George Vecsey

Pennant races drain the energy from the best of them. Old-fashioned baseball races are to me the most grueling daily test in any sport. Gotta keep coming out, every day, in the face of looming disaster.

I would never tell anybody to give up hockey - the great sports we have here - basketball, lacrosse - rugby coming into its own - we've got so many great team sports, and I say hold on to them.

All our lives are enriched by the leadership and excellence and confidence of female athletes, whether the Mia Hamms and Maya Moores we know or the field hockey, lacrosse and track and field athletes we do not necessarily know.

Baseball cannot avoid conflicts. Games are played on Good Friday, the most solemn day on the Christian calendar. On Oct. 2, 1978, they played on Rosh Hashana, and Bucky Dent hit one into the screen at Fenway Park. Supply your own moral.

For years, I have been harboring memories of my first major league game at a place named Ebbets Field in Brooklyn.

Fans all have their memories of pennant races, good memories, sick memories.

Some anthems are great for sports. You've got the Russian national anthem... 'O Canada,' how wonderful is that for hockey... but I chose the Italian national song because at my first World Cup, I saw the Italians play four times, and they won all four times - they won the championship.

We all know the Red Sox did not win a World Series for 86 years after unloading Ruth, and the Cubs just might be carrying some heavy weight for past karmic transgressions.

Without editors planning assignments and copy editors fixing mistakes, reporters quickly deteriorate into underwear guys writing blogs from their den.

In August 1945, a former Army pilot with an artificial leg pitched five and a third innings for Washington against Boston. This would turn out to be Bert Shepard's only major league game, and it remains one of the heartwarming moments in baseball history.

It is no fun lining up in your own building - as the hockey players say - and touching the hands of fellow stubbly louts who have just sent you off to the proverbial cabin on the lake.

Some of the most inspiring moments in sports have come from players with physical defects. Tom Dempsey, born without toes on his right foot, kicked a 63-yard field goal in 1970, using a straighter, wider shoe.