And . . . she’s outta there. On June 12, Marge Schott, the embattled majority owner of the Cincinnati Reds, was given the heave-ho by baseball’s powers-that-be, forced to relinquish day-to-day control of her ball club through the 1998 season. In an ongoing effort to polish Major League Baseball’s tarnished veneer, the august guardians of...

We stopped for gas and food in Chamberlain, perched on a bluff above the grand Missouri River. A clear late summer Thursday evening in South Dakota, and we were halfway to the Black Hills, where on Saturday the 55th annual Sturgis Rally and Races—one of the world’s largest congregations of Harley Davidson aficionados—would kick off....