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Talking to Michigan State sports journalism students brings back memories, advice for a new age

Me with my new friends who are spending a month in Paris and Rome learning about sports media.

Tuesday I spoke to a group of sports journalist students from Michigan State University. Twenty-two students are traveling for a month to Paris and Rome with weekend jaunts around Europe in between. We met in the Palazzo del Banco di Santo Spirito, built in the 1600s to house the Vatican Bank. Just a Frisbee throw from Piazza Navona, the Baroque palace with the four columns bordering the front door is now home to study abroad offices, language programs and the Belize Embassy. It sure beat sitting in a featureless, plaster box at University of Nevada-Las Vegas.
I’ve spoken to journalism classes at numerous colleges. I can usually tell the quality of students by the quality of questions. Michigan State’s students get it. They asked how Italy has changed me. They asked what was the most memorable sports event I ever covered in the U.S. They asked what I thought of the direction of writing in American journalism.
At UNLV, they asked me what Mike Tyson is like.
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Nice another in a long list of great weekend getaways from Rome

It cost only 138 euros to fly Marina and I an hour and 15 minutes to Nice for her birthday.

EasyJet is the greatest boon to European travel since the sidewalk crepe stand.
Which is why celebrating birthdays in Europe is so special. In March I spent my birthday in Sicily. This past weekend I took my girlfriend to Nice for her birthday. I’d pat myself on the back and say I’m not a cheap boyfriend but, in fact, the round trip tickets for two of us was all of 138 euros. That’s 69 each. Sixty-nine euros on a U.S. airline sometimes won’t even pay for your stored luggage.
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Police ride around Rome a glimpse inside a non-violent city — but watch your wallet

Gerardo Mastrangelo and Gian Cristian Salimbene before their Saturday night shift.

Salimbene and Mastrangelo were going to further impress upon me the safety of my adopted city. I’ve always been fascinated by the soft underbelly of touristy towns. What’s it like behind the back-lit monuments, art galleries and romantic piazzas? Where’s the graft? The violence? The danger?
Growing up in America, you can find that in any city. Every metropolitan area in the U.S. has neighborhoods where guns are rampant and murder is common. For the last 10 years, Detroit, a city of 700,000 people, has averaged 345 murders. Oakland, Calif., (pop. 404,000) has averaged 106, Baltimore (pop. 622,000) 234. From 1990-2014 I lived in Denver. It averaged about 150 murders a year.
Rome, with a population of 2.6 million, has averaged 35. Two years ago it had only 27.
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Monti Sibillini is Italy’s answer to New England in fall

Il Rifugio Colle Le Cese is one of nine huts on a 75-mile loop around Monti Sibillini.

I just returned from three days in one of many areas of Italy that Americans have not overrun. The 270-square-mile park straddles the underrated regions of Umbria and Le Marche east of Tuscany. Sibillini has massive green meadows stretching between mountains bearing trees with multi-colored leaves. Purple, red and yellow wildflowers line a hiking path that forms a 75-mile loop around the entire park. Spaced somewhat evenly around the park are nine rifugios, an Italian shelter with great beds and fantastic meals.
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My five best pizzerias in Rome: 72 Ore tops the list

72 Ore in the Don Bosco neighborhood levitates its down for 72 hours, nearly a day more than others.

In Rome, all the ingredients are fresh. The tomatoes taste like apples. The mozzarella has bite. The prosciutto is lean. Finish a pizza and the tin plate does not have a spot of grease. You could wash a doily on it. In Rome, pizza is almost like health food. So here are the five pizzerias I go when I get a craving, which hits only slightly less often than a heroin addict itches the inside of his arm. Keep in mind, some places are based on just one favorite pizza. I have gone to these many times and some dropped off the list and others were added. It’s kind of like a college football poll. Except my pizza poll is more important.
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Liverpool a British success story that took more than a hard day’s night

Sefton Park, established in 1872, is 235 acres of lakes, creeks, jogging paths and even a cricket pitch.

I recently spent four days in England on assignment and came to Liverpool for my first time. The impressions I’ve always had of Liverpool partially come from Beatles songs — strawberry fields, blue suburban skies, cold cathedrals — and partially from history. Fallen port city. Massive unemployment. Soccer matches on windy, rainy weekends.
New impressions: Revitalized waterfront. Vibrant museum scene. Pedestrian malls. Soccer on bright, sunny afternoons.
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Following in The Beatles’ footsteps through Liverpool

The Beatles began forming behind a Liverpool church in 1957 and in four years became international stars. They've sold an all-time high 600 million records.

