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.

My father and uncles all encouraged me to play football: every present I ever got would be boots, kit, or a new ball, and that was just how I liked it.

Let's face it: if you're an elite basketball player and you choose to be socially and politically active, it could harm your brand.

In the 1980s when I was growing up in the Berkshire town of Maidenhead I was heavily into tennis. It was the era of Borg and McEnroe. I used to spend hours hitting balls against a wall, imagining I was beating them both.

At the time when I started, coming out of football, I always used a forearm or an elbow. When it became Bionic is when I said it was Bionic. I went to some secret doctor in Istanbul who put some Bionic stuff in there.