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.
​
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.
​
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.
​
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.
​
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.
​
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.
​
Hoyt said a lot, with an assist from Manners. And it was worth the wait.

Here is a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about the new collaboration between Fanatics Collect and CGC Cards, which are aiming to offer faster grading turnarounds for collectors:

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/fanatics-collect-cgc-cards-team-up-to-offer-faster-card-grading/
​

Here' s a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about the man who caught the home run ball hit by Shohei Ohtani on Aug. 23. The blast made the Dodgers' superstar the sixth player in MLB history to hit 40 home runs and steal 40 bases in a season. It was the fan's first time visiting Dodger Stadium and he got the ball after Rays outfielder Jose Siri tossed the ball into the stands after Ohtani's walkoff grand slam.
​
www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/fan-snared-ohtanis-40-40-club-home-run-ball-thanks-to-jose-siri/

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about the first gem-mint Wilt Chamberlain card to be graded gem-mint by SGC. It was found by in a cabinet of  an old grocery store owned by his family and brought to the store owned by Minnesota card shop owner Caleb Baker
www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/no-tall-tale-wilt-chamberlain-rookie-card-found-in-old-grocery-store-earns-sgc-10/​

Here is a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about the ongoing legal battle between Heritage Auctions and the Atlanta Braves over disputed Hank Aaron memorabilia:

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/heritage-auctions-sues-braves-over-bases-used-during-hank-aarons-715th-homer-game/

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about how some of the cards of this year's 2024 U.S.  Olympic team members have fared at auction recently:

​www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/olympic-stars-created-a-buzz-with-collectors-fans/

Here's a story  I wrote about the 1984 Topps football set, which featured rookie cards of John Elway and Dan Marino:

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/1984-topps-football-set-bookended-by-2-hall-of-fame-quarterbacks/​

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about a road jersey wore during the 1952 and 1953 World Series. The jersey was donated to an orphanage in 1955 in North Carolina, and a boy bought it for $2.50. It will command more than $1.3 million in an upcoming Heritage Auctions sale:

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/mantle-road-jersey-from-1952-53-world-series-in-heritage-auctions-sale-traveled-long-road/

Professional wrestlers tell the best stories.

It’s true. I’ve been writing that for years. Mick Foley, Terry Funk, Bret Hart, Steve Keirn — the list goes on — are some of the former wrestlers whose books include compelling stories about life on the road. It’s a concept that began with Joe Jares’ 1974 book, Whatever Happened to Gorgeous George?
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But there is always that nagging doubt that some wrestlers might have stayed true to “kayfabe” — blurring the line between staged performances and reality.

That is why wrestling fans should cherish an author like Brad Balukjian. A scientist by trade and a former fact checker, Balukjian has the dogged persistence of a veteran journalist, is a skilled researcher and takes to the road freely like a modern-day Charles Kuralt.

Balukjian has a fine eye for detail and is an engaging storyteller. That comes to the fore in his second book, The Six Pack: On the Open Road in Search of WrestleMania (Hachette Books; hardback; $30; 317 pages).
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This work is a nuanced look at professional wrestling, focusing primarily on the men who competed on the wrestling card of Dec. 26, 1983. That was the night when the Iron Sheik defeated Bob Backlund for the World Wrestling Federation (now WWE) world heavyweight championship. The Iron Sheik, a native of Iran whose character played off the hostage crisis that began in November 1979, would lose the belt on Jan. 23, 1984, to Hulk Hogan — a seminal moment in pro wrestling that launched the entertainment vision of promoter Vince McMahon Jr.
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McMahon “happily held a knife to Kayfabe’s throat,” Balukjian writes.

Balukjian once considered collaborating with his wrestling hero, the Iron Sheik (real name Hossein Khosrow Vaziri) on a book about the grappler’s life — until the wrestler, mired in a drug addiction at the time, threatened to kill him in 2005. Older and wiser 17 years later, Balukjian changed tactics and decided to interview every wrestler on that December 1983 card at Madison Square Garden.

