Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about LeBron James' high school jersey -- featured in an iconic Sports Illustrated cover and photo shoot in 2002 --that sold for $1.3 million in a Julien Auctions sale.

​www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/lebron-james-chosen-one-si-cover-jersey-fetches-1-3-million/

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about the Oct. 30 release of Panini America's National Treasures basketball. It's definitely a high-end set:

​www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/2023-24-national-treasures-basketball-set-for-late-october-release/

Here is a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about Mattel announcing a new UNO game that features NFL players. 

​www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/mattel-partners-with-nfl-nflpa-to-launch-premium-collectible-uno-card-game/

Here's a story I wrote  for Sports Collectors Daily about Gilbert Mayo McNeil, an 83-year-old Denver resident accused in a card-selling scam that netted him and his partners more than $800,000. His attorneys have filed a motion to suppress some evidence:

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/man-accused-of-scamming-buyers-in-fake-card-scheme-seeks-to-suppress-evidence/

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about Ben Erickson, a graphic designer in Wisconsin who paints portraits of the stars and gets (most of them) to sign his work.

​www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/wisconsin-graphic-designer-brings-portraits-of-sports-stars-to-life/

Here is a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily recalling the 1987 Topps football set:

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/1987-topps-football-a-clean-design-with-several-desirable-rookies/​

What is most compelling about Mitchell Nathanson’s latest book is why the players he interviewed were not more bitter about the game of baseball.

Some were. Milt Kelly, who played two seasons in the Minnesota Twins’ farm system in the early 1970s, said that “While I didn’t lose interest in it, it just was bitter, you know, because of all that happened.”

Other players had issues with managers, segregation, and even teammates. But all 13 interviewed by Nathanson were willing at some point to make sacrifices for a shot at the big leagues. Few of them made it.
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Certainly, the Black minor leaguers the award-winning author interviewed had some sobering, difficult and heartbreaking stories to tell. In Under Jackie’s Shadow: Voices of Black Minor Leaguers Baseball Left Behind (University of Nebraska Press; hardback; $34.95; 224 pages), Nathanson, a professor of law at Villanova University, reveals through his dialogue with the players that for all of the enlightenment baseball claimed to have had achieved in the decades after Jackie Robinson broke the modern color line, the reality was much different.

“Some of the truest stories in baseball are never told,” said Allen “Mickey” Bowers, who was drafted by the Philadelphia Phillies in 1968 but never was promoted beyond Class A baseball. His manager at Spartanburg, Bob Malkus, wrote in a scouting report that Bowers did not care about winning and only was concerned about his batting average. The team was also concerned that Bowers looked up to Dick Allen, the major league star who had a tempestuous career with the Phillies.
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Interestingly, Nathanson wrote a biography about Allen in 2017: God Almighty Hisself: The Life and Legacy of Dick Allen. He also wrote a biography about former MLB pitcher and Ball Four author Jim Bouton in his 2020 work, Bouton: The Life of a Baseball Original.

It becomes apparent after reading a few chapters of Under Jackie’s Shadow that Nathanson is tackling a difficult subject that will take the readers out of their comfort zones. But he allows the players to address the issues, and it results in a fascinating, infuriating and at times, demoralizing read.
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Pitcher Edgar Pate, who bounced around the minors for five seasons and spent one year playing in Mexico, said he did not experience racism until he began playing professional baseball.

“I went to mixed schools and everything, but when I got in baseball, man, the hatred, the backstabbing, the favoritism and the racism was just unbelievable,” Pate said.

He added that one of the coaches gathered the Black players in the clubhouse and told them that if they wanted a spot on the team they would have to beat out another Black: “You’re not going to take a white person’s spot.”
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“They just took the heart and desire from me to want to even be there,” Pate said. “The love of my life was gone.”

​Elmore “Moe Hill, an outfielder and first baseman, played 16 seasons in the minor leagues — 14 of them at the Class A level. He said he was the first Black to play American Legion baseball in the state of North Carolina and said what he heard from the stands was “the same stuff … I heard walking through the streets.”

