* Now hear this: Gabriel Schechter

Gabriel Schechter has, in my estimation (and his), the dream job. Working at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown as a researcher in the library, the chance to be surrounded by the game in a small-town setting, a Norman Rockwell experience, as he put it in our recent conversation for The Bookshelf.

Schechter recently published This Bad Day in Yankees History, a perpetual calendar of sorts, that will no doubt provide hours of bliss for those who aren’t fans of the Bronx Bombers. In fact, on this very day, Schechter is at Fenway Park, where the Mets are taking on the Sawx. Who could ask for a better situation?

In addition to Bad Day, Schechter is the author of Unhittable: Baseball’s Greatest Pitching Seasons and Victory Faust: The Rube Who Saved McGraw’s Giants, both by his own company, Charles April Publications (named after his late cat). He also wrote the captions for Neil Leifer‘s excellent collection of photographs, Ballet in the Dirt: The Golden Age of Baseball.

The author spent a few minutes with The Bookshelf discussing the laborious process of finding the best items in the long history of the Yankees franchise to depict the true wretchedness of the organization. He doesn’t just report them, but adds his own commentary to emphasis his points. (To be fair, Schechter does have a soft spot for a few individual players.)