I’m just putting the finishing touches on my next story and illustration – a new look at Walt Malmquist’s 1913 Nebraska State League season. Who the heck is Malmquist and why should you care about his season in an obscure and defunct bush league? Well, for more than a century Walt Malmquist’s .477 has been touted as the highest recorded single-season batting average in professional baseball. Problem is, Walt Malmquist didn’t hit .477. […]
It was the week before Christmas, 1919.
Three men were cruising the neighborhood looking for a Caddy. It was, as the stockier one of the three had proclaimed earlier that evening, a “good night for stealing autos.” […]
I’ve been working on a new project lately, and it’s just about out of the prototype stage and into production. […]
Just about 98 years ago today, a tall, lanky nineteen-year-old stepped onto the train platform at Baltimore’s Camden Station. The kid’s name was Robert Groves, though everyone back home in Lonaconing, Maryland called him Bob, and here was in Charm City to join the Baltimore Orioles. […]
In the spring of 1922 a strapping young man stepped off the Manhattan train and into the streets of Morristown, New Jersey. The city-slicker shouldered his bag of baseball equipment and headed to Collinsville Oval where he was hired to play for the local ball club. In the scorecard he would be called “Lou Long” – in reality he was Lou Gehrig, and for the second summer in a row he was violating college rules by playing ball for money… […]
In the five and a half decades after he retired in 1942, Joe Hauser was the go-to man for “what if”, “hard-luck” and “where is he now” baseball stories. Hauser’s career stretched from the Deadball Era of Ty Cobb through the Roarin’ Twenties of Babe Ruth and on into the hardscrabble Depression Era 1930’s. That he lived to be 98 years old made him one of the most interviewed ballplayers and a direct and priceless link back to the game’s Golden Age. […]