About the Author: Steve L. Steinberg
Summer 2007
I’m a former apparel retailer who sold my 80-year-old family firm in 1998 and thus ended my way of life forever. I owned and ran a multi-state, multi-store chain with hundreds of employees for more than 20 years. I led my company with Core Values of
The break from guiding this company for so many years was a shock and disruption of my way of life, as I approached the age of 50. I soon reconnected with the game I loved as a child and embarked on a journey to uncover the spirit and times of ballplayers of the early 20 th century. I explored newspaper microfilm and tracked down photographs, books, articles, and people, anything and anyone that could help me understand the game of Baseball in its Golden Age. I joined the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) in early 1999. SABR is a relatively unknown gem of an organization whose members comprise a wealth of baseball knowledge and supportive community of students of the game. In late 1998 I connected with a once-famous baseball player who has been forgotten for more than 70 years. Urban Shocker was a spitball pitcher of the late ’teens and 1920s, a 20-game winner four straight years for the St. Louis Browns. One of the best and smartest hurlers in the game, he starred on the great 1927 New York Yankees. He won 37 games for the 1926 and 1927 Yankees (records of 19-11 and 18-6, respectively) while battling the deadly heart disease that claimed his life in ’28. It is a remarkable story of courage and love of the game. Because of where I was in my own life, I was predisposed to connecting across time with this fallen star. What started out as a traditional baseball biography has evolved into a creative work that is part historical memoir, part baseball biography. In searching for Shocker, I discover I was also searching for myself. Late in 2002, I put aside this book that I had been so involved with for more than three years. Now, after working on and publishing many baseball projects the past few years, I’m excited about returning to Shocker. I plan to do so in 2008, polish and tighten up my 200,000-word manuscript (the seventh draft), as I focus on my craft as a writer, as well as a historian. As is often the case with writers, my first book written, Shocker! Discovering a Silent Hero of Baseball’s Golden Age©, is not my first book published. My primary focus in 2007 is collaborating with Florida baseball author and researcher Lyle Spatz on our book 1921, The Battle for Baseball Supremacy in New York: John McGraw, Babe Ruth and the Yankees’ First Pennant. Set in America's greatest city at the dawn of its most flamboyant decade, this is the story of the 1921 baseball season. It revolves around two sensational pennant races culminating in a dramatic World Series. The book is highlighted by the New York Yankees winning their first pennant and then battling their Polo Grounds landlords and hated rivals, John McGraw’s Giants, in the first all-New York World Series. A subtext of this battle is the charismatic Babe Ruth and his assault on baseball records in the face of McGraw’s disdain for the American League and the Ruth-led new slugging style. Nineteen twenty-one signaled baseball's comeback from two of its darkest moments: the only death in a major-league game, and the late 1920 revelations of the 1919 Black Sox scandal. Here are two teams fighting for the future direction of the game. They are also battling for the hearts and minds of New Yorkers, as the city rises to the top of the baseball world, where it will remain for much of the 20 th century. Like me, Lyle is a baseball historian with an expertise of and passion for early 20 th century baseball in New York. He has published two books on the Yankees and countless article on early 20 th century baseball. We are combining our knowledge to provide the story of and insight into this remarkable season. We have already written a major part of the book and will complete the manuscript by the end of 2007. We will soon be shopping it with publishers and envision its publication in the spring of 2008. At the SABR National Convention in St. Louis in late July 2007, I am delivering a paper entitled, “September 18, 1922: The Most Heartbreaking Loss in St. Louis Baseball History.” It was the third game of the “Little World Series” between the Yankees and the Browns, with the American League pennant at stake. In March 2007 I presented a paper at the NINE conference in Tucson, Arizona on Jack (“John Picus”) Quinn, “ World War One & Free Agency: The Fateful 1918 Battle for Jack Quinn between the New York Yankees and the Chicago White Sox .” I have been researching this remarkable spitball pitcher for some time, with the help of Quinn family members. Quinn pitched for three decades and still owns some longevity records. He was repeatedly given up for being “too old” and came back as a top pitcher. I plan to publish the story of his life and career at some time in the future. Part of this story is Jack Quinn’s true origin, which was also presented as a paper at this conference by Quinn relative E. Michael Scott. It is entitled “ John ‘Jack Quinn’ Picus: Not of Polish or Welsh Origin…and Not Born in America At All .” Articles based on our papers will be published in NINE : A Journal of Baseball History & Culture in the Spring 2008 issue. In late spring 2007, I was honored to receive the 2007 McFarland-SABR Baseball Research Award , honoring authors of the best articles or papers on baseball history or biography