The Tragedy of Ken McMullen

When Dodgers third baseman Ken McMullen suited up for the 1974 season, he carried the weight of widowerhood on his 6’3″ frame—McMullen’s wife, Bobbie, died of cancer on April 6th, the day after the Dodgers opened the ’74 season. Diagnosed with...

The Story of the Tampico Stogies

Based on the eponymous novel by Paul Hemphill, the 1987 HBO tv-movie Long Gone starred William Petersen, Dermot Mulroney, and Virginia Madsen.  Long Gone revolves around the fictional Tampico Stogies, a minor league team in Florida during the late 1950s. At the heart...

NASA, Space, and Popular Culture

NASA’s Golden Age of Projects Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo inspired television programmers and producers to use space as a theme in the 1960s. I Dream of Jeannie starred Larry Hagman as Tony Nelson, an astronaut living in Cocoa Beach, Florida.  Nelson lives in a...