But, occasionally, a show so exceeds expectations that you not only don’t feel guilty about loving it, you want to hijack a stadium’s public address system and boom to the world about the marvelous piece of art that you’ve found.

For five seasons, “Friday Night Lights” has been such a gift, that piece of popular culture that not only entertains, but nourishes the mind and the soul, the kind of show for which you’re thankful that you have a television.

The show, which has received a Peabody Award, a Humanitas Award and received accolades from the Television Critics Association is loosely based on a movie that starred Billy Bob Thornton,. The film’s origins, in turn, were taken from Buzz Bissinger’s Pulitzer Prize winning study of the culture of high school football as it affected life in Odessa, Texas. I’ve sampled “Friday Night Lights” in all three forms, and while the book and movie are spectacular, the television series is the best of the three.

At its core was coach Eric Taylor, his wife, Tami, and their daughters, Julie and Grace. I’ve watched television for more than 40 years, and with the possible exception of Kate and Doug Lawrence, the parents from the seminal “Family” series in the 1970′s, I have a hard time recalling a marriage more realistically portrayed than that of the Taylors.

Yes, the exceptional writing played a large part in that, but the overwhelming reason that “FNL” nailed the Taylors so well was because of the inspired casting of Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton. The two of them behaved and talked to each other like a real married couple would. They fought, and disagreed and made up and parented just the way real people do. Few television characters have said more with their expressions than Eric and Tami Taylor, and it’s not by accident that both Chandler and Britton have received Emmy nominations in the last two years, including for this year.

But they were hardly the only remarkable characters. As Julie Taylor, Aimee Teegarden grew up before our eyes, moving from shallow teenager to poised young woman, eminently capable of making her parents proud and breaking their hearts. Her boyfriend, quarterback Matt Saracen (played by Zach Gilford) likewise matures and blossoms. Gilford’s work in the fourth season was nothing short of brilliant and should have been rewarded with at least an Emmy nomination. And Taylor Kitsch’s portrayal of fullback Tim Riggins, the embodiment of a kid who falls and gets back up and falls and gets back up again, earning a sense of nobility in the process, was extraordinary.

More than any other series in television history, “FNL” got the football right. The hitting looked authentic, the injuries were realistic and the Panthers and Lions, the two teams depicted in the show, occasionally lost. Not often, mind you, but enough to lend legitimacy to the storylines.

And unlike other series set in and around high schools, the students in the fictitious town of Dillon were allowed to age naturally and graduate and move on. Characters were allowed to return, and even have a post-graduation storyline, but you never had the specter of 30-year-old actors and actresses straining to play 15-year olds.

If this sounds like a valedictory, well, sadly it is. The lights go out in Dillon on Friday for the final time. I want to hate NBC for failing to give this rapturous show the time and publicity it deserved. But, the truth is that NBC gave the show at least two more years than it would have gotten, say, at CBS, by working a deal with Direct TV, which shared production costs with NBC for the last two seasons and got to air the episodes in the fall, leaving the reruns for the broadcast network in the spring and summer.

And to the lasting credit and wisdom of folks at ESPN Classic, they’ve begun airing reruns of the show. Also, all five seasons are available on DVD, and yes, I own them all.

The final episode, which airs Friday at 8 p.m., was nominated for an Emmy for writing, and the series finally got the Best Drama Series nomination it should have received from the very beginning. By the time Coach Taylor utters the motto that serves as the title of this post, you’ll be in tears and not just because of the storyline, but also for the loss of one of the best reasons to own a television.

I suspect that, just as my page was loaded up with well-meaning entreaties on Memorial Day to remember the troops who sacrificed for this country’s ideals, that I’ll get the same postings for Veterans Day in November. That’s what well-meaning, red-blooded Americans do, hold fast to the symbols that make this nation the greatest on Earth.

Americans are really good at latching onto the symbols of our nation — the flag, the troops, the bald eagle – but not so good on what those symbols represent, what they really mean.

If you were around the television or a radio for any length of time Tuesday after the verdict in the Casey Anthony case, you couldn’t help but hear the wailing over the incredible miscarriage of justice that supposedly took place with the not guilty verdicts on the three top counts of the indictment.

And said television wailing was just a fraction of what went on in social media where it was recommended that Casey Anthony’s sentence on misdemeanor counts of lying to police should include that she “get her tubes tied, burned, melted, fried and surgically removed along with her entire uterus so she never has the chance to accidentally drug and duct tape a child again when it interferes with her social life.”

