Why the Baseball Standings Suck

Something’s wrong with the baseball standings in the papers and online.

No one’s interested in reading the classic divisional standings; we know who won now, only two out of six races are in play, Detroit vs Minnesota in the AL Central, and LA vs San Diego in the NL West. Baseball fans are interested Read More

Stritch at Carlyle: 80 and Singin’

Rumors that Elaine Stritch has a heart of marble are greatly exaggerated. Now in the middle of her sold-out seven-week cabaret debut at the Café Carlyle, she proves once and all, and for all and sundry, what I’ve long suspected: Behind the hard-boiled exterior of a lady prosecutor with the personality of a hanging judge Read More

Stritch at Carlyle: 80 and Singin’

Rumors that Elaine Stritch has a heart of marble are greatly exaggerated. Now in the middle of her sold-out seven-week cabaret debut at the Café Carlyle, she proves once and all, and for all and sundry, what I’ve long suspected: Behind the hard-boiled exterior of a lady prosecutor with the personality of a hanging Read More

Democrats Still Need Reagan’s Supporters

It was quite the day.

New Yorkers woke up and learned from a New York Post front-page “exclusive” that

Democratic nominee John Kerry had chosen U.S. Representative Richard Gephardt of

Missouri to be his running mate. That newspaper is now worth 25 bucks on the

collectors’ market.

Mr. Gephardt- twice a failed candidate for President-was Read More

A Local Hero Vanishes, Mystery Shading Into Myth

Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy , by Jane Leavy. HarperCollins, 256 pages, $23.95.

In the spring of 1966, before there was a functioning players’ union-let alone talk of revenue-sharing-Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax approached the Los Angeles Dodgers’ general manager, Buzzie Bavasi, in tandem, and demanded $1 million, to be split evenly between the Read More

Let Me Be Your Guide: I Understand Bush Men

When I started this column about 15 years ago, in the first issue of this paper, I called it “The Midas Watch” in recognition of the revival in the 1980′s of an idea that had been suppressed in American public life for the better part of six decades: namely, that wealth represents a form of Read More

In Irving’s Apolitical Land of Unwanted Children

Lasse Hallstrom’s The Cider House Rules , from John Irving’s screenplay and based on his novel, represents to my knowledge and in my memory the first American mainstream movie to make an unqualified pro-choice case for abortion. Moreover, its two sympathetic co-protagonists, Tobey Maguire’s Homer Wells and Michael Caine’s Dr. Wilbur Larch, are shown performing Read More