All posts tagged: Free Baseball

Hope Springs Eternal

With less than two weeks until pitchers and catchers report (11 days to be exact, but who’s counting?), it seemed like a good time to get into baseball shape…with a visit to the bookshelf. I had picked up Dan Barry’s 2011 book Bottom of the 33rd:  Hope, Redemption, and Baseball’s Longest Game while on a recent trip to Politics and Prose bookstore (home, by the way, of one of the best baseball sections of any bookstore in the Washington area).  I thought it looked like a fun read – a story about the longest game in baseball history. But what I found was much more – a little gem. The game began at 8 p.m. after a 30 minute delay due to faulty lighting on April 18, 1981 – Holy Saturday – and was extended until 4 a.m. on Easter morning, April 19th, when the game was suspended after 32 innings and 8 hours with a 2-2 tie.  Two months later, on June 23rd, the Rochester Red Wings and Pawtucket Red Sox resumed the game …

Free Baseball

I love October baseball.  Friday’s games – the first between the Phillies and Dodgers followed by the Red Sox vs. the Rays – were both terrific.  And tonight, the Sox and Rays just went into extra innings – or what Skip Carey use to call “Free Baseball.”   And as I was typing those words, lo and behold, Ernie Johnson, Jr., whose dad was Carey’s longtime broadcast partner with the Braves, just used that term.  Skip lives! Yesterday, Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia was rocking – and I was reminded of my visit there just two short weeks ago when I saw the Phillies take a win that may have been the pivotal one towards the division championship.  The view (see photo at right) was very similar. More to come… DJB