Staff ace Aaron Nola was headed to salary arbitration weeks ago until he reached a four-year, $45 million deal with the Philadelphia Phillies. “I don’t play specifically for the money,” he actually said after signing his contract, “I play for the love of the game. I play for my teammates.”
After finishing various levels of schooling, training and employment, and upon reaching a certain age, encountering a heretofore unknown activity provokes surprising interest. When that activity is designated with an equally novel term, the curiosity only heightens.
For reasons I don’t understand, this year’s holiday party has been entrusted to me.
Wait, on second thought, I do understand. I’m in charge of the holiday party by default. No one else wanted to do it. And the party’s decision-making has been rife with conflict.
Frustrations abound in life and law.
The train is either agonizingly delayed, at the expense of my monthly meeting — obsessively gaveled to order on time — or leaves with infuriating promptness when I am held up, forcing me to acknowledge I can no longer cover the five-minute dash to the station in less than seven minutes.
Legal gambling on pro and college sports outside Nevada hit the jackpot on May 14 when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act passed by Congress in 1992.
Airplane travel is nature’s way of making you look like your passport photo. — Al Gore
Like rain on a day off or coffee spilling on your shirt on the way into a client meeting, air travel delays seem inevitable.
The past four spring training columns have each covered the progress of a class-action lawsuit in which minor league players sought to obtain what Major League Baseball, supreme ruler of the minor leagues, was unwilling to provide: a living wage. Many minor leaguers earn less than $7,500 a year, some less than $3,000, but barring action by the Supreme Court, their suit appears concluded.
Tipping after a meal is a highly individual preference. Some food lovers will leave huge tips even if the soup arrives cold and the beer warm with the waitstaff nowhere to be found, while other customers tip frugally after receiving five-star service at a busy restaurant.
So in our pride we ordered for breakfast an omelet, toast and coffee and what has just arrived is a tomato salad with onions, a dish of pickles, a big slice of watermelon and two bottles of cream soda. —John Steinbeck
When John Steinbeck penned, in his 1952 novel “East of Eden,” that “I believe there are monsters born in the world to human parents,” few readers could have envisioned that he might someday become one of those parents.
The University of Mississippi football team will not appear in a bowl game during the upcoming 2017 season.
This punishment, which includes forfeiting millions in Southeastern Conference post-season revenue, was self-imposed in response to a hard-driving and expansive NCAA investigation of the Rebels program.