Radio, Baseball, and the Gipper

Before he treated a chimpanzee named Bonzo like a child, pleaded the Notre Dame football team to win just one for the Gipper, and told Mr. Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall, Ronald Reagan was a baseball announcer. Reagan called baseball games for WOC in...

The Death of Charles Ebbets

When Charles Ebbets died on April 18, 1925, Brooklynites lost their remaining link to the genesis of professional baseball in their beloved borough.  Ebbets began his baseball career in 1883, when Brooklyn inaugurated professional baseball for its denizens from Coney...

The Hall of Fame Case for Mickey Lolich

Consistency is the yardstick by which excellence is measured.  Mickey Lolich, a Detroit baseball icon, demonstrated consistency, ergo, excellence in a pitching career that, perhaps surprisingly, has not yet warranted admittance to the Baseball Hall of Fame.  Lolich...

1969

As described by German Prussian politician Otto von Bismarck, politics is the art of the possible.  So is baseball.  When the New York Mets defeated the Baltimore Orioles to win the 1969 World Series, possible elevated to miraculous. Once again, National League...

Shoeless Joe Jackson’s Hometown

When the Greenville Drive ball club of the South Atlantic League takes the field, they continue a baseball legacy kindled, in part, by Greenville’s most famous resident.  Shoeless Joe Jackson. Sitting in South Carolina’s northwestern region, Greenville...