The Score

New Yorkers are abuzz with their Yankees back in the thick of the World Series here at the end of October. The annual first of November New York City Marathon is also running its 40th edition on Sunday and New York is as crazy for the event as it was in its early frenzy days of the 1970's. For the second year, more than 100,000 applied and 40,000 will step up to the starting line at the Verazzano Narrows Bridge...

I'm joining the chorus that has long been begging for instant replay in baseball. There are examples of blown calls at crucial moments that made the difference in a team's winning or losing. For me, it was Tuesday night's Yankees/Angels American League Championship Series game that pushed me over the edge...a game that nobody could claim should have gone the other way...

There are dozens upon dozens of black-tie fundraiser dinners throughout each year, usually backing worthwhile causes while offering special guests and entertainment. Tuesday night was the annual night for Billie Jean King's Women's Sports Foundation and it has been reported consistently throughout the 30 years of this dinner that it is the lively night that stands out among all the others. Veteran newswoman Cokie Roberts began her remarks on Tuesday by recounting just how many dreadfully dreary political evenings she had suffered through in that very Waldorf Astoria Ballroom...

The sports world is awash with rich storylines this week. The baseball playoff season has kicked off with the Minnesota Twins willing their way out of their Metrodome and into Yankee Stadium with the nail-biting drama of perhaps the greatest regular season-ending game in baseball history...

Mothers across America are either mandating or pleading that their sons don't play football, and if you read the weekly gridiron injury reports, moms' fears are well-founded. The NFL season is a mere three weeks old, yet the list of players already lost for the whole year is long...

Architects, journalists, and fans have toured various sports stadia to compare and comment on their myriad cozy charms and spectacular vistas. One of my favorites is Camden Yards, technically called Oriole Park, home of the Baltimore Orioles. Fairly new, finished in 1992, its intimacy, nestled within its urban surroundings, its eye-pleasing asymmetrical field pay homage to the magnificent urban ballparks built in the early 1900's...

Serena Williams' outburst of angry obscenities has been cause for comment and debate all week, but I feel one major point has been missing from the discussion...

The U.S. Open Tennis Championships are nearing the end of their two-week run in New York at the moment and, off-hand, I can’t think of another sporting event whereby the gravitas of the event is so huge in so many measurable ways and yet the television audience is so minimal. Thanks to the 17-year-old Cinderella story out of Marietta, Georgia, the irrepressible fighter Melanie Oudin, the ratings this year have actually been elevated over recent, post-Andre Agassi years...

Any sport played outdoors presents variables. Snow on a football field, strong wind on a golf course, late afternoon shadows creeping across a tennis court.  Weather and varying conditions are usually equal for two opponents on any given day, but there are athletes whose entire careers can fall under the influence of home field conditions. You'll hear football players make the point that they played, for instance, their entire careers in Green Bay, or Buffalo, and thus their rushing average wouldn't be fair to compare to the stats of players who had long careers in warm-weather locations...

Usain Bolt may be the most electric athlete on the planet today. His two new world records at the just-finished World Track Championships in Berlin blow the mind. The 100 meters in 9.58 seconds, the 200 meters in 19.19 seconds….even his closest rivals admit they struggle to fathom the talent of this 6’5” Jamaican who makes sprinting like the wind look like a jog in the breeze...

It's been a huge week for sports news. It started of course with Michael Vick joining the Philadelphia Eagles. Vick's lead-off interview on 60 Minutes Sunday night brought the news-magazine 12 million viewers, a rating 34% above its summer average. Not even healthcare reform has created a louder buzz than convicted dog fight criminal Vick back on the football field. And the debate has legs...

One of Olympic swimming's all-time greats Janet Evans states that her beloved sport is in grave danger of becoming a mockery. Long-time U.S. head swim coach Mark Schubert fears the gravitas of the sport has been threatened to the point of losing its status as the cornerstone of the Olympic Games. Michael Phelps' coach cries out that the history of their sport has been tossed out like rotten garbage...

I watched Lance win those historic seven Tours de France, 1998 to 2005, and each time, with the rest of the world, I shook my head that this almost miracle cancer survivor could dominate this, the most grueling of endurance events. Each time I found this Lance Armstrong awe-inspiring, especially in his rabbit-quick, relentless cadence up the steep climbs that are unfathomable to even the accomplished weekend cyclist. And each time, with I suspect the rest of the world, I found this guy cold, arrogant, and highly unlikeable in his superiority...

Technology is changing our world in exponential ways and that certainly includes the world of sports. In some instances, I'm honestly not sure where I stand on the wizardrous advances. It's not like we can revert back to wooden tennis racquets when Teflon and boron are the materials du jour. As they say, you can't put the genie back in the bottle...

For women, golf was the fist successful professional sport in this country. Just on the heels of World War II, former track Olympian Babe Didrickson Zaharias, Patty Berg, and Louise Suggs may have had to organize their tournaments themselves, but they became household names and set the stage for the first accepted sport where women could make a living playing their passion...