Free Republic

“John Euless, namesake of Fresno City College’s Euless Park… a 1922 newspaper article identified (Euless) as a leader of the Ku Klux Klan in Fresno,” Warszawski wrote in the editorial. “Reading that, my eyeballs nearly popped out of their sockets. Fresno City’s baseball facility, and former home to minor-league baseball from the early 1940s to the late 1980s, is named for a KKK leader?” Warszawski continued that he found a newspaper from 1922 that included a list of Klansmen’s names—including Euless—which was “seized by police during a raid… and released to the media by authority of the Fresno County district...

BISBEE – The students digging beneath the stands at Bisbee’s Warren Ballpark have unearthed a few artifacts that provide a glimpse into what life was like for fans of the century-old ballpark: firearm cartridges, broken glass bottles, bus tokens. Robert Schon, an associate professor of archaeology at the University of Arizona, leads the archeological dig, which includes both high school and college students. He said he started the project to establish a better picture of what the local economy looked like during the early 1900s. “You sort of equate going to the ballpark with drinking beers and that sort of...

RICHMOND, Va. - The mayor of Richmond announced plans Monday to build a minor-league baseball park on the site of a slave market and cemetery, prompting an outcry over what protesters said would be desecration of the area. Mayor Dwight Jones, a black minister, said the 7,200-seat ballpark would generate badly needed jobs and revenue and include a $30 million memorial. The ballbark is part of a $200 million development in Richmond's Shockoe Bottom neighborhood.

The first time? I remember that as if it were yesterday, even if it’s now 33 years’ worth of yesterdays ago. That was the evening of Friday, Feb. 22, 1980, and I was 13 years old, in the seventh grade, and I was working the scoreboard at West Hempstead High School for an evening filled with CYO basketball games. You could hear the buzz first, and it moved slowly around the old gym on Nassau Boulevard, because there was no texting and no tweeting and no email and no cell phones, just old-fashioned word of mouth, person to person, row...

The late Dan Quisenberry once said of the Metrodome, "I don't think there are any good uses for nuclear weapons, but then, this may be one." And he only pitched in 16 games there his entire career. Torii Hunter, on the other hand, played 10 full seasons in the Metrodome, so maybe he had a better read on it. This is what he told me about his former home just before the Twins moved out: "If they need any kind of help blowing it up, I will definitely be there. I will push the plunger. Boom. Boom. I will not...

3 men sentenced in fatal Phillies ballpark attackAP – 13 hrs ago PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Three men who fatally attacked a man outside a Philadelphia Phillies game in a brawl police say was sparked by a spilled drink have been sentenced to prison terms. Francis Kirchner, Charles Bowers and James Groves each pleaded guilty in October to voluntary manslaughter and criminal conspiracy in the July 2009 death of 22-year-old David Sale Jr. outside Citizens Bank Park, where the Phillies were playing the St. Louis Cardinals. Kirchner, 30, was sentenced Tuesday to consecutive terms totaling nine to 18 years. Bowers, 37,...

Basic Information About Let's get the campaign started today! Description You may remember him as the man who made sense of health care reform and tried to make it better than it ended up, or you may just remember his funny last name. Either way, you'll see that he's Washington's lone voice of logic & reason. Someone who uses common sense in his attempt to help all Americans. Is Anthony Weiner the one we've all been waiting for? He might just be.

While visiting Yankee Stadium last Thursday for Opening Day, I was disappointed to see that the food choices at the concession stands hadn't changed since the 2010 season. One would really think that they could have found the time to bring in a good taco stand...

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) -- The Minnesota House gave the Twins stadium hopes a big lift Wednesday, voting 76-55 in favor of an open-air ballpark that would be paid for mostly by taxpayers. The focus now shifts to the state Senate, where the proposed increase in the county's sales tax could run into some early trouble. The Senate Taxes Committee, headed by a lawmaker opposed to the plan, will begin its deliberations on Thursday. The downtown Minneapolis stadium project would cost $522 million -- three-fourths from a higher Hennepin County sales tax -- and would allow the Twins to leave...

The developers, land speculators and lawyers are pressing ahead with the beleaguered property owners, entrepreneurs and residents of Half Street Southeast, site of the proposed ballpark along the Anacostia River. There is nothing really fair about the process, nothing really joyous about pushing tax-paying citizens off their properties in order to enrich the wealthy, ostensibly for a public good. The hardy urban pioneers descended on this previously forgotten stretch of asphalt wedged between the Navy Yard and South Capitol Street and scratched out a living long before it became the solution of Mayor Anthony A. Williams and a fashionable destination...

McLEAN, Va. (AP) - As Major League Baseball officials met Wednesday with backers of a northern Virginia ballpark for the Montreal Expos, a second key lawmaker said he opposes a plan to finance the stadium with bonds backed by the "moral obligation" of the state. Senate Finance Chairman John Chichester (R-Stafford) said a private business like a baseball club should not benefit from the state's moral obligation bonds, which have traditionally been used for local water quality projects and other public works....

<p>The Virginia Baseball Stadium Authority is struggling to find a viable site for a ballpark to house a professional team, even as Major League Baseball nears a decision on the future home of the Montreal Expos.</p> <p>Just two months before baseball plans to announce the fate of the Expos, the authority faces determined resistance from the public to its favored sites and has had no success in persuading owners to sell the land necessary to build a stadium.</p>

A Slate employee—we'll call him "Thad"—asks the sports department to solve a problem that has been vexing him: Why does he have trouble urinating at ballparks? His testimony, worded as delicately as possible, goes like this: At a Seattle Mariners game, Thad slugged down several ballpark beverages. Later, he shuffled into the restroom, angled toward the urinals, unzipped his trousers, and then … nothing. Not a drop. Embarrassed and in acute pain, he waddled back to his seat, where he spent the remaining innings swaying like Stevie Wonder in front of a piano. After polling some of the country's pre-eminent...