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Reprint of My JFK Remembrance

by | Dec 24, 2013

I have been asked to reprint my opinion/commentary that appeared in The Baltimore Sun on November 22, 2013:

The walk home from school is what I remember most.  It should have been a lighthearted schoolboy stroll for a sixth grader on a cloudy and mild Friday in late November, filled with visions of the weekend ahead and the long Thanksgiving holiday just a few days away.  Instead, it was a mournful plodding along a route I had walked daily, yet, on that afternoon, my surroundings seemed somehow alien.  The remnants of crisp fallen leaves crackling under foot served as constant reminders that, with each step, my childhood was palpably draining out of me and being left behind to evaporate into memory. I felt it tug at me as I trudged forward, but I dared not turn around to take one final look, for fear of the heartbreak the sight would surely induce.  Better to keep my eyes ahead and march on stoically into the inevitable that would be all too vividly displayed on my home’s television screen.

            It is not my intent to make more of John F. Kennedy than he was, or imbue him with some idealized cloak of perfection.  But if you were of a certain impressionable age, and disposed to dream of the grand things you and your compatriots might accomplish, President Kennedy was a charming catalyst for youthful imagination.  The sickly Boston boy had who spent so many weeks in bed devouring history books grew up to demonstrate that knowledge was cool, words could be used powerfully, and  intellect offered the path to changing the world.  The child of privilege, who became a genuine war hero in the same theater where my own father had served, showed us that service to others and to county is honorable and gives meaning to who we are as a people. (more…)

PED Suspensions – The Magic of Records and the Integrity of Baseball

by | Aug 12, 2013

Reprinted from the Baltimore Sun, August 11, 2013:

By Raymond Daniel Burke

Major League Baseball’s suspension of 13 players in its most recent attempt to address the use of performance enhancing drugs, including an unprecedented 211-game suspension of its highest paid player, Alex Rodriguez, is a welcome sign that the game is serious about re-establishing the legitimacy of player accomplishments  The importance of such vigilance cannot be overestimated in a game where statistical comparison serves as a generational bond, and the integrity of those statistics is the adhesive that gives meaning to the experiences shared across time that are the game’s narrative. (more…)