The men and women who made up DoDDS Korea during the time I was there were an eclectic group to say the least, but as a group we were among the most talented, diverse, intelligent,...

Sparky Anderson wasn’t just my favorite manager … he was my mom’s favorite manager.

Cope? Adapt? Uh, no. These are military kids. They roll with it. I once asked a new student, ‘See any familiar faces?’ She pointed out various kids and replied, ‘Seattle, Tampa, Okinawa, New Jersey.’ For...

I’m clinging to one last thought: pain is the harbinger of hope. You have to be alive to feel pain. If you are alive, then you have purpose. If you have purpose, then you have...

Always Sami. I was tethered to her somehow. To that scared little girl I’d found on the staircase nearly a year earlier; to the past, when teaching was simpler and I could care about everyday...

America’s Team,” and by the 1990s the Braves were the most dominant team in baseball.

The reality for teachers is we don’t know if we’ve been successful or not. It takes years to see how a kid turns out, and it’s impossible to know what role we’ve played, for better...

There are more good people than bad people, and overall there’s more that’s good in the world than there is that’s bad. We just need to hear about it, we just need to see it.

Baseball really is a glorified game of throw and catch. And if you don’t have guys who throw it really well, you can’t compete for long.

Sometimes are feats aren’t so fabulous, they’re just dubious—but either way, they’re fun to talk about.

Some people have a heart to do evil and they don’t care if you’re Muslim or Christian.

Je parle français.” Indira gave me a weird look. Or a look that said I was weird. Whichever. The point is, I don’t really speak French, but it’s a useful phrase for confusing people you...

It’s hard to describe being an expatriate of sorts to people who’ve never lived overseas, but when you’re an American living in a geographically separated region within a country like Korea, you form bonds with...

He [Ted Williams] was only a 23-year-old kid when he batted .406 in 1941, but then the season ended and our country came under attack at Pearl Harbor—and by 1943 he was a Marine fighter...

Nine equals eight … just ask any math teacher. Well, make that a Tampa-St. Pete area math teacher, one who also likes baseball, and is a diehard Rays fan, and who knows that Joe Maddon...

Farid asked, ‘Do American teachers care about every student?’I thought about a humanities teacher I’d worked with in Korea and more recently a science teacher I’d worked with in Germany. I said, ‘I think most...

I spent half my childhood trying to be like my dad. True for most boys, I think. It turns with adolescence. The last thing I wanted was to be like my dad. It took becoming...

The Delta agent saw my itinerary and said, ‘You’re flying to Jakarta via Atlanta, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur? You must have really pissed off your travel agent.

I’m in my classroom and I’m looking at this girl, but all I can see is my dad on the ground, in front of The Wall, telling the truth, finally—his knees drawn and his chest...

It’s Curt Schilling and his bloody sock staring down the Yankees in the Bronx. It’s Derek Lowe taking the mound the very next night to complete the most improbable comeback in baseball history—and then seven...

Maybe faith really is the answer.

We all lose people. We all have to live in the aftermath. It’s how we move forward that counts, but sometimes we are tethered to something in our past that won’t let us move forward.

Ahead in the distance we could see the main gate, but there was a sea of cars, none moving, people standing, milling around, waiting nervously, perhaps fearfully, as heavily armed MPs and military working dogs...

…the Big Red Machine was exactly that—a freaking machine.