Major League Baseball….in Altoona?

Altoona, Pennsylvania is the kind of place Bruce Springsteen sings about – a cold, gray blight, best experienced through the rear-view mirror at about 80 miles-an-hour.  When the Pennsylvania Railroad crumbled after World War II, Altoona crashed down right along with it.  Today, the garish lights of its endless chain restaurants and strip malls are […]

Fun Facts about the 19 (no, 20) Perfect Games in MLB History

A while back I completed a project of chronicling most of major league baseball’s perfect games. What fun is that if you can’t make out a list of trivia about the games? So yes, the following list (updated to include Braden’s feat, and Halladay’s) is trivial—but then, much of life is trivia, and sometimes trivia […]

That Night, They Were Men

Recently I was showing the photo album of my bar mitzvah to some long-lost cousins who only vaguely remembered attending it. Even with the help of the photos, I don’t remember all that much about it myself. I do know that it was the last time I ever spoke–much less chanted–in Hebrew. I ate, danced, […]