It’s not just that Serena Williams defied her army of skeptics by showing she really could win a Grand Slam in her spare time. It’s that she did it while making the world’s No. 1 player look awful. Although, let’s be honest, Maria Sharapova never looks too awful.

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The great Steve Jacobson was one of my writing heroes when I was growing up, and he was one of my role models as a young sportswriter, and he provides a splendid reminder why with an elegant new book entitled “Carrying Jackie’s Torch: The Players who Integrated Baseball and America.”

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There is something historically satisfying in the fact that the two beneficiaries of the greatest clock foul-ups in basketball history are Soviet Russia and Duke.

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I don’t want to believe that we said goodbye forever to Phil Mickelson as an elite golfer that horrible Sunday at Winged Foot seven months ago. But it would be a good idea for him to start playing better, and soon, so we don’t have to ponder the possibility.