Say It Ain’t So, Lou Brock!

Curse you, Internet, for destroying a precious childhood memory: Lou Brock’s inside-the-park home run. Oh, the devastation, humiliation and lamentation despite the often-hapless Cubs sweeping the vaunted San Francisco Giants in five games at Wrigley Field all those decades ago.

Topps 274: Lou Brock 1963. © Topps Chewing Gum, Inc.

Topps 274: Lou Brock 1963. © Topps Chewing Gum, Inc.

It was June 5, 1963, when Dad, brother Chuck and I rode the Burlington’s Morning Zephyr into Chicago and took a cab from Union Station to the hallowed ballpark on the North Side. The Cubbies thumped the Giants on Tuesday, and on this Wednesday we settled in for an afternoon double-header (there were no lights at Wrigley then, so every game was a day game). Continue reading

D-Day’s Barely Recorded Landing

There’s a reason you only see the same few still and movie images from the D-Day landing on Omaha Beach over and over: That’s all there is.

Nineteen photographers in the first waves joined U.S. troops hitting that sector of the Normandy coast on June 6, 1944. Of the five sectors, the worst death and dismemberment happened here. It’s also the retelling of what happened at Omaha Beach that leads some to forget Canadian and U.K. forces suffered, some grievously, in the other sectors as did the U.S. and U.K. airborne units landing by parachute and glider. Continue reading