The Bookshelf Conversation: Gary Cieradkowski

This is a wonderful age we live in.

A decade ago, I never would have been able to meet someone like Gary Cieradkowski, the artist who created The Infinite Baseball Card set and author of the newly-published The League of Outsider Baseball: An Illustrated History of Baseball’s Forgotten Heroes.

I’ve known Cieradkowski for several years thanks to e-mail. It’s one of those situations where we have never met face to face or even talked prior to this conversation, but I know him for a dedicated fan, marvelous researcher, and darn good at his craft. The information about the players on the backs of the cards are, by necessity, brief, so his book allows him to show off those research and storytelling chops. The fact that he has been able to expand on the original premise of his work is a boon for those who love art, baseball, and discovering things a bit off the wall and I’m glad he’s getting some of the recognition he deserves.