OK, then.

(In full disclosure, that quote above comes from a nearly lifelong friend whom I adore, but absolutely disagree with on this matter.)

Look, I have no idea whether Casey Anthony killed her two-year-old daughter, Caylee. And unless you were there at the time of the child’s death, you don’t know either.

And neither do any of the talking head lawyers or helmet-haired talk-show hosts (more on her later), who reduced what should have been dignified court proceedings into football pre-game shows with their pronouncements about who was winning, how the testimony went and, ultimately, how the verdict would go.

The American understanding of the legal process is doubly cheapened by the refusal of most citizens to learn how things work beyond whatever we might have learned in Mrs. Burke’s eighth grade civics class, as well as the inexplicable popularity of judge shows. Our court system operates on a far more intricate level than the homespun homilies you get on “Judge Judy,” or “Divorce Court,” yet those are the working models most people identify with.

Is it any wonder, then, when a real trial with complex evidentiary rules and detailed processes plays itself out on television, people are baffled and angered when things don’t turn out as simply as they’ve been led to believe they would?

Actually, as my friend Elise succinctly put it Tuesday, the Anthony trial really did come down to a basic set of facts, namely these: “If you can’t prove cause of death, you can’t prove somebody was murdered. And if you can’t prove somebody was murdered, you can’t convict somebody of that murder, because it might not have happened.”

And there you have it. Try as they might, the county prosecutors never satisfactorily established a cause of death for Caylee Anthony. And no matter how abhorrent her mother’s behavior might have been, if the county couldn’t prove to a jury how Caylee Anthony died, they certainly couldn’t prove that she was murdered and so, Casey Anthony was properly set free.

The Founding Fathers, whose judgment we all reveled in Monday, set up a judicial system in which a person who is charged with a crime is presumed innocent unless and until a governing body proves otherwise beyond a reasonable doubt. That’s the way it’s been for 235 years, and the system has worked pretty darned well to this point.

Is the American legal system perfect? Of course not. It was created by humans, who, by our very nature are flawed. Occasionally, someone who appears to be guilty will be exonerated, and while that fact is distasteful, I can live with it, because the alternative, where an innocent person loses his/her freedom and/or life is far more repellant.

The burden is and always has been on a prosecutor to prove that a person is guilty and that burden is substantial. And it should be. Again, when you’re proposing to take a person’s liberty or their very existence away, you should have to get it right. Not partially right, but entirely right.

The media, of which I am a part of, seems increasingly not to get that, or worse yet, seems unwilling to convey that idea to the public. In some cases, it may be simple ignorance on the part of reporters, anchors and producers.

In other cases, as we saw here, it could be flat out demagoguery of the kind exhibited by Nancy Grace, she of the aforementioned helmet hair. For three years, Grace, on a CNN network no less, beat the drum against Casey Anthony, seizing on her every character flaw to build a “case” that she had to have killed her daughter. In the process, Grace made ratings hay and probably placed pressure on prosecutors to seek a death penalty verdict, when a lesser charge might have sufficed.

In the wake of the verdict, Grace took to the airwaves to declare that the devil was dancing because Casey Anthony was found not guilty. Goodness knows, the demons that seek to cause unrest and to drive mass hysteria have found their patron in Grace. And the principles we celebrated Monday have taken a beating in the process.

Thank God the American spirit is strong, even if not everyone understands what it stands for.

Here’s a link to the audio of the piece, courtesy of producer Mary Rose Madden:

Sports At Large 6-27-11

There’s been a suggestion around town that Vladimir Guerrero, the Orioles’ new free agent designated hitter ought to be the team’s mandated All-Star Game representative when the game takes place in a couple of weeks in Phoenix.

That’s a good idea, but when fans vote for starters in Baltimore and around baseball, they shouldn’t just select Guerrero, but also Detroit first baseman Miguel Cabrera, as well as Yankees second baseman Robinson Cano.

At shortstop for the American League, Asdrubal Cabrera of the Indians would make a fine choice, while Adrian Beltre of the Texas Rangers could be the starting third baseman.

The catcher should be Alex Avila of the Tigers, while Toronto’s Jose Bautista, Carlos Quentin of the White Sox and Kansas City’s Melky Cabrera ought to patrol the outfield.

You may have noticed a trend among the names of the suggested starters. They’re all Hispanic players, and this wasn’t by accident.

