Rick Monday’s Star-Spangled Play

Old Glory.  Stars and Stripes.  Star-Spangled banner. America’s flag is, for some, a sacred fabric.  Rick Monday represented those devotees during a Cubs-Dodgers game at Dodger Stadium on April 25, 1976, when he prevented a duo—father and son—from igniting the...

“Ball Four Goes Hollywood”

When Jim Bouton’s book Ball Four hit bookshelves in 1970, it exploded myths, revealed secrets, and offered tales of baseball, theretofore kept protected from the public.  If reporters knew about Mickey Mantle’s alcohol problem, for example, they...

Mays As A Met

Willie Mays ended his career where he began it.  New York City. His was a career of milestones.  As a rookie, Mays was a witness to baseball history.  On October 3, 1951, he was in the New York Giants on-deck circle when Bobby Thomson hit the Shot Heard ‘Round...

Magnum Goes Home

Thomas Magnum, Hawaii’s private investigator extraordinaire, reconnected family ties in the Magnum, p.i. episode “Going Home,” a story with the rarity of taking place outside the 50th state. Returning to his childhood home of Tidewater, Virginia to...

Parenting, Mayberry Style

In The Andy Griffith Show episode Opie the Birdman, a lesson in creative parenting is exhibited to great effect.  Sheriff Andy Taylor of Mayberry, North Carolina foresees trouble if Opie, his son, uses a slingshot.  Hence, he orders Opie not to use it. Opie, in turn,...