Certain individuals find a singular moment in life used to portray them and/or define them, if not basically brand them. In the world of sports, particularly baseball, this practice is raised to a level that is questionable at best, laughable in most instances and blatantly unfair as a rule. The sports media, along with a growing portion of the general public that refuses to form their own opinions, goes to extremes to constantly relive an individual's weak moments. Curiously, they often then close their ridiculing diatribes by mentioning that labeling a particular person is really unfair. In...

In July of 1985, Thomas Porky McDonald arrived in Brooklyn to work for the New York City Transit Authority. For two decades, he surveyed the grounds, the air and the heartbeat of what he would come to consider his second home. More than anything though, he found the writer and poet within himself while navigating Brooklyn, and that translated into short stories, historical narratives and the poetry that defines the Irishman who showed up one day on the "G" train from nearby Queens. Dem Poems: The Brooklyn Collection is a celebration of McDonald's 20 years spent as a Brooklyn regular, where...

In the area of ballpark hopping, there have been a number of accounts written, recorded or talked about in recent times, sometimes for a cause or others just as a gimmick. Through "Poet in the Grandstand," poet and writer Thomas Porky McDonald gives us a most unique twist on a preoccupation which has grown in the past few decades, in the wake of the closings of classic old yards and the birth of the more entertainment and nostalgia driven open-air parks. From his first trip in 1990, to the fabled Comiskey Park of Shoeless Joe Jackson, Bill Veeck and the Go-Go Sox, on through to the 2010...