Newmark's Door

Tribute to the Sandman

Mariano Rivera: way better than whoever the second-best reliever in MLB history is.

The Wimbledon final this past weekend was fun

If you enjoyed watching Federer, you might also enjoy reading, or rereading, the late David Foster Wallace's piece, "Federer as Religious Experience".

And if you like that, don't miss Wallace's earlier piece on professional tennis, the inimitable "The String Theory".

I guess it's just supply and demand . . .

. . . but damn. If you want seats in UCLA's remodeled Pauley Pavilion, here's the freight:

Courtside seats will require a $500,000 donation to the capital campaign, payable over five years, plus an annual donation of $17,000 per seat to the Wooden Athletic Fund.

A one-time donation of $30,000 or more assures up to four seats mostly between the baskets in the lower half of the arena. Those tickets require annual Wooden Fund donations of $2,000 to $4,000 per seat, plus the face value of the tickets.

(Link via Rivals.com.)

"What Do You Think of Ted Williams Now?"

From the Esquire archives, June 1986, by the very talented Richard Ben Cramer. Long, but worth the time.

Personal seat licenses for the Berkeley football games . . .

. . . supposedly are listing for $225,000.

The Stanford ticket director quips, "And they give us crap for being elitists."

Two bittersweet stories

Gene Weingarten, "A Parting Thought".

No one accepted physical deterioration with greater grace and humor than my father. Over the last two decades of his life, his eyesight clouded into a soup -- at first, a nice consomme, but eventually minestrone, and a hearty one.

He was effectively blind, but remarkably cheerful about it. He read The Washington Post front to back every day, all day, on a device that magnified each letter to the size of a fist; polysyllabic words required three screens' worth of letters and a nimble short-term memory. My father understood the absurdity of it. He said that using this machine was like putting on mittens to tie your shoes.

Bill Simmons, "When great ones go, it might hurt us more than it does them."

In the academy award-winning classic Cocktail, Coughlin tells young Flanagan, "Everything ends badly, otherwise it wouldn't end." It's the single greatest yearbook quote ever. Hell, it may be the greatest movie quote ever. Either Coughlin was the Thoreau of bartending, or Thoreau the Coughlin of writing. One or the other. . . .

It's been a sports experience unlike anything I can remember. Red Sox fans refuse to turn against Ortiz. They just can't. They owe him too much for 2004 and 2007. It's like turning on Santa Claus or happy hour. Every Ortiz appearance is greeted with supportive cheers, every Ortiz failure is greeted with awkward silence. The fans are suffering just like he is. Only when he left 12 men on base against Anaheim on May 14 did I receive a slew of angry e-mails from back home, but even those tirades centered more around Terry Francona's steadfast refusal to drop Ortiz in the order. I cannot remember another Boston athlete stinking this long, and this fragrantly, without getting dumped on.

Not surprising, perhaps . . .

. . . but still discouraging. Officials now have to look carefully for match-fixing at Wimbledon.

"Us (Detroit) vs. Them (Pittsburgh) -- now it's on"

Detroit Free Press columnist, Shawn Windsor, offers an amusing look at the two Stanley Cup Finals cities.  

The (football) Gators will be loaded this coming year

So writes Sports Illustrated's Andy Staples (4/18).

Top Ten List of Reasons Why Carolina is Better Than Pittsburgh

It doesn't look good for the Carolina Hurricanes. But before the Penguin fans gloat too much, consider why living in Carolina is way better than living in Pittsburgh. Best two reasons:

6) Pittsburgh has four seasons: almost winter, winter, still winter and road construction.

2) Nobody ever relocates to Pittsburgh.