n Thanksgiving Day, 1928, Jim Thorpe played the final professional football game of his career. Chicago was the site and Thorpe donned the uniform of the Chicago Cardinals as they battled their crosstown rival, the Bears. Nearly a decade after its creation, the National Football League had settled into 10 franchises, six of them in […]
Stuart Shiffman
Stuart Shiffman is a retired associate circuit judge from Springfield. He covers books on a range of subjects, including sports, history and fiction, for Illinois Times.
Posted inArts & Culture
The church of baseball
“I’ve tried them all, I really have. And the only church that truly feeds the soul, day in and day out, is the church of baseball.” Annie Savoy in Bull Durham. Ask any fan to name their favorite baseball movies and the 1988 classic Bull Durham is probably on the list. Baseball films come in […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Lucky Horseshoes come to town
“People will come, Ray,” intones the mysterious character played by the actor James Earl Jones in the film Field of Dreams. “They’ll find they have reserved seats somewhere along one of the baselines, where they sat when they were children and cheered their heroes. And they’ll watch the game, and it’ll be as if they’d […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Baseball is back
After a winter of discontent during which Major League Baseball owners locked out the players and essentially shut down the off-season activity that baseball fans know as the “hot stove” league, major league baseball has returned with a hard-charging one month spring training and a season that opens April 7. Here in Springfield the off-season was […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Cardinals pitching ace Wainright to visit Springfield Sunday
January and February are traditionally months when baseball fans look forward to the opening of spring training and the celebrated day when pitchers and catchers report to training camp. This year that enthusiasm is tempered by a lockout of players that threatens to jeopardize the early portion of the 2022 season. But for baseball fans […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Baseball has a new future in Springfield
Experienced baseball fans are familiar with the proverbial trade of major league players where one player is sent to another team in exchange for “a player to be named later.” On Dec. 1, before a capacity crowd in the Lincoln Room of the President Abraham Lincoln Hotel, an ownership group doing business as Capital City […]
Posted inNews
Springfield Sliders are back to play ball
For Todd Miller, owner and general manager of the Springfield Sliders, waiting for next year has become a far longer pause than the traditional six-month off-season. In 2019, his team endured a disappointing summer with a losing streak that reached record lengths. Even now, two years later, you can hear the distress in Miller’s voice […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Brush up on baseball history
In February 2021 Major League Baseball returned to a semblance of normalcy as players once again traveled to spring training locations in Arizona and Florida. Players and fans returned to baseball as we remembered it before COVID swept the world. This year marks a complete 162-game season, the normal playoff and World Series format and […]
Posted inArts & Culture
New fiction with true stories of true friends
Over several decades of living in the same legal community, fellow Springfield attorney George Heroux and I did not have very much professional contact. During my legal and judicial career, George was involved in legal education at the Illinois Institute for Continuing Legal Education. Before coming to Springfield, he had a varied career as an […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Turow’s new court novel puts him back on top
The Last Trial, by Scott Turow. Grand Central Publishing, May 2020. Every reader has a guilty pleasure. For me it has always been courtroom fiction. Granted, this led me to frustration because I would read many courtroom novels only to become irritated over the author’s inaccuracies compared to the real-life courtrooms where I worked. This […]
Posted inArts & Culture
A murder mystery set in St. Louis
In addition to his writing career, William Stage’s personal biography includes a unique life. In addition to military service in Vietnam, Stage served with the United States Air Force Reserve during Operation Desert Storm. After graduation from college he was driving ambulances in Grand Rapids, Michigan, when he was recruited by the Centers for Disease […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Rahm is not the best messenger for mayors
THE NATION CITY: Why Mayors Are Now Running the World, by Rahm Emanuel. Alfred A. Knopf, 2020. The 2020 campaign season is upon us in splendor and glory. It is remarkable for several reasons, including the presence of two former mayors in the political mix. The office of mayor has rarely been deemed a steppingstone […]
