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Click on the titles below for information on my six published baseball books: Shoeless: The Life and Times of Joe Jackson (2001)
Ghosts in the Gallery at Cooperstown (2004)
Cap Anson: The Grand Old Man of Baseball (2005)
More Ghosts in the Gallery (2007)
The Irish in Baseball: An Early History (2009)
Comments? Send e-mail to dfleitz@wowway.com. Books to which I contributed: Deadball Stars of the National League (SABR, 2004) This work contains 140 biographies on all the National League's starting players of the Deadball (1901-1919) Era. I wrote the chapter on former Pirates and Reds first baseman Jake Beckley, whom I profiled in my Ghosts in the Gallery book. Deadball Stars of the American League (SABR, 2007) This companion volume to the preceding book contains 140 biographies on all the American League's starting players of the Deadball Era. I wrote three chapters, on Shoeless Joe Jackson and two St. Louis Browns mainstays, pitcher Jack Powell and manager Jimmy McAleer. Sock It To 'Em, Tigers! The Incredible Story of the 1968 Detroit Tigers (Maple Street Press, 2008) This book has biographies of all playing, managing, coaching, front-office, and other personnel on the world champion 1968 Detroit Tigers. I wrote the chapter on Hall of Famer Eddie Mathews. Go-Go to Glory: The 1959 Chicago White Sox (ACTA Press, 2009) This book celebrates the 50th anniversary of the 1959 White Sox, who won Chicago's first American League pennant in 40 years (but lost the World Series to the Los Angeles Dodgers). I wrote the chapter on Hall of Fame pitcher Early Wynn, who won the Cy Young Award that year at age 39.
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March 8, 2010 Sorry I've been away for a while, but I got good news today. My latest book, The Irish in Baseball: An Early History, is one of 11 nominees for the 2010 Larry Ritter Award, presented by the Deadball Era committee of SABR (Society for American Baseball Research). The winner will be announced sometime in April, and the award will be presented at the SABR convention in Atlanta in August. February 19, 2010 I met some of my heroes today. No, not baseball heroes. I went to the Royal Oak Music Theater to see "Cinematic Titanic," a live show in which cast members from one of my favorite TV shows, Mystery Science Theater 3000, make fun of a really awful movie from 1962 called "Samson and the 7 Wonders." I miss Mystery Science Theater (it was cancelled in 1998) but Joel Hodgson, the show's creator and star for its first five seasons, leads a group of his former co-workers in a live show that re-creates the spirit of MST3K. It was funny and involving, and I had a great time. I met Joel afterward and thanked him for making me laugh all through the 1990s. The postcard pictured pictured below was an ad for their 1992 Thanksgiving Day marathon on Comedy Central; I received it because I was in their fan club. I had Joel sign it on the front, and the other three (Mary Jo Pehl, Trace Beaulieu, and Frank Conniff) signed on the back.
February 2, 2010 Here are the answers to the quiz I posted a few days ago. The 47 players in the Baseball Hall of Fame who spent their entire major league career with only one franchise are:
Yankees 7 (Dickey, DiMaggio, Combs,
Mantle, Ford, The 19th century guy was Bid McPhee, who played for Cincinnati from 1882 to 1899 (though the Reds were in the American Association before moving to the National League in 1890, it's the same franchise). Three of the men above played for one team and only one manager. Koufax and Drysdale had no other major league manager besides Walter Alston, while Ross Youngs played only for John McGraw. (Bill Terry had only two managers, McGraw and himself). If Chipper Jones retires after the 2010 season, he'll join that group, because he will certainly be elected to the Hall and he has played exclusively for Bobby Cox. January 31, 2010 All right, I'll give a hint about the quiz below. There are 47 players in the Baseball Hall of Fame who spent their entire major league career with only one franchise. The team breakdown looks like this:
Yankees 7 Only one of these 47 men played in the 19th century, and I did not count Cap Anson (who spent his entire National League career with Chicago, but played for two clubs in the National Association before that). Also, the Brooklyn-Los Angeles Dodgers are one franchise, as are the New York-San Francisco Giants. All of these men were elected as players, not managers, umpires, or executives, so leave out any Hall of Fame inductee who did not have a long, illustrious playing career. Answers on Tuesday. January 29, 2010 There's a remarkable web site called Sporcle.com that you may have heard of. It's a site that offers what it calls "mentally stimulating games and diversions" in many categories, including history, music, movies, sports and the like. Anyway, in the Sports category, they have games that require you to name all the World Series MVPs, or Super Bowl champs, or 20,000-point scorers in the NBA, in a certain amount of time. I took the quiz for naming all the players in the Baseball Hall of Fame and got 167 of the 200 or so on my first try. The last time I did it, I got all but one (I couldn't remember Dave Winfield, for some reason). I have a game that I may submit to them later, but I'll offer it here first. While researching a book, I made a list of all the players in the Baseball Hall of Fame who spent their entire major league careers with one franchise. I thought there might be 20 or so, but it turns out that there were 47 of them! That's the quiz. Name the 47 Hall of Famers who played for only one major league franchise. I'll post the list here in a few