The June 18 passing of the incomparable Willie Mays — growing up, he was my favourite National League baseball player and Mickey Mantle was “my guy” in the so-called junior circuit — set me thinking about Mays being the “oldest living member” (OLM) in baseball’s Hall of Fame. I thought about the OLM distinction itself and how it offers a small measure of peculiar pride and pleasure. The “Say Hey Kid” was the hall’s OLM until he took a game-ending called third strike at age 93. His death instantly elevated former shortstop Luis Aparicio, the Venezuelan vacuum cleaner, to OLM status. Read More

I rode my trusty two-wheeled steed “Trigger” down to the LaSalle Causeway on a recent Saturday. When I got there, I found a skeleton weekend demolition crew busy demolishing the doomed bascule bridge. Being sans my reading glasses, it seems I missed the posted “Closed to Traffic” sign, and the on-site security guards missed spotting me. I pedalled straight onto the west wharf and up to the two-storey office/workshop and the smaller building that houses the controls that lift and lower the bridge. Read More