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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.