Romancing the Stone

Occasionally a news article, like a dessert dish, can become a guilty pleasure. Such was the case in mid-June when a tale that New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft had been telling privately since 2005 was finally made public after he told it to a larger audience at the Waldorf Astoria in New York. As his story goes, Kraft was with an American business delegation in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 2005 and pulled out his Super Bowl ring to show Russian President Vladimir Putin. The New York Post reported that Kraft put his hands out to receive the ring back from Putin, but Putin instead put the ring in his pocket “and three KGB guys got around him and walked out,” in Kraft’s words.

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Bob Latham is a partner at the law firm Jackson Walker, L.L.P., and an International Rugby Board member. A compilation of his best columns titled “Winners & Losers: Rants, Riffs and Reflections on the World of Sports,” is available in the Media Zone.