It was almost exactly a quarter-century ago that I wrote my first column for the Sun-Times: April 2, 1995.
It was a weird one.
My little son, my father-in-law and I went to a spring-training game between the White Sox and Red Sox at old Ed Smith Field in Sarasota, Florida. The weird part was, there were no major-leaguers playing.
The baseball strike was raging, had been for more than a half-year. The 1994 World Series had been canceled.
And on that beautiful spring day, there was no solution in sight.
I wrote that no batters could reach the outfield wall, that we were studying somebody named Pookie Bernstine, that the beer was still nice and cold.