The concept for The Six Pack is similar to Balukjian’s first book, The Wax Pack: On the Open Road in Search of Baseball’s Afterlife. In that 2020 work, Balukjian interviewed the players he pulled from a pack of 1986 Topps baseball cards that had been left unopened for nearly three decades. He currently runs an online magazine, The Brad Pack, “dedicated to the unsung heroes and untold stories of sports and entertainment” before the internet.

For The Six Pack, Balukjian embarked on a 62-day odyssey that covered 12,525 miles across 33 states and Puerto Rico.

That would include a reunion with the Iron Sheik, who was much more accommodating this time around. Balukjian also connected with Tony Atlas (Anthony White), Tito Santana (Merced Solis), The Masked Superstar/Demolition Ax (Bill Eadie), and Jose Luis Rivera (Marcelino Rivera). He also writes chapters about Sgt. Slaughter (Bob Remus), who was on the card, and Hogan (Terry Bollea), who was not, but played a key role in the WWF’s astounding growth. He did not get the chance to interview either former WWE star — although he did have a brief exchange with Remus at the Iron Sheik’s funeral in June 2023.
​
“I want to understand the people behind the characters,” Balukjian writes.

Atlas and Santana consented to interviews as long as they were paid, so Balukjian shelled out $1,000 and $750, respectively. Arriba! indeed.

Balukjian, a research associate at the California Academy of Sciences, owns a Ph.D. in entomology from the University of California at Berkeley. He spent a year in Tahiti working on his doctorate, where he discovered 17 species of green flash bugs.

But as a youth growing up near Providence, Rhode Island, Balukjian was enamored with pro wrestling, even calling himself “Exciting Balukjian” and copying his heroes with ranting, finger-pointing promos.

“Wrestling was the ultimate outlet, a world where I could be strong and fearless,” he writes. “Much to my parents’ chagrin, I never grew out of wrestling.”

Many of the former wrestlers never grew out of it either, as the squared circle defined their careers. Some, like Atlas, had fallen on hard times.

This is where Balukjian excels.

Balukjian finds Atlas in Maine, a personal trainer at the YMCA. Now 70, Atlas was one of nine children who grew up in Low Moor, Virginia, and was raised by his mother and grandmother. His father, who abandoned the family, claimed to have fathered 36 children before meeting Atlas’ mother.

Bullied as a child — he went into a coma as a 6-year-old after being pushed off a bridge— Atlas worked to get stronger by lifting weights and soon excelled in boxing and wrestling. He would win the Mr. USA bodybuilding competition in 1979 and by 1982 was pulling in WWF crowds as a marquee wrestler.

Atlas went from making $65 a week as a dishwasher to earning $1,500 in his first week as a pro wrestler. But while “Tony’s rise was meteoric, his fall was just as sudden,” Balukjian writes.
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Descending into drug addiction and fired from the WWF, Atlas attempted suicide twice before turning his life around in 1989.
It is a poignant story.

Balukjian buttresses every chapter with great detail, interviewing the wrestlers’ friends, family members, high school coaches and historical society workers.

Santana’s story chronicles a Latino facing racism in the lower Rio Grande Valley area of Texas. His father was a crew leader for migrant workers who would travel north to Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan and Indiana to pick fruits and vegetables. Family members worked hard but had difficulty being served at restaurants.

Football gave Santana an outlet, “a chance to bash heads without getting in trouble,” Balukjian writes. As a pro wrestler, he peaked at a $176,000 salary in 1984, but he did not have health or retirement benefits; his paycheck depended on a particular night’s match and nothing was guaranteed. Santana decided to get out of the business after McMahon changed his character in the early 1990s to “El Matador” and realized the character was not getting any traction.

“Tito is one of the few people to leave the wrestling business on his terms, something that a control freak like Vince doesn’t like,” Balukjian writes.

Santana would go on to become a middle school teacher in New Jersey.

Balukjian made a mighty effort to connect with Slaughter, at one point finding his North Carolin residence and walking up the driveway to ring his doorbell (nobody was home).

