Whenever you pick up a newspaper or listen to a sports report, all the talk is about playoffs. It is the college football playoffs or the National Football League playoffs that dominate the headlines. But when you really think about it, why all the fuss about making the playoffs? Take the ...
Even in the worst days of Jim Campbell, the front office bungling going on in with the Detroit Tigers was not this bad. Al Avila, the man who helped the Boston Red Sox land J.D. Martinez for its success this past season, is currently the general manager of the Tigers. I use the term general ...
Watching this year's University of Michigan basketball team brings back a lot of memories for me. The year was 1965 and I was working downstate at McLouth Steel in Trenton, just a rock's throw from the murky Detroit River. It was a great time to be a sports fan in Detroit. The Tigers were a ...
It is hard to predict for sure, but I would say that University of Michigan head football coach Jim Harbaugh and Green Bay Packers mentor Mike McCarthy are sitting on hot seats today. Now, the two skippers aren't necessarily in as much peril as they were just a week ago. But the events of ...
With the Copper Island Classic last weekend, the high school hockey season has begun. As a former Houghton Gremlins forward, these are the days I live for each season. I played two seasons for the Gremlins during my four years in the school, and I would not trade the experiences I have for ...
There was once a time when Thanksgiving football was looked forward to with great relish. But that was in a more enlightened era when dollars were not the one and only thing. I am old enough to fondly remember that time. Deer hunters, coming in from the camps, could look forward to two ...
Playing on a winning team can be an enjoyable experience at nearly every level. But how about those talented athletes who spend most of their careers on the losing side of the equation? Dillion Hueckstaedt and Haley Makela of Finlandia University are two athletes who earned their spurs the ...
It's a well-known fact that statistics are good for reading and talking about. But I think late Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi hit it right on the head. “Statistics are meaningless.” Lombardi once said. “The only statistic that means anything are wins …. and ...
The first time I saw the Traverse City St. Francis High School football program in action came twenty years ago. TC St. Francis was playing L'Anse in a pre-regional game at the Superior Dome in Marquette. That was in a more enlightened time when the MHSSA was trying to cut down on traveling ...
If there is a major league baseball franchise out there looking for a way to rebuild without spending the equivalent of the national debt, it would be advised to follow the way the Milwaukee Brewers are doing it. Now, the Brewers are not like the money-rich New York Yankees, Los Angeles ...
There was a time when rivalries were easy to find in the Upper Peninsula. Wherever you found a school of any size, you could find a nearby rival school without any trouble. Mass City had a rival a few miles away in Rockland. J.A. Doelle and Chassell, separated by nine miles, were fierce ...
With the playing of the annual Black and Gold game Saturday night, and the start of the NHL season taking place last Wednesday, hockey season is in swing. At the NHL level, we have already been treated to some crazy, high-scoring affairs, starting with Washington’s 7-0 blanking of Boston ...
While watching some of the Ryder Cup matches over the weekend, I had to wonder whatever happened to the once-gentile sport of golf. The spectators at the matches in Paris, France (not Texas), appeared like they came straight of the set of the movie, “Happy Gilmore.” The unruly crowd ...
When I first heard, via Twitter, that the New York Mets were going to activate third baseman David Wright for the final series of the season, my first thought was, “finally!” Wright has been a staple in the Mets’ roster for the last 14 years. He was named captain of the team in 2013, ...
The late Yon Paananen was a bit of a sports legend in the four-county area. The Alston native played either baseball or softball in eight different decades - starting in the early 1930s with the Pelkie town team. A man of a few words, Paananen usually had little to say about anything. But ...
For a football coach who was literally given the keys to the palace, Michigan's Jim Harbaugh will be under the gun to produce big this fall. Signed to a lucrative contract four years ago, the U of M alumnus has come up short in a couple of departments. One, he has yet to win a Big 10 title. ...
The lessons learned in the past apparently didn't stick with some B1G 10 coaches and athletic directors. The conference, which I liked better when it had just ten teams, is facing problems bigger than wins and losses. One only has to look at the scandals at Ohio State and Maryland this ...
In the rush that seemingly all professional franchises are in nowadays to build new stadiums and arenas, you have to wonder what the reasoning behind it all really is. Certainly, the almighty dollar is a big part of it. Here in Michigan, we've seen the Detroit Red Wings and Detroit Pistons ...
Yesterday was Aug. 1. As I sat down in the morning to set up the agate of our sports section (the deep statistics section on page 2B), something caught my eye: the Baltimore Orioles were 32-75 on the season after a loss to the New York Yankees. The Orioles are last place in the American League ...
There is little doubt that 1968 is remembered in this country as a watershed year. There were so many earth-shaking events fifty years ago, it's hard to put them in order. You had the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy to begin with. The loss of those two charismatic ...