This fall I will publish my first book, The Price of Winning. I hope you will follow me on Twitter @priceofwinning and read more about the places, people and story here. You can download a sample chapter of the book here.
PRICE OF WINNING SAMPLE CHAPTER
This fall I will release my first book, The Price of Winning.
The Price of Winning details the rise and fall of the Plattsburgh State Cardinals first-ever NCAA Division III title.
Plattsburgh, New York is a small town, located 60 miles south of the Montreal, Quebec, Canada border and 32 miles north of Burlington, Vermont. The most notable United States city near Plattsburgh is Lake Placid, New York, a modest village and the famed setting for the 1980 Winter Olympic Games where the U.S. men’s ice hockey team upset Russia to win the gold medal, better known as the “Miracle on Ice.”
BROKEN
Dickie Thon described it this way: “It was like a boom … a dead sound. Like a thud.”
Today, the boxscore reads HBP (hit by pitch) but, for Thon, it was more than that. The Astros All-Star shortstop had been hit by a pitch major league pitches four times prior to April 8, 1984. No. 5 — a fastball by New York Mets pitcher Mike Torrez — fractured Thon’s orbital bone around his left eye, changing his life and career.
WEEKLY RECAP
It’s the final weekend of July. Baseball season hits the “dog days” of summer and the highly-anticipated trade deadline on Monday at 4 p.m. (edt).
I started the week by writing about what I believe will happen to some of our favorite Mets players at the deadline.
It’s been a busy week. Let’s recap what you might have missed and get you caught up.
INTERLEAGUE PLAY, STILL
It’s just past 10 p.m. (edt) and I begin toggling through the channels looking for the New York Mets and Seattle Mariners game. I pass by the short schedule of West Coast games — the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants, the Pittsburgh Pirates and San Diego Padres, Minnesota Twins and Oakland Athletics — before I reach my destination.
Welcome to Safeco Park.
As I lean back on the sofa, I think to myself: How many baseball fans are interested in this game? I mean, really, outside the hardcore Mets and Mariners fan bases. Is this what former MLB commissioner Bud Selig had in mind when he convinced every major league team owner that interleague play was good for the game? Was he envisioning a late-July Mets/Mariners showdown to generate new fans and higher attendance?
I think not.
A GONG SHOW DISGUISED AS A BASEBALL TEAM
Howard William Cohen was labeled by peers, sports fans – even some allies – as arrogant, pompous, obnoxious, vain, cruel, verbose and a show-off.
Cohen, known better as Howard Cosell, agreed with every one of those infamous personal adjectives. In fact, Cosell embraced the name-calling and coveted the attention, for better or worse. The more emotional viewers would get, the more Cosell felt reassured he was doing his job.