Dickson: The baseball book that changed my life
From Paul Dickson at The National Pastime Museum on December 9, 2015:
In 1962 when I was waiting to be accepted in Naval Officers Candidate School in Newport, Rhode Island (my ingenious plan to avoid the military draft was to join the Navy as an officer), I took a job in a bookstore in Yonkers called Mr. Paperback. Sometime just after the holidays in 1962, the store received a delivery of new books, which included several copies of Bill Veeck’s autobiography, Veeck—as in Wreck.
I knew Veeck was known as a maverick, but I was not prepared for his all-out assault on the sacred cows and poo-bahs of baseball.
It was love at first paragraph, as it began:
In 1951, in a moment of madness, I became owner and operator of a collection of old rags and tags known to baseball historians as the St. Louis Browns. The Browns, according to reputable anthropologists, rank in the annals of baseball as two steps ahead of Cro-Magnon man.
Read the full article here: http://www.thenationalpastimemuseum.com/article/veeck-wreck-chaotic-career-baseballs-incorrigible-maverick
Originally published: December 9, 2015. Last Updated: December 9, 2015.