Touring The Bases With…Doug Gladstone

Doug Gladstone is the author of A Bitter Cup of Coffee: How MLB and The Players Association Threw 874 Retirees a Curve, in which he champions the cause of former major league players who don’t qualify for a pension because they didn’t meet the required service time.  An excerpt from an article Doug wrote for […]

The Test of Leadership

“Management is doing things right,” the late management guru Peter Drucker once said. “Leadership is doing the right things.” I was reminded of that sage phrase after being emailed recently by Wanda Burbach, the wife of former New York Yankee pitcher, Bill Burbach. Born in 1947, in Dickeyville., Wisconsin, Burbach played parts of three seasons […]

Wake Up and Smell The (Bitter Cup of) Coffee!

Former Pittsburgh Pirates player and broadcaster Nellie King passed away yesterday at Family Hospice Center in Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania.  Nellie was 82 years old. Signed as an amateur free agent in 1946, King didn’t make his major league debut until 1954. Three years later, at the age of 29, he was out of baseball because […]

Mighty Casey Has Struck Out (Again)

Less than two weeks ago, on Monday, July 12th, Matt Holliday, he of the $120 million, seven-year contract, participated in the Home Run Derby exhibition as part of the annual All-Star Game festivities at Angel Stadium in Anaheim, California. That same evening, some 1600 miles away from Anaheim, in Sutter, Illinois, 64-year-old Jimmy Qualls came […]

874 Retired Ballplayers Are Gulping Bitter Cups of Coffee

In the final episode of M*A*S*H, the pompous doctor portrayed by actor David Ogden Stiers gets a sendoff that’s arguably one of the most indelible images in television history. After seven seasons of “Major Charles Emerson Winchester” trumpeting his own self-importance, breeding and surgical skills, this upper-crust scion of a prominent Boston family leaves Korea […]