Sports & Outdoors Archives - Pittsburgh Quarterly

2025 Spring A Farm Life

Wild Apples

A summer apple tree in the front yard is a wondrous thing. I can sit on the front porch and watch apples fall to the ground, listen to the “plunk” as they hit the grass, and wildlife come right to me. A squirrel climbs the tree, plucks an apple from a branch and runs away …

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Books Sports

Myron Cope: The Man Behind the Terrible Towel

by Fred Shaw

For a Steelers fan, watching 60 minutes of football at Acrisure Stadium without a sea of Terrible Towels is hard to imagine. In the mythology surrounding Pittsburgh’s most popular sports franchise, a playoff game against the Baltimore Colts at Three Rivers Stadium on December 27, 1975, marked the first appearance of the “gimmick” that would …

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Nature

Magnificence Along the Clarion

by Thomas Saunders

A beautiful place to hike and explore in northwest Pennsylvania is Dutch Hill Forest, along the Clarion River in Heath Township, Jefferson County. The Western Pennsylvania Conservancy has protected more than 32,000 acres along the Clarion River, which was highly polluted decades ago but is now largely restored and a federally designated Wild and Scenic …

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Sports & Outdoors

A Skiing Reverie

by Susan Fleming Morgans

When life events overwhelm me — family health issues, major expenses, needless arguments — I dream about skiing. For me, there is no better escape than soaring down a slope with nothing on my mind other than my next rhythmic turn. Skiing is great therapy, even in a dream. But I’ll probably never ski again. …

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Sports

Making It Happen

by Charlie Stewart

Mention the game of squash and it will likely conjure a traditional image of men in whites, whacking a hard, hollow ball off the walls of an enclosed court in the rarefied confines of a private club, prep school or eastern college. The indoor game with the long-necked racquet and dark rubber ball hasn’t always …

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Sports

How Baseball Brings Us Together

by Richard “Pete” Peterson

A. G. Spalding once claimed that baseball likely began with the simple act of a boy tossing a ball into the air. The poet Donald Hall, who wrote a book about Pirates maverick pitcher Dock Ellis saw this simple act evolving into “sons playing catch with fathers” and eventually into a game “on a diamond …

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Nature

An Ode on Snow Days

by Daryln Brewer Hoffstot

When I was young, one of the best two-word combinations in the English language was snow day! When I didn’t have to go to school and could stay in my pajamas and watch tv. When I coaxed myself into bulky pants, jackets, socks and boots—way before fleece, down, and waterproof fabric—and my feet got sopped …

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Nature

Explore a Winter Hike on the Laurel Highlands Hiking Trail

by Thomas Saunders

One of our region’s great hikes is the Laurel Highlands Hiking Trail. It runs from the town of Ohiopyle on its southern end 70 miles northward to a vista above the Conemaugh River at its northern terminus. Used by through- and day-hikers and runners, it’s one of Pennsylvania’s most beautiful trails. With steep grade changes, …

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Birds Sports & Outdoors

An Owl for All Seasons

by David Liebmann

I do not recommend birding while driving. Looking up into the sky to determine whether the soaring shape high above is an eagle or just a turkey vulture is generally unsafe. True, I have never veered off the road or crossed into oncoming traffic, but I could have. Hurtling down the highway, I’ve seen red-tailed …

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Education Nature People Pittsburgh Tomorrow

A Pilot Program Flies

by Douglas Heuck

Early this year, we wrote letters to the principals of all 88 high schools in Allegheny County asking them to nominate one sophomore and one junior (one boy, one girl) to the initial congress for the Allegheny Conservation Corps, an initiative for high school students to create community projects. The idea was threefold: physically improve …

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Nature Sports & Outdoors

Learning To Be A Deer Hunter

by Joe Grant

As the beautiful foliage and cooler weather approach Pennsylvania, thousands of deer hunters anticipate the time-honored tradition of Whitetail deer hunting. From late September to mid-January, hunters prepare for their pilgrimage to the forests and fields across Penn’s Woods in hopes of taking one of these magnificent creatures. Pennsylvania has 850,000 deer hunters, the most …

