The only good news is that the XFL also cancelled its regular season. As seen in Waiting for the XFL to be the Ex-XFL, this spring football league is a blight on the sports calendar
Initially — mercifully for its misbegotten fans — Sunday’s game in Seattle was scheduled to be played without spectators. Given the paltry attendance at many XFL games, an empty stadium would be little different. Apparently, the XFL is committed to playing a full season in 2021. Don’t bother.
With live sports on the sidelines, now is the time to relive Talker sports-blasts-from-the past.
We begin at the heights when in 1914 the immortal Babe Ruth played in Rochester against the Red Wings at Baseball Park on Bay Street near Webster Avenue. That International League season, Ruth pitched for the Providence Greys and Baltimore Hustlers. We end at the depths in 2020 with the infamous Houston Astros.
SEE PART II: No sports? Talker has you covered (Part II, the Bills, the Jills and love triangles)
SEE PART III: No sports? Talker has you covered. (Part III, Sports Less Traveled)
SEE PART IV: No sports? Talker has you covered. (Part IV, Conclusion: college and high school baseball, basketball and football; amateur baseball, football and softball)
1914
1916
Now gone from living memory, the last time the Dodgers (Robins) and Red Sox battled
1945
1946
70 years ago today when Jackie Robinson broke the color line at Red Wings Stadium
1969
48 years ago when Rochester saw its first “Designated Pinch Hitter”
1971
45 years ago when the Pittsburgh Pirates fielded a team of “All brothers out there”
1972
1973
On Yogi Berra and Dale Berra and the 1973 World Series and Willie Mays and my father
1974
1975
1981
The 1981 baseball strike comes to Rochester. When Dave Winfield made 1.3 million a year!
1985
30 years ago when George Brett won the World Series (and Morganna the Kissing Bandit)
1986
1988
Frank Robinson and a glove signed at the 1988 Orioles-Red Wings exhibition game
1999
Dustin Pedroia, a 1999 lawn chair and a 2005 birthday gift from Naomi and Anna Silver
2009
“An early-spring renewal of the spirit” over 10,000 fungos later
2010
The Hat Gate game is reason enough to root for the Nationals
2016
Street & Smith’s now defunct. Here is Kramer & Kramer’s Official 2016 Yearbook
Royals 4 – Mets 3. An opening day World Series rematch with Eugene Kramer
2017
2018
Street and Smith’s is back and so is Bill Pruitt with “Pennant Race 18: Curses Laid and Lifted”
Major League Baseball in San Juan as a 21st Century Marshall Plan
2019
2020
Say it ain’t so Joe. Could I like MLB’s proposed playoff changes?
Looking through the glass half full, the 2020 baseball preview
Bill Pruitt offers “Pennant Race in the Plague Year, Or Ohtani’s Quadruple Twenty in 2020”
SEE ALSO
Baseball at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Highland Park (1960 – 1972)
PROFESSIONAL SOFTBALL