Good Reads: Back from vacation

I've returned from this weekend's wedding in Minnesota and Red Sox-White Sox game in Chicago. I may write something about U.S. Cellular Field later.

Some great stuff was written while I was gone. I'm sure I missed a lot of it, but this is a pretty impressive collection.

Race is never an easy topic, but John Smallwood's column on the rarity of a white American male winning in track is excellent.


Dan Wetzel on the Iraq soccer team defining Olympic ideal. He also wrote about the Afghan woman runner. Both pieces are excellent.

Plaschke on Hamm

Here's most of the Posnanski collection since I've been gone:
On Harry Truman statue in Athens
on Paul Hamm controversy
on Maurice Greene
on Lisa Fernandez as the perfect role model
His it's Not all fun and games column has this amusing line:
Obviously, it's a bit more involved when you're from the United States since there are 438 American athletes here. Actually, there's some dispute about the number of Americans here: In the daily notes, the U.S. Olympic Committee broke it down this way:American athletes: 438. Women: 260. Men: 276.Now, I don't have a math degree, but unless there are a couple of athletes named Pat (or swimmers from the old East German days), that doesn't seem to add up.

Mike Wise's column on Justin Gatlin included the following passage.
"Moments later, eight runners took off in a blur of spandex and fluorescent colors. Imagine an event time starting at 11:10 p.m. and being over before 11:10:10 p.m. "

Ian O’Connor on the family of Tammy Crow's manslaughter victim.
Bernie Lincicome

Norman Chad on Olympic TV

Phil Sheridan

A pair of entertaining Red Sox stories:
Stan Grossfield on Manny Ramirez
Gordon Edes article on Dave Roberts has some fun nuggets on the Red Sox fantasy football draft.
Air Canada briefly misplaced the Stanley Cup. (Skip to the bottom of the story).