From the category archives:

women and baseball

Andrew Forbes is out with a new book: Field Work: On Baseball and Making a Living. If it’s anything like his last book, it will be quite thought-provoking. Another Bookshelf Conversation is in the offing. The New Yorker‘s “Sporting Scene” section takes up the issue of the Yankees’ new torpedo bats. Peter Drier offers this […]

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I have been a poor host. Other than the weekly best-seller list and the (thankfully) occasional “Lest We Forget” posts, I have not done enough to fulfill my self-appointed responsibilities of bringing you the latest news. Maybe that will be one of my resolutions. But we all know how long those last… Anyway… A feature/Q&A […]

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Has it really been that long?

September 13, 2023

A League of Their Own premiered more than 30 years ago. Ahead of my Bookshelf Conversation with Erin Carlson, author of No Crying in Baseball: The Inside Story of A League of Their Own — Big Stars, Dugout Drama, and a Home Run for Hollywood, I found several stories about the film that takes a […]

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Used to be around this time of year you could look forward to the baseball annuals from Street & Smith, Athlon, Lindy’s, and a host of other magazine publishers. Of course, back in the day there were many others put out by the likes of The Sporting News, Major League Baseball, Bill Mazeroski, with Baseball […]

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Lest we forget: Jane Gross

November 14, 2022

The pioneering journalist broke barriers when it came to women entering the locker room. Gross passed away Nov. 9 at the age of 75. In the obituary from The New York Times, Richard Sandomir wrote,” In 2018, when she received an award from the Association for Women in Sports Media, Ms. Gross recalled the indignities she […]

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Just renewed the domain for another year, so to make it worthwhile I guess I should be posting more often, and not just “Lest We Forget.” I don’t seem to have the free time to read as I did when I was working as a journalist, which is kind of weird, considering these days I’m […]

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Welcome to the second installment of the video version of the Conversations. As Yogi Berra might have said, “Thank you, Pandemic, for making this project necessary.” Today I had the privilege of chatting with Anika Orrock, artist and author of The Incredible Women of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. It’s a fascinating, all-encompassing look at […]

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Lest We Forget: Penny Marshall

December 18, 2018

Penny Marshall, the co-star of the popular sitcom Laverne and Shirley and director of the iconic baseball film A League of Their Own, has died at the age of 75. Marshall, who appeared on The Odd Couple as sportswriter Oscar Madison’s long-suffering secretary, Myrna Turner, also directed one episode of the short-lived TV series based on […]

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Fifteen bobbleheads for $300 seems like a bargain. (especially when you can buy them individually for $25 bucks apiece) but when you see that these are figurines from the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, it’s a true find. Teams represented include: Rockford Peaches Chicago Colleens Battle Creek Belles Grand Rapids Chicks Fort Wayne Daisies South […]

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That’s the story from the Hollywood Reporter which reports that Amazon is working on the project. The retail giant/streaming service is developing a TV series based on Penny Marshall’s Tom Hanks and Geena Davis feature, A League of Their Own. Mozart in the Jungle‘s Will Graham and Broad City‘s Abbi Jacobson will co-write and executive produce […]

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I had the enormous good fortune to catch Claire Smith, the newest recipient of the J.G. Taylor Spink Award at the recent Society for American Baseball Research convention. Smith was the first African-American female reporter to cover baseball for a newspaper as a staffer with the Hartford Courant in 1983. She later became a columnist […]

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Life imitates art?

June 30, 2016

Several weeks ago, I posted about Pitch, a new TV show coming to FOX this fall. It’s the story about the first woman player in the Major Leagues. Well the Sonoma Stompers aren’t exactly the Show, but they are a pro outfit. They recently signed two women to their roster. Tomorrow night, Kelsie Whitmore (below, […]

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Since I posted the first of these on a Thursday, which is known on social media as a time of reflection, I thought to make it a regular thing under this rubric. These are kind of fun; it’s like a box of chocolates — you never know what you’re gonna get. (Actually, I never understood […]

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Jessica Mendoza replaced Curt Schilling as the third person in the booth for ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball telecasts and people lost their minds. I can’t believe the misogynistic vitriol over that decision. Sure, the cynical among us might think it was done solely because she was a woman and ESPN anted to expand their audience. […]

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Since I posted the first of these on a Thursday, which is known on social media as a time of reflection, I thought to make it a regular thing under this rubric. These are kind of fun; it’s like a box of chocolates — you never know what you’re gonna get. (Actually, I never understood […]

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It’s always a pleasure to post a review from a friend of the blog. In this case we have Dorothy Mills, baseball historian and author of such books as A Woman’s Work: Writing Baseball History With Harold Seymour; Chasing Baseball: Our Obsession with Its History, Numbers, People and Places; and Drawing Card: A Baseball Novel, […]

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Ain’t misbehavin’

April 24, 2015

“No one to talk with, all by myself…” Didn’t post a Bookshelf Conversation last week, and won’t have one this week either. That’s a shame because I enjoy a good chat with creative people, getting to know what their process is, how they go to this point in their work, etc. As a sneak preview, […]

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In honor of Women’s History Month, I wanted to pay tribute to that demographic of fans and athletes and could think of no one better than Barbara Gregorich to weigh in on the topic. Gregorich is the author of Women at Play: The Story of Women in Baseball (which is included in 501 Baseball Books […]

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Note: Just like Chuck Lorre’s “vanity cards” at the end of The Big Bang Theory, you should read these list stories to their conclusion; the end is always changing, even though the theme is basically the same, finishing up with a self-promotional message. On with the show… Here are the top ten baseball books as […]

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Sadly, this fell under the radar because there was no “official” obituary. Eisen, one of three Jews to play in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, passed away May 11 at the age of 92, coincidentally, her birthday as well I had the honor of interviewing her for the New Jersey Jewish News in 2006. […]

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