I was born in 1983 at Union Memorial Hospital, just down 33rd Street from Memorial Stadium. Bittersweet, born an Oriole fan and unable to rejoice in what remains to this day our organization’s last World Series championship. On the bright side, the city had Cal Ripken Jr., real-life Iron Man. I can...
I moved to Chicago in July 2010, a New York kid who grew up with the dynasty Yankees and loved every minute. Though few would label the Bronx Bombers anywhere near the word underdog, I remember when the team won its first title in 18 years. The Yankees did so in 1996,...
The team we would be competing against played only home games. It seemed to give the players an advantage, but it was not a topic for debate. The softball team for the Baltimore City Detention Center didn’t travel. An inmate had written to the manager of our team, Dick Irwin, asking if...
When my sister Colleen turned 5, my mom wasn’t home for her birthday. She was in the hospital having our baby sister Val, who had the temerity to be born on Colleen’s birthday, April 4th. It was bad enough that Mom wasn’t there for Colleen’s birthday, but from now on she’d have...
When I first started working part time at the Baltimore News American, I got a ride home one evening from a summer intern whose car was about as old as I was, 18. The brakes might have been just as old. As we crested the Jones Falls Expressway from downtown, traffic was...
I loved playing home run derby as a kid. You needed only two players — the pitcher and the hitter. Anything not hit over the fence was an out, and we struck out a lot because every swing was for the fence. You needed only a Wiffle Ball with the cut-out holes...
Once upon a time, I shared the same feeling many of you who come to this website have about baseball. Playing it, talking about it or watching it were all important parts of life in the summer for me while growing up. Back then, breakfast was cold cereal and intense examinations of...
“I’ll have what Mr. Feller’s having.” When my dad and I heard those words just a few feet away from us, we knew it was going to be a special night. **** I was 10 years old in 1996, and my enthusiasm for baseball was just starting to heighten. The previous September,...
The July 4th cookout menu had a healthy portion of baseball talk but not much on the Orioles. Hot dogs, hamburgers, chicken kebabs, baked beans and corn on the cob seemed to add flavor to the baseball-related stories. Discussion of the current team was considered light fare. One story involved Grandmom, as...
I was driving home from Ocean City on this day last year when I received a text from my friend, Steve Marcus. He wanted to know if I was aware of the horrible news coming out of Annapolis. A mass shooting had taken place at one of our workplaces, had taken the...