| Baseball is finally upon us, which means that so too are baseball books. And oh do we have baseball books in store for you this season. From umpires to Ohtani, baseball’s golden age to its steroid era, the Pandemic Baseball Book Club roster is stocked for 2022 (and growing).
The timing of this season’s inaugural newsletter is fortuitous, because tomorrow is publication day for four of our University of Nebraska titles: Stolen Dreams by Chris Lamb, Stumbling Around the Bases by Andy McCue; Baseball Rebels by Peter Drier and Rob Elias, and Red Barber by James Walker and Judith Hiltner.
To commemorate the event, our inaugural Q&A features two of said authors, Walker and Hiltner, discussing their new book in fascinating details.
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ASK AN AUTHOR
James Walker and Judith Hiltner
Red Barber: The Life and Legacy of a Broadcasting Legend (University of Nebraska, April 1, 2022)
What’s your book about?
It traces the development and career of the announcer who did the most to professionalize the job of sport broadcasting. Vin Scully is frequently identified as Barber’s most famous protégé, though we also document the influence he had on the likes of Curt Gowdy, Ernie Harwell, Jerry Coleman, Al Michaels, Bob Costas, Chris Berman and even Phil Rizzuto. Our book offers the first full biography of a significant voice of the twentieth century.
Barber continued to inform public audiences long after he left the broadcast booth. In 1966, after a forced retirement from his 33-year announcing career, Barber reinvented himself as a writer, producing six books and more than 1,000 newspaper and magazine articles—many of them shedding the objectivity he demanded as a broadcaster to address important issues like the exploitation of college athletes, the futility of various military engagements and his fears about mass media’s divorce from civic responsibility. In his 70s, Barber regained a national broadcast platform on NPR’s Morning Edition as the wise old sage whom Bob Edwards visited every Friday. Arguably, Red was more beloved at the end of his life than at any other time.
Why this book? Why now?
No one had written a comprehensive biography of Barber’s life, even though barely tapped boxes upon boxes at the University of Florida contain fascinating archives documenting the highs and lows of his public broadcasting career. These archives supported our conviction that Barber’s story—a boy of modest means shaped by small-town life and values in the Deep South evolving into a beloved figure in Brooklyn—would make for a compelling biography. After Branch Rickey told Barber of his plan to integrate the Dodgers, Red—who as a high school student in Florida began his performing career in blackface, in a minstrel show—told his wife that he would have to quit his job. We document the soul-searching he conducted about his engrained racism, and how he ultimately became a friend of Jackie and Rachel Robinson, and a supporter of other Black players.
Similarly, Barber’s own daughter coming out as a lesbian in the 1950s forced him to confront his homophobia. Long before the rest of the nation, Barber learned, sometimes painfully, the dynamics of tolerance through the challenges he faced in his personal and professional life.
Barber’s personal evolution speaks to diversity-based tensions that plague our culture today, as does his commitment to the civic use of mass media. Years after leaving Brooklyn, Barber claimed that his favorite baseball broadcasts were the ones where he solicited blood donations for wounded soldiers, a testimony to how deeply he believed in the power of media to foster a socially engaged citizenry. Red was so transformed that for 20 years he served as a lay reader in the Episcopal Church, delivering original sermons. He consistently employed sports metaphors to symbolize his favorite lessons.
Red’s personal story dramatizes the strains that single-minded professional ambition imposes upon family life, personal health and psychic well-being, a story with resonance for many readers today.
What’s one noteworthy thing you learned doing research?
Something we were completely unaware of when we entered this project was Barber’s relationship with his only child, Sarah. Sarah was raised as a “proper” young woman, with all the privileges enjoyed by children in upwardly mobile New York families of the 1940s and 50s. During her college years, it became clear that her sexual orientation would prevent her from following the path so carefully constructed by her parents. Sarah is deceased, but interviews with her friends revealed that when she came out, her parents persuaded her to undergo a strenuous treatment they hoped would “cure” her from her “disorder.” The family’s navigation of this conflict, including Red’s evolving understanding of social justice and public service, seems to have triggered Sarah’s own distinguished career of social and civic activism, and constitutes one of Barber’s most important legacies—one that hasn’t been examined in depth before now.
How was it for a married couple to work with each other like this?
