Lyksett: SABR member Joe Niese’s baseball books connect with readers
From Dan Lyksett at the Eau Claire Leader-Telegram on August 29, 2014, on SABR member Joe Niese:
Joe Niese is a librarian by profession, a reader by habit and a sports fan by choice.
Sprinkle in an appreciation for local history and you have the perfect man to write about legendary baseball figures from our area.
Niese’s book “Burleigh Grimes: Baseball’s Last Legal Spitballer,” published last year, chronicles the human and professional side of the Hall of Famer who was raised in Clear Lake.
Niese’s next book, “Handy Andy: The Andy Pafko Story,” due out by Feb. 25, will be doing the same for the late great ballplayer and Boyceville native.
“I stopped playing organized baseball in 2004, and then in 2007 or ’08 my first article on baseball was published in the Wisconsin West magazine,” said Niese, 36, a Chippewa Falls resident, Eau Claire Regis graduate and currently information services coordinator at the Chippewa Falls Public Library.
“I wrote a few more articles, and then I read Jerry Poling’s book ‘Summer Up North’ about Henry Aaron, and he mentions Burleigh Grimes in there. So I was going to do an article about Burleigh.
“But then I went to Clear Lake and met Charles and Ardeth Clark. It really took off from there.”
Read the full article here: http://www.leadertelegram.com/news/front_page/article_858e767c-2e6c-11e4-9dd2-001a4bcf887a.html
Originally published: August 29, 2014. Last Updated: August 29, 2014.