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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Hammerin’ Hank is forever

I missed the news last year when the United States Postal Service issued a “forever” stamp in honor of Hank Aaron. But a lovely surprise arrived in the mail the other day. A friend and former Associated Press colleague had stuck one of the stamps in a notecard and mailed it to me in an […]

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 […]

Spills and thrills for the Renegades softball team

I came off the disabled list and got back onto the field with the Research Renegades softball team this week. With a game in the near-100-degrees heat Tuesday and another on cooler, cloudier Wednesday, my hands were continually switching from glove to camera to bat. We lost a tough one Tuesday, 9-8, but prevailed in […]

A great week of baseball in Philly and Baltimore

I took vacation last week and packed it full of baseball. On Wednesday, my friend Jerry and I saw the Phillies beat the Cubs at Citizens Bank Ballpark in Philadelphia. The next day, I drove to Baltimore to connect with relatives to catch an Orioles’ game against the Tigers and then two games against the […]

Switching from hardball to softball

It’s been several years since I’ve played softball, and I was excited to try my luck in the Princeton University staff league this year. I got into one game last week, then went to the disabled list for three weeks on the admonition of the oral surgeon who did some work on me last Friday. […]

Trying a new angle on Princeton baseball

The dimensions of each baseball field rarely change, and when I’m shooting games I want to make sure I don’t overlook some new vantage points that I hadn’t tried before. At today’s Brown-Princeton doubleheader, I knew I’d have time to try something different. Inspiration struck in the nightcap, when Jacob Faulkner started for the Tigers. […]