Open Letter to ESPN

Dear ESPN:
I love baseball. I pay attention to football, both pro and college. I enjoy hockey – mainly NHL, though college hockey has a grand tradition. I am passionate about NCAA basketball and accept the NBA.

But I want to see… I need to see…

• World cup skiing
• Word-class track and field
• Acapulco cliff diving
• Australian rules football
• Soccer of any kind
• Boxing of all kinds
• Gaelic football
• Ski jumping
• The very first Hawaii Ironman Triathlon
• All-Ireland hurling
• And just about every other game and sport played on earth

In short, I miss ABC’s Wide World of Sports, Jim McKay, Howard Cosell and everything they brought to sport in America. While professional sports certainly make more money, the sports world has been diminished since the demise of this amazing, wonderful program. And a disservice has been done to athletes in every corner of our earth.

Spanning the globe to bring  you the constant variety of sport. The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. The human drama of athletic competition.

This is where we witnessed the Kentucky Derby and Eric Heiden skating at speeds no one saw before. Where we saw Greg LeMond battle up and over Alp D’Huez against Bernard Hinault – the Badger – in the Tour de France. Where Americans were first introduced to Irish hurling, Scandenavian cross country skiing and the Boston Marathon that was already the better part of a century old.

Please. Someone. Bring it all back.

Attention must be paid

To four fellows who understand that you can play acoustic instruments and still tear the roof off the dump.

There but for…

It was an absolutely beautiful day today. I was walking along crossing 57th St. on my way back to the office minding my own business when a man directed an “excuse me, sir” my way.  Normally, being a hard-hearted New York City pedestrian, I would have walked along ignoring him. But for some reason, I leaned down to hear what this large fellow in a wheel chair had to say through the din of city noise surrounding us. “Can you please help me get across the street?” Initially, I thought this was just another pan handler, but I realized this man also had both arms severed at the elbows. I asked him to repeat his request. “Sure,” I said still thinking somewhere deep down this was some kind of scam. But the walk light changed, I pushed his chair across 3rd Avenue and back up through the curb cut onto the sidewalk. “There you are,” I said trying to find a place for him in the crowd. “Where would you like to be?” He just said thank you and told me he could take it from here. He turned his chair around backward and shuffled his way up the block. I waited another cycle of the light to cross back over to where I began feeling on one hand glad I helped another person out. But on the other hand, something more that I still can’t quite pin down. Hooray for me helping out another human being – big deal. I wondered what this man’s life was like. How he had to wait on the corner asking people for help getting across the street. And if he didn’t get it, he’d never get more than a block from where he was at any given time. Hundreds of people must have passed him before I responded to what he was asking. Clearly, he didn’t want anyone feeling sorry for him. He just wanted some help getting across the street.