Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Talkin' Baseball in South Pasadena



We got this note from Michael Toman at the South Pasadena Public Library:

BASEBALL AUTHOR NIGHT WITH PAUL DICKSON AND DARYL GRIGSBY AT LIBRARY ON MAY 17

An Author Night Doubleheader with Paul Dickson and Daryl Grigsby will be presented in the Community Room on Thursday, May 17 at 7:00 p.m. The event will focus on the achievements of Blacks in Major League Baseball. An opening set of tunes will be performed by Bluez Express.

Daryl Grigsby's "Celebrating Ourselves: African-Americans and the Promise of Baseball" is a labor of love. Grigsby doubles as the Public Works Director of the City of Pomona and in his spare time he dedicated 20 hours a week for three years writing his homage which focuses on the tradition of baseball in the African-American community. Daryl's original intent was to write
about Black fans, but the book took on a life of its own. Grigsby shares stories about players who made great strides toward social change, including Curt Flood of the St. Louis Cardinals and Pasadena's Jackie Robinson of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Flood's challenge to Baseball's longstanding Reserve Clause is recounted, as is the way that Robinson heroically broke the color barrier.

Paul Dickson's latest nonfiction work, "Bill Veeck: Baseball's Greatest Maverick" is his 55th. Paul is also the author of the classic "Dickson Baseball Dictionary," "The Hidden Language of Baseball, and "The Library in America." Although he has written on many subjects, Dickson now concentrates on baseball, the American language, and 20th Century history. "Bill Veeck" was positively reviewed in the Los Angeles Times and the April 2 Pasadena Star-News stated it "should become a definitive biography of a notable American." Dickson has made many television appearances and in 2009 spoke at the Library of Congress about his "Baseball Dictionary" which has been called "a staggering piece of scholarship" by The Wall Street
Journal.

More details here.

UPDATE: Pasadenan nomenclature corrected at the behest of Howard Cole.

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