Most descriptions make Beijing sound overbuilt: not a blade of grass left.

There is nothing wrong with athletes coming back from retirement.

Three of the brightest baseball pitchers of their times staged comebacks without much success - David Cone, Jim Bouton and Jim Palmer - but there was room to admire their quixotic gesture.

Personal honors never meant much to Bill Russell, one of America's most successful athletes with 2 college titles, 1 Olympic gold medal and 11 - count 'em, 11 - N.B.A. championships with the Boston Celtics.

The Greatest Living Yankee is Whitey Ford, who came out of Aviation High School, which was then in Manhattan, and helped pitch the Yankees to victory in the 1950 World Series when he was 21.

I say the Islanders were the best team I ever covered because they had more so many stars who delivered with Canadian-Swedish-suburban modesty. And they won four straight Stanley Cups from 1980 through 1983.

I love hockey because of the respect for history and for the game itself.

In North America, many fans know Cristiano Ronaldo's smirk and can recognize Didier Drogba in a commercial. Maybe they know too much for the good of M.L.S.

I love Major League Soccer, covered the first game in 1996 in a funky stadium in San Jose, and I applaud just about every move that its commissioners, Garber and Doug Logan, have made.

The Boys of Summer were heroes in Brooklyn for a full postwar decade partly because the players could not entertain higher offers.

Baseball's postseason shifts from game to game because of starting pitchers and the geography of the ballparks.

The football playoffs feature one-off affairs, without bad feelings building from weekend to weekend. In addition, football uses platoons for offense and defense and kicking, so only the interior linemen have a chance to really get up close and personal with one another.

I've seen fire, and I've seen rain. I've also had to scramble over tundra to get to the Super Bowl and seen baseball turf fields that could fry a fielder's soles.

Lance Armstrong has joined the legion of the lost, the great athletes who were barred or exiled for sins admitted or charged or suspected.

This occasional sports columnist, who has been to his share of Super Bowls, had been glad to be home on Super Bowl Sunday, but the scary commercials made me want to be in the melee of the arena, where you are not aware of commercials.

Television is making sports universal; for the same reason, big-time soccer is growing more popular in the United States.

Why is the N.F.L. so popular? The N.F.L. grew in the comfort zone after World War II. People had money and time. A popular American sport got bigger.

I will always treasure the privilege of writing the 'Sports of The Times' column.

I never worried about getting stale because the news and the people induce freshness every working hour.

Hockey lends itself to special events, including the Olympic competition: a glorious tournament of the best players in the world, putting on their national jerseys and playing on big rinks with no-goon Olympic rules and referee enforcement.

In recent generations, women's sports have been a blessing. Some of us can remember the bad old days in the '50s, when we would discover in casual schoolyard play that a girl could outrun most of us or hold her own in basketball or hit a softball - but there were no teams, no coaches, for girls.

Title IX, whether voluntarily or via court cases, opened gymnasiums to women, produced uniforms and schedules and buses.

Some of us love hockey not just for its ferocity and skill but for its underlying code of civility off the ice.

Sometimes, sport is just plain pleasing to the eye, like watching La Belle France flit by on television during the Tour de France. I can do that for hours.

We all know the Red Sox did not win a World Series for 86 years after unloading Ruth, and the Cubs just might be carrying some heavy weight for past karmic transgressions.

It needs to be said, over and over again, that Stan the Man was voted by 'The Sporting News' as the best baseball player of the postwar decade, from 1946 through 1955.

When I was working on the unauthorized biography 'Stan Musial: An American Life,' which came out in 2011, old opponents recalled how Musial knew their names after they had been in the majors only a few days.

Some people insist that hallowed professional teams should never change their nicknames.

Night tennis began at the United States Open in 1975 with certain stars trying to beg out and certain patrons trying to dump unwanted tickets on scalpers.

In New York, Kid Carter was pure vanilla for a city with stronger tastes.

Some religious guys in sports give the impression, 'I've got something you don't have.'

In the late '60s, Senator Charles E. Goodell, Republican of New York, spoke out against the Vietnam War, bringing on the wrath of the Nixon administration and, as it turned out, the disaffection of conservative voters.

Some great players, like Ted Williams and Stan Musial, had one more great hitting season left around the age of 40.

In August 1945, a former Army pilot with an artificial leg pitched five and a third innings for Washington against Boston. This would turn out to be Bert Shepard's only major league game, and it remains one of the heartwarming moments in baseball history.

In 1949, I saw a World War II veteran named Lou Brissie, who had nearly lost a lower leg in combat, pitch in the All-Star Game in Brooklyn.

Hundreds of ballplayers have performed well after Tommy John surgery, in which an elbow ligament is replaced by material from elsewhere on the body. More and more, athletes will perform with a bit of this or a bit of that in a joint or muscle.

Some of the most inspiring moments in sports have come from players with physical defects. Tom Dempsey, born without toes on his right foot, kicked a 63-yard field goal in 1970, using a straighter, wider shoe.

One of the most beautiful sights in my neighborhood is on High Holy Days when people walk to temple. Not only does this bring the traditional legendary weather, but it gives off a psychic signal to slow down.

Baseball cannot avoid conflicts. Games are played on Good Friday, the most solemn day on the Christian calendar. On Oct. 2, 1978, they played on Rosh Hashana, and Bucky Dent hit one into the screen at Fenway Park. Supply your own moral.

It is hard to imagine the World Series being held in the sweet hazy sunshine of late September rather than the sour night air of late October, but that is precisely what has transpired in baseball over the past 50 years, a deterioration from light to darkness.

Youth sports could not exist without millions of volunteers and modestly paid coaches who teach our children how to skate and catch and dribble and also how to get along with others.

When Casey Stengel was putting his mark on all four New York baseball teams, he came off as many things. I have to admit I never thought of him as anybody's uncle.

Hockey suffers from being compared to itself in ways that other sports are not. Every four years, some of us fawn over Olympic hockey, a great event with bigger rinks, minimal goonishness and national pride in addition to the heightened skills of veritable all-star squads.

Athletes are used to battling. The public would never learn their names if professional athletes had not shown courage at an early age. They learn they can overcome, but sometimes this becomes a false sense of security that leads them to the edge.

No matter how many times it happens, the public always seems to be shocked when an athlete dies young, but the reality is, there are no promises.

I think a coffee table is one of the most important things. It's where everything happens.

I think if people want to have surgery then fine, if it makes you feel better, brilliant. But it does annoy me when you're being accused of it, and it's not nice when people are commenting being like 'Eughh, what has she done to her face?' And I'm like 'Oh my god, I've done nothing, this is actually my face.'

I keep all my Sunday papers out, I keep them all week and then I change them every Sunday.

I try not to engage with those people who leave nasty comments.

I often wonder if my relationships don't work out because I am the more Alpha one and the focus is on me and men don't like that.