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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.

3rd September 2023

‘The Russian Bomber’ helps swashbuckling Buccos into semifinals

Gene ‘The Russian Bomber’ Sherman had a triple and a single, as the bottom of the Buccos lineup propelled the team into the semifinals of the LA County Senior Softball League in an 18-15 slugfest victory against the Mudhens.

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.

21st August 2023

Homeless Man Helps Buccos Conquor the Rockies

He almost didn't make the game after he and his wife were forced to flee their home in the Valley. Then in the first inning he was struck in the mouth by a line drive that glanced off his mitt. Still, Mike Novak had four hits from the bottom of the order and a crazy good shoestring catch in the last inning to help the Buccos trounce the Rockies and finish with a winning record in the summer season of the LA County League.

Pittsburgh Bill and the Buccos • 11th August 2023

Close call for Buccos and their third baseman

Greg Waskul, who has a spinal cord injury, was apoplectic after a runner plowed into him at third base. It was a close call for him and the Buccos who lost a nailbiter to the team tied for first place in the LA County League.

30th July 2023

No Guts, No Glory

Media personality Doug McIntyre raced long and hard to catch two flyballs, only to have them clank off his glove. The Buccos lost but not because of that.

15th July 2023

Senior Buccos stay hot as temperatures rise in Valley

The Buccos, after beating the Hollywood Stars 11-6 with a “phenomenal defense”, were bunched in a virtual three-way tie for fourth place in the 14-team league.

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4th July 2023

At midseason, senior Buccos in the thick of it

The midseason managers meeting of the Los Angeles County Senior Softball League features the politics and gamesmanship that often roils amateur sports in America.

21st June 2023

Buccos ‘participate’ in draw. Who are we?

Pittsburgh Bill's Bucco team approaches the midseason point with a winning record - barely. But a blowout loss, followed by a blowout win and then an anemic tie has the manager scratching his head about the team's identity. He turns to the I Ching for advice.

15th June 2023

I got rhythm...in the end

The Buccos flash the leather in two wins. One of the leagues best managers shares his recipe for success in our spotlight interviw.

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4th June 2023

Heartbreaking Loss To Cardiac Kids

I came to the 5:15 pm game that follows right after the 3:45 pm one with a clipboard and an Excel spread sheet showing the Buccos lineup, which I attached to the cyclone fence around our visitors’ dugout using bread loaf ties. No time to say inspiring things to the Buccos ahead of our inaugural game of the spring-summer season of the LA County Senior Softball League!

25th May 2023

The Buccos First Practice

“I’m “Pittsburgh Bill” and we’re the “Buccos!” I declared to the players sitting in a dugout at our first practice ahead of the opening game of the Los Angeles County Senior Softball League in mid-May.

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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!

Photo by Umar Mukhtar on Pexels

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)