Tom McCall started running on the dirt track of an Illinois prison. On Monday, he'll take on the Boston Marathon.
'I'm really looking forward to this.'
That McCall is Boston bound is certainly a story of resilience, his ability to use six years of incarceration to find a way forward rather than sinking into more dismay. But it's a story that resonates beyond one person, speaking to the value of running in itself, how it can help a human's body, mind, and spirit. To the value of community, how being among like-minded people and building relationships can lift you from most any circumstance. To the value of goal-setting, how the determination and discipline it takes to get there can impact every corner of your world.
To the value of second chances, and how if you open yourself up to people around you, you can take full advantage of them.
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For McCall, who was released in 2022, enrollment in the recovery program at Wayside Cross Ministries in Aurora connected him to their unique partnership with a program called
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Tom McCall (second from right, No. 933) is shown with fellow runners of Up and Running Again, including the program's founder Steve Tierney (second from left, wearing hat). Also shown are Bruce McEvoy (left), Sherman Richardson (No. 6050), and Max Hernandez (right).
Tom McCall
From there, a running star was born, with McCall capping his first 12-week program by running that Fox Valley Half in 1 hour, 36 minutes, 57 seconds. Almost immediately, his volunteer coach at Up and Running Again, Bruce McEvoy, a local pastor and running enthusiast with 36 marathons to his credit, challenged him with two letters any respectable distance runner knows well: BQ.
'At first, I thought that meant barbecue, and I love barbecue, it's my favorite food. I had no idea what it meant to Boston Qualify,' McCall said.
But he listened. He upped his training and within months, ran a 3:15:06 marathon. Time to pack his bags for Boston.
'This is a story of a man that has done the hard work,' McEvoy said. 'When he had no other resources, he did it, not on his own — the higher power of Jesus gave him strength — but his relentless pursuit of health, health in the body, to then having the opportunity to be released from prison and then stumble upon a place that was going to be starting a running program.
'He kept getting fortunate, blessed, and a lot call it luck, but I would argue no, he stumbled into good fortune that might allow him to be at a starting line that will ultimately get him to one of the most historic finish lines of all time, but he's doing the work. And his appendix to the story is setting a personal best at Boston and then continuing to launch to the next thing, his vision to use running and the advocacy he has to impact others, others being fellow veterans, to continue to inspire.'
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Tom McCall is looking forward to adding a Boston Marathon medal to his collection on Patriots Day.
Tom McCall
Therein lies the next chapter of McCall's story. When he's not out running, training well enough that he has designs on immediately requalifying for Boston with his time on Monday, McCall's energy goes into his foundation, which aims to open a tiny-home community for homeless veterans, helping them get off the streets and into their own homes.
As McCall writes on a
From where he was, to where he is now, running has been his most reliable vehicle. What started as indoor gym work, where he took assistance from a fellow weightlifter and rebuilt an ailing knee he'd been told would need surgery, eventually moved to the outdoor dirt track, in large part because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
What happened from there, well, that's a story only McCall truly knows.
I asked him what running has meant to him. His answer was threefold: body, mind, and spirit.
'Well, health-wise it's phenomenal, I have a 44 resting heartbeat and I expect to break a 3:10 marathon at the age of 54,' he said. 'If I can be in low aerobic capacity, which I believe my body has transformed into, then I can finish strong at Boston and Heartbreak Hill will be a success rather than something hard.
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'Mentally, it makes you stronger, too, when you overcome these challenges. Determination and challenges and overcoming them, that's all mental.
'And whenever your mind starts to break on you a little bit out there, you have some rough sessions, you miss targets, you have shoe failures, whatever it might be, you go into spirit. Especially on long runs, I'll go into spirit, suddenly realizing, 'I don't even remember that mile at all.' Your mind is free. I'll be out there in communion with God, I get rid of all the distractions. It's my go-to, my place away from the world.'
From the prison yard to Boston, running built him a whole new world.
