Sports & Outdoors Archives - Pittsburgh Quarterly

There has been a great deal written about the demise of baseball as America’s game. After the excitement of last season’s NFL playoff games and the drama of the Super Bowl, sports commentators, lamenting painfully slow and dull baseball games dominated by batters swinging with uppercuts and striking out at a record pace, decided to …

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Nature Sports & Outdoors

Riding the GAP Trail

by John Beale

Rob and Nikki Fleming came with friends from Tarpon Springs, Florida. Tom and Carolyn Cassell made the trip from Tucson. And Jeremy Cline travelled from Connecticut. Each year, bicyclists come to Pittsburgh from across the country and beyond to ride the 150-mile Great Allegheny Passage (GAP). Last year, that number reached 1.4 million, according to …

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Sports Sports & Outdoors

When Jim Thorpe Almost Became a Pittsburgh Pirate

by Richard “Pete” Peterson

In the 1912 summer Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden, Jim Thorpe won the demanding five-event pentathlon and the grueling ten-event decathlon and was roundly declared the greatest athlete in the world. He added to his stature that fall by becoming a football All-American after leading Carlisle to a stunning upset over a powerful Army team that …

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Nature Sports & Outdoors

Streaming Views

by John Beale

Nature

Surviving Summit Mountain

by Ben Moyer

Snowbound residents of Pittsburgh’s hilly neighborhoods may not share this view, but part of the appeal of being a Western Pennsylvanian is that our natural geography still imposes influence on daily life. Not all regions enjoy, or endure, that dash of topographic spice, but it’s inescapable on my travels over and atop Summit Mountain, looming …

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Birds

This Fall, Look for the Red-Shouldered Hawk

by David Liebmann

Our raptors are ubiquitous but easily confused with one another. In western Pennsylvania, with its thick forests, sloping mountains, and suburban regrowth, we regularly can see sharp-shinned hawks, Cooper’s hawks, red-tailed hawks, broad-winged hawks, and the occasional rough-legged hawk, northern harrier, and northern goshawk. Add in the red-shouldered hawk, and we have some eight species …

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Nature

Enjoy Hiking the Improved Trails in the Laurel Highlands

by Thomas Saunders

People in Western Pennsylvania are fortunate to have the beautiful Laurel Highlands nearby as a destination for hiking, fishing, hunting, boating and all kinds of exploring. One of the many great places in the Laurel Highlands to escape and explore is Bear Run Nature Reserve, a 5,100-acre natural area owned and managed by the Western …

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Sports Sports & Outdoors

How Baseball Saved My Life

by Ray Werner

He dove into a garbage dump exploding with flies to avoid shrapnel from a Commie mortar bomb, lobbed just over the hill in North Korea. Diving into that dump may have saved his life. But what really saved his life was diving after a long fly ball and making an impossible catch. Well, not impossible …

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Birds

The Fledgling Wren that Wouldn’t Budge

by Daryln Brewer Hoffstot

What must it feel like for a baby bird to fledge? To take a leap (of faith?) and fly for the first time? I couldn’t help but wonder one warm day when I watched a clutch of birds fly off our front porch. I feared, however, that if I wrote about birds’ feelings, I’d be …

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Sports & Outdoors

Bill Virdon: He Made Everything Look Easy

by Richard “Pete” Peterson

In the spring of 1956, I was a senior at Pittsburgh’s South High and the starting center fielder for the school baseball team. For aspiring high school center fielders, the decade of the 1950s was a great time to be playing baseball and dreaming of a big league career. In the National League, there were …

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Nature Sports & Outdoors

Stewards of the Stream

by Deborah Weisberg

Monty Murty casts a tiny fly — a Parachute Adams — from his bamboo rod to the surface of a stream in Linn Run State Park, instantly tempting a wild brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis) to bite. He brings the feisty fish to hand, pausing to admire its vibrant, speckled skin before removing the barbless hook …

