Fishermen need to use caution at the lake

April 4, 2020

Fishing remains a popular activity throughout the Youngstown-Warren area as we continue to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, but that’s not to say precautions can be tossed aside when we head to the water. Officials in Ohio and Pennsylvania so far have not closed public access to our states’ lakes and rivers. In fact, our states’ officials are encouraging people to fish as a way of relaxing in our stressful times. One of the big lessons out of the pandemic is that nobody is completely secure from the possibility of exposure to the virus. We should go to the water with the same ...

Fishing in area is business as usual

March 27, 2020

As tumultuous as our world has become in March, it is difficult to imagine a time and place where things are normal. Remember normal? Not so long ago, people took things like going to work, the store, school, church and whatever for granted. Watching a live ball game on TV was just a click of the remote away and we could load our SUVs to the roof with toilet paper. Life for us today is far from normal. We yearn for the day when normal is normal again. But there are many places where yesterday, today and tomorrow are as normal as they ever have been. They are places many of us ...

Fans turn attention elsewhere

March 26, 2020

Now that the Major League Baseball season has been postponed indefinitely, it doesn’t seem possible that we had almost a month of spring training before COVID-19 pulled the plug. But all baseball fans need to keep the game alive in their hearts and minds. Today was supposed to be opening day for MLB. The Indians were to host the Tigers at Progressive Field. But since live human players can’t take the field, two traditions linked to the pastime — mascots and bobbleheads — help to fill the void. Today, the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum, in conjunction with the ...

Sports means a lot to fans

March 23, 2020

The first time I saw full-out, unbridled passion for a sporting event came from an unlikely source. It was my mom. My mom doesn’t mind sports. To my knowledge, she was never an athlete, but she didn’t have much of a choice but to learn to like them when she married my father (and then had three boys). Still, she isn’t one to sit on the edge of her seat and throw things at the TV when a game is on, but this day was different. We were at a Liberty High School boys basketball game, circa 1990, and I was probably 7 or 8. My mom was holding my hand, and the entire place was ...

Links to Valley found in Arizona

March 11, 2020

My idea of paradise is to get away for a few days, head for the sun of the southwest and take in a few spring training baseball games. The experience last week at the Goodyear, Arizona, training camps of the Cleveland Indians and Cincinnati Reds, plus side trips to Las Vegas and Prescott, Arizona, turned up a few former Mahoning Valley residents and former players from the Valley’s minor-league baseball team. Consider: ¯ John Brown, son of Warren at-large Councilman John Brown and former assistant athletic director at Youngstown State University, is now business development ...

Hurt turns to focus for YSU

March 9, 2020

CHICAGO — Steve McClain looked over and saw Darius Quisenberry on the floor, crying. The UIC coach helped the Youngstown State University men’s basketball leading scorer to his feet. It looked like Garrett Covington, YSU’s junior guard and defensive specialist, had shed a few tears himself before talking in a postgame interview. The Penguins’ Horizon League quarterfinal matchup on Thursday didn’t go as expected. It usually has been a stumbling block for the Penguins program — advancing only once to the Horizon League quarterfinals. That was the 2016-17 season on a ...