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Today’s Baseball Week post combines two items from August 2013, the first by me, the second by Paul, both of us fans of Red Sox rightfielder Tony Conigliaro, a Massachusetts native who reached professional stardom at a young age and whose potential seemed limitless – until the evening of August…
Read More »Spinners Photo Essay By Jennifer Myers This has been a tough year for baseball, particularly minor league baseball. Earlier this week, Major League Baseball announced that the entire minor league season had been cancelled. But even before the pandemic, MLB had started contracting the number of minor league teams which…
Read More »Guilty Pleasures of the Fourth by Henri B. Marchand An essay from Henri Marchand, updated from its original 2006 version. As another Fourth of July holiday approaches the nightly cannonade of assorted firecrackers and whistling skyrockets has been steadily intensifying. These illegal blasts and crackles usually reach a crescendo over…
Read More »For the month of July, here on Trasna, we will be highlighting some of the literary and artistic events cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic. In early July of each year, The Henry David Thoreau Society holds its Annual Gathering. This year’s theme was “DIVERSITY.” While an ever-important subject, it…
Read More »When the San Francisco Giants won the 2010 World Series, Dave Perry composed the following essay about his longstanding affection for that team and one player in particular . . . ‘Willie’ By Dave Perry – Nov 2, 2010 I dreamt of Willie Mays last night. It was the first…
Read More »We dig into the archives for this story by Paul about a teammate of Tony Congiliaro’s on the 1967 Boston Red Sox. ‘This Is Dalton Jones’ By Paul Marion on June 6, 2012 Last Friday, I received a surprise call at my UMass Lowell office. I was in a meeting…
Read More »Jack McDonough of Tewksbury, Mass., wrote for United Press International, New England Telephone, Brandeis University, and UMass Lowell in his career as a reporter and editor. He’s a baseball fan from way back, and played his share of ballgames: “good glove-good stick.” We always appreciate his contributions to this publication. …
Read More »Geoffrey Douglas is an American author, journalist, and former adjunct professor of writing at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. His most recent nonfiction book is The Grifter, The Poet, and The Runaway Train (2019), a collection of his stories in Yankee magazine. Other books include The Game of Their Lives (1996,…
Read More »Suzanne Dion: She Loved the Game By Prudence Brighton LeLacheur Park was Suzanne Dion’s summer haven–a place to celebrate the Lowell Spinners’ victories, to grieve their losses and to simply enjoy nearly 20 summers of minor league baseball just 10 minutes from her home. Suzanne was a highly intelligent woman…
Read More »Life is all about contingencies. In this story, legendary baseball writer Chaz Scoggins explains how a former major league player, frustrated in his effort to purchase the professional baseball team in Lowell, settled into a scouting job with the Red Sox and helped bring Babe Ruth to Boston. Ruth and…
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