DHL Dan CCCVIII - The Greatest Game

First off, let me apologize for the lack of posts for the past month. Maybe all the exposure to Shank finally did me in, but I had a serious bout of laziness that I should be done with. Now on to the Picked Up Piece for the week - Shank's right about playoff baseball:

The playoffs remind us why baseball will always be the greatest game, and other thoughts

TUCSON — Picked-up pieces while watching four MLB Division Series . . .

⋅ I was in a hospital in Arizona for much of the week, visiting an ailing older brother who’s about to turn 80 and has been bed-bound for a couple of months.

Bill Shaughnessy was a strong, small-town baseball player in Central Massachusetts, Groton High School’s starting right fielder as a seventh-grader in 1960. By 1968, he was good enough to play outfield for Orleans in the Cape Cod League.

In 1955, one of his first Little League teammates was Boston Globe/ESPN baseball writing legend Peter Gammons. I spent a day with Gammons in our Groton hometown a couple of weeks ago. He’s 81, has a new book out (“It’s All About The Players”), and also has encountered significant health issues in recent years.