Indeed, if Rebecca Alpert has her way, all the All-Star starters for both the American and National Leagues will be Latino.

Alpert, a professor of religion and women’s studies at Temple University, told the Philadelphia Daily News that she wants all of the starters for the midsummer classic to be of Hispanic descent to bring shame to the state of Arizona.

There, the state legislature has enacted and the governor has signed into law the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act. That gives police and law enforcement officials permission to request documentation and to detain anyone who might look like they are in this country illegally.

The law is currently under challenge in the courts, but its passage has drawn both heavy criticism from liberals and rousing support from conservatives.

For over two generations, Latino players have made themselves essential to Major League Baseball. From Roberto Clemente and Juan Marichal in the 1960’s to Pedro Martinez and David Ortiz today, it would be impossible to imagine baseball without Hispanic players.

And it would be impossible to envision the broader American culture without the contributions of Latinos. Alpert’s idea effectively forces us to confront that very possibility in a rather public and visible way.

Perhaps a meaningless baseball game in the middle of the summer isn’t the best place to conduct a national debate on immigration policy. And the date and locale of the All-Star Game were, in fairness, settled before the Arizona law was debated and put into place.

But baseball officials annually and rightfully pat themselves on the back for the sport’s contributions to the national dialogue on civil rights with a regular season game as well as permitting players to wear number 42, the number of Jackie Robinson, the first black major leaguer.

Those same officials should have had a back-up plan for the All-Star Game which included relocation to another spot when the law came into being.

Don’t forget that the NFL, which is a lot less socially aware than baseball, threatened to take the Super Bowl out of Arizona, when the state wouldn’t pass a Martin Luther King Day holiday years ago.

Sometimes, the good old US of A needs a proverbial foul ball off our collective noggin to see what’s right. An All-Star Game starting lineup of Hispanic players would be a step in that direction.

Yet, remarkably, it appears they have done just that, or at least presented a pretty good façade. But why, when it seems like all the owners have to do is wait out the players before grinding their bones into bread?

The answer may have come in a Sports Business Journal story posted Monday that says the league is shopping an early season package of games to air on television on Thursday nights. Such a deal could yield as much as $700 million a year to NFL owners, which ought to be more than enough to shovel into the fund to cover additional costs in a new labor deal.

The idea is brilliant on a few fronts. From the league standpoint, the money from a new slate of games (which would resemble the old arrangement when Turner and ESPN split the Sunday night schedule) would in part make up for what the owners won’t get from an expanded 18-game schedule. The league will keep its eight-game Thursday schedule on the NFL Network for the back end of the season, but carve out a new passel of games for Thursday in the early season, confidently capitalizing on the national obsession with all things NFL.

And there will be no shortage of suitors who will line up to fork over dough to the league. The most obvious contenders will be Turner, which can use those Thursday games to fill in the gap before the NBA starts on TNT in early November, and NBC/Comcast, which would take those games to bring marquee programming to whatever it decides to call Versus. The Sports Business Journal article also identifies Fox (on behalf of FX) and Viacom’s Spike as potential players.

For that matter, the newly rebranded CBS Sports Channel, which was CBS College Sports, could be a logical landing place. And don’t put it past ESPN, which is talking with the NFL for a mammoth Monday Night Football package, to try to shoehorn in even more NFL, though Thursday is already a big college football night at the Worldwide Leader.

Say whatever you want about the NFL and how it does business (and there is plenty to say), but you have to marvel at its ability to spin gold into more gold. Football is the only television programming that reliably brings men in the critical 18-49 demographic to the set in big numbers. As a result, the NFL, the highest rated football, carries the highest premium. Football is even more vital to cable networks, who have dual revenue streams of advertising and subscriber fees as funding to get shows that bring eyeballs in to watch their shows.

Of course, the Thursday night games will disrupt the lives of season ticket holders and their kids on another work/school night. They’ll also shorten the work week for the teams involved, and potentially subject more players to injury.

But who cares? Pass the clicker. We gotta have more football!

If any of those applied to you, then you can identify with how I’ve felt for weeks leading up to the release of the Green Lantern movie.

You see, I’m not just a fan of the Emerald Crusader; I am an admitted fanboy. When I was a youngster, I would race home from school to watch the “Batman, Superman and Aquaman” cartoon series, hoping for a Green Lantern cartoon, even though there were only three in the bunch from the original series that premiered in 1967 on CBS.

