Sometimes vacations feel onerous. “You mean we have to get up at the crack of 8? To see important stuff? Again?” Originally, the main effort to scurry around Venice, one of the world’s great cities, was to have come today. But that was before the accidentally sublime night we had in the city the night […]

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Most every traveler loves Venice. Except, it seemed, me. Venice? Not eager to go, not on any trip I made to nearby Italian cities or to nearby Austria. But I apparently had been influenced by those who suggest the Queen of the Adriatic is overrun by tourists, or sometimes smells bad, or is too expensive […]

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It went something like this: I regained consciousness about 6 a.m., and thought the decisive Game 5 of the National League Division Series between the Dodgers and Washington Nationals ought to be over, back in Los Angeles. And I did not expect good news, especially when I saw the game was tied at 3-3 in […]

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The home run era has been fun. I think a consensus has developed among baseball people that it is beginning to grow tiresome and that something will soon need to be done to make baseball look more like baseball. Know who wrote that? Bill James, the man whose insights jump-started baseball’s advanced metrics revolution back […]

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In the 1961 Major League Baseball season, Roger Maris of the New York Yankees hit 61 home runs to break Babe Ruth’s homer record of 60, set in 1927. However, many fans of the Bambino, and perhaps those not enthralled by the laconic Maris one-upping the charismatic Ruth, clamored for an “asterisk” to be added […]

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