MIKE BURKE Allegany Communications Sports Yesterday, 78 years after he broke baseball’s color barrier, Major League Baseball again remembered Jackie Robinson, having formally established April 15 as Jackie Robinson Day in 2004. In 1997, on the 50th anniversary of Robinson’s first game with the Brooklyn Dodgers, MLB celebrated him by retiring his number 42 throughout…
MIKE BURKE Allegany Communications Sports The Baltimore Orioles don’t hit, they don’t pitch and they don’t play defense very well. Other than that, it looks good. Through 13 games, the Orioles have scored 55 runs, an average of more than four a game, but that’s deceiving. Thirty-seven of those runs have come in four of…
MIKE BURKE Allegany Communications Sports The Pittsburgh Pirates are a community treasure in Pittsburgh and in Western Pennsylvania, and have been for nearly 140 years. For 18 years, the Pittsburgh Pirates of owner Bob Nutting have operated with an indifference and a lack of perception and sensitivity in all matters of the community’s treasured sentiments.…
MIKE BURKE Allegany Communications Sports The Duke Blue Devils led their NCAA semifinal game with Houston by 14 points with 8:03 left in the game. They led by 9 with 2:06 left, and with 1:26 left they were given a 92.7% chance to win the game by ESPN. They led by 6 points with 34…
MIKE BURKE Allegany Communications Sports West Virginia and Maryland turned to the state of Texas for their new men’s basketball coaches, the Mountaineers hiring Ross Hodge of the University of North Texas and the Terps hiring Buzz Williams of Texas A&M. We don’t know much about the 44-year-old Hodge, but WVU athletic director Wren Baker…
MIKE BURKE Allegany Communications Sports We here in Maryland are used to people leaving us in the middle of the night, and Kevin Willard became the latest, though hardly the greatest, having met with Villanova on Saturday and officially informing the University of Maryland around midnight that he was leaving as the head basketball coach,…
MIKE BURKE Allegany Communications Sports In all likelihood they will be the final games of the season for the fourth-seeded Maryland men’s and women’s basketball teams when the men take on top-seeded Florida on Thursday and the women take on top-seeded and defending national champion South Carolina on Friday. And, oh, yeah, also Kevin Willard’s…
MIKE BURKE Allegany Communications Sports What is baseball? Ken Burns wrote in “Baseball,” his masterpiece documentary, “It is played everywhere. In parks and playgrounds and prison yards. In back alleys and farmers’ fields. By small children and old men. Raw amateurs and millionaire professionals. “It is a leisurely game that demands blinding speed. The only…
MIKE BURKE Allegany Communications Sports Baseball season is so near you can taste it and, in fact, it has been well underway at the local level. Thus, baseball season is here, thank God, which made it quite appropriate to see Steve Bazarnic honored by the NJCAA once more, because no one I have ever known…
MIKE BURKE Allegany Communications Sports That I, as have many others, picked Florida to win it all in my obligatory NCAA bracket, it stands to reason I picked the Gators to beat Maryland in a potential Sweet 16 matchup, yes? Yes. This season will be a good one for the Terps if they make the…
