Post Tagged 'baseball'

September 07, 2023

Baseball at the Abyss

On June 16, some 2,000 people gathered outside Los Angeles’ Dodger Stadium to protest the team’s having chosen to honor, on the field before that night’s game, a group whose core mission and purpose is the open mockery and parody of Catholicism. Continue Reading...

October 12, 2022

Aaron Judge, the Asterisk, and the Record Books

So Aaron Judge sits atop the American League record books for most home runs hit in a single season—62, breaking fellow Yankee Roger Maris’ 60-plus-year record. And by all accounts, it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. Continue Reading...

October 14, 2019

The Chicago Black Sox and baseball’s rule of law

Sports have already been an Acton topic in the past week, so another sports story can’t hurt: 100 years ago this month was the 1919 World Series between the Chicago White Sox and Cincinnati Reds, infamous ever since for the “Black Sox” scandal, in which eight members of the heavily favored Chicago team accepted money from gamblers to throw the series to Cincinnati. Continue Reading...

April 08, 2016

How a Cuban Ball Player Escaped Communism for the Majors (and Much More)

Three years ago, Dalier Hinojosa was making the equivalent of $5 to $20 per month playing baseball in the state-run Cuban league. Having now defected from the country, escaping first to Haiti and now to America, Hinojosa will make $514,000 this season, playing for the Phillies. Continue Reading...

September 28, 2012

Markets and culture: A time to play, a time to pray

Faced with the prospect of a professional athletic career, a nearly-half million dollar salary, and a perfect lady, what’s not to like? Apparently, for Grant Desme, it was the noise and unrest of the world. Continue Reading...

February 18, 2008

Georgia town reconnects with radio legend

Ernie Harwell was calling the play by play over television for the first live televised sports broadcast from coast to coast. The series featured the famous “shot heard round the world” at the Polo Grounds in 1951. Continue Reading...

April 04, 2007

Home runs against Hitler

Over the weekend I had the chance to see an airing of the 1998 documentary, The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg on Detroit public television. The film does an excellent job portraying the life of a baseball superstar complicated by social and political events in the 1930s and 1940s. Continue Reading...