My Book of Changes

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9th November 2024

INTERVIEW: The ineffable mystery of how the I Ching works

Cyrille Javary is the founding president of the Djohi Center in Paris, and author of the 1997 book "Understanding the I Ching".

4th May 2024

Summoning Synchronicity

I participated in what turned out to be a controversial experiment ” using one of the world’s most ancient texts, the I Ching or “Book of Changes.”

19th November 2024

Must have been the Supermoon

Something in the air? (Shout-out to Thunderclap Newman)The hits just kept on coming in senior softball action

11th November 2024

The ‘one-pitch save’

More last inning drama, great catches and knuckled-headedness in last week's LA senior softball league.

22nd October 2024

Dodgers flip D script to squeak by Junkies

Bases loaded, two outs in the last inning was a featured scenario this week around the senior softball league.

15th October 2024

UPDATED-Junkies walk all over ‘Crackers, then stagger to a win

UPDATES with other games. Opening day of the Fall 2024 season saw the Junkies in danger of nodding off before a dramatic finish.

23rd September 2024

Ohdahorra drub Red Sox in ‘a miracle’

The 9th-seeded Ohdahorra lugged a 5-7 record into the playoffs before rolling like a juggernaut to the championship of the LA senior softball league.

21st September 2024

CORRECTED-Mike Montez slides off into (Florida) sunset with 'The Catch'

The season-ending All-Star games in the LA senior softball league was high energy and color balanced. Orange beat Blue in the premier game and Blue beat Orange in the second game. Defense was key in both games.

1st April 2024

Buccos stumble to 'Killa-bruisers' in senior softball semis

My 70-something body, responding to the conflicting voices in my head, glitched and crumpled to the ground by second base, badly scraping a knee.

26th March 2024

No Mercy! Buccos humble Dukes in quarterfinals

Was the Dukes manager trying to send a messaage?

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18th March 2024

Earth, wind and fire, oh my! Buccos edge Dodgers in elemental battle

“I stood with both feet facing the pitcher, pulled my cap brim down against the sun and just swung and hoped,” Eric said.

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4th March 2024

Buccos snatch defeat from jaws of victory

Errors littered the field like leaves after autumn winds. Except not as pretty.

19th February 2024

In a game of inches, Buccos edge Yanks by a foot

An All-Star shortstop races home for the tying run in the last inning with another All-Star shortstop trying to throw him out.

21st January 2024

Ernie brings the electricity as late Buccos rally jolt the Smoke

Manager Bill Tarrant and other voices in the dugout started chanting “our breakout inning” going into the 6th. Tarrant waved an imaginary pirate sword around (the plastic Halloween one was missing from the dugout), which few of his teammates seemed to notice

2nd January 2024

Fathers and sons, a baseball heritage in Senior Softball

Fathers and sons bonding over baseball is a tradition as old as the sport itself. Sy and Eric Badener are one of three extraordinary father-son duos in the Los Angeles County Senior Softball League.

19th December 2023

Out of Order! Buccos trounce Mudhens despite brain fart

Bucco pitcher Bill Tarrant had left his on-deck position after what he thought was the third out, retreating to the dugout to fetch his glove and pitching mask, only to see with some consternation Raul Aguilar at the plate.

4th December 2023

A Rejuvenated David Aguilera walks it off again for Buccos

“For the first time ever, I raised my hands over my head,” said David, a former Cal State Fullerton outfielder who had coached high school sports for decades before his retirement.

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13th November 2023

Buccos run down unlucky Stars

Santa Ana winds blasting off the desert, dubbed the "hot breath of Satan" by Spanish missionaries, challenged hitters and pitchers at senior softball league games in the Sepulveda Basin

3rd November 2023

Bottoms up! Buccos upend Red Sox behind Big Mark

The Red Sox held a fragile 9-8 lead going into the bottom of the 4th in a nip-and-tuck battle “and then boom! You put the pedal to the metal,” Sox manager Ben Franco told me afterward. The lopsided final score was an outlier in the league this season which has seen an unusual number of ties and one-run games.

27th October 2023

Parity On! Buccos-Junkies Junkies one of three League games ending in ties. A trend?

The three tie games with less than a quarter of the season played equal the three tie games for all of last season in the LA County Senior Softball League. Five others were one-run games.

5th October 2023

High on life after traumatic accident, OF helps Buccos beat Spare Parts in 'vengeance' game

Mike Pivarnick is lucky to be alive, let alone playing softball at an elite level.

17th September 2023

Déjà vu: In Championship, Spare Parts Dismantle Buccos 15-6. Again

It's miserable to get butt-kicked in a championship game. Worse than losing miserably is for one to play miserably in the debacle. And worse yet is to miserably manage the game.

12th September 2023

‘How I wanted to go.’ Allan Judkowitz hangs up spikes in cancer battle

A fixture in Los Angeles softball leagues for decades, Allan Judkowitz is hanging up the spikes in his six-year battle with pancreatic cancer.

11th September 2023

Buccos 'razor sharp' in overcoming injury to skipper and limping to championship game

The game was a nail-biter, early on with defense dominating. But then an odd turn changed everything: while sprinting to second, “Pittsburgh Bill” collapsed in a heap with what appeared to be a season-ending injury.

3rd September 2023

‘The Russian Bomber’ helps swashbuckling Buccos into semifinals

A rookie manager brings a new team to the summer 2023 season of the LA County Senior Softball League. The scheming and gamesmanship. The last hurrah for the lame and ill. The thrills and spills. Herein is a week-by-week narrative focused on my team called the Buccos, evoking my Pittsburgh roots, and more broadly, looking at probably the most popular adult team sport in America.

28th August 2023

Brothers lead Bucco family to win over Dodgers in playoffs

The Aguilar brothers have been playing baseball together all their lives since Little League. The family vibe was a winning formula for the Buccos in the first round of playoffs.

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14th April 2023

Korean players give new meaning to K-pop in Pittsburgh

It was the shot heard ‘round Korea.
Ji-wan Bae, a charismatic rookie infielder for the Pittsburgh Pirates, hit a stunning walk-off three-run homer in the bottom of the 9th inning against the World Series defending champions, the Houston Astros. (Click to open article)

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2nd April 2023

My personal Deejay joins the bot family

I have my own personal deejay, courtesy of Spotify. His name is X. He sounds like Ice T!

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29th March 2023

The Enduring Mystery of MH370

I was a news editor for Reuters in Singapore when the story about the disappearance of MH 370 broke nine years ago. And to say it consumed everyone's attention is like saying Godzilla consumed much of Tokyo on an empty stomach. Richard Quest was hyper-venting so robustly on CNN I thought he would spawn his own mini-me. Click on item for full story. (Photo shows the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur)

Bill Tarrant • 23rd March 2023

Tubby, the fat cat

I never considered myself a cat person until Tubby came into my life at the end of 2019. We always had dogs growing up. My family did have a Siamese for a short while in Pittsburgh in the 1960s. She was alien and antisocial, often perching atop the living room curtains, for the view, I guess. She was expelled from the house after leaping into my father's lap while he was sipping coffee. I used to sneer at all those annoying cat videos on social media, digital therapy for the feline fixated.
• Tu

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23rd March 2023

Crazy, Rich and Asian

When the creators of “Crazy Rich Asians” were shopping the film around Hollywood, one prospective producer suggested they cast a white actor for the lead. That didn’t happen and the romantic comedy, based on the best-selling book by Singapore-American Kevin Kwan became the first all-Asian Hollywood studio movie since “The Joy Luck Club” in 1993, a uniquely Chinese-American tale that would have been impossible to cast otherwise. (Click here for the full post)