The Wonderful Writings of Donald Honig

Donald Honig is perhaps best known for picking up the mantle of Lawrence Ritter and carrying on the valuable work of preserving the history of the National Pastime through the oral reminiscences of ballplayers. But a closer look at his body of work reveals much more than interviews. In his towering history of baseball, Baseball […]

Remembering Merkle

From the New York Times, March 3, 1956: Fred Merkle, 67, Ball Player, Dies. Giants’ First Baseman’s ‘Boner’ in Failing to Touch 2d Led to Loss of ’08 Pennant. Now, that’s a pretty heavy charge to lay on anyone, that they single-handedly cost their team a championship. (And I don’t have to explain, do I, […]

A Delightful History–“Willie’s Time” by Charles Einstein

In Willie’s Time, Charles Einstein weaves a fine tale from the strands of the stellar career of the ‘Say Hey Kid’ and the fine mesh of society’s changes over a period of twenty-two years. Ingeniously divided into sections representing the five presidencies that came and went during Mays’s career, we see the ballplayer grow from […]

The Glory of Reading The Glory of Their Times

Ask any baseball bibliophile which tomes on the National Pastime he or she would bring to the proverbial desert island, and Lawrence Ritter’s The Glory Of Their Times (Macmillan, 1966) will usually be at or near the top of the list. And deservedly so. In August of 1961, Tyrus Raymond Cobb, The Georgia Peach, Hall […]

“Pennant Race/The Long Season” by Jim Brosnan

Jim Brosnan was a solid pitcher, most effectively in relief, for the Cubs, Cardinals, Reds, and White Sox, concluding his career in 1963 with his brief sojourn in the junior circuit. His best year by  far was in 1961 with the pennant winning Redlegs when he went 10-4 with 16 saves. Brosnan, who passed away […]

“Baseball is a Funny Game” by Joe Garagiola

When Joe Garagiola’s first book, Baseball Is a Funny Game, was published in 1960, an era of the national pastime was coming to an end. A gentle breeze of change had begun wafting over the landscape of baseball in 1953, when the Boston Braves, conceding the Hub’s hegemony to the Red Sox, decamped for Milwaukee […]

“They broke all the records, but we won the game.”

So said Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder Gino Cimoli in the frantic aftermath of one of the most exciting games of ball ever played. The 1960 World Series has long been considered one of the most memorable Fall Classics. However, while it is of course most remembered for Bill Mazeroski’s sayonara home run in the last of […]