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Nature

Pittsburgh’s Future as a Climate Haven

by Dominique Escandon Valverde

If you walked the streets of Pittsburgh’s Strip District in 1924 at noon, you may have needed a lamp to cut through the thick air pollution of the city once described as “hell with the lid off.” With air twice as polluted as bad air days in modern Beijing, Pittsburgh represented the worst of the …

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Birds

A Tiny Airborne Hunter

by David Liebmann

You might remember an owl on a Pennsylvania license plate from the 1990s. It was one of those plates for which you pay a little extra to support conservation efforts, featuring an owl with bright yellow eyes, an intense little bird with a bit of a scowl that said, “Who are you looking at?” This …

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Nature

Carpenter Bees

by Daryln Brewer Hoffstot

We raised our babies in this old farmhouse, wrapped them in swaddling clothes like little cocoons, and protected them as best as we could. We renovated parts of the house, added a bathroom and knocked through a kitchen wall to create more space for a growing family. We fed our children, taught them what we …

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Nature

Tryon-Weber Woods

by Thomas Saunders

There’s a great place to go for an autumn road trip where you can take a deep-forest hike and feel the awe of old forest trees. About 90 miles north of Pittsburgh in western Crawford County, the 100-acre Tryon-Weber Woods area originally was protected by the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy in 1976 and enlarged in 2017. …

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Birds

Take a Trip, Find a Puffin

by David Liebmann

Summer in Pittsburgh is pretty fine, but it’s good to explore farther afield now and again. That’s how I came to find myself on a bobbing boat beyond the breakwater of New Harbor, Maine. We were cruising out to look for Atlantic Puffins on Eastern Egg Rock, a five-mile trip on what were calm seas. …

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Nature

Poison Ivy Flourishes on Carbon Dioxide

by Daryln Brewer Hoffstot

One of my husband’s first tasks when we moved to the farm 36 years ago was to remove poison ivy from the trees. He never used chemicals, just his two (gloved) hands. He came home time and time again with poison ivy pustules on his wrists that leaked liquid for three weeks. “A fool’s errand,” …

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Sports

Seeing Reds: The Pirates’ 1970s Rivals

by Richard “Pete” Peterson

Early in the 1974 season, with the Pirates struggling after finishing April at 6-12, Dock Ellis took the mound against the Cincinnati Reds. In spring training, Ellis vowed that he would hit the first five Reds batters because the Pirates had lost their aggressiveness and self-respect ever since their painful loss to the Reds in …

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Nature

What Was that White Bird?

by Daryln Brewer Hoffstot

The first time I saw the white bird flying overhead, I thought I’d gone slightly mad because large white birds are not common in the Ligonier Valley. I was riding my bike on a rural road between two cow fields, a herd of black-angus eyeing me warily. I pedaled slowly, watching what I presumed was …

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Birds

TVs in the Sky

by David Liebmann

When John James Audubon went about portraying the biggest American birds, he took advantage of the double elephant paper that made his enterprise unique. At 26 by 39 inches, the huge sheets lent themselves to nearly full-scale images of our largest avifauna. Take his “Turkey Buzzard,” for example, an old name for the turkey vulture. …

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Sports

Pittsburgh Hopes to Finally Get a Team Worthy of its Ballpark

by Brian O'Neill

Editor’s note: This piece was written and originally published prior to the Pirates getting off to the second-best start of the 30 Major League Baseball teams. Sixteen. That’s how many teams have won the World Series since PNC Park opened in 2001. Another five have gotten to the big autumn show and lost. That’s 21 …

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Sports

Baseball’s First Great Jewish Star

by Richard “Pete” Peterson

On April 15, 1947, Hank Greenberg played in his first game in a Pittsburgh Pirates uniform. He doubled in the only run of the game as the Pirates beat the Chicago Cubs 1-0 at Wrigley Field. A few hours earlier Jackie Robinson had trotted onto the infield at Ebbets Field and integrated baseball. Greenberg, baseball’s first …

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