Karl Lindholm: Sports Illustrated emphasized the ‘writing’ in ‘sports writing’

The school was abuzz when I arrived. Students crowded around me, their enthusiasm barely contained. I was their English teacher and coach — and on this day in February 1975 their hero and exemplar. 

Karl Lindholm: Coach’s course puts sports and its lessons in context

Mike Leonard and Scott Langerman are friends — friends and colleagues. Together, they offered a Winter Term course at Middlebury College this January, “Sports and Society: How Sports Transcend Their Sidelines.” 

Clippings: Rip Van Winkle back in the classroom

“I’m Professor Van Winkle — you can call me ‘Rip.’” That’s how I introduced myself this fall on Sept. 9 at 9 a.m. to 16 fresh-faced Middlebury College first-year students.

Karl Lindholm: Brooks was great, but where’s Ray?

Cornwall’s Roth “T” Tall, consummate Baltimore Oriole fan, opened the Rotary Club meeting at Rosie’s Restaurant with a eulogy for Brooks Robinson.

Clippings: Polishing some pearls of wisdom

My sainted mother, the original Jane Lindholm, had an aphorism for every occasion and loved to trot them out. She was a regular Ben Franklin, and I was a gold mine for this predilection, given my adolescent indifference to manual labor and disciplined eff … (read more)

Karl Lindholm: Mabrey earns athletic immortality at Middlebury College

In the tenth grade, Edie MacAusland started ski racing at the Franconia Ski Club. At a race at the Snow Bowl, she stole a bib and hung it in her bedroom “as a source of inspiration.” 

Karl Lindholm: Checking in with the peripatetic Bill Lee

I gave Bill Lee a call last week, hoping he was at his home in Craftsbury and we might arrange a visit. I was concerned for his health.

Karl Lindholm: Mind over matter: Chris, Luke and Martin

Satchel Paige supposedly said, “Age is a case of mind over matter: if you don’t mind, it don’t matter.” The sentiment applies to Middlebury athlete Chris Hamilton, who has competed at masters track and field events throughout New England, and in other par … (read more)

Karl Lindholm: The Rotarians, COVID and a Colossus

Karl muses on the Impossible Dream Red Sox of 1967, the amazing Shohei Ohtani and Major League Baseball this year.

Karl Lindholm: Nuf Ced, Tessie, Honey Fitz and the Royal Rooters

The timing was right, and ripe, for those first-generation Irish boys to be swept up by the baseball fever that had overtaken America after the Civil War — and indeed the Irish dominated the early game.

Karl Lindholm: Another woman in the Baseball Hall of Fame?

A long time ago, Dec. 9, 1999 to be exact, in my first year offering these pearls of wisdom in the Independent, I started a column with “Fenway Park: What a dump!” and went to offer additional observations in that vein.

Karl Lindholm: The third front of baseball’s integration: Trois Rivières, 1946

Road trip to Trois Rivières, Quebec, for a ballgame. At least that was the plan.

Karl Lindholm: Local boy makes good — in golf!

Hogan Beazley, a 2019 graduate of Middlebury Union High School, and now Middlebury College as well, has done his namesake proud.

Karl Lindholm: Vic Power & Piper Davis: Should have been first!

One thing the Red Sox and Yankees had in common, historically, was a reluctance to sign dark-skinned players after the historic breakthrough in 1947 of Jackie Robinson with the Dodgers and Larry Doby with the Indians. 

Mending Wall and Yankee Friendship

Many of the poems of Robert Frost, the Bard of Ripton, are celebrations and deliberations on seasonal change in this part of the world.

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