Craig Tyson Adams

  George Brett had a helluva stroke and then almost had one Gather around, young ones. I’m about to tell you about how  Major League Baseball  Hall-of-Famer Billy Martin turned fellow Hall-of-Famer George Brett into a human volcano. Which is quite the turnaround because Billy Martin was famous for his eruptions. Brett’s team, the Kansas City Royals were playing the Martin-managed New York Yankees that day. The backstory is that both teams hated each other, in a sporting sense. It wasn’t hatred like the Hatfields and the McCoys or the Montagues and the Capulets. That’s a whole other story. The teams in the late ’70s and ’80s were perennial playoff opponents. They often met in the American League Championship Series for the right to advance to the fall classic. The World Series. The Yankees, of course, dominated the Royals. They’d brush past them like the Royals were the weak peasant pretenders to the throne. The Royals were a folly standing in the way of the Yankees’ rightful royalty. T

The crisp October air can represent a lot of things, but it’s the best time of year for a baseball fan. The MLB Playoffs have started. This week has been Nirvana. The fans are rapturous. Ballparks are full. Every pitch, every at bat has consequences. It all began with the MLB Playoffs Wildcard games. The defending World Series Champion Los Angeles Dodgers were favorites to win the NL West Division. They lost to the upstart San Francisco Giants who were not supposed to be contenders. The Dodgers were playing against the St. Louis Cardinals . The Cardinals were an afterthought until they went on a seventeen game winning streak. They overtook the Cincinnati Reds for the 2nd wildcard spot to close the season. Dodger bats went quiet during the first half of the game as the Cardinals clung to a one run lead. Dodgers third baseman Justin Turner tied the contest with a home run in the fourth inning. Then it was up to the bullpens. The game stayed tied until the bottom of the 9th. St. Louis r

There was an MLB game played in a cornfield last night. They played the game in Iowa. We know Iowa for its agriculture. A cornfield in Iowa isn’t out of place. Major League Baseball in Iowa is.  The game was between the American League Central division-leading Chicago White Sox and the legendary New York Yankees . People that attended the game drove to a town in Iowa called Dyersville. Attendees parked in a gravel lot and got to walk through a corn maze to get to the field. Once there, there was a temporary baseball field that was constructed especially for the game.  Why go to all this effort? What’s all the fuss about? Why did Major League Baseball have two of their franchises transport their collective multi-millionaire players to the middle of the Midwest to play a single game?  To commemorate a movie, Field Of Dreams starring Kevin Costner , made 32 years ago. Now, I’m not one to make fun of nostalgia. MLB Field of Dreams is just that. I’ve got old records. My movie collec