Isn’t It About Time To Call A Penalty
For Unsportsmanlike Conduct?

 
The mainstream media didn't cover the racially charged protests against the Washington Redskins in 1961, sparked a half-century ago by outrage over owner George Preston Marshall's refusal to integrate his all-white team.
The black press, however, was all over the story, particularly the Afro-American Newspapers, whose legendary [...]

Friendship Collegiate Academy, which I like to call The Nation's Best Team That Uses a Storage Bin as a Locker Room, once again took a large early lead then held on, beating Baltimore's Mount St. Joseph 18-13 last night in Bowie.
The game, part of some moneymaking prep gridiron extravaganza called the I-95 Classic, was Friendship's [...]

RFK Stadium turns 50 years old this fall. To kick off the golden anniversary celebration, I wrote a column this week about the stadium's first tenant, the 1961 Washington Redskins, which was also the NFL's last segregated team.
Read all about it here.
George Preston Marshall, the Redskins owner, had ignored calls for him to integrate [...]

Bill Veeck would love the way the Harrisburg Senators are promoting tomorrow night's home game.
Here's the email, misspellings and all, that the Senators blasted to fans last night:
"Mark your calenders! Back by popular demand, the cowboy monkeys are at Metro Bank Park on Thursday, Sept. 1 (7:00)! They were so popular the first time around [...]

Yesterday in front of a road crowd and an ESPN audience, Friendship Collegiate Academy made an early lead stand up in defeating one of Cincinnati's top squads, Taft, 12-6.
Yes, big time high school football is now played on Sundays, too, to accommodate national TV.
Closer to home, Friendship's win is huge for one reason: It justifies [...]

Here's a photo of the "locker room" used every day by Friendship Collegiate's highly rated football team.
It wasn't built as a locker room, obviously. It's intended to be an industrial storage bin. But this bin, plopped on the grounds of Fort Mahan Park, where the Knights practice, is what the Knights use to dress out. [...]

All D.C. Public Schools are scheduled to open on time this morning.
Except one.
It was reported on the DCPS website last night School Without Walls will remain closed while engineers comb the campus "to determine the repairs necessary to reopen the building."
"Building?"
So....SCHOOL WITHOUT WALLS HAS WALLS?
It took an earthquake to expose this sham? What kind of [...]

The Baltimore Ravens and Washington Redskins play each other tomorrow, but the teams' most interesting battles these days come off the field.
Ravens' management has declared a desire to paint D.C. purple and black, and if you look at our town's TV schedule, where the Ravens preseason games are now broadcast on Washington ABC affiliate WJLA, [...]

Just went by the National Cathedral to survey the damage. I gotta say, it's never looked better.
Sure, the tops of some spires fell off during the earthquake. But that gives the place a more authentic feel.
For anybody who's seen the old churches of Europe, which were built centuries ago, the National Cathedral, which was finished [...]

Every now and then the superiority of baseball over other team pastimes hits you in the face.
Or, at least, the ears.
The bottom of the ninth inning of Friday night's Nationals/Phillies game did just that for anybody listening on the Nats radio network.
The underdog Nationals entered the inning down two runs, then everything just started going [...]

A bombshell dropped during last night's Nationals/Reds game: Jayson Werth has dumped his walk-up music!
In the past, Werth has arrived at the plate to Kanye West's "Stronger", Metallica's "Wherever I May Roam," and Sammy Hagar's "Heavy Metal."
But when he came up in the bottom of the fourth of the Nats' win,  there were only the [...]

The basketball team representing Georgetown, home of the most respected foreign service teaching in the land, went all Bruce Lee on the players of Bayi, a Chinese professional team, during the school's, um, goodwill tour of China.
We all hoped the Hoyas would break a leg in the Far East, but from the looks of things our boys [...]

For the nearly non-current issue of the gung-ho print edition of Washington City Paper, I wrote about the focus on high school football that military recruiters have taken of late.
I've been intrigued by the recruiting tactics ever since I went to a homecoming game at my alma mater, Falls Church High, five years ago.
In the game [...]

Rex Grossman played above his weight class and the Redskins looked adequate in Friday night's exhibition win over the Steelers.
But the biggest news reported by attendees to the preseason opener was that the price of beer has gone up a dollar in the grandstands. Drinkers say the roving beer men now charge $9 a pop.
Apparently [...]

Folk heroes deserve folk songs!
And Gary Mays deserves folk hero status more than anybody I've ever met.
So now we have "The Amazing Gary Mays," a tune based on the amazing life story of Mays, my hero and friend and one of the greatest athletes this city ever produced.
The song was written by Philadelphia-area folkie Erik [...]