The good girl and the bad boy: King vs. Riggs in ‘Battle of the Sexes’

September 19, 2017

There are few more individualistic activities than tennis and few more fiercely individualistic people than tennis players.

“Battle of the Sexes,” which opens Friday, Sept. 22, gives us the iconic clash between two such individuals – tennis star Billie Jean King and former champ Bobby Riggs – in a 1973 match that was both a media event and a cause célèbre in the then-rising women’s movement. (King would win 6-4, 6-3, 6-3.)

At that time, there was no LGBTQ movement, and tennis players did not make the lavish livings they do today. The men were still something of barnstormers earning little more than beer money, and the women – whom they did not necessarily treat well – made squat. ...

Dead ‘innocent’

April 19, 2017

In “The Penalty for Holding” (Less Than Three Press, May 10) – the second novel in my series “The Games Men Play” – quarterback Quinn Novak wonders which is more depressing: prison or a hospital.

I think on this day you would have to say prison ...

The post-election and what I wore

December 12, 2016

The devil, they say, is in the details. And so it proved recently as I found myself serving and volleying furiously in a conversation with my Republican uncle about Barack Obama and Donald Trump. (If this had been a tennis match, it would’ve been John McEnroe and Ilie Nastase circa 1979, Madison Square Garden – don’t ask.)

Normally, I am the soul of forbearance with said uncle, who is elderly and served in the Korean Conflict – as he often reminds me. And I have a high tolerance for personal insults, being a confident person and having spent more than 35 years in a newsroom. But when someone I love or admire is attacked, my back is up. Uncle disparaged the current president, and we were off, shouting and talking over each other like a particularly maniacal Eleanor Clift and Pat Buchanan on the late, lamented “The McLaughlin Group.” (The idiosyncratic political round table was even funnier than its “Saturday Night Live” sendup.)

Late into the dustup with Uncle, he delivered what he no doubt thought was the coup de grace: The outfit I wore to the family’s Thanksgiving gathering made me look like a bag lady. ...

The world turned upside down

November 9, 2016

For me personally, I can say with Frank Sinatra, “It was a very good year.” I got to travel a great deal and I got a contract for my second novel, “The Penalty for Holding,” about a gay, biracial quarterback’s search for identity in the NFL. An excerpt from the book will be published in the Westchester Review, and an essay I wrote on love, sex and gender in the work of Colombian artist Federico Uribe will be part of a new monograph on him. For all this, I’m truly grateful.

I begin with an attitude of gratitude in this the month of Thanksgiving, because in other ways I’ve been disenchanted and disheartened as many of those I have loved have faltered. ...

In defense of rationality in the presidential election

November 6, 2016

Today I could be writing the latest installment in My Big Fat Greek Odyssey or about the particularly New York aspect of this presidential election. I could be considering Tim Tebow’s new book “Shaken,” and how he may not have necessarily heeded God’s word – something central to his life – in resisting the suggestion of becoming a halfback as his career as a quarterback fizzled, or contrasted him with bad boy tennis player Nick Kyrgios, who has the talent for his sport but, apparently, not the temperament.

All in good time, though, for nothing is more important right now than this historic – and historically ugly – presidential election and making a case for rationality to triumph over animalistic emotions. ...

Nightmare on Elm Street – the return of Anthony’s ‘weiner’

November 1, 2016

On Halloween, the scariest night in this god-awful election season, you have to feel sorry for Hill – a woman seemingly destined to be haunted by men who just can’t keep it in their pants.

First, of course, came Bill. Then came Trumpet. And now the compulsive exhibitionist who is the estranged husband of Hillary Clinton’s right-hand woman, Huma Abedin – Anthony the Weiner. (Technically, that should be spelled wiener, but who has time for technicalities with so much at stake?) Talk about your triangulation.

We are left with two questions – the same two questions we’re always left with, because they can never be answered:

Why are men obsessed with their privates?

And why do smart women make such foolish choices when it comes to men? ...

The NFL’s continuing female trouble

October 27, 2016

Well, just when you think gender news couldn’t be any more depressing in this “election cycle” – “Is that what we’re calling it?” one wag asked me – comes word that New York Giants kicker Josh Brown was released from the team Tuesday after new information surfaced that he had assaulted his then-wife, Molly, two dozen times, including at least once when she was pregnant. After a botched initial NFL investigation that in effect blamed Molly Brown for not cooperating – yes, always good to blame the victim – Josh Brown was suspended for a big one game.

“He’s admitted to us that he’s abused his wife in the past,” the Giants co-owner John K. Mara said Thursday (Oct. 20) on WFAN in New York.

“And I think that’s what’s a little unclear, is the extent of that.”

Translation: It was OK for the Giants to resign Brown, because he may have knocked around the missus only a bit some time ago. ...