But Hill said when he began playing for the Fox City Foxes in 1965, he was embraced by the fans even though Appleton, Wisconsin was an all-white city and there were three Blacks on the team. He said he never heard “any negative or racist stuff.”

“I got along better there than I did in my old hometown (Gastonia, North Carolina) because they loved baseball there and they didn’t care if you were Black or white,” Hill said. “They just came out to see baseball.”

Hill excelled with Wisconsin Rapids during the 1974 season, hitting 32 homers to set a team record. He also broke the Midwest League record of 31 set in 1971 by future major leaguer Gorman Thomas, according to The Daily Tribune of Wisconsin Rapids. Hill drove in 113 runs and batted .339 in ’74 to win the league’s triple crown, and from 1975 through 1978, hit 31, 30, 41 and 25 home runs — but he remained mired in Class A.

The 1974 team roster included future major leaguers Al Woods, Jerry Garvin, Gary Ward, Doug Clarey, Terry Bulling and Larry Wolfe. Hill never got the call but said he “played for the love of the game.” Hill later became a coach and roving instructor in the Kansas City Royals organization.
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One player who did reach the big leagues was Leroy Reams, who struck out as a pinch hitter in his only plate appearance in a May 7, 1969, game with the Philadelphia Phillies. Houston’s Larry Dierker struck out 14 batters that night at Connie Mack Stadium, and Reams was strikeout victim No. 13 as he batted for Barry Lersch.

Reams, who originally was drafted by the New York Yankees, spent five seasons in the minors with the Phillies before getting his chance.

“I wound up spending a week in the major leagues,” he said. “One week. It was like amazing grace.

“It was a wonderful experience to play in the big leagues.”

But as Reams notes, and it is a common theme among Black players trying to break into the majors from the 1950s deep into the 1970s, that baseball had its own caste system.

“If you were a Black player, unless you were a superstar, you didn’t advance rapidly,” Reams said.
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Aaron Pointer had several brushes with fame, but mostly through his sisters — June, Bonnie and Anita, who performed as The Pointer Sisters — and his cousin, NBA star and coach Paul Silas.

And although Aaron Pointer played 40 major league games across three seasons, he was not so excited about the way baseball and their fans treated Black players at the minor league level.

“I would hear those (racial slurs) from the stands and I would just ignore it,” he said. “If I reacted I probably wouldn’t have finished the season.

“But I just let it go over my head because I couldn’t do anything about it.”

But like many of the players Nathanson interviewed, Aaron Pointer said his love for baseball never lost its fire.

“My parents and sisters always used to tease me, saying that I slept with my baseball glove in my bed when I was a youngster growing up,” he said. “I just loved the game.”

Some of the players Nathanson interviewed had relatives who became stars in the majors. Ron Allen is the younger brother of Dick Allen, while Will Aaron is a cousin to Hall of Famer Hank Aaron.

Will Aaron, whose natural position was second base, said he was delegated to the outfield for most of his career in a move he called “stacking” — “Stack them all in the outfield, and don’t give them a chance to play the infield.”

There were plenty of broken promises and players were subjected to unfathomable racism. And when looking at statistics, it is easy to point out that some Black minor leaguers — like their white counterparts — simply did not have the numbers to advance up the chain and possibly break into the majors.
Then one looks at the gaudy numbers posted by a player like Moe Hill and wonders.

Nathanson said the challenge in producing In Jackie’s Shadow was much more difficult than it appeared. The concept is simple and was pioneered by Lawrence Ritter in The Glory of Their Times, but even Ritter did more editing and polishing than readers realized.
Nathanson wrestled with “how to thoughtfully, honestly, and accurately convey on the page what I heard with my ears.”

“What is ethical and what is not? What is fair and what is cheating?” he wrote. “There are not any easy answers here.”

Nathanson described his problems as an “ethical morass,” but he did an excellent job putting the players’ interviews into the proper context, on occasion juggling comments to fit a more chronological narrative. That does not detract from the interviews, and there is nothing ethically wrong with that; Nathanson’s editing gives the players’ comments more continuity and clarity and makes more sense.
 
