Another great outing to Baltimore and the Orioles

For the fourth consecutive year, I headed to Baltimore for a baseball wallow with my brother-in-law and two of my nephews. We took in three Orioles games at Camden Yards in which the home team defeated the Chicago Cubs once and the Kansas City Royals twice. For the O’s, it was the front end of […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Remembering a great season and a great World Series

As the sun has set on the 2025 baseball season, I’m in a reflective, thankful mood. We had a heck of a World Series, with the Toronto Blue Jays taking the mighty (i.e., mightily financed) Dodgers into 11 innings of Game 7 before coming up short. I was rooting for the Jays and shut the […]

Baseball cards to celebrate the playoffs

At the hardware store last weekend, I was surprised to find baseball cards for sale at the checkout counter. Single packs with sticks of desiccated pink gum weren’t on offer as in my childhood days — just cube boxes containing eight Topps packs. I hadn’t bought or even seen baseball cards for sale yet this […]

Face it: We’re playing ‘The New York Game’

As Kevin Baker abundantly and entertainingly makes clear, America’s pastime is “The New York Game.” Baker’s book with that title examines the development of baseball from its organizational stirrings in the mid-19th century to the cusp of racial integration at the end of World War II. The setting? New York City. My friend Jerry and […]

A gripping story of the Detroit Tigers and a 1930s wave of terror

I am forever on the hunt for baseball books, and by chance I discovered through an electronic library “Terror in the City of Champions.” The book, published in 2016, chronicles the exploits of the Detroit Tigers and other Motor City sports teams in the 1930s against a backdrop of violent crime perpetrated by a ruthless […]

‘Love and Loss’ — the tragic tale of Ray Chapman

One of my Christmas presents was the book “Love and Loss; The Short Life of Ray Chapman,” the only player to die of injuries suffered in a Major League Baseball game. The Cleveland Indians shortstop was fatally struck in the head at the Polo Grounds by a pitch from New York Yankees hurler Carl Mays. […]

My Rooting interests for the AL and NL championships

To demonstrate that I bear no animus toward New York City, I hereby declare my rooting interest in baseball’s American and National league championship series, gateway to the World Series. Anyone who knows me even passingly should not be surprised that I am pulling for the Guardians, the pride of my hometown, Cleveland. They are […]