Six months ago in this space I lamented the end of the baseball season. Now, with the arrival of April and the return of Spring and the national pastime, it’s only fitting that we remember the Georgia native who made history in 1947 by being The First. For most of us, being first is something …Continue Reading »
Loyal readers of this space know that I’m passionate about books and history. I also love sports and we’ve reached that point in the calendar where another season of college football has gone to earth, with their professional brethren soon to follow. Baseball doesn’t start for two months—the regular season at least—but pitchers and catchers …Continue Reading »
“Aprils have never meant much to me,” says Truman Capote in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and I agree with him. I was made for autumn. Give me, as Ray Bradbury wrote, “That country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons …Continue Reading »
Movie Review: Fury (2014) Starring Brad Pitt, Shia LaBeouf, Logan Lerman, Michael Pena, and Jon Bernthal. Written and directed by David Ayer. “War is cruelty and you cannot refine it.”—William Tecumseh Sherman The World War II movie has been around as long as the war itself. Hollywood began churning out anti-Nazi flicks even before combat …Continue Reading »
Former baseball commissioner and Yale president Bart Giamatti captured it best: Baseball, he wrote, breaks your heart: “It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, …Continue Reading »