I played baseball with a bat, helmet, glove, invisible ball and invisible teammates of the Cubs, Sox and Yankees. Oh, sure I did try to play baseball with some kids from the neighborhood when I was about 9 years old or so. I discovered my first time playing that, if there was one thing the neighborhood kids enjoyed more than playing baseball, it was shouting every single four-letter, foul-mouthed epithet in their parents' worldly vocabularies. At one point, I made a mistake and a kid my age called...

Posting my baseball fan fiction (the stuff I managed to write) has got me to thinking about my childhood. Like many, I fantasized when I was a kid about being a major league baseball player. I wanted to be so many guys at once that I clearly recall coming up with a few different versions of myself.

One was an outfielder for the Cubs from 1947-67 and the White Sox from 1968-75. Yes, nearly 30 years. I was very young then, and had no idea of course about how long a major league career...

a list of sluggers who have done the feat, the year and the pitcher that served up the homer

1923-Rogers Hornsby-Cardinals
Doc Kressler

1930-Hack Wilson-Cubs
Dan Nichols

1935-Buddy Lewis
Carl Hubbell-Giants

1936-Wally Berger-Braves
Art Jones

1947-Jackie Robinson-Dodgers
Mark Murphy

1951-Dom Chelini
Robin Roberts-Phillies

1953-Al Montgomery
Joe Nuxhall-Reds...

Brennan Park, home of the Knights from 1921-76, had a left-field grandstand similar to Comiskey Park-an upper deck topped by a roof. Every once in a great while a slugger would blast a home run onto the left field roof. It took a tremendous blast of about 480 feet to do it, but some renowned sluggers and a few unknowns, both for the Knights and opponents, managed to accomplish the feat, with a few of them doing it twice.

Few, if any, sportswriters or prognosticators gave the Knights any sort of prayer of competing with the Mets in the NLCS. The smart money held that the Mets were simply the better team. This was the team, after all, that had blown away the National League two years ago, running up a record of 108-54, far outdistancing all other competition in the division that year. The Mets didn’t exactly play like a destructive machine in the postseason-a hard fought LCS with the Houston Astros went six games,...