Oh boy, Mumia news in Salon. Look, I'm against the death penalty, but if you can't get your own brother to testify under oath that you didn't empty a pistol into the face of a man lying defenseless on the ground, you're not high on my list of priorities. They ain't gonna kill him, and they ain't gonna let him go. Let it go yourself.

Gotta say that's the best summation of the case I ever read. Drew really nailed it.

Boy, that was as great a summation of Mario Lemieux's career as I expect to read.

Not a big believer in the whole generation thing. Class, race and region, just to name three factors off the top of my head, play far greater roles in determining character. True, the two intersect sometimes -- as a Catholic born in the late 60s, for example, I was part of the first group of Americans baptized in English and educated according to the Vatican II reforms. But I would have far more in common with someone born in my neighborhood either eighteen years before or eighteen years after me than an exact contemporary born under radically different circumstances.

Actually, my experience has been that people who play the generational card are usually opportunists, like those irritating Republican operatives in the early 90s who tried to gut the Social Security system by mobilizing "their" generations.

Did anyone notice that utter pile of horsecrap Roberts did about the Chinese skating coach last night? How can you do an "up by his bootstraps" style profile of someone in that position without noting the totalitarianist regime that finances the program?

For whatever reason, the Chinese government has chosen to raise its profile in international sport over the last twenty years, following the patterns set by the U.S.S.R. and the Eastern Bloc at the end of the last century. One can only hope that their program is not run with the ruthlessness that led to the steroid abuse inflicted on those East German children unfortunate enough to show athletic promise in those days. But even if it is not, why does NBC feel the need to sugarcoat this program as something it is emphatically not: an inspirational story of a former figure skater hoping to improve his country's fortunes in his sport?

I'm willing to take this as satire, but why pick on Catholics about Halloween? That's a Catholic holiday; its the Fundies that used to rail about the allegedly satanic aspects of the holiday. In fact, I always found attacks on Halloween to be thinly veiled (and wholly unironic) attacks on the Church.

I finished the book this article was excerpted from a few days ago, and I must say that I really enjoyed it. It has essays on all thirty two countries participating in the World Cup this year, which gives readers the opportunity to see cultures they may not normally see. Check it out.

To echo gerontion72 here, there's another way the ratings numbers do not reflect interest in soccer. I watched the US game in a Portugese bar in Northeast Philadelphia. For its big screen TVs the bar used what appeared to be a Brazilian satellite station geared towards Brazilians in this country. Can't imagine that that showed up on any rating meters.

I don't know. When I was in high school, I harped relentlessly on someone who told me that his favorite metal band was Spinal Tap. In retrospect this is not something I feel particularly good about. So I'm glad that this person took the event with such good humor.

Its about time someone in the MSM, let alone Cooperstown, recoginzes Downtown's contributions to the game.

Seriously, great to see the reference. I'm not one for nostalgia usually, but I'll make an exception for Brown. He always seemed to be hitting pinch-hit walk-off home runs for the Phillies. In my mind, I can still hear Harry Kalas and Richie Ashburn going nuts over another one of Downtown Ollie Brown's feats.

You know, its funny how you can get so wrapped up in your devotion to your team's incompetence that you almost find it annoying when they're successful. My favorite baseball team has performed well the last month, and its 1st baseman has started to look like the second coming of Albert Pujos, and all I can think about is next year. That's when the Philadelphia Phillies will cross a threshold uncrossed by any other team in organized sports (well, excepting, maybe, the team the Harlem Globetrotters plays): 10,000 losses. Actually, if you count their years in Worcester, they've already reached it.

I haven't seen the play yet, so I'm wondering: is it possible Drew may have seen a Fed Ex driver in the first base stands and fell back on his instincts?

Fox probably chose this particular sitcom for a very special reason. Sure, its a godawful piece of crap, and therefore a perfect means to punish baseball fans, which Mr Kaufman long ago proved was the whole purpose of Fox's baseball coverage. But fans of quality television suffer doubly, for it was to make room for this show that Fox pulled Arrested Development off Sunday nights. If that's not a fungo bat to the nether regions, then I don't know what is.

I think if the Hall of Fame question was phrased differently, people, even King, might care a great deal more.

To wit: "Does Buck O'Neill belong in the Hall of Fame?"

The Boca Juniors story nearly brought tears to my eyes, but it did set off my urban legend detecting senses. And sure enough, there is a similar listing at Snopes.com. Oh well.

Holy crap! Sometimes you just have to take a step back and admire the skills of a writer. Its been a long time since I've read as well crafted a session of venom spewing as Ms. Havrilesky's take on "Grease: You're the One that I Want!"

I really enjoyed that.