Roger Kahn’s wonderful book, The Boys of Summer, always comes to mind when winter yields to spring and the crack of bat on ball enlivens the senses.

Kahn’s story is about the young men who played for the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1950s and then later went their separate ways after their summer had turned to autumn.  I’ve read the book twice, once in my 20s, when my own centerfield dreams had long since dimmed, and then again a few years later, when I was older and perhaps, although some...

I had just finished listening to Walter Isaacson’s biography about Steve Jobs when I came across a new book about Steve Jobs titled Becoming Steve Jobs.

Written by Brent Schender and Rick Tetzeli, I think it’s meant to balance Isaacson’s warts-and-all book with a warmer, more positive depiction of Steve the person.  I may read it or may not; for now, I’ll put it on the list of “possibles.”

Not that I’m uninterested in learning more about Jobs, an incredibly polarizing and fascinating...

It’s often times the odd trigger that takes you back.

And so it was when I engaged in idle conversation with a fellow who works out at the same gym that I do.  He introduced himself as Frank Corbett, and I then made idle reference to Gentleman Jim Corbett, who defeated the great John L. Sullivan in a bare knuckles boxing match in the 1890s.

As it turned out, Frank is a distant relative of Gentleman Jim’s and, as astonished as I was to meet someone from the legendary boxer’s family...