An Oral History of Baseball
My soon-to-be-father-in-law has a huge collection of radio programs that he has taped and cataloged over the last two or three decades, and recently he gave me a couple of interesting tapes from the late 80's. They contain a recorded performance of a baseball-themed show put on by the late baseball commissioner
A. Bartlett Giamatti and one of my favorite writers,
Roger Angell. The show, which is about two hours long, consists of readings of baseball essays, stories, and poetry. The work of
John Updike is represented as is that of
Garrison Keillor. I was most interested in an excerpt from a book called
The Glory of Their Times: The Story of Baseball Told By the Men Who Played It, a book that was put together by
Lawrence Ritter, an economics professor at NYU. Ritter also happens to be a baseball fan, and shortly after
Ty Cobb's death in 1961, inspired by the outpouring of myth and legend that occasioned Cobb's passing, Ritter decided to record for posterity an oral history of the early years of professional baseball. Over the next several years Ritter traveled 75,000 miles, crisscrossing the country, tape recorder in hand, seeking out the game's grizzled veterans. The result is a book that is, I am now learning, cherished by aficionados of baseball literature, and since, I suppose, I must consider myself a member of this group, my copy should be arriving via post shortly.
An Addenda
I knew I had forgotten at least one of the books I read last year, and I think I forgot because I didn't actually read it; I
listened to it. Thanks to a friend who gave me a copy,
Positively Fifth Street: Murderers, Cheetahs, and Binion's World Series of Poker by
James McManus was my driving companion for a week or so, which both doubled my reading output and made that much more tolerable the vast amount of time that I, like any Angeleno, must spend in his car.
- C. Max Magee @ 11:48 AM ~
comments: 0 ~ Links to this post
