Kobe Bryant was drafted at #13 in 1996, passed over by my beloved Celtics, who took Antoine Walker instead. Ouch.
Sports
Chief’s ring
Robert Parish is selling his 1986 Celtics NBA championship ring. How sad. Best single-season NBA team I’ve ever seen. (Via Red’s Army.)
Giamatti on baseball
It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone.
A. Bartlett Giamatti
Fenway ’56
August 7, 1956. 68 cents + 7 cents tax. Via Eephus League.
John Fox on ball games
Book trailer for The Ball: Discovering the Object of the Game by my friend John Fox (on sale May 14). The footage shows the Kirkwell Ba’, an ancient “folk football” game played twice a year, on Christmas and New Years Day, in the streets of Kirkwall, a tiny coastal town in Orkney, northern Scotland.
Yale vs. Princeton, 1903
The oldest surviving video of an American football game, Yale vs. Princeton in 1903 (via Kottke)
“A fair-haired crew-cut lad”
“You will no doubt remember a fair-haired crew-cut lad…” In the spring of 1960, Anthony Gilchrist, an old army buddy of Toronto Maple Leafs coach Punch Imlach, recommends a 12-year-old prospect named Bobby Orr. The Maple Leafs’ response is here. The whole story is told here. (Via Pension Plan Puppets.)
Cousy
Bob Cousy drives the lane against the Rochester Royals, December 12, 1956. (Sports Illustrated)