Category: Baseball Musings
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Traveling the Bambino Road: Day Five
Day Five: March 10, 2003 Today was a day of extremes, from the high tech luxury suites of Ted Turner to the splintered simplicity of Thomas Bell, from the eight lane madness of the Atlanta interstate “connector” to the backroads of pecan and peach country. Turner Field is one of those snazzy new baseball palaces,…
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Traveling the Bambino Road: Day Four
Day Four: March 9, 2003 And on Sunday, she rested. Well, not really, but I did relatively little. I only drove about two hours today, from Macon to Atlanta, and who knows, maybe tonight I’ll actually get eight hours sleep, since I’m not driving to another distant locale. My day started when I woke before…
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Traveling the Bambino Road: Day Three
Day Three: March 8, 2003 I cried at Joe Jackson’s gravesite today. But I didn’t figure out why until I was at Ty Cobb’s. But I’ll get to that later. The day dawned frigid and gray. Thirty nine degrees again. By the time I wended my way across Greenville to Joe Jackson Memorial Park, a…
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Traveling the Bambino Road: Day Two
Day Two: March 7, 2003 I woke to steel gray skies and 39 degree air temperature today. Brrr. My first stop of the day was the Baseball America offices in Durham. There I met up with fellow SABRite Cliff Gardner who accompanied me to see the Durham ballparks. The two parks are a study in…
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Traveling the Bambino Road: Day One
Day One: March 6, 2003 When I arrived at Boston’s Logan airport this morning, the roads were crackling with fresh ice and the forecast was for snow. When I stepped onto the tarmac three hours later at Raleigh-Durham International Airport, the air was moist with balmy rain. Folks here tell me it’s unusually cold for…
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May 1 2001: Scorecards, Part Two
Before my trip to spring training this year, I decided to improve my old scorecard design. Although the old one was good for most regular season games, I wanted another line or two for pitchers names, and space to write up to four batters for each line in the lineup. So now there is room…
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April 27 2001: Comings & Goings
I parked my car at Yankee Stadium recently, when I wasn’t going to a game. Why? Well, where else can you park your car in New York for eight hours for only eight dollars? I had driven down to the city from Boston to do a reading for the New York Review of Science Fiction…
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April 17 2001: Tonight I Love Baseball
If you’ve been reading “Why I LIke Baseball” for a while, you know where my team allegiance lies. If you haven’t, it’s no secret I’m a lifelong Yankees fan, born in New York City, raised in the Nettles-Reggie-Munson era, and avidly following the recent championship dynasty in the Bronx. But what I’m discovering this season…
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March 4 2001 : Mythic Proportions (The A-Rod-Jeter Thing)
I must be cranky today, because I’ve decided I’ve heard more than I want to hear about the supposed friendship and/or feud between Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez. Normally I eat this kind of stuff up. Not tabloid-ish gossip about players’ private lives, no. I don’t care if David Justice’s ex-fiancee is a gold-digger or…
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February 15: Home Stretch
Apologies, but though this piece was written on February 15th, technology conspired to keep it from appearing until February 24th… -ctan It has been a long, cold offseason, but this year I’ve done everything in my power to try to stave off the pangs of withdrawal. There’s still a few weeks before exhibition games begin,…