Mark Patton

5 days ago | noozhawk.com | Mark Patton |Barry Punzal

Overview: The Santa Barbara Foresters have won the National Baseball Congress World Series 10 times since 2006 A baseball game is like true love: It has the potential to last forever. There’s no limit to the number of possible extra innings, just as there’s no end to the ties that bind the human heart. Bill Pintard, the longtime manager of the Santa Barbara Foresters, holds onto those maxims at age 78 as tightly as anyone who ever gripped a baseball.

1 week ago | noozhawk.com | Mark Patton |Barry Punzal

Overview: Dylan Axelrod, the 927th player chosen in the 2007 MLB Draft, pitched in Major League Baseball for both the Chicago White Sox and Cincinnati Reds Little Dylan Axelrod had wished for a miracle. He got one on Sept. 7, 2011, when he made his very improbable pitching debut in Major League Baseball. But it wasn’t the miracle he’d requested. His biggest wish was that his mother, Joni, would win her battle against breast cancer. She died on his 10th birthday in 1995.

2 weeks ago | noozhawk.com | Mark Patton |Barry Punzal

Overview: Ron Anderson’s 10 years in the NBA included the 1988-89 season when he averaged 16.2 points and 5.0 rebounds while playing for the Philadelphia 76ers alongside Charles Barkley Ron Anderson’s first shot in organized basketball took flight like the 1938 plane trip of New York pilot Douglas “Wrong-Way” Corrigan. Corrigan landed in Ireland instead of his intended destination of Long Beach, California.

3 weeks ago | noozhawk.com | Mark Patton |Barry Punzal

I don’t need Sunday’s Hallmark holiday to remember the Mother of all Coaches. She knew how to get the best out of me, which I admit was no easy feat. A penchant for daydreaming often turned my dreams of athletic greatness into a nightmare. The teachers at my high school mostly just shook their heads when I stared out the window instead of at the classroom blackboard. The old-school coaches of the early 1970s, however, gave no such pass. They were more likely to slap the side of my head.

1 month ago | noozhawk.com | Mark Patton |Barry Punzal

Overview: The legacy of the Strand Family has continued through the sands of time with both AVP and Olympic volleyball stars East Beach may be a playground, but twin sisters Kelly and Lisa Strand had to work their way there a half-century ago. They’d follow their older siblings by riding their bikes for six miles, packing nothing but a sack lunch and the hunger to play some beach volleyball.