by mike | Apr 13, 2026 | Baseball, Life, Sports, Uncategorized |
As a baseball purist, I initially had some issues with the changes that have come to Major League Baseball over the last decade or so. But I gradually got used to the pitch clock, which I hardly notice anymore, the three-batter rule for relief pitchers, and—to a...
by mike | Oct 13, 2025 | Baseball, Life, Sports, Uncategorized |
A few days ago the Sports section of our local newspaper, the San Diego Union-Tribune, ran an article about former big league ballplayer Kurt Bevacqua. Playing for the Padres during the 1984 World Series, Bevacqua hit a three-run homer in Game 2 against the Detroit...
by mike | Jun 30, 2025 | Baseball, Humor, Quotes, Sports, Uncategorized |
Sure, I’ve been a San Diego Padres fanatic even before moving to SoCal in 1973. But I grew up in The Bronx, and as a kid I lived and died with the Yankees. My heroes were Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, Elston Howard, Roger Maris—and the great Yogi Berra, a catcher with a...
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 | 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...