BY EDDIE (EDWARD) MICHELS

     Well campers I’m back to the dismay of the gathering multitudes so you might as well just keep reading.  You might actually be informed and possible educated.

     Unless you are a dead baseball fan you might have missed the fact that the Boston Red Sox have hired Bill Buckner as a coach.

     WHOA FANS, he is the team’s hitting coach not fielding.  WHEW!

     Bill should do okay as I saw him work with hitters at Triple-A Syracuse in the early 90’s and he did a decent job.  Heck he won a National League batting title with the Cubbies in the 80’s

     How it’s set in stone that a Canadian is in the writers wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Doubleday Field, Cooperstown NY (RSEN file photo)

    Robert “Bob” Elliot of the Toronto Sun became the first of his country to receive the J. G. Taylor Spink Award which he will presented this coming July in the little upstate New York Hamlet of Cooperstown.

     Bob does come with some baggage though as there is the ever present notebook under his left arm, cell phone in his left ear and can of Diet Coke swinging by the fingers of his right hand.  Without these props I might not recognize the man, but now onto a funny story about the HOF’er.

     About a year ago I was scheduled to meet Bob at the Blue Jays Englebert Complex in Dunedin to shoot a pix or two for an article he was writing about one of the team’s minor leaguers.

     While waiting for Bob to arrive I was talking to the team’s farm director Doug Davis who I had witness getting a number of phone calls on his cell phone.  Doug though always seemed to hang up with a smile.

     It seems that Bob had been driving from St. Pete to Dunedin, updating Doug every five minutes as to his progress.  We Doug started informing me as to the scribe’s progress so that I would be ready for his arrival.

     Well everything went okay that day but it’s humorous to see one take such an interest in keeping someone informed.

     Now in closing I can say one thing and that is when Bob Elliot addresses me as Edward things are okay, anything else I am in trouble, I think.  So far in knowing Bob for 20-plus years it has always been Edward, hopefully there is never any other utterance.

     All I can say in closing to Bob is “Enjoy the ride buddy, enjoy the ride.” So until then…