I have Green Lantern action figures all over my home (much to the consternation of my significant other). Hanging in my den is a framed cel of the 1959 relaunch of the character, a gift from a dear friend. And I not only have the DVD with those ’60′s cartoons, but also the entire “Justice League” Cartoon Network series from the 2000′s where Green Lantern was updated, not as the familiar Hal Jordan character, but as John Stewart, a badass former Marine and a Black guy to boot .

Needless to say, I approached the new Green Lantern movie with great interest and more than a little trepidation. “Green Lantern” would require a director with a deft touch, someone who could tell the story of both the hero and the alter ego, without letting one swallow the other whole.

The critically successful superhero films (the first two Superman films, the first two Spider-Man films, the two most recent Batman movies, the Iron Man movies and Thor) have struck that balance. “Green Lantern” does, too.

Under the adept direction of New Zealander Martin Campbell (“Casino Royale,” “GoldenEye,” “The Mask of Zorro,”), “Green Lantern” moves smartly from scene to scene, never over-relying on action scenes to get in the way of character development, but never slowing things down in explanations. Special effects are a necessary evil to a film like this, but Campbell doesn’t let CGI be the be all and end all of the film. In other words, the ring is the thing, but it’s not everything.

Also, you don’t have to be immersed in comic book lore to enjoy “Green Lantern,” but the film is also mostly faithful to the legend. Fans will recognize familiar characters like Tomar-Re, Jordan’s initial handler, Kilowog, the gruff but lovable drill sergeant, and, of course, Sinestro, the leader of Lantern Corps.

The film is well cast, too, with Blake Lively in the role of Carol Ferris, the No.2 executive at the aerospace company where Jordan is a test pilot, and a love interest for Jordan. To her credit, or better yet, to that of the screenwriting team, Lively is never placed exclusively in the position of screaming damsel in distress. Carol Ferris is a fully realized, fully fleshed out character, who is smart and observant, when the moment calls for it.

Peter Sarsgaard is quite good as Hector Hammond, a contemporary of Jordan’s and Ferris’, who has unresolved issues with his senator father, played by Tim Robbins, who just avoids going too hammy. And Angela Bassett is sharp as Dr. Amanda Waller, the head of a research lab who does business with Hammond.

The revelation in this film is the performance of Ryan Reynolds in the title role. Frankly, while I liked Reynolds in “The Proposal,” I shuddered when I first heard he was cast as Hal Jordan/Green Lantern. No, the role doesn’t require the skill of Olivier or Brando or De Niro, but it does ask for more than a pretty boy, a poseur, a dilettante, which I perceived him to be.

Instead, Reynolds is exceptional, first, as a guy looking to get by in life on his prodigious skill as a pilot, then as a man who is handed an incredible gift and has to figure out what to do with it. It’s not the kind of acting that will get him an Oscar nomination, to be sure, but it places him third in the superhero acting genre behind Tobey Maguire and Robert Downey, Jr.

It’s not often that a character that has been a part of your life for decades can be put on a big screen to your satisfaction. “Green Lantern” isn’t exactly the way I conceived it, but it’s close enough. Give it, say, four power rings on a scale of five.

Oh, and be sure and stay through at least the first round of credits for the now predictable setup for the inevitable sequel.

And, thanks to the kindness of my wonderful producer, Mary Rose Madden, here’s the audio of  Sports at Large. Enjoy and discuss!

It’s a good thing for LeBron James that the NBA isn’t like elementary school, where you have to write a report about how you spent your summer when you return from the break.

Because James needs to write an essay with the title, “How I Cleaned Up My Reputation.”

You get the sense that even if the Dallas Mavericks hadn’t ended James’ season Sunday night with a 105-95 win over the Miami Heat to clinch the NBA championship in six games that James would have a lot of work to do in this offseason.

Like any player, James will hit the weight room and the gym to hone his game.

But between now and the time players report for next season, whenever that is thanks to the pending lockout, LeBron James had better spend some time working to restore the image he so carefully crafted over the first seven years of his career.

In short order, James has become the punch line of jokes and a pariah, a daily double more impressive than anything Alex Trebek has to offer.

This all began in last year’s playoffs when James, then a member of the Cleveland Cavaliers, appeared, to all the basketball world, to check out of the series against the Boston Celtics.