days. Hint: there are 7 Yankees, 5 Dodgers, 5 Giants, and 4 Red Sox on the list. January 24, 2010 With Mark McGwire getting so much scrutiny now, we're finding the name of the late Roger Maris back in the news. Once again, some columnists are asking why Maris is not in the Hall of Fame. I wrote an article in 2001 that I have updated and posted here. Click on the link to see the article that I wrote. January 17, 2010 The talk I gave to the Detroit chapter of the Incorporated Society of Irish American Lawyers last Thursday went very well. There were about 30 or so people there, and they were very interested in what I had to say. They also bought all the copies of the book that I brought with me, so that was a plus. I created a handout that highlighted the main points, and you can see it by clicking on the linked text. January 11, 2010 I'll be giving a talk to the Detroit chapter of the Incorporated Society of Irish American Lawyers this Thursday, January 14, at 6 p.m. I will be talking about my latest book, The Irish in Baseball: An Early History. The meeting will be held at the Gaelic League - Irish American Club, located at 2068 Michigan Avenue. I'll let you know how it goes. January 6, 2010 Wow. Just, like, wow. Andre Dawson makes it into the Hall of Fame, but Bert Blyleven falls 5 votes short, Roberto Alomar misses by only 8 votes, and Alan Trammell fails to top 25 percent. Here are the totals, out of 539 ballots (405 votes needed for election): Andre Dawson 420 (77.9%) Five of the 539 ballots were blank, which leads me to ask: if you're going to turn in a blank ballot, why bother voting at all? If two of those ballots had Blyleven's name on them, he'd be in the Hall of Fame today. Also, I want to meet the sportswriter who voted for David Segui. January 5, 2010 Tomorrow, the Hall of Fame will announce the identities of its latest inductees, as selected by the Baseball Writers' Association of America. It looks like Roberto Alomar will probably be elected, and such players as Edgar Martinez (first year on the ballot) and Andre Dawson (ninth year) stand a good chance of joining him. So does Barry Larkin, a fine shortstop who won an MVP award, led the Reds to the 1990 World Series title, and deserves a first-ballot election. However, I'd like to talk about one player who should make it, and one who probably won't. In the "should" category is Bert Blyleven, a curveballing righthander who pitched from 1970 to 1992 and won 287 games, mainly for mediocre teams. Blyleven stands fifth on the all-time strikeout list and threw 60 shutouts, the ninth-highest total of all time. One criticism of Blyleven is that he was not seen during his career as a superstar; in fact, he appeared on only two All-Star teams, a shockingly low number for someone who won as many games as he did. Still, I would personally vote for him (and for Tommy John, who won 288 games, and also for Jim Kaat, with 283 wins, though John and Kaat are no longer eligible). I don't know how many games a pitcher needs to win to get in the Hall, but 287 is far more than enough. The other is a shortstop who played his entire 20-year career for the Detroit Tigers. Alan Trammell and second baseman Lou Whitaker made their debuts with the Tigers on the same day in late 1977, and though Whitaker won the Rookie of the Year award the following season, Trammell became the bigger star. Ozzie Smith, a contemporary shortstop who is in the Hall of Fame, was a more spectacular fielder, but Trammell was steady and productive, and a much better hitter. The Tigers would never have traded Trammell for Smith even-up, as many people remarked at the time. Trammell was a six-time All-Star, and the MVP of the 1984 World Series. He and Whitaker played together for 19 seasons, making the longest-lasting middle infield duo in baseball history. Whitaker was pretty good too - there are men in the Hall of Fame who were not as accomplished as he was - but Trammell is on the ballot, and Trammell should be elected. Trammell was mostly forgotten shortly after he retired as a player, as a new group of power-hitting shortstops like Alex Rodriguez and Miguel Tejada came along and raised the bar for performance. Their batting stats dwarf those of Trammell, though we now know that Rodriguez, for one, used steroids to help him post his gaudy statistics. Perhaps if Trammell had won the Most Valuable Player Award that he deserved in 1987 (he finished second to Toronto's George Bell in one of the worst voting mistakes of all time), fans and writers might have paid more attention to him. He belongs in the Hall of Fame, and I hope the electors agree with me. January 4, 2010 A new year has begun (if not a new decade, which is another topic entirely), and there is still only one 100-year-old former major league ballplayer now living. He's Tony Malinosky, who played second base for Brooklyn in 1937 and hit .228 in his sole big league season. He will be the only centenarian until at least August of 2011, when the next oldest ballplayer (Connie Marrero) hopes to join the triple-digit club. For more on centenarian ballplayers, see The Oldest Living Ballplayers and Centenarian Ballplayers. January 1, 2010 I've decided to re-design my page, and I've moved some of the more important recent stories here. Click on a title to see them.
And here's a few older ones: I have now completed nine biographies for the SABR BioProject web site. Click on the name to see: December 29, 2009
This is me presenting a paper on Irish-American umpires at SABR 39 in Washington, D. C. on July 31, 2009. I posted an article on this site that was based on that presentation; you can see it by clicking on The Green and the Blue.
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