A tough weekend for Princeton Tigers baseball

Yale pulled into Princeton on Friday for a three-game series against the host Tigers. The Bulldogs were ungracious guests, you might say, as they swept the three-game series. The games were hard fought, and Princeton nearly pulled off a victory in the finale during Saturday’s doubleheader. Chased by what turned out to be a brief […]

Baseball’s “Opening Night”? We can do better

Generally, I’m a modern, progressive guy. When it comes to baseball, I tend more toward paleolithic traditionalist. Consider Opening Day or, as we are experiencing it this year, Opening Night. Let’s play in the sunshine, shall we? I have nothing against a few night games on Opening Day, as long as some of the games […]

Princeton opens the Ivy League baseball season

After its annual season-opening road trips to the South, the Princeton baseball team opened the Ivy League season at home over the weekend, splitting a series 2-1 with Cornell. The Tigers banged out hit after hit to sweep the Saturday doubleheader 13-7 and 12-0 but dropped the finale to the Big Red 6-3 on Sunday. […]

The soothing sounds of Spring Training

I spent the previous two days watching the snow fall and a few hours shoveling during and after the Nor’easter storm that blanketed much of the Northeast. Post-shoveling, through the MLB app on my iPhone I was able to catch some of the glorious sounds of opening weekend for Spring Training. Actually, I heard a […]

A game from my youth: NFL Strategy

It’s Championship Sunday in the National Football League, and it’s snowing heavily at home in New Jersey. Small wonder that I got the urge to pull out one of the tabletop games I played in my high school days during winters in snowy Cleveland — NFL Strategy. Introduced in 1970 by Tudor, the company that […]

A New York minute with my new Giants cap

At mid-week, I took a train into New York City on my way to visit my son and his family who live in Manhattan. They had given me a spiffy fitted and personalized San Francisco Giants cap for Christmas, and wearing it was the right headwear choice for a moderately cold January outing. On the […]

A fabulous new Giants cap for the Baseball Solstice

Today is the annual Baseball Solstice, the mid-point between the final out of the World Series and the first games of Spring training. Trust me when I say, I can’t wait for baseball season. I just spent an hour clearing ice off the windshields and windows of our two cars. Thanks to my older son […]

Strat-O-Matic soothes the soul

I come now to praise Strat-O-Matic baseball, the board game that for decades has enabled baseball fans like me to bring the national pastime to life in their homes with statistical realism. I was a late-comer to the game. As a kid I had several baseball games, and my favorite was Ethan Allen’s All-Star Baseball. […]

1968: The Year of the Pitcher remembered

Whenever I visit the nearby public library, I always check the stacks for baseball books. The other day, I picked up “The Year of the Pitcher” by Sridharan Pappu. In it, he chronicles the 1968 baseball season, highlighted by the pitching dominance of Bob Gibson, who posted an infinitesimally small E..R.A. for the Cardinals, and […]

Resurrecting the baseball solstice

Way back in December 2011, in a funk over the lack of baseball during a long winter, I dreamed up the baseball solstice. It would mark the midpoint between the end of the World Series and the first pitch of Spring training. It would also serve as a mid-winter reason to celebrate the game we […]