Then came James’ infamous Decision to announce that he would leave the Cavaliers, his hometown team, for Miami.

Hardly anyone outside of Cleveland of course, begrudged James’ right to leave once he had become eligible for free agency.

However, it was the self-congratulatory manner in which James took his talents to South Beach, including holding up ESPN for a free hour of time with his handpicked interrogators, that started the ball rolling.

That ball of disgust picked up steam when James, and his new teammates, fellow free agent Chris Bosh and holdover Dwyane Wade declared at an over the top press conference that they would win seven or eight championships before they had even won one.

James conducted himself throughout the season with an odd combination of smugness and a willingness to defer from stardom at crucial moments, a curious blend in a self-proclaimed king.

The Heat won 58 games, the third best record in the league, but gained increasing enmity throughout the season and into the playoffs.

In the championship round, James played poorly, scoring a combined 18 points in the fourth quarters of the six games.

To add sick humor to the insult, James and Wade poked fun at Dallas star Dirk Nowitzki, insinuating that his 101-degree fever was overblown. And as the series ended, James played the ‘I’m rich and my critics are haters’ card.

At 26, LeBron James is not the fully formed product that he will be in two, five or 10 years. His false bravado may be the by-product of the absence of the buffering and resentment that even a year in college can provide.

However, while James does appear to be arrogant, at least some of the criticism laid at him comes from people who have their own misguided perspective of how a young black man should behave.

But, for now, writing “I will be humble,” a jillion times on the blackboard might not be such a bad thing for King LeBron James.

NBC, and its new corporate master, Comcast, were thought to be, at best, runners-up to ESPN for the Winter Games of Sochi, Russia in three years and the Rio de Janeiro games in five years, with Fox in the mix as well. The story line had it that Comcast’s reputation for corporate chintziness combined with the recent departure of Dick Ebersol, the longtime sports division head who ate, slept and breathed Olympics would open the door for either Fox or ESPN to grab at least the next Russian and Brazilian Games.

Instead, in a move reminiscent of the breathless gambit Ebersol pulled off in the late 1990′s when he grabbed up five Games for one price, NBC took the Olympics off the table for the next nine years at a reported price tag of $4.3 billion.

Tuesday’s move is a gutsy play for Comcast and for Mark Lazerus, Ebersol’s replacement, in that the Olympics as a brand don’t carry the same kind of cache that they once did. As recently as 17 years ago, Olympic ratings were, well Olympian, as people of all demographics gathered together in front of one television set per household to watch our freckle-faced American athletes, the Good Guys, beat back Russians and East Germans and Romanians (oh, my!) and the rest of the godless Communist hordes in mortal combat.

Times change, however, and people have more television sets and more things to watch. And the villains we Americans once hated are largely gone, or have changed. The people we fight against on a global basis don’t care about besting America on the playing field or even in ideological battles, but are more interested in bringing this country to its knees by any means necessary. In other words, people who are willing to crash planes into buildings don’t really care much about who swims the 200m freestyle the fastest.

As a result, the Olympics have lost a significant amount of luster; so much so that NBC, under Ebersol, lost over $200 million last year televising the Vancouver Games. The price tag for producing Sochi, a relatively remote city which is nine hours ahead of New York, figures to be staggering.

So, why did NBC take such a gamble, which includes bidding on the 2018 and 2020 Games, whose sites haven’t been determined yet? Well, even in a era of such fractured viewing, sports remain the one programming form that draws in adult men, the most highly coveted demographic group. And when packaged in the right manner, the Olympics can still bring women to the TV in big numbers, provided there’s enough gymnastics, swimming and diving in the Summer and figure skating in the Winter.

NBC, under Ebersol’s leadership, has proven itself capable of producing a show that moms and dads and kids alike are interested in taking in. The rub is that the presentation doesn’t resemble the way Americans are used to getting their sports, namely live as they happen. Ebersol, who learned at the foot of ABC Sports impresario Roone Arledge, famously packaged the Olympics as an entertainment vehicle, with the events of widest appeal being taped and held for viewing when the audience was its largest.

That approach, especially in the digital and SportsCenter age, chapped sports fans, but was endorsed by the larger public, which enjoyed seeing the big events when they wanted to see them and by general managers of NBC affiliates, who appreciated the big ratings. It will be worth it to see how much or little the International Olympic Committee helps NBC in how soon it allows other entities to air footage after NBC has shown it first.

