Agent Palmer

Is the summer of 2021 the greatest Summer of Soccer the world has ever known? I believe it might be, despite not being a World Cup year, it is jam-packed with international tournaments that are unlikely to ever coincide again.

The EUROs (postponed from 2020), the COPA, the Gold Cup, and the Olympics (also postponed to this year), have created a buzz around international soccer, the likes of which we only usually experience during a world cup year, and that is only a fraction of the number of participant nations.

Baseball is a Funny Game by Joe Garagiola is not about a baseball star. It’s hardly about the fundamentals of the game or its many statistics. It is simply the story of baseball told by an average catcher who bounced around the National League for a while who can tell stories with the best of them.

This book is baseball as it was and as it is, because the more things change the more they stay the same. America’s game is no exception.

It has been a while since I went out and did 18 Holes with Tin Cup, so let’s take it slow and stick to just the front nine; with this Rober Redford directed film, based on the 1995 novel of the same name by Steven Pressfield, starring Will Smith, Matt Damon, and Charlize Theron.

What is it? It’s a fable of sorts, an allegory for golf and life (as most golf movies are), about Rannulph Junuh (Damon) a local golf hero who is suffering from post-traumatic stress since surviving World War I with distinction…

2020 has been anything but normal. No exceptions. But the 2020 Tour de France, which was never a guarantee to start and once there was never a guarantee to finish was captivating, competitive, and dramatic.

It’s easy to say some of those things in hindsight because it did finish in Paris on the Champs-Élysées, but the threat of bringing it all to a close without reaching Stage 21 was not only a looming specter but a change in tactics.

The Russian Five is a very detailed and, at times, intense documentary on the Detroit Red Wings, and how their quest for the Stanley Cup had them looking at some of the most talented and, at the time, untouchable players in the world to make their team a winning one.

But to do that, they must first extract players they drafted from behind the Iron Curtain of the Soviet Union, and along the way, they may have changed some public perceptions, but they definitely changed how hockey was played in the NHL, and perhaps elevated it.