Home Run

Baseball fans, take note: This coming Thursday, June 25, at 7:30pm, Monica Nucciarone will be at Magers & Quinn Booksellers to discuss her new book Alexander Cartwright: The Life Behind the Baseball Legend.

Alexander Joy Cartwright Jr. (1820–92) was present during the organization of the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club of New York in the mid-1800s. That much is certain. Since that time, and especially with his induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1938, Cartwright has been celebrated as the founder of our national pastime, much like Abner Doubleday. Through journal entries, letters, and newspaper clippings, Nucciarone traces Cartwright’s path from Elysian Fields in New Jersey to a gold-rush adventure in California, and on to Honolulu, where he became involved in the movement to annex Hawaii to the United States.

As an added treat, Peter Schilling will read "The Man Who Stopped Time," his short story of the unfortunate Theodore "Tarpaper" Turkleson, a young man whose one at-bat in the Major Leagues goes on seemingly forever. As discovered by disgraced Professor C. B. See, the legend of Turkleson's at-bat is stifled by the baseball establishment, and is told here for the first time.

Details on this and all our upcoming readings are always on our events page.--David E