Karl Lindholm: Barnes Boffey was a real person

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 ever met, my classmate Barnes Boffey, all 6’8”, 250+ pounds of him. I looked right into the small of his back. 

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. 

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)