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Jimi Hendrix’s Woodstock
Forty years ago, several hundred thousand people (an exact number will never be known) gathered in Bethel, N.Y., for the Woodstock Music and Art Fair. Nearly everyone who was anyone in rock—Jefferson Airplane, The Who, Janis Joplin, Sly & the Family Stone, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Richie Havens—played at that mud-soaked music fest. And…
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The 2010 NBA Free Agency Fallacy
In major markets throughout the NBA, teams and the media that follow them are talking about next summer like it’s the second coming, and not entirely without reason. Next summer the following superstars can be unrestricted free agents: LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Kobe Bryant, Dirk Nowitzki, and Amare Stoudemire. In addition, several all-stars including Ray…
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Finding Satchel
Baseball great Satchel Paige may be one of the most underrated black athletes of the 20th century. For many, he is known mostly for his longevity—in 1965, at the age of 59, plus or minus, he pitched in the major leagues. But at the top of his game, he was equal to any ballplayer who…
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Trading Bases
After a furious spate of trades late last week, the baseball trade deadline, the annual ritual of speculation that signals we’re starting into the homestretch of the pennant races, came and went. The usual construct for trades is that pennant contenders part with young prospects for short term veteran help from losing teams. Thus the…
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Banking on the Off-Season
Spending money just because you have some to spend is very, very rarely a solid fiscal strategy. But no one seemed to tell that to Portland Trail Blazers’ general manager Kevin Pritchard. All month, he has been eager to throw money after one free agent or another. And finally, late last week, he got his…
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Art in Transit
In the spring of 1978, a few months before I left Dallas to move to New York City, my senior English teacher, Jim Lloyd, took me aside to warn me of the dangers that lurked up north. Most of what he told me was the familiar claptrap about how the insidious racism of the North…
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The Original Moonwalk
I was 9 when Neil Armstrong took that “one small step for man,” and even as a kid, I wasn’t impressed. The moon? Please. On Star Trek, they were whizzing by moons in other galaxies, and Tintin, the protagonist of my favorite series of graphic novels (even in the ‘60s they were way too fancy…
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The Best Year in Jazz Ever
Ask 30 avid jazz fans, the type who cherish their vinyl LPs, to name their 30 favorite recordings and the following discs will show up on a lot of the lists. Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue, John Coltrane’s Giant Steps, Ornette Coleman’s The Shape of Jazz to Come, Dave Brubeck’s Time Out and two by…
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Tiger's Turnberry?
Tiger Woods is better than you think he is, or let me put this another way: if you think Tiger Woods is one of the best golfers of all time then you are selling him short. That sentence doesn’t need the gentle qualifier, “one of.” Shortly before Woods’ injury last year, Sal Johnson of Golf…
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Young Bucks Get the Big Bucks
Back in the day, baseball statistician and writer Bill James wrote that it’s better to spend money on new publicity instead of on old publicity. Clubs were better spending money for players who have most of their highlight clips in their future rather than in their past. It has taken baseball personnel bosses a decade…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
