What's in Dave's Head

Back when I was in college I spent my summers away from home—in Annapolis, in Chestertown and one summer in Albemarle County, Virginia on a farm where my cousin Donna and her husband at the time, Mitch, lived.  He was the farm manager. The farm, Cobham Park Farm, was a 1,600-acre tract.  It produced alfalfa, hay and firewood, and there were a couple hundred head of Black Angus cattle.  There were also a couple horses and various other animals and pets. On my one visit to the “big house,” the mansion built in 1856 where the owners, the Peter family, lived, I thought I had seen a deed map dating from the 1600s.  But when I looked online for information for this post, it looks like there are no records prior to 1722.  Starting that year, land patents were claimed.  Land grants were given starting in 1779.  You can see a list of those claiming patents, and for how many acres and quaint descriptions of the locations, at http://www.directlines...

Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig yesterday announced sanctions against 13 more players in the Biogenesis Lab scandal.  Ryan Braun, the Milwaukee Brewers outfielder and 2011 league MVP, was the first player to agree to a deal with the commissioner’s office from the scandal; he accepted a 65-game suspension in late July.  Braun failed a test last year but the results were overturned on a technicality.  Throughout the ordeal he repeatedly denied using banned substances. The players’ names and accounts with the lab, which manufactured and sold a variety of performance enhancing drugs banned by MLB, were leaked by an employee.  Later, the lab’s founder, Anthony Bosch, cut a deal with MLB and provided information that incriminated the lab’s customers. For me, a passionate baseball fan, the scandal represents all that is wrong with the game.  The league’s response, rather than being a triumph for those who want to clean up the game, is a sorry emb...