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" As a kid, I didn't know that 'All in the Family' was satirizing male chauvinism or that Bobby Riggs was a self-promoting put-on. Many of us didn't get the irony and went on making fun of women and girls who wanted to play sports, especially the same sports that men and boys traditionally played. "

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" At its root, 'quit' means 'to set free' - think of an acquittal in a court of law - and to quit is often to be liberated. "

Steve Rushin

Court

Think

Root

" Hype covers every surface of mass culture, and sports fans are intimately familiar with it - the heavy-breathing buildup that leads, inevitably, to a first-round knockout or a 30-point blowout or a fourth-inning rainout. "

" It's one thing to wear jerseys at games, which fans have been doing in great numbers for 30 years, dressing as if they might be summoned from the stands on a moment's notice to pinch-run. But those same jerseys are now omnipresent on airplanes, in restaurants, in doctor's waiting rooms. "

" With each new pair of shoes, each new wrist-watch, each new Walkman or moisture-wicking wonder-material that runners put on, the sport became more alluring to me and to millions of others. "

Steve Rushin

Shoes

" My wife is an Olympic gold medalist, WNBA All-Star, 'Jeopardy!' champion, and Rhodes Scholarship finalist who was sung to by President Clinton, sung about by Ludacris, and serenaded on 'Sesame Street' by a chorus of Muppets. "

" Broadcasters calling a big game are often reminded to let the action breathe. A great moment of a televised game doesn't need any narration, which is why the announcers - the good ones, anyway - shut up at the celebration and let the pictures do the talking. "

" Hurricane Irene's advance coverage was heavy on worst-case scenarios. Thank goodness they didn't pan out. "

" As good as NFL Films is at making players human, it's even better at making players superhuman. No Hollywood studio has made movies that are more grand or gorgeous. Every meticulous shot of 'Hard Knocks' is a vision: every slow-motion spiral, every shaved head steaming like a Manhattan manhole cover. "

" Putting is so difficult, so universally vexing, that the best the pros can do is tell us how to miss. 'Miss it on the pro side,' they say, meaning miss it above the hole. I can't even do that consistently. I miss it on the pro side. I miss it on the amateur side. I miss it on both sides of the clown's mouth. "

" In golf, a wedge issue means just that: You can't hit your sand wedge, or your lob wedge needs to be regrooved. In politics, a wedge issue is more serious still: It's one that splits the electorate, dividing voters along ideological fault lines. "

Steve Rushin

Politics

You

" My wife's name, Rebecca Lobo, is on sandwiches and street signs in New England. It adorns the arena rafters at the University of Connecticut, where she first became a basketball star. Her high school in Massachusetts is on Rebecca Lobo Way, a nice trump card to play at reunions. "

" Trying to keep up is the ultimate act of uncoolness. And so I still retrieve not one but two daily newspapers from the driveway. "

Steve Rushin

Daily

Keep

" I'm a recovering jersey wearer who can't bear to get rid of the blaze-orange Knicks warmup top that makes me look like James Carville on a highway repair crew. "

Steve Rushin

Top

Bear

" In 2007, Prince performed at the halftime of the Super Bowl. The stage in Miami was wreathed in purple light, and it poured during his performance, so that he played 'Purple Rain' in a purple rain. "

" Occasionally, Americans in large numbers are moved by a vanquished athlete's grief. Larry Bird with a towel over his head in 1979 comes immediately to mind. But more often, sports fans do the opposite - they delight in the desolation of a defeated archrival. "

" On its surface, the HBO documentary series 'Hard Knocks,' about the New York Jets' training camp, resembles another HBO series, 'The Sopranos.' Both star the stout patriarch of a New Jersey 'family' preoccupied with food, intimidation, and florid profanity. "

" If Charlie Sheen is the 21st century figure most closely associated with 'Winning,' it is perhaps time to consider an alternative to victory. "

" Growing up in Bloomington, Minn., I loved the ritual of dressing for Little League - in white socks, blue stirrups, belted pants, a double-knit jersey, and the cap I'd hold over my face to screen out mosquitoes in right field. "

" I remember seeing Letterman do stand-up on 'The Tonight Show.' Or, it's probably more accurate to say, I remember hearing him do stand-up, because the Carson show existed mainly as sound leaking under my bedroom door at night. I'd hear Johnny telling jokes and my dad laughing at them. "

" When people ask if Marquette University is in Michigan, and I tell them my alma mater is in Milwaukee, they sometimes say, 'What's the difference?' "

" Football, played at its highest level, is catastrophic. Even relatively minor afflictions are grotesque and bookworthy. "

" In the Gospels, we are reminded, 'The very hairs of your head are all numbered.' And your numbered hairs, like your numbered days, recede daily. "

" When should a man stop wearing sports jerseys? When the buttons of his White Sox top finally pop, like rivets on a distressed ocean liner? When the pinstripes of his Yankees shirt have grown wider at the midsection than at the top, as the longitudinal lines on a globe? "

" Everything gleamed or glinted on TV in the '70s, from the 'flavor crystals' in Folgers coffee to the yellow dentures dipped in Polident and instantly restored to pristine, piano-key whiteness. "

Steve Rushin

Flavor

Yellow

" The Metrodome was built for football. Fans seated down the third-base line at a baseball game faced centerfield, so that they had to turn and look over their right shoulders to see home plate. "

" If you own face paint and a bulb horn and you're not a circus clown, you might be uncool. "

" Golf mogul Donald Trump sports an arrangement of hair that is less a comb-over than a 'do-over, a candy-floss confection of gossamer wisps that comes off as the clumsiest cover-up since Watergate. "

" Anyone who thinks sports are ruled by athletes need only think of American sports' most enduring tradition: Immediately after a championship, as the champagne sprays and the confetti falls, the trophy is passed not to the team captain but most often to the team owner, handed to him by his highest-ranking employee, the league commissioner. "

" Outside Buckingham Palace, the Royal Standard flies only when the reigning monarch is in residence. Sadly, there's no similar flag outside The Woods Jupiter, which Tiger opened in the summer of 2015, spending a reported $8 million to make an upscale sports bar-and-restaurant in his image. "

" What's the best baseball name of all time? Is it Champ Summers? Clyde Kluttz? Razor Shines? Scipio Spinks? Sibby Sisti? Creepy Crespi? Before you answer, consider that Coco Crisp is not even the game's top Coco, an honor retired by Coco Laboy. "