There is nothing incompatible about laughter and demons, nor about athletic achievement and depression. Mike Flanagan made me laugh, too. But mostly, he made me brave.

Jane Leavy

Categorized in : Me Depression Brave Achievement

Trauma fractures comprehension as a pebble shatters a windshield. The wound at the site of impact spreads across the field of vision, obscuring reality and challenging belief.

trauma impact vision reality

Trauma is not the sole province of victims. If that were true, soldiers returning from Afghanistan wouldn't suffer from PTSD.

returning soldiers true trauma

Naming is a privilege of reason and the province of bullies. We name to tame and to maim; to honor the great, the dead, and ourselves.

dead name great honor

At a book festival in Fort Lauderdale, I met David Eisenhower, Ike's grandson, who was promoting his book 'Going Home to Glory: A Memoir of Life with Dwight D. Eisenhower,' in which he describes attending the Yankees' 154th game in 1961. The whole family had been following Mantle and Maris chase Babe Ruth's home run record across the country.

game family home life

Cape Cod baseball dates back to the time of the Civil War. A poster at the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown touts a round-trip train ride from Hyannis to Sandwich on July 4, 1885 - the occasion of the 14th annual baseball game between Sandwich and Barnstable.

ride game time war

When my father realized he was going blind, he took up golf.

going blind golf father

Indianapolis proved to be the perfect Super Bowl city, accommodating in the truest sense of the word.

super sense city perfect

Some scholars attribute the decline in nicknaming to the evolutionary process that turned folk heroes into entrepreneurs. The truth is: George Herman Ruth, the namely-est guy ever, exhausted our supply of hyperbole.

heroes truth-is truth process

Babe Ruth didn't become her father until 18 months after he married her mother, Claire, on April 17, 1929, Opening Day of the baseball season. Julia was 12 years old.

day opening mother father

Claire Hodgson, born Clara Mae Merritt, was the daughter of a prominent Georgia attorney who had once represented Ty Cobb. She was still a teenager when she married Frank Hodgson, a gentleman caller nearly twice her age.

born gentleman daughter age

The world is not kind to whistleblowers - a term of art with particular resonance in football, the most hierarchical and repressive of organized sports, a world of 'systems' and 'programs' and scripted plays, where reading a medical report requires a security clearance, and practice fields are patrolled like Guantanamo Bay.

medical football sports art

There is no free speech in football. Information is parsed by monosyllabic head coaches, who dictate who gets to speak to whom and when.

information speech speak football

In Naples, Fla., I met a self-made man, a multimillionaire, whose round penthouse apartment is home to Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Claude Monet, Henry Moore, and Mickey Mantle. He had purchased the most coveted items auctioned by the Mantle family at Madison Square Garden in December 2003.

man december family home

By the 1880s, baseball was entrenched in the Cape's sandy soil. Semipro teams, commonplace before World War I, were organized into the first Cape Cod League in 1923 - Orleans joined the four original teams five years later. By 1940, the league had foundered on financial shoals and disbanded.

world-war-i baseball war world

The modern era of Cape Cod baseball dawned in 1963 when the league became a showcase for the collegiate elite.

cape elite modern baseball

In the glory days of Orioles, when I was a newbie baseball writer for the Post, the roster of talkers was as good as the everyday lineup. Singy - Ken Singleton - Flanny, and Cakes - the underwear spokesman Jim Palmer - were my go-to guys, occupying stalls along one wall of the shabby chic clubhouse.

days good glory baseball

In 1927, my father descended the heights and took his place as the newly appointed water boy for his beloved New York football Giants.

boy football water father

On winter Sundays when I was a child, we waited for my father to return from his tennis game with bagels and sturgeon and for my mother to object when the 1 P.M. Giants game began.

game mother winter father

For most of my adult life, I dreaded the day I woke up and saw my mother in the mirror. It never happened. But, I had grown into my father. I shouldn't have been surprised. Everyone always said I was the son he never had.

day mother life son

In the spring of 1957, Mickey Mantle was the king of New York. He had the Triple Crown to prove it, having become only the 12th player in history to earn baseball's gaudiest jewel. In 1956, he had finally fulfilled the promise of his promise, batting .353, with 52 homers and 130 RBIs. Everybody loved Mickey.

king loved new history