Classic Baseball: Timeless Tales, Immortal Moments by John Rosengren (review)

Reviewed by: Classic Baseball: Timeless Tales, Immortal Moments by John Rosengren Charles DeMotte John Rosengren. Classic Baseball: Timeless Tales, Immortal Moments. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2022, 149 pp. Cloth, $32.00. There are some books you wish would continue beyond the last chapter. John Rosengren's short anthology Classic Baseball is one of them. A member of the Society for American Baseball Research and a writer on baseball for numerous publications, Rosengren has culled a number of his baseball articles for this book, which is divided into seven chapters with selections dating back two decades, but most of them are of recent origin. Being from Minnesota and consequently a Twins fan from his earliest years, the articles are heavily weighted in that direction, inclusive of some [End Page 124] of his favorite ballplayers. For instance, in the chapter "Personalities," there is a nice piece on Tony Oliva who rose from poverty in Cuba to become a Hall of Fame superstar. His story is reminiscent of that noteworthy film Sugar about the struggles of a young Dominican player trying to adjust to the cultural shocks of living and playing in the United States. Then there is his interview with Harmon Killebrew, who Rosengren never personally met but long admired. There is also the story about Kirby Puckett, a fan hero in the Twin Cities who, before the sixth game of the 1991 World Series, told his team to "jump on my back" and he would carry them (139). Puckett did just that with a home run in extra innings. Another delightful account centers on Williams Astudillo, a five-foot-nine, 225-pound utility player who became something of a cult hero in the Twin Cities. With a clear personal interest in Jewish players, Rosengren devotes two pieces to Hank Greenberg, the subject of his book Hank Greenberg: The Hero of Heroes. The first article centers on Greenberg's return to baseball after the war, and against all odds, helping lead his team to the 1945 pennant and World Series victory over the Chicago Cubs. The other article concerns Greenberg's on and off relationship with Detroit fans in the 1930s during a period of rampant antisemitism and how he won over not only the Jews of Detroit but the general public as well. His last article, taken from Sports Illustrated in September 2015, chronicles the challenging decision by Sandy Koufax not to pitch in the 1965 World Series against the Dodgers, among other occasions, on the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur. Throughout the book, Rosengren's skill as a writer and his ability to relate the personal to the factual are superbly demonstrated. After his father died, Rosengren, in an article published in the Minnesota Magazine, honors his dad's baseball glove and thinks that this may have been a way of "letting me glimpse what it had been like to be him" (110). There is a delightful piece on the revival of vintage baseball and a moving account of a trip he took with his father to Cooperstown, the mecca of baseball. The selections in this book are intended to be inclusive with an account of why the New York Yankees took so long to sign a Black player (Elston Howard) and the hiring of Frank Robinson to manage the Cleveland Indians in 1975. His piece about the unlikely 1925 game between the Black Monrovian club and local Ku Klux Klan team in Wichita, Kansas is both accurate and thorough in its presentation. Rosengren's useful account of the pioneer efforts of Toni Stone, Connie Morgan, and Mamie Johnson in breaking the gender gap in the Negro Leagues is a fitting conclusion to his chapter, "In Jackie's Memory." [End Page 125] If you want to take a book to bed for a good read, John Rosengren's Classic Baseball will do nicely. Copyright © 2023 University of Nebraska Press