Karl Lindholm: Women’s hoop has a record breaker: Alexa Mustafaj

In the quarterfinals of the NESCAC women’s basketball tournament on Feb. 17, Middlebury was down by four in the third quarter to the dreaded Amherst Mammoths. 

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. 

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.” 

“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.

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

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)

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.” 

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.