Agent Palmer

With NASCAR: Full Speed, Netflix is trying to capture F1: Drive to Survive’s success in open-wheeled racing with the tradition and pageantry of stock car racing. Does it succeed? That’s a tougher question to answer than I would like it to be.

The answer, however, is probably not.

Bye Bye Barry is a 2023 documentary that focuses on the circumstances and mystery surrounding Barry Sanders’ decision to retire at the height of his abilities. It’s told in a way that may actually satisfy some football fans’ sense of wonder regarding the decision.

But in order to understand the circumstances around his walking away, you have to tell the story of who Barry Sanders was and his career up until his retirement.

Thomas Oliphant’s Praying for Gil Hodges: A Memoir of the 1955 World Series and One Family’s Love of the Brooklyn Dodgers is a loving snapshot of 1950s Brooklyn. It transports you to not only the 1955 World Series between the New York Yankees and Brooklyn Dodgers, but also to 1955 New York, covering Brooklyn of course, but a few surrounding boroughs as well.

Baseball fans will enjoy this book for putting us front and center with one of the more epic game sevens in World Series history.

Football.

Where you are when you talk about it, defines which sport you are discussing. On Netflix, there exists two eight-part docu series about both of the sports. Captains follows six players who are attempting to lead their countries to the World Cup final in Qatar through qualification, while Quarterback follows three NFL QBs as they attempt to lead their teams to a Super Bowl victory.

Like last year, there were two tours of the picturesque landscape of France on bicycles; the Tour de France and the Tour de France Femme avec Zwift. Both had their moments of triumph and heartbreak, as any race or even sporting event does, but they were not equal.

Let’s start with the men’s race, because it started first and it was off with a Yates! That’s right, twin brothers Adam and Simon Yates broke away and dueled each other for the first stage victory and the leader’s Yellow jersey.