BASEBALL
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On July 4th, 1905, in the afternoon game of a doubleheader, Philadelphia’s Rube Waddell bests Cy Young in a 20-inning marathon as the Athletics down Boston 4-2. A’s catcher Ossee Schreckengost worked 28 innings that day, a Major League record. The Baseball season is too long. It is in all sports these days. I went to the season opener in Oakland Read more
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On July 3rd, 1968, Luis Tiant struck out 19 Twins in 10 innings as Cleveland defeated Minnesota 1-0. With that performance, Tiant set two major-league records: most strikeouts in a ten-inning game and 32 strikeouts in consecutive games (and he tied the record of 41 strikeouts in three successive appearances). Sometimes when I am bored, Read more
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Anyone who loves baseball and knows how to write wants to write a baseball book. Baseball is the most literary of the sports. Its long season, the leisurely nature of the games leads inevitably to stories– of past games and past players. Lawrence S. Ritter was an economics professor at NYU and an editor and Read more
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On July 1st, 1910, White Sox Park opened. The stadium, which became known as Comiskey Park, cost $750,000 to build. It was the oldest stadium in baseball when it was closed in 1990 and replaced by a new structure called then also Comiskey Park. I went to a lot of games at Old Comiskey in Read more
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On June 30th, 1995, future Hall of Fame, Eddie Murray got his 3,000th career hit against the’s Minnesota Twins’s Mike Trombley in a 4-1 Cleveland win at the Metrodome. Murray became the 20th player to reach that milestone and the third in franchise history to do it wearing a Cleveland uniform. I was lucky enough Read more
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On June 29th, 1990, Oakland’s Dave Stewart and the Dodgers’s Fernando Valenzuela both threw no-hitters. Stewart blanked the Toronto Blue Jays 5-0, and a few hours later Valenzuela did the same thing to the Saint Louis Cardinals with a final score of 6-0. The rareness of this event was possible because Stewart and Valenzuela were such absolute studs at their profession. Read more
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On June 28th, 1907, Branch Rickey, then a 26-year old backup catcher for the New York Yankees, had 12 Washington Senator players steal safely on him. The Yankees, predictably, lost that day to the Senators 16-5. It is easy to forget that Branch Rickey, who is most famous for bringing Jackie Robinson to the Major Read more
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I have always liked players named Willie: Willie Mays, Willie Stargell, Willie McCovey, Willie Wilson. Now that I think about it, one of my favorite cats was named Willie, as well as my favorite Classic Country singer-songwriter (Willie Nelson). A recent article in the StarTribune by Phil Miller, got me thinking the last few days Read more
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Last week someone left a copy of the StarTribune on the lunch table at work. It was still in the plastic bag that papers are delivered in these days. Over lunch, I took the sports page to my desk and read it. Cover to cover. Spending the most time on the page with the box Read more
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Though I have lived in the Twin Cities now for almost 40 years, I did live in a number of places before that: Northern California, Eastern Washington, Western Montana, Western Minnesota, Chicago, Houston, and Saginaw, Michigan. Beginning when I was 21 and first moved to Chicago, I picked up the habit of rooting for local Read more
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