The Jerome Holtzman Baseball Reader: A Treasury of Award-Winning Writing from the Official Historian of Major League Baseball

Just as baseball has gone through its eras of changing style--the deadball era of 1900-1920, the Ruth era of the 20's and 30's, the war years, the integration years, the 60's "decade of the pitcher", and the steroid era of the 1990's--so baseball writing has its own eras and styles. Jerome Holtzman's columns collected here, mostly from the 80's and 90's, hark back to an earlier era of writing style, before Sportscenter, the Internet, and sensationalist "inside the locker room" reporting made everything faster, flashier, and larger than life. Holtzman's columns, from the Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune, are quieter, slower, more reflective, more focused on "baseball men." They often serve to remind the reader today how much of baseball history has been lost in the last thirty years, as he interviews and writes of Stan Musial, Ted Williams, and Joe DiMaggio as living, breathing legends. They also serve as reminders of the continuity and constancy of baseball, as he writes of the potential of rookie pitcher Greg Maddux (we read that Maddux, now acknowledged as one of the smartest pitcher ever, "doesn't always listen to his elders"!) and young catcher Mike Piazza, who didn't have a natural position, but "has a chance to be something." These recently retired future Hall-of-Fame members will one day be employed and remembered in television interviews and broadcasting roles and video retrospectives, and one can hope, by writers of the quiet skill of Jerome Holtzman. As a Chicago reporter from the era when baseball reporting was still local, it is to be expected that Chicago players and subjects are over-represented, but his columns are of universal interest to any true baseball fan.

The Jerome Holtzman Baseball Reader is a collection of columns by the long-time Chicago beat writer, columnist and major league baseball's official historian. Most of the nearly 60 columns were written between 1984 and 2001. Understandably, many of Holtzman's subjects are from Chicago or the Midwest. Holtzman, who covered baseball for more than 40 years, writes about players such as Luis Aparicio, Ron Santo, Stan Musial, Hank Greenberg, Leo Durocher, Bill Veeck, Ozzie Smith, Andre Dawson and many others, as well as announcers Harry Caray and Jack Brickhouse. While I didn't find any of the columns memorable, they are interesting and can be read in two or three minutes. Baseball fans, particularly those from the Midwest, will find this collection of columns worth their time.