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Tara Sullivan is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at
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New York Times
6 days ago
- New York Times
Ranking every Premier League away kit for 2025-26: Batman shirt, inspired by a leisure centre, and… brown
Our keen eye has been cast over the Premier League's home kits, so now it's time for the away outfits. This is typically where chances are taken, outlandish designs come in, shirts that could be brilliant and beloved classics or could be complete duds. As a rule they tend to be more interesting…but will these be? Advertisement This season we have a garish copy of a cult classic, a shirt inspired by Pot Pourri, a Batman black shirt, one that looks like the walls of a provincial leisure centre, and perhaps the biggest disparity in quality between an away and a home design we've ever seen. Read on, and we're sure you won't be shy of telling us what you think… You have to marvel at the brass neck of football clubs. We all know why Newcastle's away shirt is green. It's not OK that their owners are using the club to spruce up the image of Saudi Arabia, to provide a glossy sheen to their seat of soft power, to use kits as walking billboards for their regime. But it would be insulting to anyone's intelligence to pretend this shirt is green for any other reason. Over to the Newcastle website, then, which declares that the shirt "draws inspiration from Newcastle's iconic riverside", and "features a striking green arch inspired by the legendary Tyne Bridge". Get lost. Do they think that sort of thing is funny? Or that people won't notice? Aesthetically, the shirt is fine, but if you're wondering why it's in last place, that's why. Oh. Oh no. Oh dear no. The history of the brown football shirt is short: Coventry City's away top of the late 1970s inspired some misty-eyed affection but then again, some people get nostalgic for the days of rationing, so you can't necessarily trust that. St Pauli's home shirt is brown (although this season, with white stripes), but those guys are a law unto themselves. If you want to tell their ultras they look stupid, then go for it, but I'm not going to. Otherwise, there's not much else, and there's probably a good reason for that. This shirt's only redeeming feature is the nice and striking bee logo that differs slightly from their usual crest, which is a bee inside a circle. But… they could quite easily have done that in a different colour. Bad. Very, very bad. Ah. Hmmm. Yes. Well. Forest's home kit this season is a pleasing nod to one of years past, a nice and clean design that is different to the last few years but is still identifiably 'Forest'. The away kit is… none of those things. The background design is a reference to the city's historical lace industry, which is a nice enough touch, the slight flaw being that it looks horrible and, somehow, quite boring for a shirt coated in an elaborate pattern. Maybe they would've got away with it if the Adidas stripes on the sleeves were the same blue contrast colour as the crest but for some reason, they're basically the same as the body colour. No bueno. Nope. Palace have announced this as a 'celebration' shirt, rather than their official away kit. Either way, this is clearly the shirt of a mid-range Championship team from 2005, rather than one embarking on European competition. Should that matter? Is it silly to expect a club to adhere to an arbitrary dress code that applies in some way to their general status? Of course it is, but, to bastardise the old Jerry Seinfeld quote, I'm ranking laundry here, so silly is probably the starting point. The thin stripy bits on the collars and cuffs and the piping around the shoulder redeem things slightly, but not enough. The important point is that this is not a good football shirt. You know in some films or TV shows where they will do a bit in black and white, which then dissolves into colour to symbolise a change in mood, or season, or something? No? Trust me, it happens. Can't remember any specific films, but just… trust me. Anyway, this shirt looks like the first part of that: the dreary, colourless past before life brightens up significantly. The blurb from Adidas declares that "on away days, this jersey reminds fans of the club's home city"… what, grey and boring? Now, I'm not a particular fan of Birmingham as a place, but you'd think if the club's kit was going to pay homage to it, they would find something a little more interesting than this. Yeesh. Bold. Still, you can't fault the commitment to the bit here: this shirt is a tribute to Fulham's striking 1999-2000 away kit, to the point where it's not really a tribute and more a direct copy, down to the placement of the contrast dark blue sections under the armpits and even using Fulham's old crest. The only real difference I can see is there's a buttoned collar as opposed to an open one. Is it good, though? Well, no, not really, if you're judging it by the standard of, "Do I actually want to be seen wearing this by people I know?" but it will have a cult following and enough of the Fulham support will love it, so by those criteria, maybe it is good? This is a slightly unusual shirt… actually, I'll rephrase: it elicited a slightly unusual response from me, because when I first saw it I instinctively disliked it, partly because the shades of potpourri/grandma's tea cosy purple are not the sort of thing you expect to see on a football shirt. But then I kept looking at it and for no particular reason, it has grown on me, to the point where I actually really like it now. That sort of evolution in taste isn't unusual in itself, but there's nothing really here to grow. It's just a plain shirt with two different shades of purple on it. There are no designs you didn't appreciate the first time you saw it, no little details you missed initially …it's just a purple shirt. And yet it's quite good. How would you describe this colour? The Wolves website doesn't but if you were to press me for a description, I'd say 'provincial leisure centre green', which isn't necessarily one you'd choose for your bathroom (unless you were a trainee lifeguard