His fact-checking background came into play, since the Sgt. Slaughter character claimed he was a veteran of the Vietnam War. He was not, according to military records obtained by a reporter through the Freedom of Information Act. Bob Remus, however, go to barber school.

Slaughter excelled as a babyface and as a heel.

He apparently did not want to speak with Balukjian, even encouraging his friends not to engage with him. He did, however, talk with his high school football coach.

“I always knew when I started the journey that it was unlikely that all of the Six Packers would meet with me,” Balukjian writes. “Some people don’t want to be found.

“And despite my effort to force an encounter, I have to accept that I did everything I could and still came up short.”

Eadie, who covered his face as the Masked Superstar and Demolition Ax, would later work as a teacher at a juvenile detention center.
​
He sued McMahon and the WWF for breach of an oral contract, unjust enrichment, fraudulent misrepresentation and fraudulent inducement to contract. The case dragged on for 11 years before Eadie and the WWF settled, with Eadie having “bested the almighty emperor (McMahon),” Balukjian writes.

The business end of pro wrestling is never far from Balukjian’s mind, and he writes about contracts, deals and the cutthroat world that helped McMahon build the WWE into such a profitable venture.

The chapter about Rivera reveals the difficulty a wrestler who is down the card — usually referred to as a “jobber” — endures while trying to make a living.

“He was a utility player … meaning his specialty was losing matches,” Balukjian writes.

Still Rivera has a sense of pride for his role. “I did a lot of things to make those people look good,” he said.

There are chapters on Hogan and McMahon—particularly an enlightening look at the Hulkster’s musical career before he became a wrestler and his childhood home in the Port Tampa area of Tampa, Florida — but the real focus in The Six Pack is with the other wrestlers — and that is what makes this book so compelling.

Balukjian returns to meet with the Iron Sheik, who had endured an embarrassing drug bust with “Hacksaw” Jim Duggan in 1987 and the devastating 2003 murder of Marissa, his eldest daughter, which certainly led to his drug addiction and his random threat to kill Balukjian two years later.

Balukjian shines a light on many of the struggles the wrestlers faced — drug addition, disconnected family lives and the inevitable fall when an athlete steps away from the spotlight.
​
His unvarnished observations of people and his interactions with the wrestlers ring true. That makes The Six Pack truly one of the most honest books about professional wrestling.

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about the 2023 Donruss Optic set, which was released on July 31: 

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/2023-donruss-optic-football-set-to-arrive/

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about a Heritage Auctions sale that includes a pocket watch presented to Joe DiMaggio after he hit safely in 61 consecutive games as a minor league rookie in 1933:

​www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/watch-presented-to-joe-dimaggio-honoring-61-game-hitting-streak-in-1933-part-of-heritage-auctions-sale/

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about Wheatland Auctions Services' August sale, which runs through Aug. 4:

​www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/wheatlands-800-lot-auction-offers-a-little-bit-of-every-era/

Ron Fraser was a coach worthy of his nickname.

Fraser, who guided the University of Miami to a pair of national championships and 1,271 victories during his 30-year career, impacted college baseball on and off the field. The man known as the wizard of college baseball was a showman and a marketing genius whose innovative promotions were a template for future programs.
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David Brauer examines the trailblazing career of Fraser in The Wizard of College Baseball: How Ron Fraser Elevated Miami and an Entire Sport to National Prominence (University of Nebraska Press; hardback; $29.95; 232 pages).

Brauer, who grew up near the University of Illinois and is currently the commissioner of the Prospect League, met Fraser briefly during the 1992 College World Series as a youth. Twenty-five years later, Brauer was vacationing in South Florida and visited the University of Miami Sports Hall of Fame. He spoke with Earl Rubley, who was the Hall’s former president, and became intrigued after listening to stories about Fraser. Realizing that no book had ever been written about the coach, Brauer said “the wheels started turning” and he began gathering information.
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The Wizard of College Baseball is the result. Brauer does a thorough job of chronicling Fraser’s career and his P.T. Barnum-like mind for showcasing the sport. Fraser was the coach who helped get the College World Series on ESPN during the 1980s, giving the sport valuable exposure and boosting the sports cable network’s prestige in the process.

