My Summer Vacation at the Ballpark

I usually start making my summer vacation plans around late January. This usually coincides with the first waves of cabin fever enveloping me along with the fourth layer of thermal clothing I've wriggled into to avoid hypothermia in my perpetually chilly New England colonial home.

While some would scour the internet travel sites in search of the best beaches in the tropics or perhaps a deal on a refreshing lakeside cottage in the woods, I click elsewhere.

I pore over the schedules for all the professional baseball teams within a 90-minute drive of my home. My goal: finding any and all weekday home games.

God Save Me and My 'Old Man Drinks'

Blame it on Mad Men, this taste that I’ve acquired for Manhattans and old fashioneds made with the rye whiskeys Bogart called for by the shot.

Maybe it was a re-reading of Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye by the oceanside a few years ago that turned my taste buds on to the pale green summer goddess of goodness that is the gimlet.

Maybe I simply had had my fill with flat, dull tonics bartenders had neutered my Tanqueray with for too many years.

Regardless, it’s time to admit, with pride not shame, that I’m imbiber of what my wife teasingly calls “Old Man Drinks.”

Environmentalists Grasp at the Last Straw

With the Earth having just survived to see another Earth Day (it was Sunday, you heathen), I bring you on its behalf the following public service announcement: Straws suck.

In particular, non-biodegradable, disposable plastic ones.

Be it bendy or rigid, striped or solid, in your drink or up your nose (you ol’ cocaine cowboy, how’d you survive and disco die?), the humble single-use straw is the latest low-hanging fruit the environmentally conscientious are trying to harvest.

Best Baseball Opening Day Ever (Minus the Actual Baseball)

Mets legend Ed Charles, right, assists the author is showing off his 1969 World Series ring.

Spring is here again in the Northeast! It’s time to put away your warm winter clothes and dig out your equally warm but beer-proof Opening Day of Baseball Season clothes!

I’ll be doing that soon in preparation for today's New York Mets home opener, a near-annual ritual for me that includes the near-annual threat of the day being the coldest and/or wettest ever recorded for that date in history.

Maybe that’s why when I look back on all the Opening Days I’ve attended (22 unless my math fails me which it often does because ... writer), one of the most memorable was one where the game wasn’t even being played at the field.

To Each Generation of Students Comes the Need to Walkout

I’ve been asking my children about the National School Walkout planned for Wednesday, and they don’t seem excited about it — my questions or this demonstration. 

There’s much debate among their peers about what the walkout aims to achieve, they said, and there’s much more resignation that, regardless, it will achieve nothing. 

Lucky for them, I’ve got experience as a successful high school protester.

Answering the Questions No One Asks Me

The time has come, the blogger thought, to write of many things. So let’s once again reach into my imaginary mailbag to see what real topics are on the minds of people who would need real help if they imagined I could provide any.

What can be done to bring back diplomacy that would lessen the threat of nuclear war between the United States and North Korea? — Signed, Stop Pushing His Button