Lazerus said Tuesday the network plans to air all events live rather than holding them to air on a tape delay basis. That may very well be the plan, but we’ll see if that holds up. At any rate, Tuesday’s news was a very big shot in the arm for a network and a company that could sorely use it.

Do with that what you will. I will say this: If the clouds that will surely rain down on Columbus and Tressel help bring about needed changes in college football, then this won’t be such a bad thing.

Not to put too fine a point on this, but college football is a cesspool run by men (and a couple of women) who apparently wouldn’t know ethical conduct and standards if they bit them on the fanny pad.

How do I hate college football? Let me count the ways:

1. Just as the National League stubbornly refuses to join the rest of organized baseball and adopt the designated hitter, big time Division I-A football remains the only organized football organization that does not decide its championship in a logical manner, i.e. a playoff. And spare me the nonsense about how a playoff would diminish the regular season or would keep the gladiators out of class or make them miss exams. Players in Division I-AA, II and III, where the idea of a student-athlete isn’t a joke, manage to study AND play without hurting the game or their GPAs.
2. Though there are more than 120 schools in Division I-A, the big money from what passes for a national title is controlled by four bowls as well as the schools of six conferences and one independent. And they refuse to share it, even though a playoff would bring badly needed revenue for athletic departments that are hemorrhaging cash to provide opportunities for men and women.
3. Coaches and athletic departments routinely over sign recruits, making more scholarship offers to kids than they have available slots. And, on the other side, if kids change their minds about a school or if a coach leaves a recruit for greener pastures, the schools often refuse to let the kids transfer or make the terms so onerous as to effectively make it impossible for them to leave.
4. Related to that, almost all big-time programs use 85 scholarships for football and dress more than that for home games. Keep in mind that NFL teams are only allowed to keep 53 players on a roster and to dress 45 for a game. The 85 scholarship barriers makes it impossible for many schools to provide equal athletic opportunities for women, because there is no sport for women that allots that many scholarships. Yet, when schools are forced to close programs of lesser interest to bring their athletic programs into Title IX compliance, football coaches have done a masterful job of pinning the blame on women’s programs, as in, ‘The reason they have to cut wrestling is because they have to have a women’s rowing program,’ not, ‘We could save wrestling by only keeping 75 scholarship players on a football roster.’
5. Despite the heavy numbers of black college football players, you have an easier time finding a man of color on the ice during a hockey game than you do running a big time college program. As I wrote nearly a year and a half ago, the numbers of black college football coaches are getting better, but then, they were so abysmal before that they had to improve. And they still aren’t close to good enough.

There are others, but you get the idea. And understand that I have nothing per se with the game of college football. It’s the off-field garbage that surrounds it that makes it so darned untenable to me.

No doubt, there are a few folks reading this and wondering of what significance is all of this and why should I care. Here’s why this matters: Most schools receive federal education dollars or handle federal dollars through grants. A good chunk of that money makes its way to athletic departments in a variety of manners, which is why the Justice Department is justifiably interested in how those aforementioned big schools and those four bowls (Fiesta, Rose, Sugar and Orange) have kept smaller schools out the money for so long.

And this may just be the beginning of government involvement in college athletics. If Barack Obama wins a second term and the Democrats re-take control of the House next year, it’s not hard to envision a scenario by which congressmen like Henry Waxman and Elijah Cummings, meddlers of the first magnitude, issue demands that the Department of Education take a more active role in intercollegiate and interscholastic athletics. With a few more scandals like the one at Ohio State, it might be hard to argue against it.

UPDATE: Since the bulk of this post was written, the Bowl Championship Series has moved to strip Southern California of the title the Trojans won at the end of the 2004 season. The move, which included vacating USC’s appearance in the BCS title game the following season because of Reggie Bush’s acceptance of illegal gifts, curiously does not include USC giving back any of the money it received for either game.

Hmm.

I haven’t gotten there yet, but I have to admit that years of covering women’s basketball and seeing college teams dress in all pink a couple of times each season left me a little numb to the cause of fighting breast cancer. The disease seemed as much a marketing vehicle as an actual ailment, even as a beloved member of my extended family contracted it.

And then I got a freelance assignment to cover the Susan G. Komen Global Race for the Cure in Washington last weekend, and breast cancer came alive in the stories of endurance and loss among the more than 40,000 participants and of the 9,500 survivors.