completed during the preceding calendar year. It was awarded for my article, “Matty and the Browns: A Window onto the AL-NL War of 1901-1902 .” it examines the story of pitching great Christy Mathewson’s signing with the St. Louis Browns early in his career and how the Browns’ visionary owner Robert Lee Hedges gave him up in the peace settlement of January 1903. It appeared in the Spring 2006 issue of NINE: A Journal of Baseball History & Culture and is based on the paper I presented at the NINE conference in Tucson in spring 2005, held during baseball’s spring training in Arizona. In spring 2007 my article “The Curse of the…Hurlers?” appeared in the Baseball Research Journal. It looks at the New York Yankees’ acquisition of pitching talent from the Boston Red Sox in the late ‘teens and early 1920s and suggests these trades were at least as important for the Yankees as the purchase of Babe Ruth. It also reveals how equitable the deals seemed at the time, even though they turned out so one-sided in New York’s favor, and suggests why they turned out as they did. It is based on a paper I presented at the 2002 SABR national convention in Boston. Early in 2007 the ambitious SABR collaborative book, Deadball Stars of the American League, the companion volume to the 2004 book, Deadball Stars of theNational League, was published by Brassey’s. Each has well over 100 biographies of stars of the 1901-1919 time period. In the AL book, I contributed bios of three fascinating early 20 th century baseball people: * St. Louis Browns’ owner Robert Hedges, the man who hired Branch Rickey * Second baseman Del Pratt, called “the greatest clubhouse lawyer baseball ever knew” by the New York Times * Pitcher Ray Caldwell, one of the most colorful and talented pitchers in the history of the game, whose drinking held him back from greatness In the NL book I contributed the bio of pitcher Spittin’ Bill Doak, the pitcher who developed, with Rawlings, the first baseball glove with a webbed pocket in 1920 Lengthier biographies of all the three AL men (and a reprint of the Doak bio) appear on an ambitious SABR web site undertaking, the BioProject. www.bioproj.sabr.org . In the fall of 2007, the St. Louis Cardinals will publish my article on Miller Huggins’ St. Louis years (1910-1917) in their GAMEDAY Magazine. It complements my article on his New York Yankee years that I published in the YANKEES YEARBOOK 2005 (see below). At some point I’d like to delve into Huggins’ Cincinnati years, 1904-1909, where he began his major league career. I’ve previously published in the Cardinals’ GAMEDAYMagazine. My article “The First Cardinal Pennant Race,” which looks at the Cardinals’ Opening Day 1914, appeared in the post-season 2004 issue of GAMEDAY. In 2006 I was honored to have an article I wrote about St. Louis baseball from 1920 to 1925 (actually a chapter from my Arcadia book) included in The St. Louis Baseball Reader, published by the University of Missouri Press. Other authors in this wonderful collection include Bob Broeg, Bob Costas, David Halberstam, Donald Honig, Fred Lieb, Larry Ritter, Ray Robinson, J. Roy Stockton, and George Will. Also in 2006 I contributed to a fascinating book entitled, Play It Again, a counterfactual or “What if…?” book about key events throughout baseball history. I was part of a large panel of experts, including authors and historians Maury Allen, Bill James, and Rob Neyer, and former ballplayers Bobby Doerr, Bob Feller, and Brooks Robinson. My focus was on early 20 th century issues, including:
In the fall of 2006, I gave a series of lectures on a Holland-America cruise through the Panama Canal. My four topics were:
In late June 2006, the Northwest chapter of SABR hosted the 36 th annual SABR national convention. My contribution to our publication, Rain Check: Baseball in the Pacific Northwest, was my first foray into Northwest baseball history. My vehicle was the rise of future Hall of Fame spitball pitcher Stan Coveleski, who spent 1913 to 1915 in Spokane and Portland. I include in my article many of the baseball personalities and developments of this region at that time. In 2005, I gave two lectures about early St. Louis baseball—the early success of the Browns and the rise of the Cardinals. In March, I spoke at the Missouri Historical Society, in conjunction with their hosting the Baseball as America exhibit from the Baseball Hall of Fame. That fall, just as the Cardinals were starting their playoff run, I spoke at the Mercantile Library’s “Lunch and Lecture” series. In 2005 and 2006 I wrote articles for publications of the New York Yankees. My in-depth look at Hall of Fame Yankees manager of the 1920s, Miller Huggins, appeared in the New York YANKEESYEARBOOK 2005. The Yankees reprinted that article in a summer 2005 issue of YANKEES Magazine. As the Yankees reached the 2005 playoffs after a season of adversity, I had an article in their Official Playoff Program 2005. It featured another great Yankees’ pennant race, that of 1922, when they edged the St. Louis Browns by only one game. I also had a feature in the New York YANKEESYEARBOOK 2006, entitled “Pitchers in Pinstripes.” Whether it’s the 1920s or the 1990s or today, the Yankees’ sluggers often get most of the acclaim. Yet it’s their pitchers who make the winning possible. Here I looked at thirteen hurlers of the 1920s, who helped Babe Ruth and the Bombers win all those pennants. In early 2005, my article “Springtime in St. Louis” appeared in Gateway, the journal of the Missouri Historical Society. It looked at