The feeling here for quite some time has been interleague play needs to go the way of "Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell" and "My Mother the Car" because it debases the integrity of the major league baseball schedule.
My brother Mr. Rickey, who now seems to go to roughly 26 professional baseball games a week, told me he had the itch to go big league this week, and since the Orioles are back in town for the first time in what has been the better part of a month, he said he was going to take in last night's O's game with the Red Sox.
Finally got to see the 1993 movie “Sandlot” after all these years, which is really surprising since I will watch any baseball movie — good or bad — anytime, anywhere or with just about anybody.
Tyree Evans is a 6-foot-3 dead-eye shooting guard who made 44 percent of his three-point attempts on his way to scoring 21 points a game last season at Motlow State (Tenn.) Community College.
For anybody out there who believed last Wednesday's entry concerning Aaron Laffey being right where he belongs - the major leagues - was a Hometown Boy Special, it's well past time to discover some new beliefs as Laffey, while still looking for his first big-league win of the season, continues to consistently get big-league hitters out.
Stu Jackson, the NBA’s lord of discipline, said if the Cleveland Cavaliers’ LeBron James (or is it the LeBron James’ Cleveland Cavaliers?) had hit the Washington Wizards’ Darius Songalia in the face the same way that Songalia hit James in the face during Game 5 of their just-completed playoff series, The Chosen One would have been suspended for Game 6 just as Songalia was.
I find it mildly amusing that Sam Perlozzo's buddy, Miami Dolphins executive vice president Bill Parcells of all people, would be miffed at Dolphins defensive end Jason Taylor, who I understand has become quite the network TV star this offseason from his performances on "Dancing With the Stars."
It was a tough way to lose a game, but then there is never is a pleasant way. Still, Allegany High's Aaron Laffey once more showed a nation of baseball fans that he's right where he belongs - in a big-league uniform, on a big-league pitcher's mound, getting out big-league hitters.
Don’t know if you’ve seen the latest issue of Sports Illustrated (How would I know? I don’t live with you), but the cover story this week is about the 1958 NFL championship game between the Baltimore Colts and the New York Giants.
From somewhere in Oklahoma (I'm assuming), I have semi-regular dialogue with a fellow by the name of Blaine Wood, who is also a Pittsburgh Pirates fan. Blaine and I agree on a lot of things when it comes to sports, just as we agree to disagree on some things, which is really what the true beauty of being a sports fan is all about.
The New York Yankees are 10-10 and Hank Steinbrenner is hemorrhaging. If Baby Boss, who earlier this season was made an honorary citizen of Red Sox Nation, isn't digging up Big Papi jerseys to block curses, he's calling Yankee manager Joe Girardi and general manager Brian Cashman idiots for using young Joba Chamberlain as a set-up man. Meanwhile, Joe Torre is the most relaxed man in America.
It’s open season on former Baltimore Orioles shortstop Miguel Tejada, apparently, as ESPN has jumped on the Make Miggy Miserable bandwagon along with Sen. George Mitchell and the federal government.
Pope Benedict XVI will be in Washington, D.C. April 17 to check out Nationals Park, the Washington Nationals' new baseball venue in Southeast D.C. So far, the reviews have been very good, but it should be interesting to see what the Pope thinks of the place. Pope John Paul II loved Camden Yards in 1995, although he was too busy to try a Boog's Barbecue.
It is where the T-shirts read, “Fear the Purple,” “771 ft. from home plate,” and “No fastballs, No curveballs, Just Sliders.”
As usual, Sam Perlozzo’s day at Oriole Park at Camden Yards began early and drew late into the evening as there were scouting reports to assess, signals to assure, duties to assign, media to address, and countless friends to greet
Years before he became a coach, Mike McMillan loved to coach. He loved to discover, and he loved to teach. Allegany High School Principal Mike Calhoun, former head football coach at Williamsport, Keyser and Fort Hill high schools, found this out about 40 years ago at Beall Stadium. Calhoun was the quarterback and placekicker for the Mountaineers and every summer day he went to the stadium to practice his placekicking.
It was the Bucky Waters play-in game, West Virginia vs. Duke, with the winner playing itself into the Sweet 16. Tomorrow night in Phoenix, beginning at 7 o'clock, those will be Mountaineers playing Xavier in the Sweet 16, not Blue Devils.
It’s the height of March and, naturally, folks tend to be pretty much one-tracked these days. For instance ...
Ralphie: “Hey, pally, you look a little groggy today.”
In the past two weeks, her itinerary has taken Jonelle Mooney from Emmitsburg to Moon Township, Pa., to Long Island, N.Y., to Fairfield, Conn., to Dayton, Ohio, to Towson for the funeral of a friend, and now to Raleigh, N.C.; not to mention countless of other places across the country in the four years previous.
