His career in sports writing, focusing on baseball, included brief sojourns into other fields, including a two-year stint as associate editor of the Johns Hopkins Magazine. He is the author of 12 books, including the much-admired Phillies Encyclopedia. Two of his books, Diamond Greats and Splendor on the Diamond, feature interviews with former major league players, including Yankees center fielder Whitey Witt, who used to room with Babe Ruth. The old timers I talk to all have these marvelous stories. You don't get that in other sports.
Football is all rush, rush, rush.
The pace of baseball lends itself to stories. Closeups of the Chesapeake's visual joys combine with the preservation-minded text of a ranking Bay watcher to lift this big book off the coffee table. The Yankee Clipper fended off serious biographers with the same finesse that he brought to playing center field. But Cramer stayed on the story after DiMaggio, too, had left the scene. The Gilman tower was awash in purple light to honor the Baltimore Ravens' drive to the Superbowl championship in January.