Red Smith

Secretariat was a star but not yet a legend when his van rolled up to Pimlico Race Course in the second week of May 1973. The big red horse had taken off like a rocket ship to run down the field at the Kentucky Derby, winning in less than two minutes, a...

My father, Bill Guilfoile, was a baseball executive for 40 years with the New York Yankees, the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Baseball Hall of Fame. He was also a compulsive reader, and it's no surprise that his favorite subject was the game that has...

My pals who are big sports nuts love to heap scorn on Hollywood sports movies, especially when the discussion is unfolding in a bar. Their biggest complaint? The films are squishy, full of more easy sentiment than soul, with the victories being achieved...

Someone asked during my online chat Tuesday whether I thought prolific U.S. Open Twitterer Dan Jenkins is one of the top 10 sportswriters of all time. I replied by saying I am not an expert on the work of sportswriters......

Here is an interesting essay about the state of sportswriting from the Columbia Journalism Review. It was recommended by long-lost Friend of WatchDog Richard Deitsch, who is about halfway into his fellowship at Michigan, where he is trying to fix......

The day the Orioles arrived in Baltimore, trolleys clanged down cobbled streets. Kids rushed to see Pinocchio at the Hippodrome. Banana boats dumped their bushels onto weathered wharves where the Inner Harbor now stands. On April 15, 1954, Baltimore...

When Vincent Pettway, the handsome man and superb fighter, knocked out Italy's Gianfranco Rosi in Las Vegas on Sept. 17, 1994, he became Baltimore's first world boxing champion in more than half a century. He made headlines, logged a fair amount of mug...