I followed The Beatles’ footsteps around their hometown which, when they grew up in the ‘40s, was still undergoing urban renewal after getting bombed in World War II. I started at the Mecca of all Beatles’ fans, the Beatles’ museum. Called The Beatles Story and built by the waterfront in 1996, the museum traces the group from start to finish with fascinating Beatles’ paraphernalia scattered around like confetti. It draws 300,000 visitors a year.
Some things I didn’t know about The Beatles (and I bet you didn’t know, either):
* Both Paul McCartney’s and John Lennon’s mothers died when they were teen-agers. Paul’s mother, Mary, a midwife, died of an embolism when he was 14. Julia Lennon, a movie usher, was killed in an auto accident by an off-duty policeman when John was 17.
* In their first performance abroad in 1960, promoters in Hamburg, Germany, changed their name to The Beat Brothers as they thought The Beatles was too confusing.
* The 1967 album, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” which spent 27 weeks at No. 1 in Great Britain, took 700 hours to produce at their Abbey Road studio in London.
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Love Italian style: Positano is the Sirens’ call to celebrate an anniversary

Every anniversary is worth celebrating in Positano, even a first date. A year ago April 29 Marina Pascucci and I had ours.

I’m standing behind a small table for two on our balcony. Below us is a turquoise swimming pool and beyond is a forest of trees leading down a steep cliff to the cobalt blue Tyrrhenian Sea below. The sun is setting behind the cliff to our right, bathing the sea in a soft orange glow. A bottle of Falanghina white wine is chilling in the mini bar next to a plastic tub of goat cheese and lean prosciutto.
A year ago Friday I had my first date with my drop-dead gorgeous and talented girlfriend, the photographer Marina Pascucci. I needed to find a suitable place to celebrate our one-year anniversary.
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Fritto Misto is Le Marche’s “healthy” celebration of Italian fried food

The Sicily booth, featuring the island's signature cannoli, is one of 17 booths at Fritto Misto. Photo by Marina Pascucci.

So what am I doing in a gorgeous Italian town near the Adriatic surrounded by fried food, the antithesis of what made Italian cuisine famous and Italian bodies prized?
I’m covering the 12th annual Fritto Misto, a celebration of all things fried in Italian cuisine. For 10 days every April, the charming town of Ascoli Piceno becomes the capital of Italian fried food. From ascolane to arancino, from cannoli to, yes, fried pizza, Fritto Misto (Mixed Fry) covers the landscape of all things fried in Italy.
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A.S. Roma’s season breaks and swells the heart of this die-hard fan

The front page of Tuesday's Corriere dello Sport, writing how Roma's win over Napoli gave Juventus its fifth straight Serie A title.

I now understand what it feels like to have so much emotion riding on one sports event. I no longer look at sports as a launch pad for writing. I look at Roma games as a boost to a great mood the rest of the day. I care. I really care. Before, all I cared about was my deadline.

It’s with this in mind that I write an early season review of A.S. Roma. I say “early” because my lupi, my wolves, my giallorosso (yellow and red), are taking its dwindling mob of fans (more on that later) for a wild ride all the way to the final day. I went to Stadio Olimpico Monday to watch third-place Roma play second-place Napoli.
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How has Italy changed me? Let me count the ways

Celebrating my 60th birthday March 29 in Syracuse, Sicily.

I love more than I ever have. Italy teaches that to you. It is a society of nurturers who open their arms up to strangers with a bottle of wine in one hand and a plate of carbonara in the other. In Italy, I never felt like a stranger in a strange land.
With that in my mind, here are the answers to the question: How Italy has changed me?
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The Baroque Triangle: Sicily’s trail of the Renaissance’s gift to architecture

Noto's Chiesa di San Domenico is an example of the Baroque architecture that began during the Italian Renaissance in the 16th century and spread around the world. Photo by Marina Pascucci.

My girlfriend, the uber-talented photographer Marina Pascucci, and I continued my 60th birthday celebration on the trail of what is known as the Baroque Triangle. It’s a series of small towns dripping with Baroque architecture. Baroque style was born in Renaissance Italy during the late 16th century and designed to show off the wealth and power of the rapidly expanding Catholic Church. Baroque churches are extravagant, abnormal, garish and, depending on your taste, either ostentatious or jaw-dropping gorgeous.
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