Hockey historians say the handshake dates to English settlers in Canada, who preached an upper-class version of sportsmanship in the 19th century. Soon, tough kids in urban and prairie rinks began imitating imagined dukes and earls of the old country.
— George Vecsey
No matter how many times it happens, the public always seems to be shocked when an athlete dies young, but the reality is, there are no promises.
Stanley Cup hockey comes around every year, when games start to count in multiples of best-of-seven series, and the players seem to put more attention into every pass, every check, every annoying little trick.
It is hard to imagine the World Series being held in the sweet hazy sunshine of late September rather than the sour night air of late October, but that is precisely what has transpired in baseball over the past 50 years, a deterioration from light to darkness.
Some of the most inspiring moments in sports have come from players with physical defects. Tom Dempsey, born without toes on his right foot, kicked a 63-yard field goal in 1970, using a straighter, wider shoe.
In August 1945, a former Army pilot with an artificial leg pitched five and a third innings for Washington against Boston. This would turn out to be Bert Shepard's only major league game, and it remains one of the heartwarming moments in baseball history.
Some religious guys in sports give the impression, 'I've got something you don't have.'
Under a pulsating full moon, the gussied-up Billie Jean King National Tennis Center seems much softer and prettier at night, with the fountains bubbling and fans without tickets to the big stadium sitting in the plaza and watching a big screen.
When I was working on the unauthorized biography 'Stan Musial: An American Life,' which came out in 2011, old opponents recalled how Musial knew their names after they had been in the majors only a few days.
Nobody has ever called Shea Stadium a cathedral. In style, it was more like the old warehouse or outdated movie theater that Korean worshippers have transformed into a church in the borough of Queens. Not a cathedral - but a place where people go to be fulfilled, nonetheless.
Weary soccer players just cannot run anymore and must resort to shootouts after 120 minutes when a result is mandatory, but men on skates can go indefinitely, no matter how badly it disrupts the television network's schedule.
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.
I never worried about getting stale because the news and the people induce freshness every working hour.
Why is the N.F.L. so popular? The N.F.L. grew in the comfort zone after World War II. People had money and time. A popular American sport got bigger.
We all understand the economics of the Super Bowl - 10 or 12 minutes of the ball in motion will be stretched into three and a half hours or more of money-making commercials.
Lance Armstrong has joined the legion of the lost, the great athletes who were barred or exiled for sins admitted or charged or suspected.
Baseball's postseason shifts from game to game because of starting pitchers and the geography of the ballparks.
It's a Stanley Cup thing. The boys mangle one another for a series, performing all kinds of nasty tricks, then they make nice, shaking soggy hands as the teams shuffle in opposite directions.
Athletes are used to battling. The public would never learn their names if professional athletes had not shown courage at an early age. They learn they can overcome, but sometimes this becomes a false sense of security that leads them to the edge.
When Casey Stengel was putting his mark on all four New York baseball teams, he came off as many things. I have to admit I never thought of him as anybody's uncle.
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.
Hundreds of ballplayers have performed well after Tommy John surgery, in which an elbow ligament is replaced by material from elsewhere on the body. More and more, athletes will perform with a bit of this or a bit of that in a joint or muscle.
Some great players, like Ted Williams and Stan Musial, had one more great hitting season left around the age of 40.
In New York, Kid Carter was pure vanilla for a city with stronger tastes.
Night tennis began at the United States Open in 1975 with certain stars trying to beg out and certain patrons trying to dump unwanted tickets on scalpers.
It needs to be said, over and over again, that Stan the Man was voted by 'The Sporting News' as the best baseball player of the postwar decade, from 1946 through 1955.
Sometimes, sport is just plain pleasing to the eye, like watching La Belle France flit by on television during the Tour de France. I can do that for hours.
For good reasons, there are no ties during the Stanley Cup season. Somebody needs to win so the lads can get out to their cottages on the lakes, where all hockey players spend their summers, or so I have been told.
In recent generations, women's sports have been a blessing. Some of us can remember the bad old days in the '50s, when we would discover in casual schoolyard play that a girl could outrun most of us or hold her own in basketball or hit a softball - but there were no teams, no coaches, for girls.
I proposed abolishing boxing because it was bad for the brain, but boxers were generally so decent that I loved being around the gyms.
Television is making sports universal; for the same reason, big-time soccer is growing more popular in the United States.
Certain Stanley Cup traditions remain intact, including the handshake line between players who had been belting one another for a couple of weeks.
I've seen fire, and I've seen rain. I've also had to scramble over tundra to get to the Super Bowl and seen baseball turf fields that could fry a fielder's soles.
War of attrition, war of wills. That's what the Stanley Cup playoffs are - more intense, more physical and more prolonged than the playoffs of any other sport.
It is no fun lining up in your own building - as the hockey players say - and touching the hands of fellow stubbly louts who have just sent you off to the proverbial cabin on the lake.
Hockey suffers from being compared to itself in ways that other sports are not. Every four years, some of us fawn over Olympic hockey, a great event with bigger rinks, minimal goonishness and national pride in addition to the heightened skills of veritable all-star squads.
Youth sports could not exist without millions of volunteers and modestly paid coaches who teach our children how to skate and catch and dribble and also how to get along with others.
One of the most beautiful sights in my neighborhood is on High Holy Days when people walk to temple. Not only does this bring the traditional legendary weather, but it gives off a psychic signal to slow down.
In 1949, I saw a World War II veteran named Lou Brissie, who had nearly lost a lower leg in combat, pitch in the All-Star Game in Brooklyn.
In the late '60s, Senator Charles E. Goodell, Republican of New York, spoke out against the Vietnam War, bringing on the wrath of the Nixon administration and, as it turned out, the disaffection of conservative voters.
When the Mets were on their run in the 1980s, Gary Carter was often seen hugging somebody. It was easy to joke about that. The best hug of all was with Jesse Orosco at the end of the 1986 World Series.
Some people insist that hallowed professional teams should never change their nicknames.
We all know the Red Sox did not win a World Series for 86 years after unloading Ruth, and the Cubs just might be carrying some heavy weight for past karmic transgressions.
Some of us love hockey not just for its ferocity and skill but for its underlying code of civility off the ice.
Title IX, whether voluntarily or via court cases, opened gymnasiums to women, produced uniforms and schedules and buses.
Hockey lends itself to special events, including the Olympic competition: a glorious tournament of the best players in the world, putting on their national jerseys and playing on big rinks with no-goon Olympic rules and referee enforcement.
I will always treasure the privilege of writing the 'Sports of The Times' column.
This occasional sports columnist, who has been to his share of Super Bowls, had been glad to be home on Super Bowl Sunday, but the scary commercials made me want to be in the melee of the arena, where you are not aware of commercials.
Every spring, this happens: People discover hockey when daylight lasts longer and men grow beards and tie games do not end in shootouts but rather continue until a goal is scored. The seventh game only heightens the mood for players and fans alike.
The football playoffs feature one-off affairs, without bad feelings building from weekend to weekend. In addition, football uses platoons for offense and defense and kicking, so only the interior linemen have a chance to really get up close and personal with one another.
