Bobby Thomson knew a fastball was coming
“The Shot Heard ’Round the World” and “The Miracle of Coogan’s Bluff.” Those are the two most famous names given to the game-winning home run Bobby Thomson hit off Ralph Branca on October 3, 1951. Thomson...
Malcolm X
During my sophomore year at the University of Texas, one of the assigned readings in a huge American history class was The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Two decades later, I asked my then-girlfriend to accompany me to an auditorium on the same...
Patronizing the swoosh
In late May 2013, a Korean friend who goes by the English name of Billy and I walked a few blocks to Gangnam-daero, one of the busiest streets in Seoul. We were going to the ABC Mart so I could buy a pair of running shoes. Billy, a marathoner...
The Boz
“Richard, are you going middle-age crazy on us?” That question was put to me by a friend named Debra Drueple at an Austin Runners Club picnic in the summer of 1989. She had good reason for asking because I was sporting a new and...
On the question of female superiority
The girlfriend—let’s call her Katie—and I were sitting in the restaurant at the Adam’s Mark Hotel in downtown Dallas one morning in 2001. I have to say that Katie was one of the sanest people I knew. She seldom made...
Mimizuka
When I think of the fortuitous events of late 2007 that brought me from Austin, Texas to Korea, I realize I could just as easily have gone to Japan. After all, I once had a colleague named John who left Austin and moved to a small Japanese...
Fighting the good fight in Korea
Yeong Yoon and I work in the Halla Classic Building—he on the 11th floor and I on the 4th. We meet for lunch once every two weeks, and he stubbornly refuses to let me buy. He pays every time. Mr. Yoon was born in Yesan in 1939...
UT loves Joe Jamail and his big bucks
They say that money talks and a certain bovine byproduct walks, and I know it’s true. A case in point is 87-year-old Joseph Dahr Jamail, Jr. Summarizing the life of Joe Jamail is not easy, but I will try. He is of Lebanese descent, the...
Deconstructing MacArthur
Just to the northwest of Dallas sits the suburb of Irving. One of its high schools is named after Douglas MacArthur. This is far from unique since many other American cities have schools and streets named in honor of the old general. He...
Say it ain’t so, Suzy
Tuesday Weld, Annette Funicello and Angela Cartwright. Most Americans of a certain baby-boom age remember the names of these young actresses in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The blonde-haired Weld (born in 1943) was in several television...
Detroit
Over the course of four weeks spanning December 2012 and January 2013, I read three books purchased on the cheap from Amazon.com. All of them pertained to the history of Detroit, the one-time “Paris of Southeastern Michigan.” Why...
Dr. Z and the greatest quarterback of them all
Living in Korea, I am not as attuned to big-time college and pro sports as I was before. This is probably good because I had become increasingly disaffected if not alienated by the sometimes sleazy, sometimes inane stuff that went on...