What a great time to be an Angels fan. A well-rounded team, a first World Series, one of the great comebacks in baseball history, leading to a championship. The key game was Game 6, at Anaheim Stadium, I filed a comment piece. Here it is, under the headline: “Angels create an instant classic; Commentary: Game […]

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I have been looking at this thing every day for years now. However long I have used Firefox as my browser. And I have no recollection of making that choice, so it has been a while. I don’t go looking for it. It waits for me, lying in ambush when I log in. The message […]

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I have been a grandfather for nine years and change, and it’s a pretty good gig. You can take a whack at spoiling the little guys and not feel guilty about it, and you can smile and head for the door when three boys get a bit too … boisterous. There are some great moments […]

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Generally, when I hear about an athlete getting a contract with lots of years and enormous numbers, I heave a sigh. “He can’t possibly be worth all that money.” And generally the athlete is not. Teams get excited and offer big deals based on last season, or the last few seasons, and give insufficient attention […]

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Typically, we would be looking at another couple of weeks before the wine-producers haul out their monstrous vine-shakers and start bringing in the 2020 harvest. However, a dry, hot summer has the local producers are thinking later this week more than later this month. Which reinforces what I come to understand about making wine, while […]

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I believe it is time to give the National Basketball Association full credit for pulling off something no one was quite sure would work: The NBA Bubble. Twenty-two teams, dispatched to the ESPN/Disney enclosed sports pod in Orlando, and left to figure out the bottom of the standings, and then stage the whole of the […]

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I have been kicking this around for years. “How many kids from the 1971 senior class at Los Angeles Lutheran High School could I recall by name?” Wouldn’t that be a fun mental challenge? Maybe? There were 132 of us in the senior class, by my count, 66 boys and 66 girls, . A small-enough […]

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We have far more serious things to worry about than the future of Major League Baseball. A pandemic, for example. The growing threat of climate catastrophe. Etc. But we can make a little room on the side for ball, which still likes to be known as the national pastime, even if it has been eclipsed […]

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Four months ago, I posted an item on this blog entitled “Pandemics and the Grandfather I Never Knew”. That grandfather was Alfred F. Oberjuerge, who died in 1940, 22 years after the Spanish flu nearly killed him in his 20s. Even before I had completed the Alfred entry, I knew I needed to circle back […]

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