Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
February 17, 2004
Ritter Dies

John Rogan sends me details of the death of Lawrence Ritter, chronicler of baseball history.


In the early 1960s, when reel-to-reel tape recorders were bulky and unwieldy, Mr. Ritter traveled 75,000 miles in a five-year period to hear the voices from an era when roughneck ballplayers came out of farms and small towns with battered suitcases, when baseballs were dead and spitballs were alive.

Mr. Ritter located old-time baseball stars living in obscurity and asked them of a time when their deeds were the stuff of headlines. ``The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the Early Days of Baseball Told by the Men Who Played It,'' published by Macmillan in 1966, became a classic of baseball history.


The nice thing is that those tapes are in the Hall of Fame, so they will be available to generations of researchers. We all owe Mr. Ritter thanks for his work. My thoughts are with his friends and family.


Posted by David Pinto at 03:21 PM | Authors | TrackBack (1)
Comments

The audio version of Glory is actually comprised of the original interviews. I have it on CD at home (along with the book itself). Amazing stuff.

Posted by: Cliff at February 17, 2004 04:06 PM

I read Ritter's book for the first time when I was about 11 years old. I vividly recall riding in the car with my dad and asking him to turn on the dome light so that I could keep reading even after the sun went down. My copy is shredded from repeated readings through the years. Simply a brilliant book.

Posted by: Matt Rumbaugh at February 18, 2004 10:29 AM

The Glory of Their Times is a great book. Reading it inspired me to go back and read everything I could find about the 1908 Merkle incident, including the NY Times microfiche at the local library.

Posted by: Pat Curley at February 18, 2004 01:53 PM