For the past two weeks, no matter where you turned, you could find any number of people visiting from out of town who really didn’t feel like they were visiting at all. They felt as though they belonged here because each time they visit they are made to feel right at home.
Last year on Alhambra Catholic Invitational Tournament Sunday we were saying goodbye to our friends in Philadelphia, only to get the chance to welcome them home again for at least one more time
It's a small world, and when it's ACIT week it gets even smaller. Who are these people? And just where are they coming from? Oh, yeah. Baltimore, Washington, Arlington, Richmond, Philadelphia and Salt Lake City. As Jeff Spicoli once said, "Hey ... I know that guy."
Katie Getty, one of just two seniors on the Allegany High School girls basketball team (her sister Elizabeth is the other senior), said last summer the Lady Campers would be at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County in March to play in the Maryland state basketball tournament. If you know Katie Getty, you know if she tells you the moon is made out of green cheese she is going to do everything in her power to make sure you know she's right.
The thing that confuses me the most about Brett Favre's retirement is, if you're a reporter who covers the NFL for a living and Brett Favre calls you on the telephone, how can you not be there to answer it?
Of all the gym joints in all the world, I had to walk into theirs. Sunday night. Senior Night at Comcast Center. Maryland-Clemson, with a possible bye in the ACC tournament and a likely NCAA tournament lockdown at stake.
The best part of this job is meeting and working with so many great people, whether it comes through covering sporting events live, taking information for stories over the telephone, or just running into people who are willing to share their two cents with you when it comes to sports.
In reading comments made by Baltimore Orioles pitchers about first-year pitching coach Rick Kranitz, it would appear Leo Mazzone bashing is in-season, which is too bad. Although, to be honest, most of the bashing has been rather veiled, and practically all of it has come from some younger pitchers, still fresh from their participation-trophy days when nothing ever sticks to them.
A notice appeared in the Cumberland Times-News sports section on Wednesday, Feb. 20 concerning Comcast Cable Company Pittsburgh adding the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network (MASN and MASN2) to the dial for viewers in the Frostburg and Keyser areas.
Greivis Vasquez wholeheartedly disagrees with this, and that's a good thing. But that real bad ACC loss the Maryland Terrapins had at Virginia Tech back on January 12? The one ACC loss the Terps should have won?
It's the first full week of spring training and everybody's coming clean when it comes to having used performance-enhancing drugs. Well, obviously, not everybody is coming clean, and let's not forget that those who are coming clean are only doing so because they've already been caught. But you take your small victories wherever you can get them.
Coming up on one year, Sam Perlozzo and Leo Mazzone welcomed friends from home during spring training in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
In the 10 days or so since reports first surfaced the Orioles were this close to completing their blockbuster trade with the Seattle Mariners, to the time the deal was actually completed:
Ah, National Signing Day. What memories that day holds for me. I’ll never forget the day I announced where I was going to college. No, I wasn’t a football player, and, no, there wasn’t a single school in the country that asked me to attend, but the University of Maryland told me they wouldn’t mind that much if I went to school there. As long as I brought my mother’s checkbook, in fact, they didn’t think it would be that bad.
Sunday's Super Bowl was certainly one for little brothers everywhere as the New York Giants' Eli Manning not only joined his big brother Peyton as a Super Bowl-winning quarterback, but apparently defeated Big Brother in the process as we haven't heard the last of Spygate by a long shot.
These Maryland Terrapins are up to a challenge. They had better be. They’re constantly challenging themselves, their coach and their fans.
Nothing has, nothing does and nothing will come easy for these Terps, but don’t misinterpret. This team is playing with grit. The Terps are playing with determination. They’re battlers, just like their under-appreciated coach, and, like their under-appreciated coach, they play with a lot of passion and pride.
Q: Baltimore Orioles president of baseball operations Andy MacPhail has gone on the record as saying Orioles owner Peter Angelos did not block the proposed trade of Erik Bedard to the Seattle Mariners.
We don't know if Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos is the one who slammed the brakes on the reported Erik Bedard deal, because nobody is saying. On top of that, we don't even know if the deal that would send Bedard, the Orioles' lefthanded ace, to the Seattle Mariners for center fielder Adam Jones (not that one), the centerpiece of Seattle's end of it, veteran reliever George Sherrill, 19-year-old pitching prospect Chris Tillman and one or two other prospects, was ever really in place.
Does Tom Brady have a high ankle sprain, or not?
That’s John Harbaugh. Not Jim Harbaugh, not Bob Harbaugh.
Nothing against the Eirich brothers, because I like all three of them - Toby, Todd and Tedd - very much. I've never met Troy, of course, because, well ... nobody has.
For any of you who have taken time in the past to send me venom-laced e-mails, or phone calls, or greetings on the street concerning this matter, you understand I come here today not as a Dallas Cowboys fan or sympathizer.
