Quo vadis, MLB?Dick Flavin
There has been very little good that has come of the Great Pandemic of 2020. But at least sports fans during September were offered a veritable smorgasbord of games to choose from on TV. The football ...
The rise and hard fall of a hard drinker Dick Flavin
Just 90 years ago, Sunday, Sept. 28, was the final day of the 1930 baseball regular season. In the last of the eighth inning that day, at Chicago's Wrigley Field, Lewis "Hack" Wilson of the Cubs singled, ...
The new conventional wisdomDick Flavin
Old habits die hard. But, like most everything else, they eventually die. So it is with the age-old tradition of teaching young baseball players how to hit. Conventional wisdom has always -- at least ...
History, skulduggery, and bad luck Dick Flavin
Time for a bit of ancient baseball history, mixed in with a touch of skulduggery and a bushel of bad luck. In the summer of 1934, a 15-year-old kid snuck into a tryout on the St. Louis Cardinals held ...
Statistics matter, some more than othersDick Flavin
I got an email from an old pal the other day, asking if I agreed with him that RBIs were baseball's most meaningful statistic. RBIs are important, of course. Runs are how we keep score, and if there ...
The straw that stirs the drink Dick Flavin
So, there I was, sitting in front of the TV during the ninth inning of another dispiriting Red Sox loss, listening to O'Brien, Eckersley, and Remy as they performed their nightly balancing act, that of ...
Ah, if only I knewDick Flavin
"How did it all happen?" That was the question that German ex-Chancellor Prince von Bulow famously posed more than a century ago to his successor as Europe plunged into flames at the outset of World ...
Happy anniversary to Lizzie Murphy Dick Flavin
Ninety-eight years ago, on August 14, 1922, the Red Sox played host in an exhibition game to a team of all-stars from the American League that was filled out by several players from around New England. ...
