COVID-19: A nurse’s words point to the depth of the lie

The words came from Jodi Doering, an ER nurse in South Dakota, and they were posted on Twitter over the weekend.  In her own quiet way, Doering proved once again that what is most simply stated is often what is most profound:  “I have a night off from the hospital,” Doering wrote. “As I’m on …

One last blog MMQB – & then it’s back to the future

&&&&& this will be the last blog version of the Monday Morning Quarterback for the foreseeable future. I will go on blogging here at jacktoddbooks.wordpress.com but I will return to my old space in the Gazette sports pages beginning next Monday – part of a new and old crew of columnists that includes three brilliant …

From 1968 to 2020, one watershed season to another

It was November 5, 1968. A group of us had gathered at the apartment of my friends George and Deanna Kaufman in Lincoln, Nebraska to watch as the election results trickled in. Most were staffers on the Daily Nebraskan, the student newspaper at the University of Nebraska. I was the anti-war editor that fall, visible …

A heartbreaking result, a lost nation

On the day the United States of America went to the polls to elect its next president, 93,000 new cases of the coronavirus were added to what was already the highest total in the world, and 1,200 more Americans lost their lives. That alone was reason enough for any president to be ridden out of …

Want to make America great? How about we get back to basic decency and tolerance…

It was late October, 1956. A cold rain was falling and the playground at William Cullen Bryant school (named after the 19th century poet and editor of the New York Evening Post) was a labyrinth of mud puddles. We were perhaps a week away from the presidential election that pitted the eminently decent Adlai Stevenson …

Why, Bobby? On the intense reaction to Orr’s bad call

When I first heard that Bobby Orr had taken out an ad in the New Hampshire Union-Leader supporting Donald Trump in Tuesday’s election, I was furious. It felt like a betrayal. A profound act of faithlessness that called into question everything we thought Orr to be. I wrote a blog and posted it, expecting the …

Bobby Orr, Trump’s fool

Bobby Orr, you chump. To do what you have done, you would have to be dumber than a bucket of frozen pucks. You have embarrassed a nation, made a complete fool of yourself and tarnished your reputation forevermore. And for what? To support a grifter and fraud who makes your former agent, Alan Eagleson, look …

On Claude Julien, an astonishing play and the great Lewis Hamilton

Y’know, boys and girls, we here at MMQB Central have been watching sports longer than most of you have been around. Since Rocky Marciano was heavyweight champ and Hank Aaron was a rookie. So long that when Cassius  Clay won his gold medal at the Rome Olympics, I felt inspired to go climb the fence …

On fast runners, fast drivers, Claude Julien and more…

Y’know, boys and girls, we here at MMQB Central have been watching sports longer than most of you have been around. Since Rocky Marciano was heavyweight champ and Hank Aaron was a rookie. So long that when the man who was then Cassius  Clay won his gold medal at the Rome Olympics, I felt inspired …

The Blue Monday Blues

Here we are, 19 days into October. The leaves are falling. The world is upside down, the streets a masked parade of anxious souls. And it is 39 years since Blue Monday, the day the Dodgers and Rick Monday wrecked the Expos’ World Series plans and, arguably, sent the organization on the road to extinction. …