Will Aaron said he still has a recurring nightmare about baseball, where he “missed the train.”

“I’m playing in the outfield. “I’m playing, and I’m running through quicksand,” he said. “And I don’t have my uniform. It’s in the cleaners.

“The cleaners is closed.”

For many Black minor leaguers, the path to the major leagues remained closed for a variety of reasons. Nathanson is offering a cross-section that is thought-provoking. A difficult read? Yes. But a necessary one.

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily, a follow-up to a Wilt Chamberlain card that was found in gem-mint condition in Minnesota. The card sold for a record $1.7 million:

​www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/wilt-chamberlain-rookie-card-sgc-10-sold/​

There are many autobiographies of baseball players, but Waite Hoyt’s recollections of his 21-year career in the major leagues have seen the light 40 years after his death.
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Just call Tim Manners a true ghostwriter. The longtime writer, editor, essayist and baseball fan has resurrected the ghost of Waite Hoyt, the ace of the New York Yankees pitching staff during the 1920s. Hoyt would pitch in six World Series for the Yankees and also made an appearance in the 1931 Series with the Philadelphia Athletics. The right-hander won 20 games twice and at least 16 games seven times during his career.

He became the radio voice of the Cincinnati Reds from 1942 to 1965 and was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1969.

Manners brings the life and times of Hoyt back to life in his own words in Schoolboy: The Untold Journey of a Yankees Hero (University of Nebraska Press; hardback; $34.95; 260 pages). It is the story of a baseball player who began his career as a mere schoolboy (hence his nickname) and had a refreshingly candid view of his life in baseball and his personal struggles.

“Reanimating Waite Hoyt’s amazing, untold story was like stealing bases for me,” Manners writes. “As a genetically ordained editor, I never had so much fun as I did blue-penciling his journey.”

Manners notes that Hoyt "was a man in conflict with himself." He was athletic, but also enjoyed painting and the arts. He was a cultured man who could still mix it up during the rough-and-tumble 1920s, when the Yankees -- and Babe Ruth -- established their baseball dynasty.​

Manners met Hoyt’s son, Chris Hoyt, in 1982. He never connected his friend with the Yankees pitcher, because the younger Hoyt never mentioned it and Manners admittedly had never heard of Waite Hoyt. He was embarrassed to discover who Chris Hoyt’s father was two years later during a casual conversation.

Over dinner in 2020, Manners asked Chris why an autobiography of his famous father had not been published.
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“Before I knew it, eight banker’s boxes of Waite Hoyt’s notes, letters interview transcripts, memoir attempts, and other recollections were sitting on my front porch,” Manners writes.

But as he sifted through the material, Manners said he was unsure whether that voluminous amount of material held anything that could sustain an autobiography.
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And then he found a bright blue, 3-inch three-ring binder in the fifth banker’s box.

Bingo. Inside the binder were transcripts of interviews of Hoyt conducted by his niece, Ellen Frell Levy, about two years before the pitcher’s death in 1984. Manners received permission from Levy to use those interviews verbatim, and that provided the foundation for “Schoolboy.”

To his credit, Manners then lets Hoyt tell his story. And he has a lot of stories to spin and a lot of sage advice.

For example, Hoyt notes that “God loans us talent.”

“When we die the talent departs from us and is injected into someone else,” Hoyt says. “I wasn’t given any talent; it was loaned to me by the heavens.”
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He also introduces a word I had to look up — “peregrinate” and its derivative, “peregrination.” The word means “to travel or wander,” or even simply, “walk,” as in “It was hard for me to find associates of my own because boys and girls weren’t free to peregrinate.”​

In addition to his pitching artistry, Hoyt also became smitten with art. He first became intrigued with Japanese art when an all-star baseball team traveled to Japan after the 1922 World Series. In the United States, Hoyt would enjoy spending time at art museums and other cultural venues. He once tried asking teammates if they wanted to see the plane Charles Lindbergh used in his solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean but found no takers.

