A Bartlett Giammatti

Baseball commissioner Bart Giamatti, a former president of Yale University and an authority on Renaissance literature, is obviously a man of letters. But why would he have written that letter praising the honesty and virtue of a convicted drug felon and admitted bookie who allegedly took more than $1 million in bets from Manager Pete Rose of the Cincinnati Reds over a two-year period? Giamatti won't discuss the subject, but at some point an explanation would seem in order.

Baseball commissioner Bart Giamatti, a former president of Yale University and an authority on Renaissance literature, is obviously a man of letters. But why would he have written that letter praising the honesty and virtue of a convicted drug felon and admitted bookie who allegedly took more than $1 million in bets from Manager Pete Rose of the Cincinnati Reds over a two-year period? Giamatti won't discuss the subject, but at some point an explanation would seem in order.

Pete Rose's lawyers today appealed a judge's decision to keep his suit against baseball in federal court, blaming "judicial gymnastics" for depriving Rose of a state court hearing. The baseball commissioner, meantime, has scheduled a disciplinary hearing Aug. 17 on charges that Rose bet on baseball, including his own team. Today's appeal, filed in the U.S. 6th Circuit Court, asks that Rose's suit against Baseball Commissioner A.

Lou Gehrig gave a face -- and a name -- to Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, the disease that claimed his life on June 6, 1941, and today remains an incurable killer of thousands of people each year. Gehrig was 6-foot and 200 pounds. He played in a record 2,130 consecutive games for the New York Yankees and was known as the Iron Horse. Yet, all his strength could not fight off the ravages of ALS, more commonly known as Lou Gehrig's Disease. ALS is a disease of the skeletal muscular motor nerve cells throughout the nervous system.

Help me. Please, help me. I am suffering. I am in agony. The pain cuts to the bone and shoots to the heart. It lingers there and finally breaks it in two. I am old, and respected, and refined, but when in need of help, no one is there for me. No one comes to my rescue at the last possible minute. No one soothes me with cold compresses and reassures me that everything is going to be all right. I know that it is not going to be all right. It is never all right.