Yes, it was short, but wasn’t it the coolest NHL season in recent history? These six outdoor games? Officially (as in, “marketingly”), four of them were called “The 2014 Stadium Series.” They complemented “The Winter Classic” and “The Heritage Classic.” Unofficially, they gave us a six-pack of insanely great hockey.

http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/68607688/nhl-outdoor-games-are-the-best-hockey

Maybe it will prove to be a day just like any other day. Maybe not.

It promised to be long, that was for sure: eight hours searching scholarly journals to find my first two dozen citations and sources for my upcoming Masters thesis, and writing summaries of at least ten of them…

….but at least it would be capped with two or three hours on Skype in the evening with the very cool athlete with whom I’m writing a book. The guy is smart, funny and frank. It’s a blast to hear his story, and be entrusted with telling it for him.

But first — gad — an entire day plumbing search engines that would lead me down remote corners looking for arcane studies which would stand up to the scrutiny of my professors. Grad Ed departments are nothing if not wedded to their Scholarly Sources and High Journals of Pedagogy, each packed with articles that rely on 20 other sources, most of them written so that the writer can keep his or her job by being published in a journal no one will ever read.

My thesis — still a good 16 months from fruition? That teaching as a second career after a life in journalism might be beneficial to all — teacher, student, school district, university. What scholarly stuff could posssibly be out there?

Turns out, a lot. Not about the journalist stuff…but about people who have turned to teaching as second careers, after fulfilling first ones. About how it had invigorated them later in life. And how they’d invigorated their students.

I found studies from Idaho, and New Zealand, and Pittsburgh, and Hong Kong and Houston and Harvard. And — how weird was this? — once I got started, I couldn’t stop. As the hours unspooled, it was like being on a scavenger hunt where, with every new stop, you learned something more, something new, something encouraging. I even began to parse the rigid scholarly prose, which is invariably written with all he stylistic flair of the ingredients list on a cereal box.

I found my two dozen. I wrote my ten summaries. I was pumped. I was jacked. According to my one day of research, it looked like the scholarly consensus is that going back to school is not only viable, it makes you younger, and more curious about the world, and reborn, when you find a new workplace that welcomes you.

And that the students want to hear your lifeworn lessons…about, you know…life.

Oh. Then I interviewed my basketball player — former Duke stud, second pick in the 2002 NBA draft. He was telling great stories. But…I wasn’t really all there. The sportswriter in me should have loved hearing about the time he dove into Lake Michigan in February at 3 a.m. on a bet. The stuff about the weed smokers on the team. The dark side of the NBA.

But I kept thinking, “Been there, done that. Another book? Yet another frikking book? Why?” See, turns out that one of the things the people who age gracefully do, in changing their focus, in pursuing different paths, is lose their ego. They don’t live to see their name on a book cover anymore. They live to get e-mails from their students who have gone off to a village in the Congo to volunteer her help. That would be Karen. They live to see that another student’s blog now has more than 12 million followers. That would be Shane. They live to have a student write an impassioned essay for the campus newspaper — that he now advises — about the need for Amnesty International to have a presence on campus. That would be Katie.

Then, at the end of the day, they wonder where they might find another even better scholarly article tomorrow. Just for the hell of it.

The book? Who cares? The thesis? That’s the writing that’ll matter. If I pull it off, I’ll finally be a Master of something: Getting over my bad self.

http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/67759040/derek-jeter-is-forcing-another-yankee-farewell-tour-on-us

http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/67837448/tj-oshie-and-vladimir-tarasenko-prove-olympic-spirit-still-exists

http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/67974352/team-usas-real-miracle-on-ice-occurred-in-1960-in-squaw-valley

You think you know what it’s like to be pulled over by a Georgia State Trooper? With New York plates? You have no idea.

We had crossed the Georgia border about four minutes earlier. The flashing lights in my rearview were so aggressively redblue-redblue-redblue-redblue that they would have prompted an epileptic fit if I were given to seizures. Which I was about to. Seize, I mean.

I pulled our new, bright red Kia Soul to the side of Interstate 95, and looked into the rearview. This time I noticed more than the lights. I saw a large car with ominous bars in front of a chillingly grinning grill. I saw the metallic face of an automotive carnivore, ready to devour a New Yorker’s life.

Had I been speeding? Impossible. It had been a decade and a half since my wife and I had bought a new car. I generally drive a ‘97 Volvo that shudders from side to side when it goes over 58 miles per hour; I hadn’t figured that a Kia shaped like a toaster could actually go 75.

Apparently it could.

I looked in the rearview to see the archetypal central-casting Southern trooper. Big, wide-brimmed hat, and protuberant belly., beneath which were a belt with all sorts of ordnance: the Swiss Army knife of trooper belts.

I was surprisingly cool, since I couldn’t remember the last time I’d gotten a ticket — at least a decade — so, what the hell. Pulled out the license, rolled down the window, looked up, and, i swear, flashed on James Dickey playing the suspicious trooper in Deliverance.

