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My lifelong Chicago Blackhawks love affair

This week’s spectacular (and satisfying) Chicago Blackhawks Stanley Cup win, ending a 49-year drought, has caused me to pause and think about my own following of this team and franchise dating back to my freshman year at college.
During the past three or four weeks, and particularly Wednesday night, when Patrick Kane slipped in the Goal [...]

Connecting Bobby Hull and Wayne Gretzky

I have ticket stubs to two special NHL games.  One is from March 12, 1966, the other from March 23, 1994.  For the first (second balcony standing room, Chicago Stadium) I paid $2.50.  The second, in the corner in the lower bowl at the Los Angeles Forum, was $125 from the friendly scalper in the [...]

In (futile) pursuit of Pete and George’s quests

I have been fortunate in being in the right place at the right time for some significant sports accomplishments.  Some have been by accident (the no-hitters, Gayle Sayers’s six touchdowns); others have been by design (Randy Johnson’s 300th , Wayne Gretzky’s 802nd).
To accomplish something by design requires some false starts, some adjustments, and more than [...]

Target Field in Minneapolis: Major League Park #58

Continuing my lifelong collection of major league parks, I spent the first part of Memorial Day Weekend 2010 in Minneapolis, home of the Minnesota Twins and the newest “new” park in baseball.
After two and a half decades in the Humphrey Metrodome (of the ear-splitting decibels and “Hefty Bag” right field wall), the Twinkies have ventured [...]

The “hold” is a ridiculous statistic

I took off yesterday afternoon to catch the “business special” at Chase Field, where the Arizona Diamondbacks finally swept a series…their first of the season.
Arcane statistics have become the norm in baseball today (like the punch line to the old joke: “because we can”), and the guru Bill James is certainly responsible for many of [...]

The end of college basketball’s longest streak (then)

Sometimes it’s just luck. That would certainly be the situation with my experience with what was then the longest winning streak in NCAA basketball history.
December, 1956. I was nine years old, and we had just moved to Urbana, Illinois, where my father had entered graduate school at the University of Illinois. He was a lowly [...]

A statistical anomaly

Nothing beats a night at the old ball park, right?  So I went to Chase Field last month to see Houston defeat the Diamondbacks, 6-4.

In the sixth inning of that game, something I believe was truly unusual (if not unique) occurred.  Two players on the same team achieved significant milestones, with only one batter in [...]

The Phil and Amy Mickelson “Tragedy”

I have always enjoyed watching Phil Mickelson play golf, and have seen him in person every year at the Phoenix Open, as well as following his reckless abandon style of playing during televised golf coverage most weekends.
People love Phil because (other than his prodigous golfing skills) he’s so human, and so willing to ‘fess up to [...]

A tale of two parks and one (two?) cities

My major league parks quest is again complete, with visits to the “New” Yankee Stadium and the Mets’ Citi Field this week in New York.  This gets my all-time total to 57, and I have no new worlds to conquer until the Twins open their new place in Minneapolis next season.
I don’t get surprised much [...]

Witness to Johnson’s 300th win!

June 3, 2009:  Like Todd McFarlane, I am a collector.
But my baseball collection is not so much made up of memorabilia, but of memories that now span over 50 seasons.
I’m sitting on a Southwest Airlines plane this morning after rising at 4:45 a.m., en route to Baltimore to witness (I hope) Randy Johnson achieve his [...]