THE NAME ON THE BACK.
Worldwide, Tommy Lasorda is arguably baseball’s greatest ambassador. Colorful and recognizable, he is as popular in front of corporate crowds as he is in baseball circles, and he can command as much as...
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SAM I AM NOT — A NOTE ON COURAGE AND ADVERSITY
As the evening sun sets over Portland’s West Hills, cooling the October air and narrowing the gap between its temperature and the dew point, tiny droplets of water born high among the Cascade...
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A MAJOR MINOR LEAGUER
ONE DAY YEARS AGO, I SAT IN HANK JONES’S KITCHEN. Hank was a scout for the Los Angeles Dodgers. He had known me since I was fifteen years old, helped develop me as a player, watched me grow through...
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NEW SCHOOL FLUNKS OUT
Annie Savoy believed in the Church of Baseball. I do, too. The Ballpark Henrietta from Ron Shelton’s Bull Durham tried all the major religions, and most of the minor ones — Buddha, Allah, Brahma,...
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SHARE AND SHARE UNLIKE
At twenty-three, I was easily the oldest member of a rag tag group of college players from the Northwest spending its spring break barnstorming through Southern California in March of 1989. A...
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PUIG, PUJOLS, AND POETRY
“Good judgement comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgement.” — Will Rodgers, American Cowboy and Humorist At 84, my father can still recite much of the obscure poetry he learned...
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WHAT HAVE I DUNN?: MY WORST DAY ON THE DIAMOND
A businessman was trying to coax his son to jump into his arms from the cement deck of the swimming pool in which the man was wading, chest deep. The young boy was frightened — terrified really —...
View ArticleBILLY GOAT STEW: A NOTE ON JOE MADDON AND THE CUBS FANS WHO QUESTION HIM
The text messages were still coming more than twelve hours after I watched Chicago Cubs first baseman Anthony Rizzo stuff the baseball into his left rear pocket. An instant earlier, third baseman Kris...
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SUN, SANDCASTLES AND SURF: A NOTE ON IMPROVING BASEBALL (AND OTHER) SKILLS
“Hey, Siri. What’s the temperature at Poipu Beach?” It had been a frustrating hour for my student and me. Romy had been trying his best to copy the stride of Carlos Beltran of the New York Mets, but...
View ArticleGROWING UP CARDINAL
I was blessed to grow up here in Vancouver, on NW 149th Street, in the days when even my oldest brother, Mike, could not hit another house with a rock. The road was flanked by hay fields and cattle...
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