Sports & Culture

Bilqis Abdul-Qaadir hosts basketball clinic at Springfield College Last week, I was reunited with Bilqis Abdul-Qaadir. I first became aware of this extraordinary young woman at halftime of a high school basketball game in 2004. I was teaching then, as now, at Springfield College, but also covering sports for The Boston Globe, and I was curious to see a high school team called New Leadership and its star player, Yusuf Abdul-Ali. Indeed, he was impressive to watch: strong, unse

Photo credit Courtesy photo/Kelly O'Connor “I try to explain, and people are like: ‘WHAT happened?????’” -- Charlie Zink, August 8, 2018 The game itself—the one played 10 years ago today, August 12, 2008—was unquestionably one of the strangest in Red Sox history, arguably even in baseball history. Consider the basics: - In the bottom of the first inning, the Red Sox took a 10-0 lead over the Texas Rangers, sparked by two 3-run home runs by David Ortiz.  - The Rangers rallied

Interview on public television WGBY’s “Connecting Point”

From Vice Tony King, will not be wrestling with philosophical questions when he walks out to the mound around noon on Sunday. All week he has been brushing aside the idea that this ceremonial first pitch was significant. “It doesn’t make any difference,” he insists. “It’s just the idea of it, anyway. You let the ball go, and you go down. It’s just something to get the game started.” Watch: The All-Ivy League Ex Marine Trying to Make it to the Majors For weeks, he has been tos

She was not quite 4 when her daddy died. Deep in the recesses of her memory, Jessica Waddell Lewinstein, now 30, can still hear his voice. It was a voice that held contrasts: deep but soft, considered but sprinkled with mischief, nuanced with sadness and lilting with joy. Tom Waddell was a star athlete at Springfield College. Courtesy Springfield College Archives She remembers only snippets of conversations. Like the time he sought her advice on the best color for a car he ho

Londell Francis, 8, who has sickle cell anemia, cuts the nets with his LIU-Brooklyn teammates. Courtesy of Long Island University-Brooklyn The Sports Grinch is beaming. And why not? The athletic landscape in early 2013 is a veritable carnival of cynicism. Beneath the pedestals are huge piles of rubble. Hope is dying. To the Sports Grinch, the bad times never seemed so good. Manti Te'o playing his heart out for a dying girlfriend -- but the "love of his life" doesn't even exis

Doug Clark is 1-for-11 in his major league career, his lone hit coming in 2006 for the A's.  Lisa Blumenfeld/Getty Images In Hermosillo, Mexico, it is 81 degrees a little after 7 p.m. MT on Thursday night. The stands of the new estadio are packed and raucous. Flags waving. Songs ringing out. Cerveza flowing. Two outs, top of the first inning of the Caribbean Series championship, Latin America's great baseball theater. Up steps left fielder Doug Clark for the Yaquis de Obregon

Marcus Camby has played in 14 games this season with the Knicks.  Jim McIsaac/Getty Images The NBA is a test of manhood. It's a league where "power forwards" throw down "slam dunks," where frontcourt players are called "big men," where the preferred defense is "man to man." The most-prized virtue in the league is toughness. So it's only fair to point out that New York Knicks big man and 17-year NBA veteran Marcus Camby has a skeleton in his closet. There is no gentle way of s

You would have needed a well-sharpened knife to cut through this tension. The smoky air in the basketball arena in Lexington, Ky., was thick with anticipation. All eyes focused on the collision of cultures, the will-he-or-won't-he moment of truth. Celtics president and co-owner Walter Brown (left) welcomes Don Barksdale at the Fargo Building in Boston in November 1953 after Barksdale was acquired from the Baltimore Bullets.  AP Photo Everyone looked at a single bottle of wate

Matt Torra was invited to spring training this year with the Rays.  Mike Janes/Four Seam Images via AP Images Matt Torra has the seven-year itch. No, his marriage to the former Jessica Reed appears to be in great shape. If you ask Torra about his minor league odyssey, you will hear him talking about his wife, their toddler, Isabel, and the second child who is swinging some bats in the on-deck circle. The Torras live together in North Carolina during the season, and afterward

One of the many things they have in common is wealth — lots and lots of it. There is plenty of green to be had in the bluegrass when you are John Calipari and Rick Pitino. But in all deference to the Commonwealth of Kentucky, it is the Commonwealth of Massachusetts that fueled coaching’s most bitter rivalry. The road from UMass to bluegrass is a story of out-of-the box thinking (and coaching), of Gucci (and itchy) shoes, and of the one man, the one coach, who helped to launch

A step ahead of his limitations Read more ...

"I want America to be as good as she imagined it." -- President Barack Obama on Christina-Taylor Green, Jan. 12, 2011 Trinity Gonzales of Twentynine Palms, Calif., is the catcher for the Sparks. Courtesy of Gonzales Family Amid the rolling green hills of Cooperstown, N.Y., 22 diamonds are glittering with children at play. The tunnels of fog from Tuesday night have burned off, opening to a sun-sparkled Wednesday afternoon, Aug. 17, a perfect day for baseball. One-hundred-four

From Publishers' Weekly Dobrow's first book is a beautifully written, meticulously orchestrated account of the families, common agents, notable triumphs, and devastating failures of half a dozen talented young men who want to play in the Major Leagues. A veteran sports writer, Dobrow reveals an insider's instinct, a high level of compassion, and finds the drama in the dream of "making it big." Minor Leaguers have to make ends meet, often for years, and learn how to embrace a

From ESPN Hasenfus has done whatever has been asked of him in making the Springfield College JV team. Asked his 87-year-old father, "Do you think there's any chance you'll get called up to the varsity?"  Ryan Matlack for ESPNBoston.com SPRINGFIELD, Mass. -- The first week of the baseball season can be a time for veteran left-handers to work out the kinks. Last Monday, 48-year-old Barack Obama was high and outside with his presidential first pitch before the Washington Nationa

Mixing memory with desire

A top student and now the top high school scorer in state history, Bilqis Abdul-Qaadir knows there is more to life than a game. But does she have game. Bilqis Abdul-Qaadir competes with her legs and arms covered and with a hijab (or head scarf) on her head. (Globe Staff Photo / Michele McDonald) Bilqis Abdul-Qaadir walks quietly through the halls of the New Leadership Charter School. She is soft-spoken and polite. The youngest child of a devout Muslim family, the 5-foot-3-inc

Disability can't stop athlete from lifting her team The first pitch of the fifth inning, a fastball for a called strike, sent forth a huge puff of dirt from the glove of Elms College sophomore catcher Gina Gilday. The Blazers were already way ahead, 16-1, over Johnson State, in the first game of a doubleheader last Saturday. "All right, Gina!" called out one player as Gilday fired the ball back to pitcher Destinee Meeker. The next pitch was fouled to the backstop, and Gilday

Freeman never lost dream of playing college basketball All of the kids were special to her. In the rough-and-tumble neighborhood of Schenectady, N.Y. -- a place Daisy Smythe unabashedly calls "a hood" -- all of the grandchildren and cousins had a unique place in her heart. So, too, all of the foster kids, the parade of runaways and castoffs she brought in and showered with tough love. They too were children of God. They deserved a chance. But the really tall one, the frequent