The State of Things

More than any other American sport, baseball is a game where mental focus is as important as speed or strength. The challenge for coaches has long been how to get top athletes to exercise the muscle between their ears. One of the leaders in that area was Harvey Dorfman, who is considered the father of sports psychology. He had a long career helping some of the world’s most famous baseball players — Roy Halladay, Alex Rodriguez, Greg Maddux among them — learn to think more rigorously about the game. Dorfman died earlier this year at his home in Brevard, North Carolina.

Nearly every school child on both sides of the pond can recite the opening lines of “The Tiger” by William Blake. The poem is part of the collection “Songs of Experience” and is among William Blake’s best known works. There’s a companion collection called “Songs of Innocence,” and together they explore the duality of good and evil existent in everyone.

Tom LaGarde was literally skating through his life after basketball stardom when he met his wife Heather. Tom played for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the mid 1970s, won an Olympic gold medal in 1976 and finished the decade in the NBA. He was running a program for at-risk kids in New York City that involved playing basketball while Rollerblading. Heather was in the crowd at one of these roller basketball games, their eyes met across the crowded court and they've been together ever since.

When Father Andrew O'Connor started his Goods of Conscience project several years ago, he had no idea that Cameron Diaz and Julia Roberts would end up wearing his clothes. O'Connor, a parish priest in the Bronx, designs casual, upscale clothing made from cotton hand-woven by Mayan workers in Guatemala. Seamstresses in the Bronx put the pieces together. The project raises money for the weavers, seamstresses and the parish, and could serve as a model for other communities across the country. Father O'Connor talks with host Frank Stasio before delivering the baccalaureate sermon to Elon University’s graduating class.