by gordie | Oct 25, 2024 | MLB
Not to get all gooey on you, but for some reason I was thinking the other day about my first time in a major league baseball ballpark. Yankees-Angels, Aug. 26, 1968, in the old Yankee Stadium. Second game of a double-header. Future Phillies manager Jim Fregosi at...
by gordie | Aug 4, 2023 | MLB
Orioles closer Felix Bautista stands 6-8, weighs 285 and routinely throws 100. Dubbed “The Mountain,” he looks like Shaq when he’s out there on the mound, or at least an NFL edge rusher. (And dare it be said that he’s now on the short list of great mountains, along...
by gordie | Jul 5, 2023 | MLB
Decades before Ted Lasso hung that iconic sign over his office door, another Hollywood venture into the sporting world taught us the value of belief. Again and again in Bull Durham, director Ron Shelton’s 1988 ode to minor league baseball, the characters invest...
by gordie | Oct 28, 2022 | MLB
Baseball’s timelessness was once the game’s blessing, the subject of sonnets. Now it is the game’s curse, the target of regulation. (Hello, pitch clock!) But what it also is, is something of a myth. Because while the sport has always been timeless, it has never been...
by gordie | May 29, 2022 | MLB, NBA, NFL
Roger Angell wrote long, long after it was fashionable to do so. Ray Didinger spoke evenly, even as hot takes became all the rage. You wanna call them dinosaurs, fine; have at it. I choose to believe that is true only in the sense that they have left (or are about to...
by gordie | Mar 26, 2021 | College Basketball, MLB, Writing
On March 16, 2019, the East Stroudsburg University men’s basketball team lost an NCAA Division II first-round game to West Liberty, 106-99 in overtime. The silver lining for the Warriors that night at IUP was considerable, however: Freshman center Ryan Smith had...