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Birds Sports & Outdoors

A Lesser-Known Pittsburgh Raptor: the American Kestrel

by David Liebmann

As far as shopping plazas go, the Waterworks Mall in Fox Chapel is pretty typical. A Five Guys and a Chipotle. Party City. A Barnes & Noble that still carries… books! A Giant Eagle, the kind that sells groceries, not the feathered kind that have begun to nest again just up the river in Harmarville. …

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Nature

Exploring the Islands

by Thomas Saunders

One way to see Pennsylvania’s natural landscapes is to paddle a canoe or kayak down its rivers and streams. Many of our regional lakes, creeks and rivers provide scenic views, wildlife habitat and remote experiences along their forested banks. Quietly passing closely along a stream shoreline and depending on the time of year, paddlers may …

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Sports & Outdoors

The Pittsburgh Dodgers: In the Wake of Jackie Robinson

by Richard “Pete” Peterson

My memory of going to my first Pittsburgh Pirates game with my father is so vivid that a number of years ago, on a visit to the Baseball Hall of Fame, I asked Tim Wiles, the Director of Research at the National Hall of Fame Library in Cooperstown, if he could find the box score …

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Nature

The Perch

by Kate Benz

I have found a perch. It’s at the top of a rocky, rutted trail that shoots up a 70-degree angle from terra firma. Today’s destination: closer to the clouds. I have a book, The Genius of Birds, an old, wooden folding chair that functions as a plant stand in our living room, and a bottle …

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Nature

Making the Cut

by Kate Benz

I need to get the chains from our chainsaws resharpened, but there’s a line at Lloyd’s counter. June is standing in front of me, a gas-powered, STIHL MS 251 CB-E with the 20” bar in her hand. June is 80 years old. Thin as a rail. Her back curves like an S, she kinda leans …

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Nature

Pittsburgh’s Urban Forests

by Thomas Saunders

Pittsburgh is widely regarded as one of the most beautiful cities in the world — a beautiful skyline, stunning geography, a city set at the confluence of two rivers that form a third. And this is reinforced by its being such a green city — a city of large parks and of wonderful green spaces …

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Sports

1972: Triumph and Tragedy for Pittsburgh Sports Fans

by Richard “Pete” Peterson

The new decade had started off well for Pittsburgh sports fans. In January 1970, the Steelers used the top pick in the NFL draft to select Terry Bradshaw, a strong-armed quarterback from Louisiana Tech. Drawing comparisons to the comic strip character Ozark Ike, he looked to have the talent to lead the Same-Old-Steelers, after decades …

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Nature

Nettle: The Weed that Stings

by Daryln Brewer Hoffstot

What is a weed? A plant in the wrong place is a common definition, or as Ralph Waldo Emerson said: “a plant whose virtues we haven’t yet discovered.” But nettles — weeds to most of us — have virtues long discovered. Samuel Pepys wrote in his diary of eating very good nettle porridge. In Aesop’s …

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Birds

Darken Our Skies to Help the Birds

by David Liebmann

Who doesn’t love the sparkle of the Downtown skyline when cheering on the Pirates at PNC Park? I’ve sat marveling at the view across the water as the Bucs warm up and the stadium lights begin to come on. The glass, metal and stone are iconic of the Steel City. Then I imagine birds migrating …

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Nature Sports & Outdoors

A Little Slice of Heaven

by Kate Benz

My chainsaw is little. Like, really little. A baby chainsaw. The love child of gas-powered monsters that guys twice my size use to slice through the trunk of a 200-year pine as if it were a stick of butter. Those blades are as long as my leg. This blade, the one on my chainsaw, is …

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Sports Sports & Outdoors

They Still Come

by John Beale

It’s a harbinger of spring. As sure as robins begin to appear in backyards in Pittsburgh, Pirate baseball’s faithful travel to Bradenton, Florida. But Pirate City in Bradenton is locked down to fans, and the parking lots around LECOM Park are empty. Some still come. They peek through fences for a glimpse of minor league …

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