Giving thanks we're no turkeys

by Sid Dorfman/for The Star-Ledger

Tuesday November 25, 2008, 8:16 PM

Some ruminations for Thanksgiving Day:

Benjamin Franklin wanted to make the turkey our national bird, said the turkey was a much more respectable bird than an eagle and a true original native of America. He said it was wily, clever and fast on its feet, like a prototypical politician.

In turn, Ben hated the eagle, said it was a "bird of bad moral character, like those among men who live by sharping and robbing." I don't know what he meant by sharping, but it sounds like he was defining a con artist.

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Amaker cuts own path at Harvard

by Sid Dorfman/The Star-Ledger

Wednesday November 19, 2008, 6:43 PM

Harvard basketball coach Tommy Amaker cut five players from his roster in late September and drew an angry response from relatives and others demanding to know just how he could possibly do such a thing.

It did seem unlikely that such an indignity could happen at Harvard, or, for that matter, anywhere else in the Ivy League, which values academics and a code of behavior above all other practices.

You cannot take Harvard lightly. It is occasionally rated the No. 1 tower of learning in the country, as befits a school with an endowment fund that could rescue Detroit.

What the highly respected Amaker did was refuse players he hadn't recruited in the first place and for whom he could not find a role. Instead, he wants to go with a promising freshman class he had brought to Cambridge himself in a personal recruiting tour.

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For loyal fans, the price is wrong

by Sid Dorfman/The Star-Ledger

Tuesday November 11, 2008, 9:28 PM

Sports fans love their teams the way they love their country. They will endure horrible seasons of defeat in return for that rare moment when a title comes their way.

And when the title arrives, the fans want to be there. But change, as the politicians are still yapping about these days, is not in their favor. Loyalty is getting its ultimate test.

"At 100 bucks a ticket," says my friend Stanley, "I can be a loyal Giants fan forever, win or lose. But at 700 bucks a pop, plus all that licensing stuff for seats, I have my limits."

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Fight commissioner steps into ring

by Sid Dorfman/The Star-Ledger

Tuesday November 04, 2008, 8:11 PM

Aaron Davis, the new commissioner of boxing in New Jersey, is 6-8 and 270 pounds, and I'm thinking: Wouldn't it be something if he were also a heavyweight contender.

"My father Charlie," says Davis, "thought I might be a boxer, so he used to take me around the Philadelphia fight gyms, smelly old places like the Blue Horizon, to see whether I would develop any interest in fighting.

"I didn't. I did a little boxing out in Kansas, where I went to college before I became state commissioner there, but I didn't like it. I love boxers, but I didn't want to be one."

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Pitino's formula is an open book

by Sid Dorfman/The Star-Ledger

Tuesday October 21, 2008, 11:05 PM

Mike Nolan got canned the other day by the San Francisco 49ers, in midseason yet, the most embarrassing time for a coach to get the ax. Others likely will follow as bad records continue to get worse.

Proves again that ownership, in any sport, doesn't know exactly what it will get when it signs a coach. And neither does a coach when he signs. It can vary wildly. Tom Coughlin has taken the ride from near extinction to the crest of the mountain.

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John McCain could bring reform to boxing

by Sid Dorfman/The Star-Ledger

Tuesday October 14, 2008, 7:04 PM

If he is elected, John McCain will be the best friend boxing ever had in the White House.

I don't know how much that honor will help get him elected. There are any number of seedy folks who would just as soon see him look for corruption in other dark corners and leave theirs alone.

McCain's role has been one of a reformer, in a sport that may not be worth reforming. No politician in history has ever succeeded, as he has, to bring about a legislated measure of improvement in the ancient and violent game, which at one time may have been the most popular sport in the country, if you overlook baseball.

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Violence comes to a head

by Sid Dorfman/The Star-Ledger

Tuesday October 07, 2008, 7:25 PM

So I read where 12 athletes will submit themselves to a study on what football concussions have done to their brains over a period of life.

More than one neurologist over the years has told me, before anything else, that a concussion is damage to the brain. Simple as that. The more concussions, the greater the damage. But the study of the 12 athletes will deal with the nature of the damage years after it has been inflicted.

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Dorfman: Before the Mets, it was the Dodgers

by Sid Dorfman/The Star-Ledger

Tuesday September 30, 2008, 8:55 PM

After all, aren't the Mets the lineal descendants of the Brooklyn Dodgers? And if so, wouldn't there be a genetic explanation for why they left their faithful in copious tears on their final appearance in a junked Shea Stadium? The Dodgers once did the same thing, but the Mets trumped their antecedents in pratfalls. They did it twice in a row.

For those who may not recall, on May 13, 1951, some 57 years ago, the Dodgers of consecrated Ebbets Field charged into first place, and joy was everywhere. Even better, on Aug. 11, with 49 games left to play, the Bums, as they were affectionately known, led the New York Giants by a boring 13½ games.

Boring, but not for long. In mid-August, the Giants swept the Dodgers in a three-game series and then forgot how to lose. They won 16 in a row in August and seven straight ending the season.

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