The Boys of Summer were heroes in Brooklyn for a full postwar decade partly because the players could not entertain higher offers.
Those of us who have tested gravity under a hoop know its mystical properties. Robin Layton, as I would have expected, has turned this staple of Americana into a gorgeous art form.
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.
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.
Many American players - Paul Caligiuri, Claudio Reyna, Eric Wynalda, Kasey Keller, Tony Sanneh, Michael Bradley and Steve Cherundolo, just a partial list - have sought the income and challenge of Germany.
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.
In New York, Kid Carter was pure vanilla for a city with stronger tastes.
Baseball's postseason shifts from game to game because of starting pitchers and the geography of the ballparks.
When I was a kid, my father brought home the autobiography of Sid Luckman, the great Chicago Bears quarterback - probably an extra copy from the sports department where he worked. It was the first sports biography I ever read.