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Category: Baseball

‘We lost Coach tonight’: Remembering Paul Kreke

September 21, 1996. Twenty-five years. It simultaneously feels like yesterday and a lifetime ago. I was lounging around the house on a Saturday night, having relinquished my job as sports editor of The Quincy Herald-Whig three weeks earlier to assume a new role as the newspaper’s news editor. It was a promotion that meant having nights and weekends off for the first time in nearly 20 years, counting my time as a sportswriter for the Columbia Missourian at Mizzou. So I was hanging out with my kids instead of sitting in a stadium press box somewhere preparing to write about…

Baseball losing its entertainment value

With Major League Baseball entering its all-star break, and the Cardinals and Cubs both shuffling along below the .500 mark, the Washington Post’s George Will has an interesting take on the state of the game. Clearly, as Will concludes, changes must be made for the game to recapture the interest of America’s sports fans. Writes Will: EVEN if you belong in the basket of deplorables — Americans uninterested in baseball — you should be intrigued by the sport’s current problems. At the all-star break, Major League Baseball’s 2021 season is demonstrating, redundantly, that the quality of the game as entertainment…

A legendary sports columnist retires

Sports columnist Thomas Boswell will be retiring at the end of June after 52 years with the Washington Post. Boswell, 73, is known primarily for his coverage of baseball. He appeared several times in the Ken Burns series Baseball, sharing commentary into the history of America’s pastime. He has authored seven books, including “Why Life Imitates the World Series” and “Why Time Begins on Opening Day.” Both of those books are in my personal library. Wrote Boswell in a farewell column of his decision to finally unplug the laptop: I’ve spent my life having a long, rich conversation with friends…