Quarterly Report #10

Ten quarters is two and a half years. Throw in the quarter where I blew off writing one of these, and I’m almost three years into writing this blog. My output last quarter was just under a post a day, and some of the posts I added weren’t more than a picture and a few

A bittersweet day

There are some things in life that I truly enjoy, and writing is at or near the top of the list. While I’ve written things all my life, putting them into a form where they can be read by other people has been a relatively new development for me. And today offered some reminders of

Some writings from this month

Yesterday was the first time that I’ve had a piece published on ChicagoSideSports this year, but I’ve also been active on ThroughTheFenceBaseball and on FiveWideSports. I haven’t promoted them the  way that I would like to here, but I’m grateful to have a chance to share some of my thoughts with those in the online

Sweet Home Ditka-go

It’s Mike Ditka’s city, and I just happen to live in it. Last Spring, I celebrated Chicago’s annual season of hope by writing out a list of all the reasons I could think of for why Chicago was not only a baseball town, but the best baseball town in all the land. It was a

Quarterly report #8

It’s now been over two years since I’ve been writing this blog. It’s been a time capsule of my life, and the more I do it, the more comfortable it becomes. As I sometimes do in this space, now’s a time to look back, and try to see what lies ahead, too. I passed 1,000

Quarterly Report #7

I skipped doing a Quarterly report after the first three months of 2013, which would have been the seventh quarter that I’ve been writing this blog. Perhaps I was busy, of I kept putting it off until it was too late, but whatever the reason was, I didn’t do it. So this report is being

Link to a piece on ChicagoSideSports

It’s been about a month since I had something appear on ChicagoSideSports, which is a website I really enjoy writing for. With the Bulls and the Blackhawks in the playoffs at the moment, and neither of Chicago’s baseball teams doing much of anything, there’s not much interest in what’s happening on the diamond. In fact,

Submitted for the Cubs’ consideration

Dear Chicago Cubs, I welcome the news that you will be turning away from random celebrities, in favor of giving the seventh-inning stretch more of a Chicago feel. To honor your decision, I want to kick off a campaign to secure myself an invite for one of the celebrity-vacated spots, for the 2013 season or whenever

What’s in a name?

I have a new-found respect for the work of William Shakespeare, after seeing Romeo and Juliet performed onstage these last couple of nights. He tells a great story, and the words coming from the actors’ mouths are secondary to the emotions being displayed. That’s what doesn’t come through in simply trying to read the plays.

Kate Upton and me (sort of)

Trending on Yahoo is something that I have never done before the last couple of days. And, truthfully, I wasn’t trending at all. The “Pete Rose erased” story, which grew out of this piece for ChicagoSideSports and in the Chicago Sun-Times, was doing the trending. But I started it all off, and if that story

My 15 minutes

What an interesting day this has been. A month ago, on January 13, I speculated that the first “double 13” of the year was an ominous thing, and there were still eleven more of them to go. Well, today was the second “double 13” of the year (and in our lifetimes), and I won’t soon

Link to a piece on ChicagoSideSports (and in the Sun-Times)

I was possibly the worst hitter to ever play organized baseball. And yet, three decades later, I went to bat for the best hitter who ever lived. Life can be very strange sometimes.

Link to a piece on ChicagoSideSports

Ryan Freel’s tragic suicide in December of 2012 might not matter to me if he had never played for the Cubs. I’m very provincial that way. Most fans probably are when it comes to their team. The brevity of Freel’s career as a Cub does not mean that he was unimportant; It’s actually quite the

Expert or connoisseur

Yesterday I was referred to in a piece on ChicagoSideSports as a “baseball card maven,” which pleased me greatly. I’ve been called many things in my life, but never a maven before. I did some internet research, and was surprised to find it’s a relatively recent word. It’s very flattering, though, and I won’t dispute

Link to a piece on ChicagoSideSports

It’s all over but the bowl game now. The college football season was exciting, but ultimately disappointing for me as an alumus of Northwestern University. Not one, not two, but three games got away from the Wildcats, and that’s why there’s no game to look forward to this weekend. That’s why this feels more like

Quarterly Report #5

It’s been an exciting three months in this space. I’ve written some things that I’m very proud of, and I’ve carried out a format change, as I suggested I would the last time I wrote one of these reports. I like the format of displaying images from the most recent posts on the right, and

Link to a Kerry Wood piece on ChicagoSideSports

Kerry Wood got a Wrigley Field send-off yesterday, and as a long-time Cub he deserved something nice. But for all of the celebratory things that were said about him, I thought of what might have been, if only his potential had been a bit more fully realized. The piece itself appears here. It’s not really

Gave proof through the night

The piece I wrote yesterday about Jimi Hendrix and the anniversary of his death set me on a mission to find my Hendrix CD. It was purchased sometime in the 1990s, back when CDs still needed to be purchased in order to acquire music. I still have lots of old CDs, and fortunately I was

Wrigley, Ronny and the Boss

ChicagoSideSports is a new website in town, and it focuses on topics that mean a lot to me. Chicago is a great sports town, and ChicagoSide presents angles on it that national outlets like ESPN never could. I was thrilled when my first piece for them was published a couple of weeks ago, and even

One week to go

It’s Friday night, and at this time next week Bruce Springsteen will be onstage at Wrigley Field. September once seemed far away, and now it’s almost here. It promises to be a rockin’ good time. Earlier this week I had a piece published on ChicagoSideSports about how Springsteen will be the first artist to play