We lost two major baseball writers with the passing of Rick Wolff, 71, on April 10 and St. Louis Post Dispatch veteran scribe Rick Hummel, 77, on May 20.
Wolff published numerous books on coaching and sports psychology. He collaborated with his son on Harvard Boys: A Father and Son’s Adventures Playing Minor League Baseball (2007). I met him while working for the New Jersey Jewish News on a few occasions when he spoke to kids and parents and various schools and found him to be quite patient, as one must be when dealing with that audience.
I had the pleasure of chatting with Wolff for a Bookshelf Conversation in 2019 for his work on the Macmillan Baseball Encyclopedia.
Here’s his obituary from The New York Times by Daniel E. Slotnick.
Hummel, one of those venerated gentlemen of the press box, published Commish and the Cardinals: The Most Memorable Games, as Covered by Hall of Famer in 2007. “Commish” was Hummel’s nickname which he “earned…early in his career for organizing the Post-Dispatch newsroom’s softball and bowling leagues,” according to the Baseball Hall of Fame when he received the BBWAA Career Excellence Award in 2006.
He also collaborated on Tony LaRussa’s 2012 memoir One Last Strike: Fifty Years in Baseball, Ten and a Half Games Back, and One Final Championship Season.
Here’s Hummel’s obit from the Post-Dispatch by Derrick Goold. I can only imagine what it’s like to do one of these for someone you work with.
is available on Amazon.com,
Comments on this entry are closed.