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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)

Louis Sockalexis: The First Cleveland Indian (2002)

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.

March 30, 2010

I just found out that two more compilation books to which I contributed will be published, probably before the year is out.  A book on the 1947 Brooklyn Dodgers is one of them; I wrote the chapter on infielder and catcher Bobby Bragan.  The other book highlights the 1984 world champion Detroit Tigers, for which I wrote a chapter on first baseman Darrell Evans.  I'll let you know more details when I get them.

March 24, 2010

In response to the March 21 posting below, one of my readers wrote to me and said that Hank Greenberg was not in his copy of The Glory of Their Times, so where on earth did I get the quote that I used?

The answer is that Hank - along with Babe Herman, George Gibson, and Specs Toporcer - were added to the enlarged edition of the book, which appeared in 1984, 18 years after the original.  I still think that Larry Ritter's book is the best baseball book I ever read, but the 1984 edition, with the four extra chapters, is even better.

March 22, 2010

More on the Hank Greenberg article referenced below ...

Howard's Megdal's article in The New York Times last Sunday supports his assertion (that American League pitchers denied Hank Greenberg a chance to break Babe Ruth's home run record by walking him late in the 1938 season) with some very flimsy statistical evidence.  I looked into the matter further to see if any particular team was guilty of walking Greenberg an outlandish number of times.

Greenberg played in every game of the 1938 campaign, and so his number of plate appearances against each other team are very similar.  Here is a table of how many times Hank walked against the other seven teams in the league (thanks to baseball-reference.com for their excellent data):

Well, perhaps the White Sox have some explaining to do, but they finished in sixth place that year, 32 games out of first.  The Yankees, who cruised to the pennant, walked Greenberg less than any other club.  Perhaps the White Sox were simply more afraid of Greenberg than the Yankees were.  Besides, five of the 26 walks issued by the White Sox to Greenberg happened in the opening series of the season in April.  In mid-September, Hank belted three homers in three games against Chicago, but they only walked him three times.  No smoking gun there, in my view.

March 21, 2010

If you read The New York Times today, you may have seen an article that attempts to prove a rumor that has floated around major league baseball for more than 70 years.  Specifically, did American League pitchers purposely walk Detroit's Hank Greenberg, especially late in the 1938 season, in order to keep a Jewish player from breaking Babe Ruth's season home run record of 60?

Greenberg had hit 56 home runs with a week left in the 1938 campaign, and appeared to have an excellent shot at breaking Ruth's mark.  However, Greenberg managed only two homers in his last seven games, and none at all in his last five, to end up at 58. 

Today, the article in the Times suggests that opposing hurlers pitched around Greenberg and denied him a fair shot at the home run record.  The evidence, as presented by author Howard Megdal, states that Greenberg's walk rate took a sharp upswing in September of 1938.  He had walked about 15 percent of the time in his plate appearances during the previous three months, but his rate in September jumped to 20.4 percent.  His 28 walks in September (in 32 games) was his highest monthly total that year.

I'm still looking into it, but here are Greenberg's walk rates for 1938 (thanks to baseball-reference.com for the data):

The article says nothing about the fact that Greenberg walked more often in April and May than in September.  It merely states that he walked at a 15.9 percent rate from April to August, then saw his rate jump to 20.4 percent in September.

I don't think that there is conclusive evidence that anti-Semitic pitchers conspired to keep Hank Greenberg from breaking the home run record in 1938.  Greenberg himself rejected such a notion; in Lawrence Ritter's The Glory of Their Times, Greenberg stated that such an idea was "pure baloney" and said, "The reason I didn't hit 60 or 61 homers is because I ran out of gas; it had nothing to do with being Jewish."  Megdal's statistical case is a weak one, and if Greenberg himself did not believe he was being discriminated against, then I don't believe it either.

March 12, 2010

There's another addition to my "almost lived to be 100" page.

George Cisar, a Chicago native who batted .207 in 20 games for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1937, died on February 19.  His baseball biographies had always listed his year of birth as 1912, but his family revealed that he was actually born on August 25, 1910, making him 99 years old, not 97, at his death.  The funeral home confirmed his age as 99, and a bit of research reveals that the 1920 census, which was apparently conducted before his birthday that year, lists him as a 9-year-old boy.

So, George Cisar was the second-oldest ex-player at his death, and just missed the list of baseball centenarians.  Click here to see my updated page of centenarian ballplayers.

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.