The Cubs’ new everyday Joe

So an unknown guy, with lots of minor league stops on his playing resume, just made the Cubs’ Opening Day roster. And he did the old-fashioned way, by wanting it and working hard to make it happen. And his first name just happens to be Joe. It’s a good story so far, and it’s all

The year that the world changed

There have been a couple of times where I have found a penny on the sidewalk, picked it up, and used the date on that penny as a jumping off point for a post in this space. And so it was today, as I was visiting Chicago’s DuSable Museum of African American History. I hadn’t been

A fascinating name

When I hear the name “Biff,” I assume it’s a nickname for something else. I found the name “Biford” online, which is of English origin and means “lives at the river’s crossing.” Perhaps it rhymes with Clifford and is shortened the way we would turn it into “Cliff.” And if there’s a better explanation for

My tribute to a great player

The World Series starts today, and it’s both a good thing and a bad thing. It’s good because, after all of the Spring training drills, regular season games, and postseason drama, now we get to see which team can say they’re the best. And it’s bad because, after it’s over, the game will go away

The unique nature of Game 163

This is my 163rd post on this blog, and I wanted to spend a few moments ruminating on the most unusual game in all of baseball. The baseball regular season is a very predictable thing, in the sense that a team travels around from city to city, plays 2 or 3 or sometimes 4 games

Jody! Jody! Jody!

At the dawn of the 1980s, I was an eleven-year old kid living in Springfield, Illinois. And at the end of the 1980s, I was a 21-year old who wanted to live as far away as possible. You might say I passed through the crucible of youth that decade, going from 7th grader to college

The game without any drama

When history looks back on the baseball games of last Wednesday night, the Red Sox/Orioles game in Baltimore and the Yankees/Rays game in Tampa will receive the lion’s share of the attention. The endings of the games were weirdly synchronized with each other, in a way that Hollywood would never be able to script. But

Reconstructing an old memory

As a kid who wore glasses from an early age, I identified with ballplayers who wore them, too. One of the most prominently spectacled players was Jeff Burroughs, who had a long career in the majors, with most of it spent in the American League. For some reason, though, I have a partial memory of

Same old, same old for the Pirates

Is it fair to say that Jerry Meals cost the Pirates a chance at a winning season? Probably not. But can a case be made that his blown call didn’t help? Absolutely. And if instant replay ever does find its way into the game on a widespread basis, it should be called the Jerry Meals

Countdown to #Cubs #DoubleTriple now at 43 losses

No big league baseball team lost 100 games in 1968. The closest any team came was the Washington Senators, who lost 96 games that year. But I still feel the need to riff on 1968 for a bit, anyway. So here goes: A lot has been written about all of the things that happened in