“Awful far from New York, arentcha?”

“I guess we are,” I said, humbly, meekly. I tried to look as little as possible like someone who was Jewish because while I myself am not Jewish, although I’ve always wished I were, I am frequently told that I look Jewish, and I had this idea that people in Georgia, who generally aren’t Jewish, judging by the number of churches which seem to outweigh the number of actual homes in the state by 2-to-1, are not particularly fond of having Jewish people in the rural areas of the Peach State.

“What’s yer destination?”
I mentioned an old fishing village down on the southern coast of Georgia, where we’d rented a cottage for Christmas week. Charming, unknown little town with a nice coffee shop, a nice wine store and marshland full of birds.

“I know Darien, he said. “Great place. Where you from in New York?”

“Dutchess County,” I said. “North of the city.”

“I know where it is,” he said.

“How?” I said. By now he’d lightened up, and we were just having a conversation, which I was intent on extending before we got to the heavy stuff.

“I was a marine,” he said. “Spent a lot of time in New York.”

“My dad was a marine,” I said.

“Yeah?” He was looking at my license now. “You know you were goin ‘75?”

“No, I didn’t,” I said. “We just got this car, and it kind of drives itself.”

Now he actually smiled. “I think it probably needed some help from your foot on that pedal.”

I have no idea why I had to stretch the boundaries here, but he seemed to be encouraging me. “No,” I said. “You haven’t heard about these new cars? They actually do drive themselves.”

At this he looked at me and laughed. “Now, that’s one I haven’t heard.”

I was about to ask my wife to get the registration and insurance card, but he cut me off, and handed me back my license. “Have a good time in Darien,” he said, “and slow down.” Then he walked back to his car and drove away.

We’ve decided to return to Georgia next Christmas.

http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/66241194/

Phish meets the NFL?
Dogs and cats, living together.
The end of the world as I know it. And I don’t feel fine. How could I? What if you had two overriding passions that eclipsed everything else in your life, including your family (as they’d surely attest), and each passion (or, to be frank, religion) represented the two totally opposite sides of your bipolar psyche, and somehow balanced it into sanity…and, surreally, they then decided to collaborate?

On an Unhappy Matrimony for the amazing site Bronx Banter.

http://www.bronxbanterblog.com/2013/12/18/an-unholy-matrimony/

http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/64330342/

I have no idea how old the rake is. Judging from the chips and wear and roughness of the wood on the handle, and the rust and weight of the 15-tined iron head, I’m going to guess forty or more years. My rake is like a weathered, grizzled old guy who seems to get tougher with age. If my rake were alive it’d smoke unfiltered Camels.
The hoe seems to be a little newer…maybe 30? Weathered wooden handle, nicely dinged, heavy blade. Maybe thirty years? There’s no way of knowing, short of carbon dating; they were both in the shed when we bought the house almost twenty years ago and the previous owners had passed away,
Once a year, when it’s time to plant the garlic — always the middle of October — I carry them into the vegetable garden and put them to work. Well, they put me to work. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that the garlic-planting ceremony is always one of the highlights of my year.
Is it because the tools are so old and heavy and good at their job? And that I’m getting blisters exactly the way backyard farmers have gotten for a century? Absolutely. Do the heads of garlic keep getting bigger every year because of my age-old methodology? I;’ like to think so. No, I do think so.

The toughest part of the afternoon is the first act: attacking the jungle of weeds that have sprouted since the harvest last July. They’re thick and they mock: While you weren’t looking, after you took out your previous crop, we took over your space. You got a problem with that? Well, yes. And so the teeth of the tines wade through the invaders with carnivorous delight: rending, shredding, yanking, tugging. Again and again and again, the heavy iron sweeps, until all that’s left are the couple of dozen plants that refuse to give in — the couple of dozen of stalwarts with ridiculously deep roots for organisms that have only been round for three months.
That’s where the hoe comes in. No plant can stand up to the brutal, insistent, crazily satisfying chop of the hoe — the flat edge of the blade, the deep prick of the sharp corner. And before long, I’m facing nothing but a perfect, rich plane of dark, dark fragrant soil.
The rest of the job belongs to the trowel: only four or five years old, but with a thick steel scoop, of course. I punch about ten holes per row, seven rows, each seeded with the fattest cloves of the July harvest, then covered by the soil, and ready for the long winter sleep.
I’m not saying it won’t be nearly as cool next July when I harvest my six dozen heads — effortlessly, with one deep scoop of a pretty old shovel — and dry them on the porch, andthen bag them in the basement, where they’ll give us a winter’s worth of the fresh stuff.
I’m just saying that their flavor in all those dishes over the winter — in stir-fries; embedded in butterflied lamb; in souffles — will feel as if it’s rooted in a cycle for the ages. The planting with timeless tools will prove — in those explosions of flavor — the inarguable agricultural dictum: you reap what you sow.