My favorite Red Sox player is Lucas Giolito . . .

Giolito is a solid major league pitcher with a career won/loss record of 73-66 – and I knew his grandmother.

August 1972: My last (of six) Army Reserve “summer camps,” this one at Fort Knox, Kentucky, working in the hospital there.  After my two weeks of duty, I was headed back to Cleveland in my VW Beetle (bought new for $1,995) where I was teaching high school … (read more)

“I would have recruited her if she came from Mars!”

Duncan Edwards, a lifelong educator, described Jeff Brown as “a great coach but an even better man. My son is a better man for having been in his presence — there is no truer or lasting measure of success than that.”

Writing about Pete Rose filled me with despair. Pete died last September at age 83. I was hoping interest in him might fade with the man. Alas, he’s back.

A common style of offense in basketball is the “motion” offense. Like much of life, it is defined by an oxymoron: constant change.

The big event in the U.S. sports world this week is the annual college draft of the National Football League. There is a genuine possibility that Thomas Perry, a Middlebury College senior, will be one of the 250 players selected to join the approximately … (read more)

Last week, Thursday, was Major League Baseball’s Opening Day, despite the fact that the Dodgers and Cubs had played two official games in Japan the week before.

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 t … (read more)

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.