Josh Gibson, The Heartbreak Kid

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Josh Gibson, The Heartbreak Kid The kid tapped his bat on Yankee Stadium’s home plate and tugged at the sleeves of his gray visi­tors’ uniform, revealing biceps “built like sledge ham­mers.” Before him, the stadi­um’s left field roof, with its famous gingerbread lattice facing, soared one hundred and eighteen feet into the air some four hundred feet from home plate. The scene was the World Series...
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Currents

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Currents Famous Faces John W. Mosley (1907-1969), characterized by an admirer as “our most magnificent and beloved photographer,” was Philadelphia’s leading black photographer, whose images appeared in nearly every African American newspaper on the East Coast (see “His Eye Was On The Positive” by Richard D. Beards in the winter 1990 edition of Pennsylvania Heritage)....
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Currents

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Currents White Elephants Baseball historians generally consider Connie Mack (1862-1956) the paragon of managers. His knowledge of the game, professional disposition, and ability to acquire and, more importantly, manage players captured the attention of sports enthusiasts during a time when the national pastime was riddled with scandal, permeated with intemperance, and punctuated by rowdyism. Connie Mack...
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Currents

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Currents When Worlds Collide History, politics, and art collide in a newly opened exhibition of works by renowned illustrator N.C. Wyeth (1882- 1945) and his grandson, James Wyeth (born 1946), at the Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford, Delaware County. One Nation: Patriots and Pirates Por­trayed by N.C. Wyeth and James Wyeth brings together eighty draw­ings and paintings that challenge viewers to...
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Baseball’s One-Armed Wonder: An Interview with the Late Great, Pete Gray

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Baseball’s One-Armed Wonder: An Interview with the Late Great, Pete Gray On Sunday, May 20, 1945, thirty-six thousand spectators packed Yankee Stadium, in the Bronx, for a doubleheader that pitted the New York Yankees against the defending American league champions, the St. Louis Browns. The Yankees, who had finished in third place in the previous season, six games behind the Browns, had something to prove that afternoon. Even though the World War II had stripped...
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In King’s Shadow: Bayard Rustin and the 1963 March on Washington

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on In King’s Shadow: Bayard Rustin and the 1963 March on Washington On Wednesday, August 28, 1963, a quarter-million African American and white civil rights activists walked the one-mile length of the National Mall from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial to rally for better jobs and freedom for the nation s blacks. The signature event of the March on Washington occurred in the late afternoon when the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his...
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Bookshelf

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf Archbishop Patrick John Ryan: His Life and Times: Ireland — St. Louis — Philadelphia, 1831–1911 by Patrick Ryan published by AuthorHouse Press, 2010; 357 pages, paper, $11.60 Upon the death of Patrick John Ryan (1831– 1911), Archbishop of Philadelphia for more than a quarter century, church bells throughout the city solemnly tolled to mark the passing of the remarkable Irish-born prelate. Ryan...
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Bookshelf

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf Mrs. Goodfellow: The Story of America’s First Cooking School by Becky Libourel Diamond published by Westholme Publishing, 2012; 288 pages, cloth, $26.00 Married and widowed three times, Elizabeth Baker Pearson Coane Goodfellow (1768–1851) owned a popular bakery and sweet shop in Philadelphia during the first decades of the nineteenth century. In addition to catering to the city’s wealthy...
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