The Cardinal Way we keep hearing about does not really exist in a tangible sense. It is just a way to understand baseball -- a lens like our own experience is a lens. The same goes for Red Sox Nation.
Acting out, getting left behind and winding up too big for Little League is no way to go through life. A personal history from the rugged baseball diamonds of Billings, Montana, haunted by the baddest of the Bad News Bears.
The Cardinals are a very good baseball team, and their fans are very good fans. No one really argues with all that, but -- with the Cardinals back in the World Series and the Best Fans In Baseball back in the spotlight -- no one seems to like it much, either. What's so worth hating, here?
Yes, it's frustrating when NBA players insist on acting like reasonable people and sign the richest possible deals as free agents, context be damned. But there is a time and place for taking a discount. These particular examples are not at all examples of that, but still.
Marv Levy sings, the Jets are shouted about for hard-to-discern reasons, and a journey to the heart of the Jacksonville Axis of Sads. Also predictions for this week's slate of NFL games.
At it's best, it's ike following a real-time, real-life Friday Night Lights, right down to the appreciation of the mundane, the athletic struggles, the triumphs, irrational fans, obnoxious competitors and loving marriages.
Cycling has been a defiantly, narrowly European sport for a long time. That's changing, as of course it would and should, thanks to a crop of promising new riders from South America and Africa. It's not at all clear how ready cycling is for that, but change is coming all the same.
Karl Sides is a man and a St. Louis Rams fan. He is also a heavily costumed, widely recognized and carefully branded superfan named Ram Man, which is something else entirely.
A national team is still just a team. It can’t get by on the trappings of nationality alone. Sharing a nationality with the players is no substitute for sharing a sense of purpose with them. You need to know that when you look at them, they will sometimes look back at you. Otherwise, why does a team exist at all?
