About Me

I've turned an avocation into a vocation. I paid just $1 -- can you believe that? -- to sit in the cheap seats of Chicago's ballparks in the 1970s. You learn a lot about sports by watching hundreds, even thousands, of games -- you don't necessarily need to "strap it on" as athletes insist.

For the last three decades I've covered baseball and other sports in multi-media fashion -- for newspapers, magazines, radio, TV and on-line -- from my Chicago base. My sum total of experiences, relationships and perspectives will be featured in "Bench Jockey" while I continue my old-media work, including my venerable 16-season-old "Diamond Gems" syndicated baseball radio show. I've authored 10 baseball books since 1998 with No. 11, an oral history of 1970's baseball, due out at the end of the 2010 season.

What you read comes from a media junkie. Back in eighth grade, I read four daily newspapers while watching Huntley-Brinkley and Cronkite. I'm also a dog "parent" of a golden retriever and basset hound. They're angels even when they're devils. My 16-year-old African grey parrot talks just like me -- yikes! I'm proud that my daughter, Laura, 25, is a recent Dean's List graduate in interior architecture from Columbia College Chicago.

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