Wayback Machine

“Sherman, set the Wayback machine to Will Swartsweirdest old stories.”

If you’ve come this far, enjoy a few from the vault. These come from the sadly defunct publications MinorLeagueNews.com, the esteemed and much missed Far Eastern Economic Review, and the still-ticking Reed College alumni magazine, which published two of the craziest stories I’ve ever written.

Baseball Blows Back Into Brooklyn

That first Brooklyn Cyclones game was a magic night, the air heady with sea breezes and the nostalgia of thousands of old men recalling the Brooklyn Dodgers of their youth. It couldn’t have ended better.

Mongol Invasion – In Central Park!

The Far Eastern Economic Review asked me to write about the fun when Mongolia’s foreign ministry decided to export its equivalent of the Olympics to New York.

Yak Burgers, Nouvelle Style

I reviewed Dunya Restaurant in Lhasa, Tibet, for the Far Eastern Economic Review. It’s still going strong, all these years later!

Ninth-Inning Conviction

The other team wore stripes.

Never a sports powerhouse, Reed College’s baseball team wasn’t picky about its opponents, which included a team of prisoners who took on the college boys inside the walls of the Oregon State Penitentiary. The sidebar at the end ought to be a movie. I’ve never heard anything like it.