Burlington Free Press: To find the meaning of baseball, roll the dice
From Chris Bohjalian at the Burlington Free Press on January 12, 2013:
It wasn’t one of those pitching duels for the ages — the final score was 4-2 — but it was two hurlers facing off who between them have an astonishing 615 Major League wins. It was likely Hall of Famer and Yankees ace C.C. Sabathia against Walter Johnson. Yup, that Walter Johnson: the Washington Senators pitcher who won a mindboggling 417 games.
Just for the record, Johnson died in 1946. Sabathia was born in 1980.
But that’s the beauty of the dice baseball league conceived by Burlington lawyer Tom Simon. It’s the best against the best from throughout baseball’s long history.
No, that’s not the beauty. This is: It’s a dice baseball league for kids who love the game. The official name is the Buster Olney SABR Junior Club. SABR stands for the Society for American Baseball Research. Buster Olney is an ESPN baseball analyst and former New York Times sports reporter who was born in Randolph. The kids named it after Olney as a small homage.
The group meets Sunday afternoons on the third floor of Simon’s Burlington home, but only during the off-season. “The kids want to be outside playing baseball during the regular season,” Simon told me.
Read the full article here: http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20130113/COLUMNISTS03/301130008/Idyll-Banter-To-find-the-meaning-of-baseball-roll-the-dice-Chris-Bohjalian?nclick_check=1
For more information on the Gardner-Waterman Vermont Chapter, click here.
Originally published: January 14, 2013. Last Updated: January 14, 2013.