Since Ed Bickert retired from playing guitar around 2002, his place in a couple of bands I play in – the Mike Murley Trio and the Barry Elmes Quintet – has been taken by Reg Schwager. It speaks volumes for Reg that these were quite seamless transitions; replacing Ed’s unique playing would normally be impossible and generally, his absence has left a sizeable hole on the Canadian jazz scene at large. The Elmes Quintet has released several records with …
Most baseball fans know that Miguel Cabrera of the Detroit Tigers did something last year that no ballplayer has since 1967. He won the batting Triple Crown, which means he lead his league in batting average (.330), home runs (44) and runs-batted-in (RBI), with 139. Oddly enough his teammate Justin Verlander won the pitching Triple Crown – leading in wins, ERA and strikeouts – in 2011. This is not talked about nearly as much and for good reason, the …
One of the perks of working at Osgoode Hall is seeing the grounds in spring and summer, all the beautiful trees and gardens maintained by two very hard-working women. There are about five blossoming crab-apple trees that recently came into spectacular bloom and on Friday morning I saw a flash of orange fly up into one of them. I thought “Baltimore Oriole” right away, but it happened so fast I wasn’t sure. So I walked over and stood under …
Given their dismal record of losing and being almost continual baseball chumps from 1946 to this very day, it might strain belief to suggest the Chicago Cubs had a second decade of success nearly equalling that of the 1904-13 teams. Nevertheless, in the Depression years of 1929-38, the Cubs came close to matching the great run of their predecessors. True, the later teams didn’t win any championships or nearly as many games, didn’t concentrate four pennants in a five-year …
I’ve been reading The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract off and on for over two years now and it just keeps on giving. It’s not the kind of book you read from cover to cover, it’s far too big for that. It has to be digested in small portions, but, even so, I’m still coming across things I’ve missed. It continues to yield surprising and thought-provoking information, such as the following from a short piece about the Chicago …
I wrote this after first making a baseball trip to Buffalo in August of 2011. With the Blue Jays’ AAA farm team now located there, the piece has new relevance, so I thought I’d revive it. Besides, given how awful the big club has been so far, Buffalo may be the nearest place for Toronto fans to actually see something like major-league baseball being played.
While thousands of Canadian baseball fans made the pilgrimage to Cooperstown yesterday to witness …
On the subway the other day I saw someone wearing one of those sweatshirts that say “Member of the All-Harvard Drinking Team”. It got me to thinking of how many drinking men there have been in baseball through the years, so I thought I’d put together an All-Star team of the game’s notable boozers. Generally, it seems that excessive drinking was more widespread in the past, and since professional baseball began around 1860 or so it has always reflected …
This old music joke was reprinted in an English jazz mag I subscribe to, I read it with my coffee this morning and I thought you all might get a laugh out of it.
It mostly works because ‘a fifth’ is an old-school jazz musician’s term for a 40-ouncer of booze. Eddie Condon, the guitarist and dispenser of trenchant jazz wit once said the following to explain the difference between modern jazz and his preferred brand of trad-jazz – …
Many are familiar with songwriter Dave Frishberg and his baseball songs, the most celebrated of which is “Van Lingle Mungo”. Those who haven’t heard it, should. It’s a delightful masterpiece. The lyrics are all old ballplayer’s names, arranged so artfully and rhythmically that they become poetry, with the pitcher’s name Van Lingle Mungo repeated throughout the song as a kind of haunting refrain and link.
Being a retro-maniac, a mental collector of old ballplayers’ names, I was familiar …
On Saturday night after an all-day visit, my wife Anna and I dropped our daughter-in-law Sarah and one-year old grandson Charlie off at their place in the west end. We were tired but in a great mood, they’re just so much fun to hang out with and Charlie has all kinds of new stuff going on. He’s walking now (kinda like Frankenstein sometimes) and has a lot of funny faces, some new laughs and games. He’s saying a few …