All You Ever Wanted to Know about Me (and more!)

Hi!  This is me.  I was born in Birmingham, England, lived briefly in Washington, DC, but grew up in Toronto.  My parents, Ray and Ruth, both earned doctorates in sociology and they passed on a love of reading and writing to me and my siblings Corinne, Douglas and Joy.  My father taught at York University for thirty years and has written half a dozen books; he is now retired and lives in Salmon Arm, British Columbia.  My mother was also a prolific author who loved to write about her passion for social justice.  Shortly before her death in 2001, she received Canada’s highest civilian honor, appointment to the Order of Canada, for her devotion to reaching out to the marginalized members of society.

I earned a bachelor’s degree at the University of Toronto, but by then had become obsessed with competitive Scrabble.  At several tournaments I met a player named Chris Reslock and became intrigued by his innovative approach to the game, which challenged all the accepted wisdom.  We became good friends and I ended up moving to East Lansing, Michigan, to play against and learn from Chris and another maverick player, the late Vic Steinman.  We all three drove yellow cabs to pay the bills but put our real energies into mastering Scrabble.  My ideas about strategy and about how to learn words were conventional and unoriginal, and at first I resisted their ideas.  But gradually I saw that they made sense, particularly for the breakneck pace at which I liked to play.  So I became a sponge, adopting most of their ideas and integrating them into my own game.  Eventually I was runner-up to Bob Watson in the 1988 National Scrabble championship and then was fortunate enough to win the 1989 National Scrabble championship in New York City and then the first World Scrabble championship, which was held in London, England, in 1991 and featured players from twenty countries.  My friend and mentor Chris Reslock never won a world championship in Scrabble, but he turned his attention to poker instead and was crowned as the world champion of Seven Card Stud poker.

Soon after the London tournament I retired from competitive Scrabble.  I stayed in East Lansing and earned a master's degree in English at Michigan State and spent several years happily teaching writing and literature courses while working desultorily on a couple of dissertation ideas, the first about the novels of Anthony Trollope and P. G. Wodehouse, and the second about the works of Iris Murdoch.  But gradually academia lost its hold on me and I started to instead become fascinated by the history of baseball.  For six or seven years I spent an increasing amount of my spare time in highly unfocused research on baseball in the 1860s, ’70s and ’80s, as the game made an amazing transition from a boy’s diversion to a professional sport.  The more research I did, the more I came to wish that there were contemporary books that answered some of the questions that fascinated me.  There were some very good works on many subjects, but it was much harder to find the answers to questions like how did baseball catch on in states like Michigan, or to how did they hit upon things we now take for granted, such as nine players per side and the pitcher’s mound and the infield fly rule.

Eventually I decided that nobody else was likely to write the books I wanted to read, so it was up to me to write them.  My first book, Baseball Fever, was a detailed study of baseball in Michigan from the 1840s until 1875.  My second book, the two-volume A Game of Inches, is an attempt to answer, one by one, how and why every element of baseball (from foul territory to the catcher’s mask to free agency and the exploding scoreboard) originated.  The next book, Level Playing Fields, came out of my conviction that groundskeepers were the unsung heroes of baseball history and I did my best to recreate the lives of two pioneers who fought flooding and a host of other obstacles to build beautiful diamonds.  My next book, But Didn't We Have Fun?, returned to the period that I covered in Baseball Fever, but covers the whole country.  My newest book, Catcher: How the Man Behind the Plate Became an American Folk Hero, was published in the spring of 2009.  An updated and revised, one-volume paperback version of A Game of Inches was published in the spring of 2010 (as was a paperback version of But Didn't We Have Fun?, which contains no new material). I’m now hard at work on a couple of new projects.

When time permits, I do book signings and share my passion for baseball history.  Book signings aren’t always glamorous unless you’re a J. K. Rowling or a Stephen King.  One time at a Borders a man came up to me and said, "I don’t know if you’re the person to tell this to but the urinal in the men’s room is overflowing."  Nevertheless, it all seems worthwhile when someone who has read your book comes and is excited to talk to you about it.  I’ve also had the chance to be a part of some amazing events, including the annual meeting of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, the awards ceremonies for the Seymour Medal and CASEY Award, an event in Monroe, Michigan, where Gordie Howe was signing at the next table, and countless others.

I’m particularly thrilled when I get the chance to talk to an audience that already knows about and shares my fascination with the early days of baseball.  Vintage baseball is the name for people who give public displays of how baseball was played in the nineteenth century, much like Civil War reenactors.  They take accuracy very seriously, so I always enjoy exchanging perspectives with them.  I have been a speaker at two annual conventions of the Vintage Base Ball Association, including giving the keynote address at this year’s convention.  On the right is a picture from a talk I gave at a vintage baseball game at the Mary’s City of David in Benton Harbor, Michigan, home of the barnstorming House of David baseball teams.  The gentlemen on the right actually played for the House of David and they have some incredible stories to tell about those long-ago days.

I also have spoken at the past five annual conventions of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR).  SABR members are diehard baseball researchers and historians, so it’s always a challenge to come up with a topic that will be fresh and provocative.  Thus it’s been gratifying to have twice received the award given for the convention's best oral presentation.  At the 2007 convention, which was held in St. Louis in late July, I gave a talk about African-American trailblazer William Buckner, who served as trainer of the Chicago White Sox for over twenty years (1908-1918, 1922-1933) when major league baseball was otherwise segregated.   

And of course I’m happy to do interviews when asked.  Here I am doing one with Morris Eckhouse, former president of SABR:

When I’m not writing and researching baseball books, I live in Haslett -- a suburb of East Lansing -- and work for the Michigan Public Health Institute.  I work on a project that is putting the actual transcripts from lawsuits against the tobacco industry up on the internet, so people can read primary sources about this tragic saga for themselves.  Another great passion is Michigan State sports, particularly the women’s volleyball team.  Big Ten volleyball is amazing to watch -- I started out going to every home game and now travel to many of the road games as well.  I just can’t get enough of the extraordinary athleticism and the thrill of moments like this big win over our archrivals, the University of Michigan (I’m the one with my hands raised, ha ha):

For a few years I wrote and edited the newsletter of the booster club and have been privileged to get to know many of the players quite well.  Playing college sports is a tremendous time commitment and very few people appreciate how much dedication it takes to be a student-athlete.  And, sadly, the occasional revelation of a student-athlete in one of the big revenue sports who cheats the system gets more attention than the thousands of college students who study as they travel to games and sacrifice countless hours in hopes of experiencing a moment like the one shown above.  Below is a picture of me with two former MSU volleyball players and dear friends, Mickey Davis (left) and Kim Schram.  The shirt I’m wearing is a Scrabble shirt that Mickey saw in a store in California and bought as a present for me.  And Kim gave me one of her jerseys when she graduated, which now proudly hangs in my living room.  Have you ever purchased a souvenir of one of your favorite athletes?  If so, then you’ll have some idea of how much I treasure these gifts.

That’s probably more than enough about me, but if you want to learn about my favorites in baseball, literature and a variety of other activities, click here.