Opening Day 1912 in St. Louis with some recently uncovered photos from the Society. In 2004, my book Baseball in St. Louis: 1900-1925was published by Arcadia, as part of their “Images of Baseball” series. It looks at a rich time in baseball history in a city that has been passionate about its baseball for more than a century. It was the time of George Sisler, Rogers Hornsby, and Branch Rickey. They are but three of 22 men in the Baseball Hall of Fame who wore a St. Louis uniform during this time period. The book contains 180 rare images, drawn from more than 20 collections, as well as revealing stories and history of that era. In 2004 I published “George Grantham Bain: Pioneer of News Photography,” in conjunction with the Library of Congress’ digitization of 40,000 of photos of the early 20 th century photographer (available on their web site, www.loc.gov). The article, which appeared in The National Pastime, included a number of classic Bain images. The following year I published “The Face of Baseball,” a feature on the baseball photo collections at the Detroit and Cleveland public libraries. Besides the revealing photos, I visited with legendary Detroit broadcaster Ernie Harwell and told how he acquired a remarkable collection that he later donated to his hometown library. In 2003, my analysis, “The Spitball and the End of the Deadball Era,” which looked at the history of the mysterious pitch and its ban in the seminal year of 1920 (except for 17 hurlers who were “grandfathered” and allowed to continue throwing the “wet one” for the rest of their careers), when baseball was undergoing enormous change, appeared in the National Pastime. Early 20 th century spitball pitchers have been a special focus for me. I have closely studied and written about some of the masters of the pitch, including Urban Shocker, Jack Quinn, and Ray Caldwell. In spring 2003, my creative piece on Urban Shocker’s 1925 return to the New York Yankees, “Back Where I Belong,” appeared in NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture. Unlike my other articles, this one was written in the creative literary style of the upcoming Shocker book. In March 2003 I taught at Elderhostel’s Baseball: A Game for the Ages programs in Florida. There I gave a series of lectures on baseball in the ’teens and 1920s. At the 2001 SABR national convention, I made a presentation on a controversial pitcher of that era entitled “Dave Danforth: Baseball’s Forrest Gump.” My Danforth work appeared in a SABR publication the following year. In 2002, I delivered a paper about the rise of the New York Yankees at a NINE’s annual conference. In 2000, I published my first baseball article, about Urban Shocker’s fascinating and quixotic quest for free agency in the winter of 1923-1924. “Urban Shocker: Free Agency in 1923,” appeared in The National Pastime. I’ve completed another book, which hasn’t yet found a publisher. It too is about a distant figure from baseball’s past, yet it approaches its subject in a very different way. The Genius of Hug© is a revealing look at Hall-of-Fame baseball manager Miller Huggins, in his words and the words of those who knew him. It is not simply a book about baseball, but also about teams and leadership and winning—in any organization. Numerous fascinating photographs of Huggins, many of which have never been seen before, accompany the quotes. I also provide brief commentary for each quote and photo, which gives them a historical context. The challenges Huggins faced and the results he achieved tell a powerful story. When he took over the New York Yankees in 1918, they were a sorry franchise with a losing tradition. When he suddenly died during the 1929 season (just a year after Shocker’s untimely death), he had established the team’s winning ways with six pennants and three world championships in the 1920s. His remarkable insight into human behavior enabled him to succeed as few sports leaders have. As the president of a large retail company for more than a decade, I was able to recognize the management savvy and leadership skills of Miller Huggins. My web site www.stevesteinberg.net is a source of baseball history, which I continue to add to. It enables me to present my expanding array of baseball research and writing projects. In particular, I offer a wealth of information on the origin and history of the spitball, in the site’s Baseball History section. I admit that I don’t update it as often as I’d like, because my primary focus is on all my other research and writing. But when I do add to it, I do so in a meaningful way. I promote my writing and research with the same fervor and talent with which I marketed my stores. I care deeply about these people and the meaning that baseball can bring to life. I consider my role of publicizing their stories as a sacred trust for the men who’ve played this game. I live in Seattle with his wife of more than 20 years and three children. We have been blessed with each other. We were also blessed with a 2001 Seattle Mariner team for the ages, one that an aspiring writer will revisit in the year 2073, when Ichiro turns 100. |
I am a baseball historian of the early 20 th century, with a special focus on the New York Yankees and St. Louis baseball. Since early 1999, my love of baseball has taken me back in time, where I’ve spent thousands of hours researching the events and personalities of the game. My role—my purpose—is to bring back the forgotten. Their stories deserve to be told. They deserve to be “recovered” and discovered once again.