All posts filed under: Baseball

Scoring a Walk Off

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Walk Offs.  The name is pretty descriptive.  One pitch and the game is over.  And last night, I had the chance to see one in person.  From my perspective, nothing in sports is so exciting.  You may ask, “What’s the difference in a walk off in baseball and a sudden death touchdown or field goal in football, when the last score wins it all?”  (I recall Curt Gowdy liked to rename these extra periods “Sudden Victory” in place of “Sudden Death.”)  What about the last second shot in basketball? Here’s why…in baseball, the walk off comes as part of the normal course of the game.  Baseball is famous for not having a clock.  This infuriates some when it is 11 p.m. and you have babysitters at home or an early morning alarm clock is on the horizon for work.  But there is no sudden death (or sudden victory) in baseball.  When you win with a walk off, it means that the home team has won in the course of the normal rules of the game.  It …

Boswell on China

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Thomas Boswell of the Washington Post is one of the smartest sportswriters on the planet.  (For evidence see Why Is Baseball So Much Better Than Football.)  So I found his column today on the Beijing Olympics (They Made the Buses Run on Time) to be smart, funny, and – I suspect – pretty accurate.  My father often told me, “Don’t believe everything you see on TV.”  Many of you who don’t normally read the sports pages of the Post will find Boswell’s comments of interest. More to come… DJB

Stadium Memories

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Some people read 1000 Places to Visit Before You Die and think about how many they can check off in a year.  My quest is more modest:  to visit all the major league baseball stadiums in the next ten years.  I’m about 1/3 of the way through my list, but I have to admit that given stadium demolitions, I’ve had to make up my own rules about what counts.  Essentially, I’m just trying to get to at least one stadium  per team. So along that line, I wanted to let you know there’s a great online story – accompanying a magazine feature in Preservation – of Yankee Stadium memories on PreservationNation.org.  If you like baseball stadiums and/or baseball stories, check it out. FYI, this has been a good year in my quest.  So far I’ve visited three new (for me) parks this year:  Oakland (with Anthea and all the folks from the Trust’s Western Office), Coors Field in Denver (with Mountains/Plains Office Director Barb and Dolores), and – of course – the new Nationals Park …

Skip Carey – RIP – A Follow-up

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A friend of mine, John Lane, sent an email after the post I made last week on the death of long-time Braves announcer Skip Carey.  It included a great story that I just had to share.  After noting that he appreciated baseball and was headed to Fenway next month for a game, John turned to basketball announcers when he wrote: “That brings to mind Johnny Most, who was for many years the radio voice of the Boston Celtics (1953-1990), one whose allegiance was never in doubt.  Catch him on YouTube. On one occasion the game had gotten very exciting.  Most was screaming into the microphone when suddenly his voice was lost, though the crowd noise in the background continued at a roar. After nearly two minutes of no play-by-play, Most’s voice resumed:  ‘Sorry about that Celtics fans.  I got so excited I fell out of the press box.’” If you have stories to tell on your favorite sportscaster, please feel free to write a comment to this post. Off to hike the Grand Canyon.  More to come… DJB

Summer Reading

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An email from the husband of a friend who shall remain nameless showed up in my home email in-box recently with a list of books on his table ready for his summer reading.  There were a lot of very serious titles—some of which I’ve read and many of which I’ve missed—but the one that caught my eye was War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges.  Now I’ve read that book, and I don’t consider it light reading.  In fact, it is pretty depressing.  For while Hedges calls for humility, love, and compassion as the only chance for the human race, he writes of the addiction of war and its unifying force.  When you read this, our chances seem pretty slim. But that’s NOT why I’m writing about Summer Reading Lists.  There are 9 other months of the year to read books like War is a Force…  Summer reading is different.  Here are three books (two on baseball; one only tangentially on architecture but really on love) I think are great for …