“It’s Not Personal, Sonny. It’s Strictly Business”

Much has been written about the Derek Jeter situation. I was talking to my brother-in-law last week about it, and I brought up some relevant and relatively obscure illustrative points. One, that I love, is Tom Seaver’s incredulity at ownership’s shock that players, the most competitive people on Earth, were equally fierce at the bargaining […]

874 Retired Ballplayers Are Gulping Bitter Cups of Coffee

In the final episode of M*A*S*H, the pompous doctor portrayed by actor David Ogden Stiers gets a sendoff that’s arguably one of the most indelible images in television history. After seven seasons of “Major Charles Emerson Winchester” trumpeting his own self-importance, breeding and surgical skills, this upper-crust scion of a prominent Boston family leaves Korea […]