Sports Book Reviews

The seasons keep changing and the sports books keep coming. They are focused on all kinds of subjects, approaches, dealing with different sports. Herewith, for your reading, exciting tomes dealing with baseball, football, tennis. Hank Greenberg in 1938 by Ron Kaplan (Sports Publishing, $24.95, 235 pages) is an important book for its subject, its time […]

Remembering Elston Howard

“A man of great gentleness and dignity” –on his Plaque in Monument Park “He deserves credit and where would I be without him?  Phew! He can give me a job in the outfield and he can catch, too.  Good kid, too. He’s good.”—Casey Stengel With all the newspaper headlines today documenting angst and anger and […]

Remembering Red Barber

“Red was perhaps the most literate sports announcer I ever met.” – Vin Scully In my early and middle years of writing sports book, I called on Red Barber to blurb them. He never failed. He along with Mel Allen those long ago summer  nights spun the tales of New York City Baseball and hooked […]

Yankee Monikers and Nicknames

A lot of things are not the way they used to be. And that is especially true in the world of sports. Baseball once held bragging rights to the best and most nicknames. And the Yankees led the pack in that regard. For your edification and pleasure, a sampler of some of the of the […]

Summer of ’41: Joe DiMaggio’s Epic 56-Game Hitting Streak

With all the hype and hoopla surrounding Aaron Judge and with all the comparisons to the stir and accomplishments of the Yankee Clipper, what Joe Di did in 1941 stands at the top of the list. So here is the flashback. The 1941 Yankees were a loaded team. They would win 101 games, the American […]

The Rivalry: Yanks vs Red Sox

Back then, as the story goes, there was a get-together in the woods. A  Red Sox fan, a Cub fan and a Pirate fan were there. They all wondered when their team would make it to the World Series again and decided to call on God for advice. The Cub fan asked first: “When will […]

How Murderers’ Row Shaped Baseball

When Yankee owner Colonel Ruppert’s “Rough Riders,” as some called them in the late 1920s, were not going head to head against their American League competition, they were playing exhibition games in Buffalo, Omaha, Rochester, Columbus, Dayton, Indianapolis… Everyone in the little cities and small towns wanted to catch a glimpse of the Babe, Lou […]

Dog Days at Fenway Park

With the crowds having fun at the hub in Boston, with the team gearing up to go deep this October, with a roster loaded with talent and more on the way, a flashback to Sox in the Sixties is almost like culture shock. September 28th, 1960, Red Sox vs. Orioles.  Overcast, dank, chilly the final […]

Remembering The Yankee Clipper

All the hype and histrionics over Aaron Judge and some of the over-reaching comparisons to Joe DiMaggio trigger the need to go back and re-visit what the Yankee legend was all about. He was born Giuseppe Paolo DiMaggio on November 25, 1914 in Martinez, California, one of nine children of Rosalie and Giuseppe DiMaggio, a crab fisherman father, an […]

Remembering Yogi Berra

“Mr. Berra is a very strange fellow of very remarkable abilities.” –Casey Stengel “Talking to Yogi Berra about baseball, is like talking to Homer about the gods.” – Bart Giamatti The kid who grew up in St. Louis eating banana sandwiches with mustard grew up to be one of the legends of legends of New […]

Remembering Mel Allen

I had the very good fortune in 1990 to visit the legendary Mel Allen at his home in Greenwich, Connecticut. I was there to collect memorabilia for the “Stars of David: Jews in Sports” exhibit that I was the curator and executive producer for at the Klutznik Museum in Washington, D.C. My wife Myrna came […]