I had almost nothing published until I had something published in Sports Illustrated. I started there as a fact-checker two weeks after I got out of college and was there for almost 20 years.

My first interview at SI, I sat in silence next to Guy LaFleur for five minutes on the New York Rangers team bus until he finally broke the ice. Those early interviews, every one of them was like a terrible first date.

I never learned the secret handshake. That may be one of the reasons I've grown to love English soccer.

Summer runs out the way a centerfielder runs out of real estate - slowly at first, then all at once.

By the age of 18, the average American has witnessed 200,000 acts of violence on television, most of them occurring during Game 1 of an NHL playoff series.

You can be writing every day. When you go on a road trip, the trip itself becomes part of the story.

Hockey belongs to the Cartoon Network, where a person can be pancaked by an ACME anvil, then expanded - accordion-style - back to full stature, without any lasting side effect.