The Death of John McGraw

John McGraw was to baseball what Henry Ford was to the automobile.  They did not invent their respective industries.  They reinvented them. Straddling the line separating the 19th and 20th centuries, McGraw ended his career as a baseball player by performing the...

61 in ’61

In 1961, John F. Kennedy was inaugurated as the nation’s youngest elected president, The Dick Van Dyke Show débuted, and Alan Shepard became the first American astronaut in space. 1961 was also the year of Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle.  The M&M boys. As...

Lonesome Rhodes, Will Stockade, and Andy Taylor

Corruption rooted in ego, fame, and power forms the foundation for A Face in the Crowd, a 1957 film; Budd Schulberg wrote the screenplay based on his short story The Arkansas Traveler. Andy Griffith stars as Lonesome Rhodes, a country bumpkin discovered by television...

148 Bonnie Meadow Road

Humor, it is often said, serves us best when it is grounded in reality.  The Dick Van Dyke Show espoused this theorem. Carl Reiner, formerly a writer and performer on Your Show of Shows and Caesar’s Hour, starring television comedy pioneer Sid Caesar, created a...

Bad Bill Dahlen

Bill Dahlen earned his nickname “Bad Bill” because of his arguing style that had the finesse of a 300-pound ballerina.  It triggered 65 ejections for Dahlen, a figure in the Top 10 in baseball history. Dahlen played from 1891-1911 for the Chicago Cubs, New...