Stories indexed with the term ‘baseball’

John U. Bacon

On Monday, former home run hitter Mark McGwire talked to sports broadcaster Bob Costas in an attempt to restore his good name.

He had a lot of restoring to do.

McGwire was one of those super-sized sluggers who were knocking out home runs at a record rate in the ’90s. And, like his peers – Barry Bonds and Sammy Sosa – McGwire was widely rumored to be taking steroids.

In fact, the FBI gave the commissioner of baseball a list of 70 players they discovered were taking steroids, including McGwire – two decades ago. The commissioner, of course, promptly did absolutely nothing, because he was too hooked on the home runs that were saving baseball from itself after he had canceled the 1994 World Series.

And the hits just kept on coming. In 1998, McGwire broke one of the game’s most revered records when he shattered Roger Maris’s old mark of 61 home runs in a season by smashing 70. He was a national hero. [Full Story]

John U. Bacon

And so, it’s done. The Detroit Tigers’ once promising season ended Tuesday in a cataclysmic collapse.

In the American League’s Central Division, Sports Illustrated had picked the Tigers to finish next to last. But by September, they had built a seemingly insurmountable seven-game lead. The team was a tonic for a troubled town in a troubled time. Some pundits even claimed the Tigers season was a metaphor for a Motown renaissance. They started comparing this team to the 1968 Tigers, and the role they played in healing a city that had been torn apart the summer before.

On July 23, 1967, the long-simmering tensions between the police and the people finally boiled over into a full-blown race rebellion – or riot, depending on whom you ask – that lasted five days, the worst in American history.

Enter the 1968 Tigers. [Full Story]

John U. Bacon

If you grew up in Michigan in the ’70s, as I did, Bob Seger sang the soundtrack to your summers, and Ernie Harwell provided the voiceover.

When I think about our family trips up north, they’re always accompanied by Harwell’s comfortable cadences filling the car. He didn’t simply broadcast baseball games. He turned them into stories. In Harwell’s world, a batter didn’t merely strike out. He was “called out for excessive window shopping,” or “caught standing there like the house by the side of the road.”

Unlike today’s announcers, who prattle on with mindless patter and pointless stats, Harwell treated his listeners to healthy doses of “companionable silences,” something Zen masters refer to as the delicious “space between the notes.” Harwell said the quiet allowed the listeners to enjoy the sounds of the ballpark itself, which he felt was richer than his own voice. [Full Story]

By the time the presentation was in full swing, close to 40 people had streamed into a ground-floor meeting room at Miller Manor to hear city of Ann Arbor park planner Amy Kuras, plus a supporting cast of consultants, sketch out options for improvements at West Park and listen to reaction from residents. Residents and planners alike might have disagreed on the specifics, but there seemed to be a consensus on at least one point: the future of West Park should be filled with activity. [Full Story]