who's really attached to the job, I suppose), but one they have opted for here anyway. The initial reaction was to turn away and wrinkle the nose but the more I look at this, the more I don't mind it. It's probably the collar that does it: pleasingly neat and in a dark enough green that it offsets the main body, but still goes with it nicely. It's faintly depressing for those of us with grey around the temples when clubs refer to "classic kits from our history", and it turns out they're talking about a time when the first of those greys started appearing. For example, the Bournemouth website reports that this simple but attractive blue and black striped shirt is "inspired by the club's classic kits from the club's history". We regret to inform any other grey-templed types that they last had a blue and black striped kit in 2012. Admittedly, it has popped up further back in their history (as long ago as 1990, as far as we can tell), but that 2012 shirt is enough to inspire some ennui. Anyway, nice shirt. "It won't take fans long to see the influence of the club's early-'90s Adidas snowflake kit on this jersey," declares Adidas about this Manchester United away shirt. Erm… won't it? If you peer pretty closely at what looks to be a broadly white shirt, you will see a version of the classic old pattern, used on their 1990-92 away kit and more explicitly referenced in the 2021-22 version. But it's pretty abstract. The shirt itself is fine, although the faint bluey-purpley hue of the snowflake design does leave it with the old favourite 'dark socks left in the white wash' feel to it. Sort of quite nice? I think? Supposedly, the wavy white patterns across the light blue are "sound waves of chants and singing recorded in our home sections" — the sort of thing a manufacturer would say, safe in the knowledge that nobody is actually going to check. Burnley's main sponsor this season is one of these white-label betting sites that aren't actually available in the UK, so it can't be displayed on children's shirts. No problem, say the commercial team at Turf Moor: the junior version of this shirt is thus sponsored by Dude Perfect, which, if you're not familiar, is a troupe of whooping American YouTubers who do increasingly elaborate trick shots and sport-related stunts. A strange old state of affairs. This shirt comes with its own marketing slogan, "In darkness, we dare", a reference to Tottenham Hotspur's club motto ("to dare is to do") — but it does sort of imply that the club itself is in darkness, and is trying to get out of it. Anyway, black/extremely dark and minimalist shirts are clearly a 'thing' this season and while this isn't quite the best of the bunch, it's pretty smart. A slightly bolder contrast colour would have improved it a bit, a more brilliant white, perhaps, as opposed to this grey-that-looks-slightly-purple-in-some-light option. I concentrate far too much on these kits' descriptions, but I have to tip my cap to whoever quickly retconned "a bold look to mark the return of Champions League away nights" into the spiel, given Spurs would have been slipping down the Premier League and nowhere near Europe's elite when the shirt was signed off. After gleaning retro inspiration from the classic 'bruised banana' away shirt of the early 1990s, they've moved on a few years and brought out a kit that gives a nod to one from 1994, with the 'lightning bolt' motif referencing something to do with the Royal Arsenal Gatehouse in Woolwich, from where the earliest version of the club sprang. It's pretty nice, but one quibble would be that they already did a kit a few years ago that referenced the lightning bolt thing. The two shirts look different but it feels like a slight paucity of imagination. Umbro have taken a 'back to basics' approach with West Ham's kits this year, which absolutely does not mean bad. Far from it. In this case it means 'quite good.' This shirt "takes inspiration: from the cream - or 'ecru', as only kit manufacturers or high-end paint companies call it - shirt that West Ham wore in 1996-97, and this is a rare case of the modern version actually being nicer than the retro shirt it is paying homage to. There's nothing to get particularly giddy about in this shirt, it's just clean, identifiably West Ham through the claret and blue trim, and will still look good in a few years when some of the more experimental designs will have aged rather badly. The manufacturers' descriptions of football kits are often full of nonsense, contain flimsy post-hoc justifications for designs and feature impenetrable marketing speak, but they're not often passive-aggressive. However, the blurb on the Liverpool website tells us that the "off-white shade will be familiar to Reds who know their history", which is reminiscent of those people who see someone wearing a band t-shirt and say: "oh you like them, do you? Name their first three albums". Presumably this sniffy little aside is referring to their away kit from 1996-97…but of course, according to them, you won't need me to tell you that. Snarky online spiel aside, this is actually a really nice shirt, with the bold red contrasting the off-white main body really nicely, without overpowering the whole shirt. Now, name Liverpool's three top-scorers from 96-97. Now this is black. Jet black. Coal black. Batman black. This shirt looks like it could be deployed by the US military and be undetectable by radar. We've had black kits before but this is…black. Apparently it references the earliest known Manchester City kit from the 1880s, when they were a church team known as St Mark's. Things sure have changed in…well, yes, 141 years, as you might expect, but even when a club has strayed as far from its roots as City and therefore such nods to its past feel slightly hollow, those nods can still be pleasing. "Timeless, minimalist and powerful," reads the blurb from Puma…and I'm pretty close to swallowing it whole. Attempts to tie a shirt design to a club's locality or a beloved landmark can be pretty clumsy but even if they are, they can have a certain charm. Maybe I've been in a sentimental mood when writing about these kits this year, but it does feel like quite a few designers have got these