Great fighters are supposed to have something called “heart,” but it’s not easy to understand where it comes from or what its limits are. In Joe Frazier‘s case, it came from a rural upbringing replete with bootleg whiskey, one-armed fathers,…
Death is final, but it leaves you with the same old questions of form and content. What to say, what mood to strike? And how to deliver — a question not just of style but composure. If you can’t get…
For the first time in nearly four decades, baseball will welcome Opening Day without the presence of George Steinbrenner — neither front and center, as he was for most of his tenure as owner of the New York Yankees, nor…
Every year after the Super Bowl, I pull the plug on sports. Football is over, baseball has yet to start, and I don’t much care about other sports except boxing, which is not a game and has no season, anyway….
Henry Allingham and Harry Patch, two of the three surviving British veterans of the First World War and the last two who saw action in the trenches of the Western front, died within a week of one another last month. Allingham…
On the 40th anniversary of the moon landing, it’s tempting to emulate William F. Buckley, who was asked how he would describe the event. “With silence,” Buckley said. This defining human achievement soon had the effect of making such awe…
For devotees of an always-troubled sport, Alexis Arguello‘s death on July 1 at 57 brought back memories of the elegant boxing master of the 1970s and early 1980s. It also reminded me of the conversation I had with him at…
World War One: A Short History By Norman Stone (Basic Books, 240 pages, $25) The pacifist’s preferred term for any war is “senseless,” but more troubled observers would be hard-pressed to apply such a judgment across the board. Even seemingly…
Recently I began noticing on tabloid covers and website homepages frequent stories involving two people named Jon and Kate. I don’t know who they are. The brief headlines and teasers I’ve seen don’t identify them, as in, “Former Olympians Jon…