Ezra's Essays

Category: Baseball

  • PISSANTRIES, POLITICS, AND A GORGEOUS MISTRESS

    I generally keep my notes for future essays in my head but in some cases on an old dictating machine on my desk. Two of these notes appeared simultaneously and I thought that there were enough similarities that they could be married together. The first essay has to do with the ancient word for an…

  • PLAYOFF GREED

    In recent weeks, the sporting scene has been dominated by the National Football League Playoffs. Under the present system, playoffs are the most important part of the long NFL schedule. The regular schedule is largely incidental. Teams play a 16-game schedule starting late in August. Each team is given a bye week when no game…

  • NEW YORK, NEW YORK Part 12 – The Yanks, The Giants and The Brooklyn Dodgers

    When it was determined that essays would become a permanent fixture in my life, it was apparent that my long term love affair with baseball would result in a piece about what used to be called, “America’s Pastime.” And so this is a baseball story. No politicians, no preachers, no cats or pets, just baseball.…

  • LILA

    AT&T Long Lines had its headquarters at 32 Sixth Avenue in New York City. At its peak, that building housed about 10,000 employees with telephone operators accounting for about 80% of that total. Because the operators and the telephone craftsmen worked around the clock, the Company provided two cafeterias and one dining room. The dining…

  • ON GOLF, CIVIL WAR, AND VIRGINS

    -Three Disparate Thoughts Growing up during the great American Depression, it was my view that golf was an elitist sport. There were a few driving ranges around, but public golf courses were few and far between. Jobs also were few and far between and money was a problem at every step of the way. Golf…

  • “I’M EVERYBODY” – VERNON LUDLOFF

    It may very well be that this essay should be entitled “Back to the Future.” In my current situation, I am of course unable to see the action taking place on television. I listen to the dialogue on television and in many cases, I can determine who the speaker may be but in other cases…

  • TAKE ME OUT TO THE AFRICAN BALL GAME

    The title of this essay is a bit misleading because at the time this game took place, Africans played no baseball at all. On the other hand, it is a celebration of a game played by GI’s late in 1944 or 1945 between two clubs whose managers disliked each other with such intensity as to…

  • MAIL CALL

    This essay has an air of inevitability about it. If a pitcher stands on the mound and expectorates on the baseball, the batter should know that the next pitch will inevitably be a spitball which will start out at waist level and sink to his shoe-tops by the time it crosses the plate. There is…

  • FADING TO GRAY

    As this essay is being started, it is a cold, rainy, Sunday afternoon in late April. It means that most people are home bound which is the bad news on a Spring weekend. The good news is that the Boston Red Sox took three straight from the New York Yankees over the past three days…

  • THE 0-FER FACTOR

    The Salvation Army, the Baptist Young People’s Union, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and the Luther League (Missouri Synod) have approved this essay only on the ground that I disclose that it is a political and not a baseball essay. But to make my point it is necessary to call on the practice of baseball…