Because the site I was writing for is aimed predominately at sports fans, I wanted to talk to men who either had run in the race or had walked in support to see how breast cancer had touched their lives.

The stories were heartbreaking and heartwarming all at once. There was a man who walked in memory of his 48-year-old sister had died four years before, leaving two small sons without a mother. There was a 59-year-old man who ran to recall his own loving mother, who fought breast cancer for over 20 years. There was a young man here from Holland, here in the U.S. for a few weeks as an exchange student, but just long enough to join colleagues from George Mason. His run was to recall a grandmother who died of breast cancer, as well as a grandfather who died of lung cancer and his father who is fighting off lung cancer.

But, of all the people I met and whose narratives I heard Saturday, it’s the story of Gerry Klopp that will resonate with me for years to come.

Mrs. Klopp, smiling broadly, was the hit of the Survivors tent, with women lined up around her wheelchair to get their picture taken with her. And why not? On a day filled with hope and life, Gerry Klopp’s narrative will rest with me for a long time

The makeshift signs on her wheelchair said it all: Gerry Klopp discovered a lump in her breast 43 years ago, got herself tested and treated and has lived to tell the tale ever since.

“I think she’s a real inspiration to some of these others,” said Marcie Bassler, Gerry Klopp’s daughter. “So many of the women have come up and said, ‘I hope I’m you,’ and ‘You give me hope.’ They want to have their picture taken and that’s why we’ve come.’

This was Gerry Klopp’s third appearance at the Race for the Cure, and the odds are strong that she’ll be back in 2012. Heck, she could even run in the race, though when I joked with her that she had won the previous two years, she laughed and said, ‘If I ever were to win something, I’d retire.”

Gerry Klopp is a big winner, and to cap it all off, Monday marked her 91^st birthday. Those American Cancer Society ads with celebrities singing ‘Happy Birthday” might be hokey to some, but to millions like Gerry Klopp, that song is a song of victory.

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Let’s take them in order. I’m Milton Kent, a once and hopefully future sports writer. For 23 years, I worked at the Baltimore Sun before I took a buyout in August, 2008. Before I left, I covered a gamut of activities, from college football, men’s and women’s college basketball, Major League Baseball, the NBA, the NFL and sports media. In December of 2009, I joined on with Fanhouse, a sports website operated by AOL. I’d still be there now, except that in March of 2011, AOL entered into a deal with the Sporting News to have that magazine handle sports content for it. The Sporting News cut loose a lot of good talent (myself included) and kept just four columnists.

No pity parties here, though; I am doing some freelance work for a few outlets, and I do a weekly essay for WYPR 88.1 FM, the NPR affiliate in Baltimore. It’s called “Sports at Large,” and it airs Mondays at 5:30 p.m. and again the next day on “Maryland Morning.” intermittently, the script for that week’s show will appear here as a post, and there might even be an audio link or two.

Which leads me to what you can expect from this space, which is a little bit of everything. For instance, there will be a monthly post on the work of a musician/songwriter that piques my interest. I’m a huge consumer of popular culture, so you can expect commentaries on the best and worst of the form, from my vantage point. And I expect to reflect on the world as I see it from the standpoint of being a Black man in America and as a practicing Methodist, as well as from my political perch, which is almost always from the left of center.

But, mostly, this will be a place for me to comment and occasionally report on sports. I’ve spent too many years in press boxes, press rows, clubhouses, locker rooms, newsrooms, production trucks and in studios to let that go to waste. I have interesting things to say and I hope you’ll enjoy reading and hearing them.

Oh, and about the name of the blog. The spot is a few blocks away from my church, New Waverly United Methodist. Of course, Baltimore sports fans of a certain age will recognize it as the address of the late, lamented Memorial Stadium, the home of the Colts and the Orioles. The ballpark, which closed in 1997 and was demolished four years later, was the site of a ton of my most cherished memories. I saw my first ball game there as a 10-year old between the Orioles and the Kansas City Royals. Eighteen years later, I shed tears in the press box on the afternoon of the last baseball game there, when the heroes of my childhood, Brooks Robinson, Frank Robinson, Boog Powell, Paul Blair and Jim Palmer and the like, trotted out one final time to their positions while the music of “Field of Dreams” played in the background.

The stadium is gone now, replaced by a youth baseball stadium and a YMCA, but the memories it created and the impressions the people who played there left on me still reside in me, never to leave. I’ll be happy to share some of those thoughts and a lot others with you over the years to come.