JIMMY BROWN When I was young, we all referred to Jim Thorpe as Jim Thorpe. But it was different with the greatest football player ever–and one of the greatest all-around athletes on the planet–Jim Brown. Perhaps as a testament to everlasting youth, we called him Jimmy Brown. Jimmy Brown was…

JOE KAPP AND DENNY CRUM Joe Kapp and Denny Crum probably didn’t know each other and likely had little in common. They were a year apart in age and died a day apart in early May. What they did share was celebrity. And success. Each man was a star in…

THE HEAT AND THE PANTHERS The Miami Heat will be at the Garden tonight (May 17) to visit the Boston Celtics in Game 1 of the NBA Eastern Conference Finals. The Florida Panthers will travel to Raleigh, NC to face the Carolina Hurricanes, opening the NHL Eastern Conference Finals tomorrow…

MONTY AND BUTCH Jim Montgomery and Bruce Cassidy… Not quite a year ago, I wrote a scathing piece excoriating the Bruins brass for unceremoniously kicking then-head coach Bruce “Butch” Cassidy to the curb. [See “Bruce Cassidy, Claude Julien, Cam Neely and Don Sweeney,” June, 2022.] I was irate. It was…

BRUCE CASSIDY, CLAUDE JULIEN, CAM NEELY AND DON SWEENEY A .672 winning percentage over 399 career regular-season games. A 36–37 career playoff record with zero Stanley Cups, a game-7 loss to the St. Louis Blues in the 2019 Finals, as agonizingly close as it would come. A roster with not…

CHASE AND SYDNEY BROWN The Brown identical mirror twins were born two minutes apart, Chase at 5:33 and Sydney at 5:35 a.m., on March 21, 2000. This week, they will become just the sixth set of twins selected in the same NFL draft in 40 years. “Everything they’ve done, they’ve…

VIDA ROCHELLE BLUE JR. Of late, I’ve been writing about those whose time on our planet has run out. Expired. Sands of the hourglass, I suppose. Dick Groat. Bobby Caldwell. Joe Pepitone. Pete Carril. To name a recent few. It’s not that I’m obsessed with death. Hardly. Rather, sometimes it…

DICK GROAT Apart from Jim Thorpe, who possibly was the greatest athlete short of Tarzan, Dick Groat is so richly deserving of mention. In this context. Groat was one of the most accomplished two-sport athletes in American sports history, a college All-America in baseball and basketball as well as one…

THE TAMPA BAY RAYS The Tampa Bay Rays began play in the American League as the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in 1998. Twenty-five years ago. They sport patches on their caps and uniform sleeves celebrating the franchise’s history. Until the recent past, there wasn’t a lot to celebrate. My, how…