It’s about three and a half hours from here, the last 45 minutes of which are off the thruway and run through the beautiful hilly terrain of central New York.

“I think my passion for baseball started when I was four or five and my dad gave me a baseball card — a card of Albert Belle (a star for the Cleveland Indians),” Freddy Mosier told me over a beer at Fire and Ice last Sunday evening.