This year has been unlike any other for me. Covering a team that has been far worse than anyone could have imagined, a midseason job switch that brought me to BaltimoreBaseball.com, and the deluge of Orioles trades and declaration of a rebuild. This was also the year that I lost my mother....
It was a 30-minute swim, but when it was over, there were ripples throughout the Baltimore baseball community. My wife, Barb, got in the water just before 4 on Tuesday afternoon to do laps while I sat near the pool on my laptop, checking for player movement as the non-waiver trade deadline...
Dr. Jon Simon was in his office late on a summer afternoon. He was there to discuss what an MRI revealed about a rotator cuff injury to a patient whose best pitching days were with a Wiffle Ball when the Orioles were winning four American League pennants and two World Series in...
Back when he was working for the Palm Beach Post, Rob Hiaasen would tell co-worker Frank Cerabino that they should go out for lunch. Cerabino knew what that meant. Hiaasen would drive to a park in West Palm Beach, open the trunk of the car and pull out two gloves and a...
Forty-five years ago this month, I attended my first Orioles game. It was a momentous occasion for any lifelong O’s fan, but special for several other reasons, too. It was Father’s Day weekend and featured a near-historic pitching performance by Jim Palmer. An unfortunate error also occurred that cost me a game...
My dad was meticulous about the work he did. There were no shortcuts. He might have invented measure twice cut once except I recall he measured at least three times before he cut. There was nothing he couldn’t do, and nothing he didn’t do right, including repairing the rain spouts. Through the...
It’s embarrassing to admit, but I didn’t fully appreciate Brooks Robinson until a few months before everyone else did. That’s when the Hall of Fame third baseman amazed the baseball world by shutting down Cincinnati’s Big Red Machine in the 1970 World Series. For Brooks, it was a glove story. For me,...
It was a sunny afternoon in early October, the kind that connects the fading of summer with the emergence of fall and its bold colors. I was about to make a bold prediction, with my dad as a witness. We had stopped at a diner after going to the grocery store, and...
Every once in a while, a season in our life runs parallel with a season of a lifetime. It happened to me in 1983. April 4th was Opening Day, but my focus was on the birth of our third child, Kelly Patricia, to whom I gave three nicknames — Lover Dover, Special...
It happened so quickly. I was standing alone in the front of a department store when I noticed a tall, tan man in a tailored suit coming toward me. Somehow, I managed to say, “Are you Jim Gentile?” And for some reason, he said, “No,” and kept walking toward the back of...