things pretty spot on. Take this Sunderland shirt, which features, as its background pattern, a chessboard style arrangement with depictions of the Roker Lighthouse, which is a short distance away from the Stadium of Light and an even shorter distance from Sunderland's old ground, Roker Park. And it works: it works aesthetically and it works emotionally. Ideally, you wouldn't have an ugly betting company logo obscuring all of this, but within the confines of the grim capitalist nature of modern football, this is a delightful shirt. You'll probably already know this but Leeds's signature all white kits weren't the norm until the mid-1960s, when Don Revie took inspiration from Real Madrid and switched their colours from the dark blue and yellow they had largely worn to that point. So this shirt is a nod to the old days, one they have made many times before, but it's always quite nice when clubs do this, so I'm minded to like this shirt regardless of how good it looks. And it does look pretty good, even if it is slightly…shiny, and those thin horizontal stripes do make it seem a bit like you're looking at the shirt through the door of a retro, art deco-themed restaurant toilet. It might not be quite as nice as the home shirt, which is an absolute triumph, but this is absolutely terrific nonetheless. You don't get many pale yellow football shirts, almost the shade of a 1970s tennis top, but this has the bravery not to be needlessly brash, standing out by being different rather than grabbing you by the lapels and slapping you in the face. The detail on the cuffs is subtle (a nod to the railway tracks that once served the Liverpool docklands where their new stadium has been built) but sets off the rest of the shirt really nicely. Another win for Castore. Who saw this coming? This might be the biggest disparity between the quality of one club's two shirts in a single season because while Chelsea's home is an absolute horror, only ranked at 20 because there are no places lower than that, this is not only absolutely gorgeous but provides a short history lesson too. This shirt apparently references one Chelsea had in 1974 that paid tribute to the 'Mighty Magyars', the great Hungarian team of the 1950s, a shirt that came about simply because then-manager Dave Sexton admired them so much. I never knew that and I'm delighted to know it now. Almost as delighted as I am by this shirt, which simultaneously manages to nod to the club's past but still looks original; plus be subtle and striking at the same time. It's wonderful. Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Play today's puzzle
New York Times
12-08-2025
- New York Times
Connections: Sports Edition hints for Aug. 12, 2025, puzzle No. 323
Need help with today's Connections: Sports Edition puzzle? You've come to the right place. Welcome to Connections: Sports Edition Coach — a spot to gather clues and discuss (and share) scores. A quick public service announcement before we continue: The bottom of this article includes one answer in each of the four categories. So if you want to solve the board hint-free, we recommend you play before continuing. Advertisement You can access Tuesday's game here. Game No. 323's difficulty: 2.5 out of 5 Scroll below for one answer in each of the four categories. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Yellow: BANNER Green: RETURNER Blue: BUZZ Purple: KICK The next puzzle will be available at midnight in your time zone. Thanks for playing — and share your scores in the comments! (Illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic) Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Play today's puzzle
Yahoo
01-08-2025
- Yahoo
Big 3 Basketball League Trolls Sydney Sweeney, American Eagle Ad
As the old saying goes, any publicity is good publicity. And for the popular clothing store American Eagle, their latest ad starring fan-favorite celebrity Sydney Sweeney is drawing plenty of attention. The latest social media play off the popular ad comes from the Big 3 basketball league, which used its own remake of the photos to promote the upcoming weekend of hoops action. Sydney Sweeney's American Eagle Ad Quickly Went Viral The great debate over Sweeney's ad swept the internet, with some pushing back on its punchline. Others saw nothing wrong with the advertisement and pushed back on the narrative. As one investor highlighted, when the ad dropped, it also increased the share's stock by 5 percent on Thursday, July 24. Regardless of thoughts on the ad, the attention it drew was a major pull for American Eagle. Even pushback from the likes of Doja Cat, who mocked the American Eagle commercial, went viral. Big 3 Basketball League Trolls Sydney Sweeney's American Eagle Ad The latest play off the "in our genes" line from Sweeney's ad came from the Big 3 basketball league, a 3v3 focus that is televised by CBS Sports and has grown in popularity since its inception in 2017. The league, created by Ice Cube and Jeff Kwatinetz, features 12 teams with rosters filled with both former NBA and international players. Their social media team posted a clip of the league to X on Thursday, July 31, that read: "Basketball is in our genes. Tune in Saturday at 1 PM ET on @CBSSports" Although the responses were mixed in the comment section, the post drew plenty of attention from fans and those who simply came across it in passing. Big 3 Basketball Is Drawing Noteworthy Names Putting the ad aside, the Big 3 basketball league continues to provide impressive performances from names longtime basketball fans know and love. Among the most popular names in the league are Joe Johnson, a member of the Triplets, who's a two-time league MVP and two-time Big 3 champion. So far this season, the league is led in scoring by Glen Rice Jr., son of former NBA star Glen Rice, followed closely by ex-NBA standout Michael Beasley, Jonathon Simmons, Jordan Crawford and Earl Clark. All five players spent time in the NBA, while names like Greg Monroe and Jeremy Pargo, leading the league in rebounds and assists, respectively, are also former NBA 3 Basketball League Trolls Sydney Sweeney, American Eagle Ad first appeared on Men's Journal on Jul 31, 2025 Solve the daily Crossword
