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.” 

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. 

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

Who is that fellow playing left field for the Red Sox this season? He bats left-handed and throws right-handed and is hitting .327 with six homers and 22 RBI after a slow start and has led the Red Sox recently on an eight-game win streak — and has hit saf … (read more)

Francois Clemmons has sung spirituals his entire life and is a preeminent interpreter and champion today of the American Negro Spiritual. He will give a concert in Middlebury on May 6.

When Middlebury’s Angus Barstow won the “Hills are Alive” Tournament in Stowe last September he took home the top prize: $297.00.

I’m trying to break my newspaper habit. For all of my adult life, I have read a newspaper, real newspapers, made out of paper, newsprint. Hard copy. 

I don’t actually remember my first game. I was too young. But I can imagine it, the incomparable thrill of it, because I have been similarly affected every time I have gone to Fenway since.