Hondo

Frank Howard is a big man. Now in his mid-‘80’s, he was an All-American basketball player at Ohio State University before signing a bonus baseball contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1958. Two years later, he won the National League Rookie of the Year award. At 6’7” and somewhere between 275 and 300 pounds, […]

More About Ted Kluszewski and Me

“Earl’s not gonna like that mustache.”  Earl was Earl Smith, head baseball coach at East Carolina University.  The mustache was mine.  Tim Bayless was a starting pitcher for the ECU Pirates and he knew I soon was headed to the school with the intention of becoming a Pirate.  On this particular day, however, Tim picked […]

A Picture Worth Almost Two Thousand Words: Ted Kluszewski and Me

It was a moment that now seems almost as if I imagined it.  It was the summer of 1972, I was seventeen years old, freshly graduated from high school, away from home, somewhere in Ohio, and Iron Mike was hurling baseballs at me in a batting cage.  Having spent considerable time in this same situation […]