May 9, 1949, 75 years ago: William Martin Joel is born in The Bronx, New York. It was a Monday, not a Saturday, so I suppose it doesn't matter if he was born at 9:00. He grew up in Levittown and Hicksville, Long Island, about 30 miles east of New York City. He blue-collar Jewish: His parents split up when he was a kid, and his single mother struggled. He had a mind and a talent bigger and tougher than the suburbs, and he knew it. But it wasn't enough. He was desperate, searching. Music became his lifeline. When Hicksville High School told him, shortly before he was supposed to graduate in 1 ..read more

So the last Yankee game I posted about was on April 30. Here goes: Last Wednesday -- who decided it should be spelled "Wednesday," but pronounced "Wenzday," anyway? A real weirdo. -- May 1, the Yankees played the 3rd game of a 4-game series against the team they're currently fighting for 1st place in the American League Eastern Division, the Baltimore Orioles, at Camden Yards. Before that, in 9 tries this season, they had scored 2 or fewer runs in a game, and lost them all. How many times, Ed Rooney? Anyway, this time, they got 2 runs, on a 2-run home run by Oswaldo Cabrera in the 5th. But ..read more

May 6, 1954, 70 years ago: Roger Bannister becomes the 1st competitive runner to run a mile race in less than 4 minutes. Roger Gilbert Bannister was born on March 23, 1929, in Harrow, West London. He went to University College School in his hometown, and medical school at the University of Oxford and at St. Mary's Hospital Medical School, which is now part of Imperial College London. He was 8 years old on August 28, 1937, when fellow Englishman Sydney Wooderson ran a mile in 4 minutes, 6.4 seconds at Motspur Park in London. This was a world record. On July 1, 1942, the record was reduc ..read more

May 4, 1949, 75 years ago: A plane crash wipes out what might have been the best soccer team in the world at the time. Torino Football Club, based in the Northern Italian city that the English language calls Turin, had dominated Serie A, Italy's football league. They had won Serie A in 1928, and Italy's version of the FA Cup, the Coppa Italia, in 1936. Ferrucio Novo, who had played for Torino as a defender, had gotten rich in the leather industry -- possibly appropriate, given the team's symbol, also the city's symbol, a bull. (And the team was known as Il Toro, The Bull.) In 1939 ..read more

May 4, 1944, 80 years ago: The St. Louis Browns baseball team has its finest hour. And it has nothing to do with their winning their only Pennant that season. The St. Louis Browns, playing in a racially segregated city, announce that they are dropping their policy restricting black fans to the bleachers at Sportsman's Park, which they own. The St. Louis Cardinals, tenants despite their great success since 1926 and the Browns' long failure, have no choice but to comply. In their game that day, the Browns beat the Detroit Tigers, 2-0. Nelson "Nels" Potter pitched a 5-hit shutout. George ..read more

The 1st full month of the Major League Baseball season is over. The Yankees have done better than I had expected, but still not good enough. Two nights ago, they began a road series against the Baltimore Orioles. The O's moved the left field wall at Camden Yards back 26 feet, specifically to stop the Yankees' righthanded sluggers -- Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton and Gleyber Torres -- from hitting home runs there. It has had some success: Torres, in particular, has been affected by it. Clarke Schmidt started on Monday night, and he got into the 6th inning, but was removed after 92 pitches ..read more

Last night, the Denver Nuggets, the defending NBA Champions, beat the Los Angeles Lakers, 108-106 at the Ball Arena (formerly the Pepsi Center) in Denver. The Nuggets thus won the Playoff series, 4 games to 1, and ended the Lakers' season. Nikola Jokić of the Nuggets has clearly been the best player in the NBA the last 2 years. Steph Curry of the Golden State Warriors has been the best player over the last 10 years. And LeBron James, now with the Lakers, has been the best player over the last 20 years.  LeBron might not have been the better all-around player than Steph. But there is n ..read more

Is it me? It is the fact that I'm not trying to do a writeup after every game, and sticking to once a week, the reason the Yankees haven't gotten off the kind of slow start they got off to these last few years? I know what you're thinking: "Come on, Uncle Mike, the world does not revolve around you. Didn't your parents ever teach you that?" Yes, they did. But it's not true. As far as any of us knows, the world only exists through our own perceptions. Self-preservation, and thus selfishness, is a default position. Or else Donald Trump never would have become President. Cliché Alert: Bu ..read more

Inside the M25, the highway that serves as London's "capital beltway," there are 14 soccer teams in England's Football League. Two of these are in North London, 4.7 miles apart: Arsenal Football Club, or Arsenal F.C., or sometimes simply "The Arsenal," Capital T, Capital A; and Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, a.k.a. Tottenham, a.k.a. Spurs, or the Spuds, or the Totts, or the Tiny Totts. Fans of each call the other "The Scum," Capital T, Capital S. In the immortal words of that great broadcaster of American football, Keith Jackson, "These two teams just... don't... like each other!" Tottenh ..read more

April 27, 1994, 30 years ago: The Republic of South Africa ends apartheid by holding its 1st all-races general election. Lines of people miles, and hours, long developed, stunning the world with footage. It shook many people up, including Americans, who had taken the right to vote for granted. The African National Congress won 62 percent of the vote, resulting in 252 seats in the national legislature, the National Assembly. As a result, its Leader, Nelson Mandela, was sworn in as President on May 10. The National Party, which went into the election as the party holding the government ..read more