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Plenty has happened since last Browns road playoff win

Let’s put the recent Cleveland Browns playoff win over the Pittsburgh Steelers in historical perspective. If you have been a Cleveland Browns fan as long as I have, you may have experienced these life “stressors” and / or milestones between Browns road playoff wins: ¯ Getting cut by your Little League baseball team after the first spring practice; ¯ Falling “in love” with Marcia Brady after watching the first episode of “The Brady Bunch” on primetime Friday night on ABC-TV. In proceeding years, the above “crush” subjects would include Farrah Fawcett and the ...

Appreciation for fishing, life needed after 2020

In many ways, the dawn of 2021 is like the start of a new fishing day. When I go to the lake at sunrise and slide the boat off the trailer at the ramp, the day spreads out in front of me with opportunity and optimism. I can build on yesterday’s positives. But I also can learn from yesterday’s failures. The failed casts, broken lines and lost fish literally are history. What didn’t work then informs the decisions I will make in the day just beginning. So now it is 2021 and the slate is clean. Last year’s successes and failures are the lessons for this year’s living — ...

Couch Fan offers wishes for New Year

As part of the new normal, us “boomer” sports fans have to get used to: ¯ Downloading apps to our televisions in this post-cable, post-satellite television universe. Now, does that Cleveland baseball team play on Fox Sports Go or just the regular Fox Sports app? ¯ Telling the difference between which Collinsworth is speaking during NBC’s Sunday Night Football. Maybe we can trade in one of them so Carrie Underwood can come into the booth to sing the theme song live. ¯ Going to any sporting event with our facemasks on. Maybe it won’t be all that bad if the Browns can ...

My time was special thanks to the people

Late morning, about 11 a.m. These grey corduroy and leather slippers hug my bare, size-14 feet on this chilly, snow-covered day as I make my way down the staircase inside my home. My daughter, Alexa, enveloped herself in a charcoal black polyester winter covering with a furry, brown Chewbacca suit underneath and my wife’s purple, rubberized boots as I gazed outward onto our snow-covered deck to find her frolicking in the inches of white, fluffy precipitation doused on the Mahoning Valley. The moments watching her in the frigid winter wonderland transported Alexa back to her ...

YSU seeks routine amid COVID chaos

YOUNGSTOWN College basketball coaches, their players and supporting staff are creatures of habit. Schedules are followed. Itineraries are met. Practices. Weight lifting. Classes. Meals. One-on-one meetings with position coaches. Those are just some of the on-campus activities student athletes have on a daily basis. The laundry list of activities on road trips with hotels, meals, video sessions, practices and games keep each member of the team on task. A COVID-19 stoppage put a screeching halt to a sense of normalcy, as much as you can achieve these days. One positive ...

Sights, sounds of Scrappers bring normalcy

A nearby wooded area encompasses the baseball stadium parallel to the Eastwood Mall. The Eastwood Field facility has been a fixture in the Mahoning Valley since the summer of 1999. Shane Bieber, Asdrubal Cabrera, Jason Kipnis, Francisco Lindor, CC Sabathia and Tyler Naquin are a few of the future major leaguers to step foot on the Mahoning Valley Scrappers’ natural grass field, make contact from a wooden bat from a hard-thrown, tightly-wound baseball and entertain area fans for the better part of two decades. In-game giveaways, dollar-beer night and all sorts of giveaways attract ...