Liam Coghlan, 26, is facing the end of his baseball career after an ACL injury in college. Because of that, he started Diamond and a Dream at The Vandal, an organization that will use baseball to help teach kids about life. Still, I asked went through his head when the doctor’s told him he might […]
John W. Webb III, sixty-eight, loves baseball. I asked him about his favorite childhood memory of baseball, and what he thinks he learned from that moment.
Author Trey Dowell said if he and wife had a child, he’d definitely teach him the game. I asked him why he was so adamant about that (because it’s a sentiment I’ve heard expressed in nearly every interview).
Florence Freedom player Taylor Oldham has a background you don’t normally find in professional baseball: He was home schooled. That means baseball was his Physical Education class. That also meant he wasn’t sure exactly how good he was. Until the first day of Little League tryouts.
Catch isn’t really about baseball. That’s a red herring. A red herring I happen to love, but a red herring none the less. The book is really about something much deeper. The game isn’t just a metaphor for life. It’s the conduit through which fathers teach their sons.
Not every baseball story is about playing. Most of my memories from the game came during the down times. My favorite story: The day the bird pooped on my mom’s head.
When I was just around nine or ten, I broke my arm before a big playoff game. And by “big” I mean either tee-ball or coach pitch. And by “playoff game” I mean last games of the season. My dad asked the doctor to place my cast below the elbow and above my wrist so I could keep playing.
Growing up, baseball was at the center of my life. My friends Jimmy, Greg, and I constructed so many different ways to play the game. By using the game on the back of the 1979 baseball cards, to Strat-o-matic, MicroLeague Baseball, and a variety of in-person games played in garages and basements.
Catch: An Oral History is a yearlong writing experiment in which I’m going ask people to tell me stories about how baseball has shaped the relationships that have with people in their lives. Here’s how it will work: I’ll interview people from across the country, transcribe what they say, do some light editing to make sure it’s coherent, and let them tell you their story.
This is a call for writers to share stories of disenfranchisement, helplessness, and maybe even action. These stories can be your personal experiences, a more detached rant, or a mix of both.
I’d go home, open a bottle of Jameson, turn off the lights in my room, pull out the napkins, crank up Merkinball, and write until the story was done.
I am broken and heartbroken today. This is sometimes my answer when people ask me how I am, which as you can imagine gives them pause. I find myself explaining what I mean quite often. And so I thought I’d do it here as well.