His name might not be as familiar as David Halberstam or Roger Angell or Lawrence Ritter, but in the baseball book world, Hollander was an annual companion. He produced a staple of fans’ libraries
From the obituary in today’s New York Times:
a journeyman journalist who rebounded from the merger of his newspaper in the mid-1960s by becoming what Sports Illustrated called “the unofficial king of sports paperbacks” — particularly a once wildly popular series of encyclopedic yearbooks — died on Friday in a nursing home in Manhattan. He was 91.
As the obit points out, Hollander compiled these books all before the popularity of the internet, as the subject of this Times’ piece from last August.
I have several of Hollander’s baseball titles in the attic. Along with Who’s Who in Baseball, Street & Smith, and the Baseball Digest March (Rookies) and April (Stats and rosters) issues, his incarnations Handbooks were a harbinger of a new and fun-filled season.
It’s a pity that they don’t make ’em like that anymore. His importance to sports culture is evidenced by this lengthy tribute in the Times.
is available on Amazon.com,
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