​There are some structure issues in the book, but they do not detract from the overall effort and may simply be my personal preference. More on that later.

Despite its location in sunny South Florida, baseball at the University of Miami was practically a wasteland when Fraser arrived at the school in 1963 after coaching the Royal Dutch national baseball team.

Even Hall of Famer Jimmie Foxx could not lift the program when he coached the team to a 20-20 mark in 1956-57.

Fraser told USA Today in a 1989 interview that when he took the job he wanted to take a bat and ball to meet the team but the program did not own either, Brauer writes. The baseball field was in terrible shape, players wore hand-me-down uniforms from other programs and Fraser had received a mandate from the university’s athletic director “not to spend any money.”

That forced Fraser to build the program from scratch, and his resourcefulness and ability to connect with donors in South Florida molded the Hurricanes into a formidable program.

Not every trick worked, Brauer writes. Fraser reconditioned stained baseballs by soaking them in evaporated milk. The baseballs were white, but the smell was horrible.
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Other plans did not have a sour ending. Fraser introduced fall practices and home-and-home exhibitions against MLB rookie teams. He added night baseball, figuring correctly that more fans would attend games at night, rather than sitting in the broiling South Florida sun and energy-sapping humidity.

He added early season tournaments and invited programs from northern schools to compete, making sure the Hurricanes played their games during the late afternoons during the round-robin events.
Fraser also introduced the Sugarcanes, batgirls who also worked the concession stands and the manual scoreboard. They also passed out promotional literature to fans, Brauer writes.

Some of Fraser’s on-field innovations were viewed as radical when he introduced them. He installed artificial turf at Mark Light Stadium, which played to the Hurricanes’ strengths of pitching, speed on the bases and defense. He also relied heavily on relief pitchers to close out games; previously, starting pitchers with a lead were expected to go the difference. Fraser saw the advantage of using fresh arms late in the game to nail down victories, Brauer writes.

Fraser became adept at raising money
for the Miami program, offering nine-course meals on the infield at Mark Light Stadium for donors. The “Cruise to Nowhere” allowed guests to enjoy wine, dinner and entertainment  aboard an ocean liner — for $125 per ticket.
​
“He had an enormous knack for promotion,” broadcaster Roy Firestone, who worked at WTVJ and WPLG in Miami before embarking on a long career at ESPN, told Brauer. “No idea was silly to him.
 
“Even if it started out silly, he could shape it and make it an idea.”

​Speaking of donors, Brauer brings the legacy of plastics magnate George Light to the forefront. Light’s donations helped fund lights and artificial turf at the Hurricanes’ field. The stadium was dedicated as Mark Light Stadium in 1978, named after Light’s adopted son, who died from muscular dystrophy in 1957.

He also raffled off car batteries and presented the Sugarcanes in bikinis for one promotion, but also worked hard to present a family-friendly atmosphere.

“I was more interested in getting the people in the stands,” Fraser said. “Because I knew we’d never be really successful unless we made money.”

Fraser had compassion and saw his players as family members. He reveled in their successes and grieved when tragedy struck.

When one of Fraser’s former pitchers, Rob Souza, was killed in an automobile accident in January 1985, a reporter called the Miami baseball office and asked to speak to Fraser. An official in the Miami sports information department initially said that Fraser was in a meeting, but that changed when Souza was mentioned.

The call was immediately put through to Fraser.

“We’re all shocked down here,” Fraser told The Stuart News, his voice cracking with emotion as he called Souza a “fierce competitor” whose victory in a regional championship in 1984 sent the Hurricanes to the College World Series for the seventh time.

Fraser was diplomatic but also knew how to navigate treacherous political waters. When Team USA played during the 1987 Pan American Games in Cuba, President Fidel Castro entered the stadium and wanted the Americans to come meet him.

Fraser demurred, insisting that he was there to play baseball and not to meet Castro. Fraser was not going to play politics, especially given the anti-Castro sentiment in South Florida from Cuban exiles. If Castro wanted to meet Fraser’s players, he would have to make the move.

