Glory Days of the 50s and 60s

Oh, for the good old days when Major League Baseball meant two leagues, 16 teams and a playoff format spelled WORLD SERIES. That’s right … the best team in each league, best-of-seven, and Shazzam! Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t go around talking about walking five miles to school in two feet of snow. […]

Ron Luciano on Life as an Umpire in the 1970s

A few months ago, the memory of devouring Ron Luciano’s four collections of tales and anecdotes from his umpiring days when I was a kid led me to look up the story of his suicide in 1995, 15 years and one month ago today. In the process, I discovered a long interview he gave back […]

Alabama, the Cradle of Baseball Greatness

A little while ago I started to realize that Alabama has produced some of the greatest players in baseball history. I remembered reading Bill James making a point somewhere in his Historical Baseball Abstract from the ’80s about sports players tending to come from poor areas. I thought about Willie Mays and Hank Aaron, and […]