EAST BRIDGEWATER 1980 - REFLECTIONS ON BASEBALL This column originally appeared on Wicked Local. Each year as the weather becomes more spring-like, I am taken back to 1980 in East Bridgewater, a memorable end of the school year with an extremely competitive little league season. Baseball was the highlight of our spring. There was no internet. There were no AirPods. There wasn’t even such thing as a Space Invader yet, unless you were talking about the ones that arrived on the big-screen in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. All players marched in the annual East Bridgewater Little League parade, and for the first time in what would become the norm, I opened the season at second base for the Lions Club team coached by twenty-one year old Terry Kingman. Eamon (Terry’s little brother) was a fixture at shortstop. Eamon Kingman and I were close friends, so we worked well together on and off the field like Alan Trammell and L...
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BROCKTON ACCORDING TO GILLESPIE This column originally appeared on Wicked Local I decided to make a trip through Brockton after roughly thirty years away. Brockton is a city that, despite its questionable reputation in recent years, is one that I remember as being vibrant and lively when I was a kid. But the Brockton I found was sadly void of the energy that I remembered. Gone are the landmarks that once characterized Brockton East: Christo’s, the Brockton East Twin Cinema, Bradlees, Burger King, Friendly’s, Red Lobster, and even the old Jack-in-the-Box. They have been replaced by a handful of less than notable stores, a Home Depot, and an annex to Massasoit Community College. The energetic vibe that once reverberated the downtown area of Brockton is also gone. Main Street was once highlighted by thriving long-las...
CANCER COMES UNEXPECTEDLY This column originally appeared on Wicked Local. My wife asked me if I would like to go to her doctor’s appointment with her. Although I would be forced to take the morning off from work, it was something that was clearly important to her, so in a show of support I agreed to join her. (My wife sometimes measures loyalty and commitment through a willingness to accompany her to medical appointments.) She was scheduled to get a routine mammogram, a relatively simple procedure that would hopefully leave us the rest of the day to have lunch and possibly do some light-hearted shopping. I had already poured through roughly ten pages of my book, Bill Pennington’s expose on late Yankee icon Billy Martin, by the time she reached out to me via text message. “So they just did another mammogram x-ray and now I wait to talk to the radiologist. They said I could have them bring you in for the results but it’s a little weird ...
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