by mike | Mar 18, 2024 | Basketball, Sports, Uncategorized |
“Et tu, Brute?” For sure, March did not turn out to be the best of months for Julius Caesar. But for those of us who love college basketball, this month is “…the most wonderful time of the year.” That, of course, is because the NCAA Men’s and Women’s Basketball...
by mike | Mar 11, 2024 | Basketball, Life, Sports, Uncategorized |
My bride, Jacqueline, is a Hawkeye through and through. After we met in the early ’90s we would fly back to Cedar Rapids once or twice a year to visit her parents, Carol and Jack Benzinger, before they passed away in 2011 and 2012 respectively. On a visit in the early...
by mike | Feb 19, 2024 | Baseball, Books, Movies, Musical Theater, Sports, Uncategorized |
I don’t recall exactly when The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant, published in 1954, came into the Sirota household. Maybe I picked it up at a library sale…a possibility, as back then I haunted the West Farms Branch (in The Bronx) of the New York Public Library....
by mike | Dec 14, 2023 | Baseball, Movies, Sports, Sports Movies, Uncategorized |
I don’t miss many baseball movies, but this one almost got by me. I first presented this post in 2020. The 2019 drama, Bottom of the 9th, initially drew me in for two reasons. First, it’s a baseball movie, and if I haven’t seen every single one ever made, I’m pretty...
by mike | Oct 5, 2023 | Basketball, Movies, Sports, Sports Movies, Uncategorized |
The world of sports could not present a story more uplifting than this one. The post first ran in 2020. I believe it is significant that I’m writing this post on April 15th, which happens to be Jackie Robinson Day. The great baseball player—and even greater human...
by mike | Aug 21, 2023 | Baseball, Death, Sports, Uncategorized |
Raymond Johnson Chapman played shortstop in the major leagues for nine seasons. His legacy, sadly, is not one that Ray himself would have wished on anyone. DIRTY BASEBALLS Ray Chapman, born in Kentucky in 1891, was raised in Illinois. He realized the dream of so many...