Shaun White, Jersey Tomato
Shaun White, the Flying Tomato, rocks. Even in LAX, late at night, when he has better things to do like listen to some tunes and relax. He’s working, like the rest of us, yet he was talking, high-fiving, low-fiving, signing autographs, and generally being a Tomato worthy of a Jersey appellation. Tough skin but great [...]
Kathyrn Bertine’s Olympic Quest
ESPN’s e-ticket follows Kathryn Bertine’s quest to represent the United States at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Doing just about anything, it seems. The series is Bertine’s quirky, self-effacing and sport-defacing travelogue of her attempts to qualify in the women’s pentathalon, checking out team handball to a tortuous, tortured, and not at all circuitous route to [...]
Top Ten Hockey Books
I love books. I buy many more than I read, and lately I’ve been buying out of print or gently used editions from amazon.com to add to my collection. Typically the used tomes fill in from days when spending $15 on a book would have put a serious dent in my spending money. Now that [...]
Bertine to Beijing
Got an email from Kathryn Bertine, former ice skater, ice show skater, and very funny writer, about her deal with ESPN to pen a column chronicaling her quest to compete in the Beijing Olympics. She’s published one more sports book than me, used to skate at the rink in Colorado that used to bear my [...]
We’re Going To Lake Placid
Fifteen hours from now, I’ll be driving a car loaded with one smelly hockey bag, two well-worn sticks, two boxes of girl scout cookies, three suitcases, camera bag, case of trophies, box of NJ Devils Youth Hockey club pins, a cowbell, two parents (mine) and one son (also mine). 290 miles from here we’ll pass [...]
Over and Out From Torino
Olympic hockey has been anything but predictable. The early favorites have early exits, the early disappointments have Turined up the heat, and more than a few people are left scratching their heads. Chalk it up to global growth and interest. Chalk it up to blatant nationalism that the Canadians and Americans discount Scandanavia and TRFKAC [...]
Injured Elias Leaving Torino
Elias is on his way out of Torino. The good news is he’ll have a solid 10 days to let the ribs heal up before the knock’em sock’em Eastern Conference schedule resumes; the bad news is that he went through a lot of travel and personal wear and tear to play in one Olympic game. [...]
Czech In The Ribs
Patrik Elias took a hard hit to the ribs in the Czech Olympic team’s opener, and sat out last night’s game versus Switzerland. We should have surmised something was up when Patty didn’t get a shot off after the first period of the opener, and at first I attributed his omissions from the game stat [...]
Angela, Protector
Just how cool is Angela Ruggiero? Talk about picking a good time to score a goal in the Olympics. What she did today — picking up the puck at the goal line, skating coast to coast, finding a seam in the defense and snapping a shot to put the US ahead of Finland, 4-3, was [...]
Locomotive Cheer for Michelle Kwan
The locomotive cheer is one of the oldest college cheers. dervied from a pre-Civil War Army cheer. It’s forever ingrained in my Princeton experience, not just from four years on campus but through countless reunions and sporting events, in which a locomotive signals a job well done, a sign of respect, and conveys a thank-you [...]