Baseball, of course, is a language of its own, speaking to those who for some divine reason or another hear it clearly and understand. Growing up, I always lost myself in the poetry of Jack Buck's play-by-play on KMOX. Occasionally, Dad would score tickets to a Cardinals game at Busch Stadium, setting up memorable road trips from my hometown in Pinckneyville, Illinois, nearly 75 miles from St. Louis. The farms and fields of the Mississippi River bottoms wrapped around the lon

Yeah, yeah. It's May. I sketched these a while back.

The latest installment in my series for Black College Nines features Marvin Freeman, former standout pitcher for Jackson State University and Major League Baseball teams Philadelphia, Atlanta, Colorado and the Chicago White Sox. The baseball talk is enjoyable. But even more interesting to me is the personal story behind the games. I remember watching Marvin Freeman pitch when I was a kid. He was one-dimensional, as were most of the players on TV. Conversations like this one b