Perhaps our best story about working together is how we decided to begin this project in the first place. It started at the shop across the street from our home in Chicago, where we discovered a book about what to do in retirement, including a list of stimulating activities to absorb the retiree’s newfound free time. Having both recently retired, we independently ranked each activity. Surprisingly, the exercise revealed that we both wanted to do something we’d never talked about during the course of our then-30-year marriage: write a biography. Through Jim’s work on the history of baseball on the radio, he knew that no comprehensive biography of Red Barber had ever been published. He also knew about the University of Florida’s virtually untapped collection of Barber’s papers. So we began to think about this project as something to do together. It’s really enriched our retirement years.
What surprised you?
We were not sure at first if we would remain interested enough in Barber to research and write about his entire life. Did the world need another bio of a dead white male? What if we were not inspired to stick with him? The more we began to learn about Barber, though, the more interesting he became. We were struck by the stamina he exhibited when experiencing crippling setbacks in his health—a loss of his voice that threatened to end his career, the complete loss of hearing in one ear and partial loss in the other, the removal of three-quarters of his stomach due to recurring ulcers, and heart problems and clots in his leg among other health crises—all before he was 60.
Who had the biggest influence on this book?
Barber himself, because he wrote and talked so often about his life and his work. In 1968, he published his own protracted memoir, “Rhubarb in the Catbird Seat,” with Robert Creamer. Just as important was Red’s wife, Lylah, who published her own memoir in the 1980s. Through her eyes we get to see Red not only as a rising star in the world of broadcasting but as a husband and a father. These two primary texts supplied us with a balance of perspective, which is difficult to find in the biographies of famous men.
How long did the book take?
We began working on it in 2017, and completed our research just before the pandemic hit in 2020, so we were able to focus solely on writing and revising during 2020 and 2021.
What’s the most memorable interview you conducted?
One of our primary challenges was that most of the people who worked with Barber are long gone. One extremely important exception was Tom Villante, the producer of Barber’s Brooklyn Dodgers telecasts. His insights into Barber—his strengths and limitations on the job—were rare, sharp, insightful and beautifully articulated. It was he who told us that when the microphone was turned off, Barber “was someone else entirely,” returning to his regular quiet and somewhat detached personality.
Was there anything you felt was extremely difficult to cut?
Steve Gietschier, former archivist for The Sporting News, is the self-sacrificing saint who volunteered to read our entire bloated first revised draft, and who told us that we had fallen too much in love with our sources. He was correct. We needed to discriminate much more scrupulously about information. This wisdom, as well as his specific suggestions for cutting, resulted in a near 25-percent reduction in pages.
In that vein, one of our most important interviews was with Red’s niece, E.V.E. Joy, the only close family member alive who knew Red. She told us many stories about Red’s father, his brother Billy and her own mother, Virginia. While the tales were entertaining, we ended up cutting them because our book was simply too long. One story in particular illustrated the puckish wit of Red’s father. Bill Barber took his niece to visit Mount Vernon and apparently decided to have some fun with their docent. With a straight face, Barber’s father claimed that he had heard the Washington property was on the market, and was shocked how anybody could try to sell a piece of real estate with no indoor plumbing or bathrooms.
If you’ve written other books, how did this process differ?
Judith has done biographical work on Phillip Freneau, known as “the poet of the American Revolution,” and on Deborah Sampson, a celebrated woman who disguised herself as a man to fight in the Revolutionary War. Jim wrote eight brief biographies of seminal announcers for his history of baseball on the radio. This was our first full-length biography, with a wider scope of research than most of the academic studies we’ve undertaken. When you do a biography, you take responsibility for the story of that person’s life. In the case of Red Barber, it’s a life that meant a lot to a lot of people.
Buy Red Barber here.
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NOW UP AT PBBCLUB.COM
Whispers of the Gods: Tales from Baseball’s Golden Age, Told by the Men Who Played It
Peter Golenbock is as close to a baseball literary institution as exists today. With some 60 books, many of which were best-sellers, he’s back, digging into his archives for a collection of interviews with ballplayers from times past, in the tradition of The Glory of Their Times. From guys like Ted Williams and Stan Musial to little-known pitchers and even a clubhouse man, this collection will bring you back to a different age. In conversation with Jason Turbow (They Bled Blue).
Watch it here, or listen to the podcast.
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TWITTER, MAN.
Those of you who are sufficiently wired might have noticed that the PBBC Twitter feed became a lot more lively a few weeks back. That’s thanks to Mitchell Nathanson (Bouton), who got his meaty paws on the controls and took off a-running. Let’s just say that things are better for us in that space than they ever have been. A small sampling:
Most importantly for Mitch was this one, sent late last week, which concerned everybody here at the home office.
