Throwing the game (golf)

With my Brewers cap on my head and baseball on my mind, I headed out the back door this morning intent on walking the golf course adjoining our lot. But a funny thing happened along the fairway. On the first hole, I picked up a stray range ball nestled up against a tree. I planned […]

Baseball Cards, the Astros, and other Garbage Pail Kids

As I dashed into Target last week to pick up a few food items that needed restocking, I swung by the display for the trading cards on my way to the checkout line. If there’s not going to be a baseball season, I reasoned, I need some baseball cards by which to remember it. I […]

Baseball isn’t back — but I am

This may be the season that wasn’t. I’m writing this post as I conclude Week 6 of working from home during the coronavirus outbreak. Major league baseball has been postponed while most Americans and millions of others around the world are experiencing the strange sensations (or lack thereof) of social distancing. A decade ago when […]

Celebrate the baseball solstice (and put a new equinox on your calendar)

Today, Dec. 28, 2017, marks the annual Baseball Solstice. That’s the mid-point day between the last out of the World Series and the first exhibition game or games of Spring Training. The World Series ended the night of Nov. 1 in Los Angeles, with the Houston Astros defeating the Dodgers. I am still processing the […]

Cleveland’s League Park: A gem restored

June was a good baseball month for me: Not only did I get to take in my first game at Pittsburgh, but on a trip back to my hometown of Cleveland I visited the old location of League Park. The park was the full-time or part-time home of Cleveland professional baseball [go ahead, insert your […]

Flash! It’s the 2016 Baseball Solstice

Happy New Year and Happy Baseball Solstice, everyone! Today — January 1st — not only is the first day of the new calendar year but it’s also the midpoint between the last out of the 2015 World Series 2015 and the first pitches of Spring Training exhibition games on March 1. I dreamt up the […]

Setting the annual Baseball Solstice

With the temperature flirting with 70 degrees today here in New Jersey, I’m aching for baseball even as I acknowledge we must endure weeks of winter before we hear “Play ball!” again. So it’s high time to announce the annual Baseball Solstice, that precise point between the final out of the World Series and the […]

A farewell to the Freak? I hope not

Just yesterday morning, waking up and moping over the morning news that the Giants had fallen to the Dodgers for a second consecutive night, I got to thinking that it would do the world good to see Tim Lincecum back on the mound. Today, I woke up here on the East Coast to the news […]

Ending the year with the Baseball Solstice: Dec. 31, 2014

The high priests of baseball emerged deep from inside the clubhouse today, where they’ve been holed up since the final out of the World Series to declare Dec. 31 the Baseball Solstice between the 2014 and 2015 seasons. The solstice each year marks the midpoint between the final out of the World Series and the […]

You can’t slide home again: A trip to the diamond of my youth

Several weeks ago I was back in the neighborhood where I grew up in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, and I took a stroll down Memory Lane. More accurately, I walked up and down Bluestone Road, the major thoroughfare of my youth, connecting our home on Erieview Road to my grade school in neighboring South Euclid. In […]