A victorious scream Down Under

Reading through my sports section of The Syracuse Post-Standard on Tuesday morning, I came across a small photograph of British tennis star Andy Murray that caught my eye. That mouth! So elongated, I thought. Was it a special lens used by Associated Press photographer Vincent Thian down there in Melbourne for the 2016 Australian open…

Going for the green

Every year at this time, I turn on the Golf Channel and wish. Wish I were in Hawaii. Wish I were really good at golf. Wish I could be playing really good golf in Hawaii right now. Of course — pun intended — I have to be content with clicking on The Golf Channel and…

So far, not so good for the Orange

Syracuse sports fans will gather round their screens and hope for the best tonight. The Orange men’s basketball team will trot onto the court at Boston College and try very hard not to fall to 0-5 in the Atlantic Coast Conference standings. That 0-4 start is not good news here in the heart of upstate…

First half ends with a 7th-place finish

When last I reported in from the Thursday Night Men’s League rolling at Bowling Green in North Syracuse, our Cici’s Pizza squad was battling mightily to remain among the top teams for the first half of our season. Nope. When the first 15 weeks were said and done, we’d finished in seventh place out of…

Sad, sweet, over

An odd feeling filled me as my dear wife Karen and I settled into our seats in the Carrier Dome for the final time in this 2015 college football season Saturday. It looked familiar enough, a sparse crowd that the Sunday paper listed as what I figure as a bought-but-did-not-attend 30,317 in place for the…

Another hot bowling Sunday

We rolled our second Sunday special session last week. This time, I arrived for the 10 a.m. start slightly sleepy-eyed after working the closing shift at my new job. My practice rolling at Bowling Green in North Syracuse did not go well, as I felt like an old man pleading with his joints to loosen…

Drop the Puck!

I’m the guy at the hockey game who likes to yell “Drop the puck” at the officials when I think he’s keeping the guys with the sticks waiting in the faceoff circles too long. Last week I learned a new meaning of one of my favorite phrases between periods of the Syracuse Crunch contest. They…

18 bands big is quite a state

The kids in uniform kept coming up the steps and passing our seats at the Carrier Dome last Saturday. Many kids in many different uniforms, up the steps they went to seats far up in th section. It was obvious that something was going on at halftime. The guys behind us joked half-heartedly about how…

Catch a ride on the Zamboni

Players need clean ice. So Zamboni drivers do their job between periods. It’s an important relationship at ice hockey rinks around the world. Yet I had a feeling last Saturday night that there was a more important bond for the guy guiding one of the two big machines at the Onondaga County War Memorial, where…