Thankfully, the “possible cardiac issue” was just a ripped chest muscle that Mitch says “hurts like hell but it’s better than a heart attack.” Also, he got lots of painkillers, and as such is entirely uncertain if anything he’s tweeted over the last few days is as funny as he thought at the time.
Judge for yourself. And follow!
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WHAT THEY’RE SAYING ABOUT US
Booklist liked Red Barber enough to give it a starred review.
The Seattle Times gave a shout out to Luke Epplin’s Our Team.
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WHERE WE’VE BEEN
Gary Cieradkowski went onto fellow PBBC’er Rob Neyer‘s SABRcast, and also on 21st Century Radio with Dr. Bob Hieronimus.
Andrew Forbes spoke to the Yankees blog Start Spreading the News about The Only Way is the Steady Way. And about Ichiro, of course.
Clayton Trutor (Loserville) was on the Thom Abraham Show at 97.7 ESPN in Huntsville, Alabama; the Paul Finebaum Show on ESPN Radio and the SEC Network; and sat down with All Hawks on Sports Illustrated’s FanNation.
Andy McCue (Stumbling Around the Bases) went on the Good Seats podcast to discuss American League expansion and relocation.
Dan Epstein talked music on the Chusky Boys podcast.
A whole host of PBBC authors participated in the recent NINE conference in Arizona, including keynote speaker Anika Orrock (The Incredible Women of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, pictured below with co-keynoter Jean Fruth). Jason Cannon (Charlie Murphy) and Andy McCue (Stumbling Around the Bases) took part in a session that somehow involved both Ford Frick and the 1974 Padres. And Brad Balukjian (The Wax Pack) was the key draw for lunch on the Milagros patio. He did not pick up the tab.
Erik Sherman discussed Two Sides of Glory in the booth with Joe Castiglione (pictured below) during a Red Sox spring training game. Erik is living his best life.
***WHERE WE’LL BE
April 15: Peter Dreier will be live on “Air Talk with Larry Mantle,” on NPR station KPCC 89.3 in Los Angeles, from 10:40 a.m. to 11 a.m. PST.
April 18: David Krell (1962: Baseball and America in the Time of JFK) will be at Library of the Chathams in Chatham, NJ, to discuss his book. 7 p.m. EST.
April 19: Peter Dreier will be discussing his new books at Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena, via Zoom.
April 25: Peter Dreier will be speaking at Chaucer’s Book Store in Santa Barbara at 6 p.m.
April 27: Peter Dreier and Rob Elias will address the SABR Pacific Coast Chapters at 7 p.m. PST.
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WHAT ELSE WE’RE DOING
Robert Whiting (Tokyo Junkie) launched a Substack about Japan, and baseball, and baseball in Japan.
Peter Drier (Baseball Rebels and Major League Rebels) has been getting after it. He’s the first PBBC representative to write for The Nation, not once (about Curt Flood and labor issues) but twice (about the lockout). He also wrote about LGBTQ+ issues in Salon and NINE.
John Rosengren (Classic Baseball) profiled Mike Schultz, who lost his leg after a snowmobile crash and reinvented himself as a Paralympic gold medalist snowboarder, for GQ.
David Krell (1962) has been working like a madman on the SABR Games Project: June 5, 1966 (feat. Tommy Davis, Wes Parker and Sandy Koufax), June 11, 1959 (Johnny Podres‘ 2-hitter), and April 22, 1903 (New York’s AL debut).
Clayton Trutor (Loserville) wrote about Al McGuire‘s Brookfield Life for MKE Lifestyle Magazine, Knute Rockne and the Four Horsemen for Notre Dame Magazine, and the history behind Atlanta’s World Series win for the University of Nebraska Press blog.
On his blog, Gary Cieradkowski (21: Illustrated Journal of Outsider Baseball Vo. 2) wrote and illustrated the story of Negro League pitcher and civil rights pioneer Doc Sykes.
Dan Schlossberg (The New Baseball Bible) wrote about the lockout settlement for Forbes and the IBWAA.
Dan Epstein (The Captain & Me) wrote a Herbie Mann tribute for the Forward. And guess what’s coming out in paperback on May 3?
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GET SHOPPING
Yeah, baseball was delayed, but it’s here now and if you’re not properly outfitted then you risk your status as the cool kid on the block. Are you willing to take that chance? Of course not. Go get a three-quarter sleeve PBBC shirt, which will not only keep you warm but will make your friends’ eyes spin with envy. Find that and an abundance of other goodies at the PBBC shop. Cool kids forever.
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