Castro visited the Americans’ dugout and “politely grabbed Fraser’s arm in greeting,” Brauer wrote, noting that Fraser did not shake hands with the Cuban leader.

“That was unbelievable,” Vinny Scavo, who was the team’s trainer at the Games, told Brauer. “I knew that was for Miami — all the people that struggled. He wasn’t going to let them see him go up and meet Castro. He could come to meet him.”

Fraser even took a page out of Casey Stengel’s playbook, catching players who broke curfew by using a hotel employee. Fraser would hand the worker a baseball and ask the staffer to get autographs of players that wandered in late. Fraser was more subtle than Stengel, chatting up the employee and making that person a fan of the Hurricanes.

The ploy worked.

The structure issue mentioned earlier was about Fraser’s personal life, which Brauer delegated as the book’s final chapter.

While Fraser was a household name among college baseball fans, a generation of fans may not have been familiar with his formative years since he died on Jan. 20, 2013. His accolades were plentiful — Fraser has been elected to eight halls of fame, including the College Baseball Hall of Fame’s inaugural class (2006), the Florida Sports Hall of Fame (1986), the University of Miami Sports Hall of Fame (1983) and the Florida State Athletics Sports Hall of Fame (1981).

He was a four-time NCAA coach of the year, and piloted the 1992 U.S. Olympic baseball team.

But how did he get there?

I would have preferred that Brauer’s closing chapter, “Personal Life,” had been split, with information about Fraser’s youth until his hiring at Miami created as an earlier chapter. That would have given the reader a taste about Fraser’s path to success.

His married life, anecdotes about his children and hobbies, and stories about his many friends that make up the final chapter are appropriate toward the end of the book.

Just a personal preference.

The only other criticisms were the misspelling of “unfazed” as “unphased,” and Brauer’s penchant for maybe using “legendary” more than necessary. That’s a career copy editor’s observation.

Fraser never had a losing season at Miami and the Hurricanes appeared in 12 College World Series between 1974 and 1992, including five consecutive berths (1978-1982). Three of his teams won more than 60 games in a season, and the 1980 Hurricanes won 59 times.

Fraser was eager to share his secret to success with other programs, and assistant coaches like Skip Bertman, who would lead LSU to five national championships.

“I got a lot of credit as a leader because I had big crowds at LSU, and now they have big crowds everywhere,” Bertman told Brauer. “Ron was doing it ten years before me.

“I wouldn’t have the success I had without Ron Fraser.”

What makes The Wizard of College Baseball so insightful are the interviews Brauer conducted. He relied on newspapers, books and media guides for information, but interviews with more than 100 former players, coaches, administrators, reporters and family members give the reader a well-rounded picture of Fraser and the program he built.

There is a reason there is a statue honoring Fraser outside Mark Light Stadium. He was a giant among college baseball coaches, saving Miami’s baseball program from being cut in the early 1970s.

What Fraser did was contagious, and the entire Hurricanes program benefited tremendously.
​
Brauer’s attention to detail, his anecdotal prose and insights from his interviews make The Wizard of College Baseball a success.

Here is a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about an R316 Kashin Publications set coming to a Heritage Auctions sale next weekend:

​www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/r316-kashin-publications-complete-set-from-1929-part-of-heritage-auctions-sale/

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about the cards and career of Hall of Fame pitcher Robin Roberts. On July 5, he pitched his 28th consecutive complete game, an amazing stat that seems impossible today because of pitch counts and managers with quick hooks:

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/robin-roberts-baseball-cards-chronicle/
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Author Larry Gerlach calls Bob Emslie “the least-known famous umpire in baseball.”

Umpires are supposed to be anonymous. They are like offensive linemen in football. They only get noticed when they make a bad play, or in an umpire’s case, a bad call.

