Baseball spring training is officially underway, and that means even more reasons to visit the Tampa Bay/St. Pete region, where you’ll find the spring training homes of the New York Yankees, Toronto Blue Jays and Philadelphia Phillies, as well as the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Yankees train in Tampa, the Phillies in Clearwater, the Pirates in Bradenton, and the Jays in Dunedin. I’ve been a regular visitor to the area since I began covering the Blue Jays for the Toronto Star in the early 1990s, and have probably been 15 times or more by now. Here’s a list of some of Read more
Major League Baseball
Baseball fans in Canada are riding a rollercoaster, as the Toronto Blue Jays bounced back from two losses at home to the Seattle Mariners with a 13 to 4 win on Wednesday night. As the Jays look to advance to their first World Series since 1993 (a series I covered for the Toronto Star, allowing me to witness Joe Carter’s home run with my own eyes) attention on the team has advanced well past regular ball fans. New data from the non-profit Angus Reid Institute finds two-in-five Canadians following the team closely on this run (39%) – rising to half Read more
Here’s an interesting study that arrives just in time for what is Opening Day for most teams in Major League Baseball. A new study from FlashPicks ranked all 30 MLB ballparks based on the overall number of Instagram hashtags, to determine which stadium is the most picturesque. I do quibble a bit with the methodology, as the teams that attract the most fans, which is are usually the biggest cities, are likely to have the most social media tags. I’m biased as I’ve been a San Francisco Giants fan since I was six, but the Giants’ stadium is hands down Read more
I can’t say I remember a lot about Rickey Henderson’s two-to-three month stint with the Toronto Blue Jays when I covered the team for the Toronto Star in 1993. But I sure remember how we met. It was July 31, 1993; the Major League Baseball trade deadline, and it was my second year as a full-time writer on the Blue Jays beat for the Star. The Jays had won the World Series the previous year by beating Atlanta, but they desperately wanted a second title and were believed to be in the market for another outfielder with some offensive skills. Read more
It might have been 1962. Perhaps 1963. It was a simpler time. And I wore, to paraphrase Billy Joel, a much younger man’s clothes. My family lived in a small, suburban town in the San Francisco Bay Area called Castro Valley. And we were baseball fans. Football was catching on, and a few people liked the NBA at the time. But in the early 1960s, Americans were obsessed with baseball. We carried transistor radios to hear the ballgame announcers, and we tore into the local newspaper the next day to read the box scores. In my case, the local paper Read more
