The Baseball Book That Changed My Life Reading this nostalgic book following its 1972 release, I was jealous of its author, Roger Kahn. Why? Because I wish I could have been in his boots writing about those pennant-winning years of the early 1950s Brooklyn Dodgers as he had done for the New York Herald Tribune, then […]

Umpires appropriately prefer to stay out of the limelight. The game is, after all, not about them. They are rarely recognized as they arrive at the ballpark maybe 90 minutes before game time. During an interview with Ted Barrett and his crew during a visit to officiate a series between the Seattle Mariners and Boston […]

Distinctive baseball saloons, which once dotted urban landscapes not far from the cities’ ballparks, have gone the way of telephone booths and bookstores. Some are still around, but they’re falling like dominoes. Baseball saloons during a bygone era were once convenient gathering places not only for fans and the players themselves but also for prominent […]

A lot of batboys have “made good” in life, and no doubt the responsibilities instilled in them during those teen years have been a factor. But Tom Villante, who was the New York Yankees batboy in 1944–45, has had a dazzling career, largely in and around baseball, in the years since. The son of a […]

For the sake of argument, let’s say that Tim Raines never gets elected to the Hall of Fame. Jump forward a century or so to a handy baseball landmark, say the year 2130. Without the stamp of immortality conferred by induction into the Hall of Fame, Tim Raines is completely forgotten. Only scholars of the […]