As Mitch Miller’s 1951 song “The Umpire” notes, “We ain’t got no use for the umpire unless he calls them our way.” Major leaguers Tommy Henrich, Ralph Branca, Phil Rizzuto and Roy Campanella have lines in the tune, sung by Miller and the Sandpipers.
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Only 10 umpires have been elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Starting with Bill Klem and Tommy Connolly in 1953, nine arbiters were selected by the Veterans Committee. The last umpire chosen was Hank O’Day, selected by the Pre-Integration Era Committee in 2013.

That dovetails nicely with Emslie, who was O’Day’s contemporary and a good friend.
​
In Lion of the League: Bob Emslie and the Evolution of the Baseball Umpire (University of Nebraska Press; hardback; $39.95; 432 pages) Gerlach examines Emslie’s life and umpiring career during the late 19th century and early 20th century. It was a rough-and-tumble era for the men in blue; the four-man crew was still a pipedream as each game had only one umpire, and later, two.

That meant that players could take liberties, by cutting corners on the basepaths, trapping the ball in the outfield and other ploys that gave teams an edge. It was difficult for an umpire to call balls and strikes and then hustle down the basepaths to decide plays on the bases. Umpires were also subjected to more verbal — and in some cases, physical — abuse from players. Unlike today’s thin-skinned, quick-trigger umpires, Emslie was reluctant to eject a player who was “kicking.” And there were plenty of reasons, as ballplayers — particularly in the 1890s—used profanity freely.
​
According to Retrosheet.org, Emslie ejected 163 players and managers during his 35-year career.

​Judging from Gerlach’s strong research, Emslie was one of the game’s best. Even though he was respected by most players and manager for his fairness and evenhandedness in running a game, Emslie never got to work a World Series.

His knowledge of the rules made him a “go-to” official for major league executives, and while he was criticized late in his career for his work behind the plate — New York Giants manager John McGraw, a frequent nemesis, called him “Blind Bob” — Emslie’s work on the bases was beyond reproach.

Gerlach is qualified to write about Emslie. Now in his 80s, the native of Lincoln, Nebraska received his bachelor’s degree in education and his master’s in history from the University of Nebraska. He earned his doctorate in history from Rutgers University and began teaching at the University of Utah in 1968. Since his retirement in 2013, Gerlach has been a professor emeritus of history at Utah.
​
A former board president for the Society of American Baseball Research, Gerlach wrote the 1994 book, Men in Blue: Conversations with Umpires. He is also the coeditor of The SABR Book of Umpires and Umpiring.
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In May, he was one of three recipients of the Henry Chadwick Award, presented annually by SABR to honor baseball’s great historians, statisticians, archivists and annalists.

So sure, Gerlach is qualified to write about baseball history, but why choose Emslie? Gerlach admits in his prologue that he had no intention of writing a biography about the umpire. But he made a 20-miunte speech about Emslie during a Canadian baseball history symposium. Gerlach then realized that a biography about Emslie and the era when he umpired would provide a valuable addition to baseball literature.
​
Readers will be educated through Gerlach’s careful research and casual narrative about Emslie — he calls him “Bob” more often than not, a device that personalizes what until now has been an obscure baseball figure. And Gerlach’s research also shows readers what umpires faced during the pre-1900 era. It was not an easy time.
Gerlach draws from publications from the late 1880s, like Sporting Life and the Spalding Guide, newspaper articles and even Emslie’s memoirs.

Emslie began his career as a right-handed curveball specialist. Playing in the from 1883 to 1885, American Association, he fashioned a 44-44 record in three seasons. That mark is deceptive since a sore arm ended his career. But in 1884, Emslie put together a 32-17 record with a 2.75 ERA for the Baltimore Orioles.

More impressively, he started and completed 50 games that season and pitched in 455.1 innings. But the toll on his arm resulted in a rough 3-10 record in Baltimore the following season before he was released and finished his career in Philadelphia, going 0-4 with the Athletics.

Still enamored with the game, Emslie turned to umpiring, coming out of the stands on Dominion Day in 1887 to help out when the regular umpire did not show up. He would work his way through the minor leagues before landing in the American Association in 1890. His first game as a major league umpire was April 17, 1890, and his career as an umpire lasted until Sept. 28, 1924, when he worked the bases for a game in St. Louis between the Cardinals and the Cincinnati Reds.

