It’s embarrassing to admit, but I didn’t fully appreciate Brooks Robinson until a few months before everyone else did. That’s when the Hall of Fame third baseman amazed the baseball world by shutting down Cincinnati’s Big Red Machine in the 1970 World Series. For Brooks, it was a glove story. For me,...
It was a sunny afternoon in early October, the kind that connects the fading of summer with the emergence of fall and its bold colors. I was about to make a bold prediction, with my dad as a witness. We had stopped at a diner after going to the grocery store, and...
Every once in a while, a season in our life runs parallel with a season of a lifetime. It happened to me in 1983. April 4th was Opening Day, but my focus was on the birth of our third child, Kelly Patricia, to whom I gave three nicknames — Lover Dover, Special...
It happened so quickly. I was standing alone in the front of a department store when I noticed a tall, tan man in a tailored suit coming toward me. Somehow, I managed to say, “Are you Jim Gentile?” And for some reason, he said, “No,” and kept walking toward the back of...
I grew up knowing only one grandfather. He was on my mother’s side, and I called him Pop Pop. We spent more time with the relatives of my father, whose dad died when he was 6, so I mainly saw Pop Pop on holidays and birthdays until I got older. Pop Pop...
When people asked me two years ago why we created BaltimoreBaseball.com, the simple answer was I needed a job. The more complex response, though, is I wanted to create a website that was different from what others were doing. There’s a ton of excellent and thorough coverage of the Orioles out there,...