Musings on new ballparks and competitiveness

Back in the 1970s, I figured the surest way to assure your major league ballclub a pennant and victory in the World Series was to build a new stadium. I watched it happen in Cincinnati and Pittsburgh with Riverfront Stadium and Three Rivers Stadium, respectively. But baseball is more complex than that, as any number […]

The steroids gang: New villains for a new century of baseball

The early days of 20th century baseball live in the imagination of us modern men. We have in our heads hazy images of Frank “Home Run” Baker, Smokey Joe Wood and Muggsy McGraw, hard-nosed country boy players and managers from a rough-and-tumble era that ended ignominiously with the Black Sox game-fixing scandal of 1919. [picapp […]

Scoring big with discount-bin ball caps

My wife is a regular shopper at Marshall’s and TJ Maxx. I often tag along eagerly in hopes of finding a great deal on baseball or football caps and clothing. The stock at these discount stores rotates regularly, and you never know when you’ll stumble onto something you really like. After numerous trips over the […]

Astros fan makes great catch with his cap

Here’s great use of a baseball cap: An Astros fan, sitting along the left field foul line in Houston, uses his cap to snag a foul ball out of the clutches of the Mets fan sitting beside him. And the Astros fan made the catch while talking on his cell phone! Here’s a link to […]

Rest in peace, Bobby Thomson

Bobby Thomson died today at age 86, but his memory will live on as long as the game of baseball is played. It was Thomson who hit “The Shot Heard ‘Round the World” in 1951, a home run that lifted the New York Giants over the Brooklyn Dodgers and into the World Series. That blast […]

Tracking down my first major-league baseball game

The Internet was invented for us baseball fans. No other sport offers such a rich trove of statistics, and the Web is chock full of sites that slice and dice them. One of my favorite is baseballlibrary.com, which enabled me to track down the precise date of the first major league game I attended. I […]

Great baseball stories: W.P. Kinsella’s “Thrill of the Grass”

Baseball, the quintessential American game, is the source of inspiration for many a writer. If I have single favorite short story on the sport, it likely is “The Thrill of the Grass” by W.P. Kinsella, who it just so happens is Canadian. Perhaps it’s that across-the-border perspective that allows him such keen insight into “our” […]

A tip of the cap to Paul Waner, in memory of my father

Paul Waner Originally uploaded by doug.goodman Had cancer not claimed him years ago, my father would have celebrated his 90th birthday today. Dad handed down to me many values, not the least of which was his lifelong love of baseball. Dad was born in western Pennsylvania in 1920, which meant he grew up a Pittsburgh […]

The Yankees’ evil empire keeps expanding

[picapp align=”right” wrap=”true” link=”term=Lance+Berkman&iid=8924515″ src=”http://view4.picapp.com/pictures.photo/image/8924515/mlb-brewers-astros-may/mlb-brewers-astros-may.jpg?size=500&imageId=8924515″ width=”234″ height=”351″ /] A few years back my younger son and I marveled at the awesome display of power Lance Berkman put on at the home run derby during the All-Star break. Now the longtime Houston Astros slugger is wearing pinstripes for the Evil Empire that is the New York […]

Matt Garza no-hits the Tigers

[picapp align=”center” wrap=”false” link=”term=Matt+Garza&iid=9263262″ src=”http://view4.picapp.com/pictures.photo/image/9263262/tampa-bay-rays-matt-garza/tampa-bay-rays-matt-garza.jpg?size=500&imageId=9263262″ width=”500″ height=”365″ /] Matt Garza entered his named in the record books at Cooperstown as he threw a no-hitter against the Detroit Tigers tonight. In the old days, I’d have been lucky to catch the game late at night on the radio if the right stations with the right wattage […]