When Emslie began umpiring, Gerlach writes, “it was the best and worst of times for umpires.”

But as it turned out, he was “a born umpire.” His “tactful, conciliatory approach” to defusing controversy was admired by players, managers and fans — although there were times when his decisions did not sit well with them.

But that is an umpire’s life.
​
Emslie called four no-hitters during his career and worked the bases in four others. With Klem behind the plate, he was part of the fastest nine-inning game in MLB history — a 51-minute sprint at the Polo Grounds between the Giants and Philadelphia Phillies in the first game of a doubleheader on Sept 28, 1919. 

​He was umpiring the bases on Sept. 23, 1908, in the famous “Merkle’s Boner” game, also at the Polo Grounds. Emslie had to duck to avoid Al Bridwell’s apparent game-winning hit to center field, but when Fred Merkle failed to touch second base, Chicago Cubs second baseman Johnny Evers called for the ball.

t most likely was not the game ball, as fans swarmed onto the field, but Evers caught “a” baseball and stepped on second base, claiming the winning run was nullified by the force play.

Emslie appealed to O’Day, the plate umpire, who called Merkle out. The game was eventually called a tie and was replayed at the end of the season when both teams finished with 98-55 records. The Cubs would win the rematch and the Giants were furious.

In addition to “Blind Bob” affixed by McGraw after that controversial, Emslie was also known as “Wig” because of his receding hairline and his penchant for wearing a toupee, according to some sources. Gerlach disputes that despite the “execrable rowdiness of the 1890s,” there was no evidence that Emslie had that nickname.

However, players did make mention of his lack of hair, with Jack Doyle taunting him in an 1897 game by suggesting he “get a hairpiece.” Doyle took it a step further in 1898, Gerlach writes. Angered by being called out, the player grabbed the umpire’s toupee and took off running. Doyle later said his $20 fine “was worth the laughs.”

Emslie’s duties behind the plate diminished beginning in 1909, and he constantly lived in fear of being forcibly sent into retirement thereafter because of criticism over his farsightedness. At times during the 1910s, he was part of a team of replacement umpires.

And yet Emslie persevered, becoming the “Dean of Umpires.” After retiring from active duty, he became chief of umpires and continued to be the game’s expert on rules.

By the time Emslie retired, he had set records for most seasons (35) and regular-season games (4,231) as an umpire. Klem, who was an umpire for 37 years, topped that mark with 5,375 games, a mark that stood for 80 years until Joe West finished his career in 2001 with 5,640 regular-season games across 43 seasons.
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Gerlach concedes that trying to “capture the private person” was difficult with Emslie, outside of his love for baseball, trapshooting (of which he was an expert) and curling. Very little was known about his family life after he got married, but Gerlach has extensive information about Emslie’s formative years.
Years after his death in 1943, Emslie was elected to the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in 1986. A baseball field in St. Thomas, Ontario, is named in his honor. It would be another decade before an umpire would be elected to the Hall of Fame.

Gerlach makes a case for Emslie’s enshrinement but conceded that his lack of postseason umpiring and a refusal to wear glasses to cure his farsightedness worked against him. Umpires did not wear glasses until 1956, when Ed Rommel and Frank Umont became the first.

In Lion of the League, Gerlach writes ’em like he sees ’em. It’s a fascinating view of an often overlooked — but extremely important — part of the game.

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about Panini America's Caitlin Clark Collection of cards that was released on July 1:

​www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/2024-panini-caitlin-clark-collection/

Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about some of the memorable Topps cards of Orlando Cepeda, who died on June 28:

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/orlando-cepeda-remembering-the-baby-bull-in-baseball-cards/
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Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about the 1984 Topps baseball set -- it's 40 years old!

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/1984-topps-baseball-one-big-rookie-was-highlight-of-pleasant-looking-set/

Here is an interview I did with WLKF Radio in Lakeland about Forest Ferguson on D-Day, his athletic career and life. Starting at the 6:40 mark.