A columnist for the Post since November 2002, Mike Vaccaro has reported from four Olympics, 12 World Series, 10 Super Bowls, eight Final Fours and five U.S. Opens, among the hundreds of events he has covered in his 20-year newspaper career. His "Open Mike" and "Vac’s Whacks" are regular Sunday features, and he has written three books, the latest -- "The First Fall Classic," about the 1912 World Series between the Giants and Red Sox -- is out Oct. 6.
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- Matt Joyce figured it wasn't worth his while to guess, because he had seen Phil Hughes' fastball, and it was very good, and he had seen Hughes' breaking stuff, and that was awfully good, too....
July 31, 2010 12:00 AMEleven months. That’s how quickly the world can spin you around. Eleven months. It was Aug. 29, 2009, when Ron Gardenhire, the manager of the Minnesota Twins, summoned R.A. Dickey to his office at the Metrodome and all...
July 30, 2010 3:09 AM
There are times when glum makes a noise. That was the top of the first inning last night, Citi Field, the Cardinals' Ryan Ludwick pounding a Jon Niese cutter into the ground, the ball bouncing just high enough over...
July 28, 2010 12:00 AMA few days after The Decision, I called a friend of mine whose sporting heart always has resided in Cleveland, even if he followed his own talents to South Beach about 15 years ago. As sports fans know by instinct,...
July 25, 2010 1:57 AM
Jed Curtis had just escaped a meeting, returned to his desk at Curtis Capital Group in Issaquah, Wash., when he saw a spasm of craziness filling his computer screen. Three thousand miles away, an otherwise unassuming...
July 22, 2010 4:13 AM
From the start, we wondered about consequences. From the start, we wondered how Alex Rodriguez's admission to the use of performance-enhancing drugs would alter his reputation, affect his legacy, edit his place in...
July 21, 2010 12:00 AM
As much as anything, George Steinbrenner wanted to prove he wasn’t only good enough to make it in New York, but big enough, too. He could have been a king in Cleveland, his hometown, where he owned a shipping company,...
July 14, 2010 1:48 AM
The Miami Heat know what it’s like to be hated. There was a glorious window — from the moment in June of 1995 when Pat Riley faxed his resignation to the Knicks through May 2000, the last time the Knicks stole a Game 7...
July 11, 2010 2:38 AM
This was a gift, delivered courtesy of a hazy night and some difficult lights. Ike Davis had lofted the ball over the infield and Braves shortstop Yunel Escobar never saw it, and frankly didn’t seem much inclined to try...
July 10, 2010 4:58 AMFor now, and for good, it doesn't matter how close the Knicks came to signing LeBron James, if they finished second, third or sixth. For now, and for good, it doesn't matter that James Dolan sent Isiah Thomas to do his...
July 09, 2010 12:00 AMSay what you will about Jerry Manuel, the man's been on the job long enough where he's started to channel the feelings and insecurities of Mets fans. Wednesday night, before the Mets suffered a frustrating 3-1 loss to...
July 09, 2010 12:00 AMFor now, and for good, it doesn't matter how close the Knicks came to signing LeBron James, if they finished second, third or sixth. For now, and for good, it doesn't matter that James Dolan sent Isiah Thomas to do his...
July 08, 2010 10:45 PMIt is 33.38 miles from the fifth floor at Madison Square Garden to the front door of the Boys & Girls Club of Greenwich, Conn. The Knicks have not been this close to an important basketball night since the evening of...
July 08, 2010 3:31 AM
Here’s the part I don’t understand, to be honest: Everything about LeBron James’ act screams that he should want New York City every bit as much as the city wants him. His nickname is “King,” for crying out loud. He...
July 07, 2010 2:27 AM
I was sitting in the Boulevard, my favorite San Francisco restaurant, when the waiter walked over to my table with an urgent look on his face. “Are you Mr. Vaccaro?” he asked. I get recognized occasionally in New York...
July 04, 2010 1:26 AMTry to feel the way you used to feel when you opened a package of baseball cards. Seriously. Let your mind drift to when you were a kid, when you would walk into the candy store with a couple of spare quarters in your...
July 03, 2010 4:38 AMThis was always the risk, of course. For two years, as the Knicks cleared salary space like foresters leveling trees, the possibility of a LeBron-free summer of ‘10 always was a ghastly, ghostly shadow following every...
July 02, 2010 3:26 AM
It isn't often in life when you get one shot at redemption, one chance to wipe clear a debt of under-performance. Golf allows you that; you can get smoked for 17 holes, press your bet on the 18th, and all can be...
July 01, 2010 4:05 AM
LOS ANGELES -- The ball hung like the moon in the jet-black night sky, and for a moment the remnants of 56,000 people at Dodger Stadium weren't quite positive how to react. Part of it might've been hypnosis: Surely...
June 28, 2010 12:00 AM
HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — You walk around this city and there is something familiar about the way the locals strut, and swagger, and lead with their chests and their chins. It is that way in downtown Los Angeles, too, and...
June 27, 2010 2:27 AM
LOS ANGELES — At the end, as the United States was running out of time, running out of World Cup, you could open a window anywhere in the country and hear the pleadings of a nascent soccer nation. Hadn’t the Americans...
June 27, 2010 1:50 AM
LOS ANGELES -- You know who A.J. Burnett is? He's Mickey Rourke: A very good actor who should've been one of the very best actors. He's the rock band Boston: one excellent album, one pretty good album and a whole lot...
June 27, 2010 12:00 AMLOS ANGELES — The pitch came in at 95 mph, and it left at a significantly greater pace. And with one swing of his bat, Alex Rodriguez had taken the Teddy Roosevelt Memorial High Road approach toward dealing with what...
June 26, 2010 12:00 AMLOS ANGELES — Do not buy into the propaganda, the revisionist history that sometimes passes for updated truth around the Yankees. Do not permit the lingering giddiness of a championship won under Joe Girardi’s...
June 25, 2010 2:21 AM
Let's worry about what it means later, can we make that deal? Let's wait a few weeks, a few months, whatever it takes, before we start to ponder if the epic 1-0 win the United States earned earlier today over Algeria...
June 23, 2010 12:20 PM
The Mets lost a game yesterday, lost a Subway Series to the Yankees, ended a nine-game road trip 7-2 after starting it 7-0. And yet as they walked away from Yankee Stadium following a 4-0 loss, the prevailing sense was...
June 21, 2010 12:00 AM
The danger with converting sports into show business is always the anal-retentive nature of sports fans, right? I love “Field of Dreams,” love all the father-and-son stuff that always turns a room dusty whenever it’s...
June 20, 2010 4:01 AM
There are lessons that come hard and lessons that come easy, and Jose Reyes knows all about the gamut, could teach graduate-level courses on the subject. There is the grotesque scar plainly visible on his right leg,...
June 20, 2010 12:00 AM
OF COURSE there had to be a pop-up. One more Friday night at Yankee Stadium, one more bottom of the ninth inning, Yankees fans nudged to the edges of their seats, Mets fans hiding their eyes with shaking hands,...
June 19, 2010 12:00 AMThere is a sense among a small but vocal faction of Mets fans that the team’s recent foray into the dregs of the American League ought to be recognized with an asterisk or an explanation. These are the people who e-mail...
June 18, 2010 4:30 AM
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