SIDETRACK
FIRST STRING: Harvard's head basketball coach, Tommy Amaker, and his wife, Dr. Stephanie Pinder-Amaker, had the home court advantage Saturday, when they hosted the team's Tip-Off Cookout at their Mashpee house. The annual event welcomes back players, families, friends and staff members to another school year of the sport, and there was quite the turnout. Among the notable guests at the lakeside hangout: Harvard hoops alum Gov. Charlie Baker; former Celtics head coach M.L. Carr; CNN pundit David Gergen; GE's Mo Cowan and his wife, Stacey; civic leader Fletcher “Flash” Wiley and his wife, Bennie, who's the head of the Wiley group; Harvard Law professors Ron Sullivan and Stephanie Robinson; Dr. Walter Carrington, the former U.S. ambassador to Senegal and Nigeria, and his wife, Arese; and Harvard Kennedy School professor Roger Porter.
DAD DUTY: John Krasinski may be the star of the newly streaming series “Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan,” but he's making it clear that his biggest role is a family man. At its Los Angeles premiere on Friday, the Newton-raised celeb revealed that shooting the show couldn't keep him away from his wife, actress Emily Blunt, and their two daughters, Violet and Hazel. “Family, for me, it's a non-negotiable thing,” Krasinski told People magazine. “So if I'm honest, I was shooting 6,000 miles away from them, and I flew back every single weekend.” He must have racked up those frequent flyer miles, thanks to the weekly round-trip treks between Montreal and London, where Blunt was filming her own flick at the time. However, it seems like the real value came with keeping his girls rooted with a routine. “Emily was shooting a little indie movie called `Mary Poppins (Returns),' ” Krasinski said. “So they were with her, and we always set up a base, and I always want the base to be with their mom, and I'll do the flight time.”