William World News William F. Yurasko's blog v.14 – Nats, Redskins, Capitals, D.C. life, transportation, not so much Penn State anymore,

The Town of Vienna, Va.’s preeminent historian Mayo Sturdevant Stuntz, aged 97 years, has died. Stuntz was a lifelong resident and co-author of the book “This Was Vienna, Virginia” that was published in the late 1980s. He visited my social studies class and shared with us his memories of the town.
My brother Christopher, who provided [...]

On this day in 1966, the first black umpire made his debut, nearly 19 years to the day after Jackie Robinson made his playing debut. Emmett Ashford umpired third base in the Cleveland Indians vs. Washington Senators Opening Day game at RFK Stadium. Cleveland would defeat Washington, 5-2 before 44,468. Boxscore – Baseball Reference. D.C. [...]

Thirty years ago today, the Washington Federals and the United State Football League debuted. I was pretty young, so I don’t remember too many specifics other than one of my older neighbors had his birthday party at a game and another one was still using a Federals key chain a decade later. I also remember [...]

Today was the 75th anniversary of the Washington Redskins first NFL Championship which concluded their first season in D.C. As always, Dan Steinberg looked back at how The Post covered it on DC Sports Bog. Here is the lede:
“In a wild, frenzied battle for points on the frozen turf of Wrigley Field, the deft arm [...]

GREAT FALLS, Va. — While it had occurred to me that the design of Old Dominion Drive was atypical for Northern Virginia roads, I had not thought about it enough to hypothesize that it was actually railroad-grade. A visit to Great Falls Park this past weekend enlightened me to that and it all made sense.

The [...]

Launched in January, Ghosts of DC quickly became a must-read local blog. I recently asked the creator of Ghosts of DC, Tom, about why he is motivated to share the history of Washington and its surroundings, how he does it and of course, about the patron saint/badass of his blog, Officer Sprinkle.
WFY: You mention in [...]

Photo by roger4336 on flickr
I stumbled on a great flickr group recently, Arlington, VA before 1990. I didn’t spend a lot of time in Arlington before 1990 (or even 2000 for that matter), but I still recognized a number of things like the old Putt-Putt in Ballston which I went to once, not too mention [...]

Last night was the 30th anniversary of 75 year old Luke Appling hitting a home run off Warren Spahn in the 1982 Cracker Jack Old Timer’s Baseball game. I was hoping to embed the video of it — there used to be a pretty good clip on youtube, but it’s gone. This ESPN retrospective video [...]

Bryce Harper Invited to Become Volunteer Firefighter in Arlington – ARL Now
In a recent Q&A on the MLBlogsNetwork Curly W Live, Bryce Harper mentioned that if he wasn’t a baseball player he would probably be a firefighter and elaborated that he was “going to get my EMT and do the firefighting thing” in the offseason. [...]

I have one regret from my 2007 trip to San Francisco — I didn’t drop everything and get to the Golden Gate Bridge the day I arrived, when it was sunny. Nevertheless, seeing it from the Wharf at Sunset was breathtaking, as was seeing it up close, driving on it, walking on it on a [...]