A game from my youth: NFL Strategy

It’s Championship Sunday in the National Football League, and it’s snowing heavily at home in New Jersey. Small wonder that I got the urge to pull out one of the tabletop games I played in my high school days during winters in snowy Cleveland — NFL Strategy. Introduced in 1970 by Tudor, the company that […]

A New York minute with my new Giants cap

At mid-week, I took a train into New York City on my way to visit my son and his family who live in Manhattan. They had given me a spiffy fitted and personalized San Francisco Giants cap for Christmas, and wearing it was the right headwear choice for a moderately cold January outing. On the […]

A fabulous new Giants cap for the Baseball Solstice

Today is the annual Baseball Solstice, the mid-point between the final out of the World Series and the first games of Spring training. Trust me when I say, I can’t wait for baseball season. I just spent an hour clearing ice off the windshields and windows of our two cars. Thanks to my older son […]

Strat-O-Matic soothes the soul

I come now to praise Strat-O-Matic baseball, the board game that for decades has enabled baseball fans like me to bring the national pastime to life in their homes with statistical realism. I was a late-comer to the game. As a kid I had several baseball games, and my favorite was Ethan Allen’s All-Star Baseball. […]

1968: The Year of the Pitcher remembered

Whenever I visit the nearby public library, I always check the stacks for baseball books. The other day, I picked up “The Year of the Pitcher” by Sridharan Pappu. In it, he chronicles the 1968 baseball season, highlighted by the pitching dominance of Bob Gibson, who posted an infinitesimally small E..R.A. for the Cardinals, and […]

Resurrecting the baseball solstice

Way back in December 2011, in a funk over the lack of baseball during a long winter, I dreamed up the baseball solstice. It would mark the midpoint between the end of the World Series and the first pitch of Spring training. It would also serve as a mid-winter reason to celebrate the game we […]

Remembering a great season and a great World Series

As the sun has set on the 2025 baseball season, I’m in a reflective, thankful mood. We had a heck of a World Series, with the Toronto Blue Jays taking the mighty (i.e., mightily financed) Dodgers into 11 innings of Game 7 before coming up short. I was rooting for the Jays and shut the […]

Rooting for the BLue Jays (and hoping against hope)

Led by Shohei Ohtani, the Los Angeles Dodgers are a formidable force heading into the 2025 World Series. After whipping the Yankees in five games last year, the Dodgers are back and well-positioned for a repeat victory. As a San Francisco Giants fan, I am genetically encoded to root against LA, and I will do […]

Baseball cards to celebrate the playoffs

At the hardware store last weekend, I was surprised to find baseball cards for sale at the checkout counter. Single packs with sticks of desiccated pink gum weren’t on offer as in my childhood days — just cube boxes containing eight Topps packs. I hadn’t bought or even seen baseball cards for sale yet this […]

Hammerin’ Hank is forever

I missed the news last year when the United States Postal Service issued a “forever” stamp in honor of Hank Aaron. But a lovely surprise arrived in the mail the other day. A friend and former Associated Press colleague had stuck one of the stamps in a notecard and mailed it to me in an […]