Hoyt also enjoyed reading, preferring books to card games. He carried several books with him when the Yankees would go on road trips during the season.

“While my teammates were gambling, playing poker or bridge, I would always sit off in a corner and read,” he says.
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A paint-by-numbers set got Hoyt hooked on painting, and some lessons from a few artists in Cincinnati gave him a taste for creating art. But he also said that there will never be a market for an “original Hoyt” painting.
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“I know my limitations, in baseball as much as in art,” Hoyt says.

Hoyt did not go as far as calling baseball an art, preferring to characterize it as a craft.

But as a pitcher, Hoyt said that learning one’s craft comes through competition.
“Lessons learned from victory and defeat, and much more by defeat than success … have no substitute,” Hoyt says. “Mistakes are always punishing, and baseball pitchers remember punishment all their lives.”

Hoyt is candid about his career, his personality and the problems he faced, including alcoholism. He is frank about his early days as a minor leaguer when he was lonely because of his young age. What he saw sometimes shocked him, noting that life in the minors had taught him things that were on “the decadent side.” Life in the majors, on the other hand, was charming.

Hoyt would call himself a boy who learned to conceal his sensitivity and idealism "beneath a crust of wise-guy sophistication."

Hoyt takes responsibility for the failure of his first marriage. His wife was a great mother, “but I didn’t grasp being a father.” Tension between Hoyt’s family and the family of his first wife, Dorothy, did not help matters.

"I must confess I wasn't the most attentive father in the world, a great fault of mine," he writes.

Hoyt’s lifestyle did not help. He was 23 and the Yankees had just won the 1923 World Series.

“You become rather loose and irresponsible,” he says. “A twenty-three-year-old kid doesn’t know what to do. His mind cannot make the adjustment.

“Of course, I wasn’t exactly the All-American boy and became careless in my associations.”

That included drinking and being a man about town in New York, a temptation that was too easy to pass up.

Hoyt also tells great stories about the Yankees of the 1920s, and gives a blow-by-blow description of one of the most famous strikeouts in World Series history — when Grover Cleveland Alexander fanned Tony Lazzeri with the bases loaded in the seventh inning. Hoyt said the sight of Alexander walking to the mound, a day after he had pitched a complete-game victory, “was the approaching figure of doom.”

He has plenty of stories about Ruth and expresses regret that he and his teammates gave Lou Gehrig a hard time when he first broke in as a shy, awkward rookie.

Hoyt also recounts his side job working for his father-in-law at a funeral home and then opened his own mortuary with a partner. There is a hilarious incident when Hoyt parked a vehicle with a body in a casket at Yankee Stadium because he was scheduled to pitch that day. After the game, he transported the body from the Bronx to Brooklyn.

“I imagine that was the first and last time anything like that happened at Yankee Stadium,” Hoyt says.

Hoyt also touches on his career in vaudeville, and the night he and teammate Joe Dugan met gangster Al Capone in Chicago. Hoyt and his second wife, Ellen, would become friends with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.

There are plenty of anecdotes about Hoyt's career as a broadcaster, and how it was just as difficult for a radio rookie to break into the business -- and earn respect -- as it was for a major league rookie. His bouts with drinking also played a part, as he went missing for a few days in June 1945 because he checked himself into a New York hospital for alcoholism.

But when he was engaged on the radio, Hoyt was engaging. He told countless stories about the Yankees' dynasty of the 1920s.

Brooklyn Dodgers broadcaster Red Barber once noted that audiences would "pray for rain" so Hoyt could tell baseball stories.

"He had a priceless ability to tell a story interestingly and to tell it with dramatic flair and punch."

On his website, Manners recalls some advice given to him by an uncle: “Write a lot about a little, not a little about a lot.”

While Manners may have been given eight banker’s boxes to work with, he still had little to work with. How to organize Hoyt’s thoughts, how to incorporate contemporary news reports, and most importantly, how to write an autobiography in the pitcher’s voice? His teammates were long gone, but Hoyt’s words ring crisply thanks to Manners.
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Hoyt said a lot, with an assist from Manners. And it was worth the wait.