Around this time each year, the PGA Tour opens up its doors to any duffer with the price of admission and some good rounds of golf under his belt. This most democratic of professional sports really does provide an answer to those who say: "I can do that!" The PGA...

Hold on. This may come as a shock! Recent headlines suggest -- that playing professional football is dangerous. But how could it be otherwise? The game involves vicious, premeditated collisions between large and athletically talented men who have played the sport since they were in the peewee league. These warriors...

For twenty years now, the National Football League, in an ever-vigilant effort to find more ways to sell its product to the television networks, has featured 16 games in 17 weeks. From the fourth to the tenth week, each of the 32 teams has one week off. The bye-week system...

The media is all a-twitter about the sudden inability of baseball umpires to make any correct calls during this postseason. Safe is out and out is safe. The Alice-in-Wonderland performance of the men in blue has increased demands for instant replay. Baseball purists explode in response that, after all, the...

The visceral reaction to the news that Rush Limbaugh was part of a potential ownership group looking to purchase the St. Louis Rams was quite heartening. Dave Checketts, the owner of the St. Louis Blues hockey team, announced that Limbaugh had "become a complication and a distraction," and he was...

As a fan of the National Game and a card-carrying member of the Society for American Baseball Research, I have long loved the statistics that surround the game. Just ask any young fan for the current batting average of her favorite baseball player, and I bet you will get...

It has been months now since we have heard the word "steroids" uttered in the sporting news about the allegedly "cheating" baseball players. In early February, even before pitchers and catchers reported for spring training, anonymous sources reported that Alex Rodrigues had used performance enhancing drugs. Months later, an illegal...

Forty years ago on September 21, 1969, Wayne Maki almost killed Ted Green. Ted Green was one of the most feared of the National Hockey League gladiators. Superbly confident in his ability to control and pass the puck, Green made his opponents pay a physical price for entering his space...

The season-long suspension of LaGarrette Blount by the University of Oregon football team for sucker-punching Boise State's Byron Hout after last Thursday's game has kept sports mavens busy all weekend. All seem to agree that Blount's misconduct was outrageous and that it warranted serious discipline. They differ on whether...

Readers of this blog know that I am an ardent sports fan. I love the games. Sometimes, however, the people who attend the games just annoy me. Maybe it is because it rained so much this summer or that I am not ready for the academic year to begin once...

At Olympic Stadium in Berlin this past week, the young South African runner, Caster Semenya, blew away the field in the women's 800 meters at the International Association of Athletics Federation's track and field world championship. Semenya is an 18-year ingénue from the village of Fairlie in the Limpopo province....

The Philadelphia Eagles have signed Michael Vick to a one-year contract with a club option for a second year. While player personnel experts can decide whether this was a good football acquisition for the bridesmaid Eagles - they always seem to get close to the Lombardi Trophy but do not...

The most recent chapter in the baseball steroid scandal has produced a rare flat denial. David Ortiz has told us he did not take steroids. Do you believe him?

It is true that Roger Clemens also denied taking injections, but his denial runs up against an accuser and apparently some...

With apologies to Peter Finch's screed in Network, I have had it with the steroid controversy in baseball. Yesterday, I received a phone call from a reporter asking me if a ballplayer had any recourse when it is publicly disclosed that six years ago he tested positive for steroids.

You have undoubtedly heard about the litigation in Minnesota involving players on the Vikings who took StarCaps which contained the drug bumetanide, a substance said to mask the use of steroids which is banned by the National Football League. One problem (actually one of many problems with the case) is...

The announcement last week that Donald Fehr would be leaving his post next spring as Executive Director of the Major League Baseball Players Association offers an opportunity to reflect on the role of labor unions in professional sports, in particular in the National Pastime. Fehr said that he would propose...

Tennis is all a twitter about the sounds emanating from the five-foot five-inch frame of Michelle Larcher De Brito, the 16-year-old tennis phenom from Portugal. Ms. Larcher De Brito's sounds, variously termed as "shrieks," "wails" and "grunts," have caused a kafuffle in professional tennis of John McEnroe proportions. Ranked 91st...

Baseball's saga of sorrow continues. The latest hero to be toppled from his pedestal is Sammy Sosa, the joyous Dominican who, together with Mark McGwire, brought baseball back from the edge of despair with their home run derby in the 1998 season. That was a glorious season that reminded us...

When President Obama introduced Judge Sonia Sotomayor as his nominee to the Supreme Court to replace retiring Justice David Souter, the only decision of hers he mentioned was the famous baseball case of 1995. Of course, she has written hundreds of opinions, some in important cases, others resolving the day-to-day...

The emergence of women's collegiate sports at the varsity level since the early 1970s has been a significant social phenomenon. The number of women participating in sports has increased over 500 percent. This dramatic increase was not simply the result of the belated discovery by women of an interest...