Month: October 2016

This is a touchy story, one that will likely spark strong feelings no matter where you find yourself standing. Still … my old friend Buck O’Neil would want me to write about it. He would demand it, in fact. I often find myself thinking in various situations: What would Buck do? Or: What would Buck…

When you cover losing baseball for 15 years, you begin to learn the rhythms of losing. You begin to anticipate sense the various DEFCONs of the losing team. DEFCON 5: Everything’s fine. DEFCON 4: Everything’s fine, we’re playing well, just not getting the breaks, you gotta tip your hat to the other team sometimes, we’ll…

I’m in the middle of a slow breakup with Apple. It has been painful but, to be honest, the split has been in the works for a few years now. Some people here know that I have been a bit of an Apple obsessive for the last decade plus. I have purchased just about every…

Let’s go over the whole thing briefly so that we can appreciate the miracle that’s going on here. On October 6, Cleveland shut out Boston 6-0 to take a commanding lead in that best-of-five division series. The Red Sox had led Major League Baseball in runs scored by a fairly large margin — 33 more runs…

Huh. I was looking up something I had written about Chief Wahoo because of this riveting and powerful piece written by Sterling HolyWhiteMountain. And I came across this old piece — I believe it’s the first long blog piece I ever wrote. It originally appeared on some long ago version of this blog, five or six bloggy…

Dick Fick died 13 years ago. Do you remember him? Probably not. He was a relatively minor college basketball coach; Dick was an assistant at Valpo and Creighton, head coach for a time at Morehead State. He was known, if at all, for two things, one obviously being his name. The other: His antics on…

I’ve sort of stopped writing about the Cleveland Browns lately because, well, there’s really nothing interesting to talk about. They’re terrible. They are also injured. They are not developing an interesting young quarterback, they are not showing any signs whatsoever of  building even a passable offensive or defensive line, their last half-dozen drafts have been…

Just about any obsessive Bruce Springsteen fan — or obsessive Beatles fan, Stones fan, REM … U2 … Smiths … Adele … Zeppelin … Sinatra … Streisand … Pearl Jam … The Who … Billy Joel … Elton John … Billie Holliday … Depeche Mode … Eminem … Jimmy Buffett … Cole Porter … Elvis … Nirvana ……

Let’s be honest: What you want in a manager of your favorite team is someone who wins. It doesn’t need to go too much deeper than that.  Yes, of course, you would prefer it if your team’s manager or coach has a vivid personality — funny, outrageous, thoughtful, loyal, loony, whatever you like. Bears’ fans famously…

Jason Heyward was a somewhat controversial player even before this year. Some baseball people loved him. Others just never saw what the big deal was. He was a darling of advanced statistics like WAR. His more traditional numbers left you yawning. When he got $180 million dollars from the Chicago Cubs before this season, many…