Here on Jackie Robinson’s birthday, wanted to repost this story I wrote a couple of years ago. When Bobby Bragan was young, people used to call him “Nig.” He was of a darker complexion than most. He liked the nickname. Bobby Bragan grew up in Alabama. The only black people he knew served food and…
Month: January 2018
Wahoo
When I was a kid in Cleveland, there was an enormous Chief Wahoo sign on top of Cleveland Municipal Stadium. The sign was of Wahoo swinging the bat — his left leg was up in the air like he was Josh Donaldson — and below him it said CLEVELAND in all capital letters and Indians…
An Announcement
Because this is a personal blog, I hope you will indulge me for a moment as I make what is, to me anyway, a very important announcement about my life. From this day forward, I intend to only wear baseball ties. This has been a long time coming. I’m sure this has happened to you…
You are the captain
She is so scared. I can always tell when she’s scared; she has this look on her face, and it’s not so different from the look she had when she was three years old and we were walking through Times Square, and the crowd was overwhelming her. I reached down then and picked her up and…
The Browns and Garoppolo
Seth Wickersham’s excellent piece about the building feud between Patriots owner Robert Kraft, coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady is one of the hotter things on the Internet now, for good reason. It offers great insight into how people wear on each other — it’s like one of those great VH1 “Behind the Music”…
The Hall of Fame Ballot
As I do every year (for some reason), I am going through the entire Hall of Fame Ballot, writing about all 33 players leading up to election day, January 24. Here are the links to all of them. I will try to update these daily. 1. Kerry Wood 2 and 3. Jason Isringhausen and Brad…
The Unwinnables
First, we bow to the achievement: It is really, really, really hard to go 0-16. The 1980 New Orleans Saints couldn’t do it and, apparently, that entire team was coked up. The 1989 Dallas Cowboys couldn’t do it even with all the bad mojo that came from Jerry Jones firing Tom Landry. The 1990 New…