My Greatest Day in Baseball

Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1996. First Bison Books Printing [stated]. Trade paperback. Very good. xii, 243, [7] pages. Illustrations. Box scores. Introduction to the Bison Books Edition by Jerome Holtzman. This is a reprint of the original 1945 edition. John P. Carmichael (October 16, 1902 in Madison, Wisconsin - June 6, 1986 in Chicago, Illinois) was a sportswriter who began his career with the Milwaukee Leader in 1924. He moved to Chicago in 1927, where he wrote for the Chicago Herald-Examiner until 1932, then the Chicago Daily News, where his column "The Barbershop" ran for 38 years. Carmichael became sports editor of the Daily News in 1943. He also served as editor for the Who's Who in the Major Leagues from 1938 to 1954. He retired in 1972 and was awarded the J.G. Taylor Spink Award in 1974. That the original 1945 incarnation of My Greatest Day in Baseball has returned to print, courtesy of the University of Nebraska's Bison Books imprint, is as welcome as a hanging curve to a power hitter. It's a cornerstone volume to any serious baseball library. Based in Chicago, John Carmichael was one of America's most celebrated sports columnists from the early '30s to his retirement 40 years later. For My Greatest Day, he collected the first-person rambles of 47 of the best ballplayers of the first half of the century. The roster is a virtual who's who: What aficionado wouldn't want to share a dugout with, among others, Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, Frankie Frisch, Satchel Paige, Mel Ott, Rogers Hornsby, and Jimmy Foxx? Sometimes myth triumphs over absolute truth in the players' memories, but baseball has always made room for its legends, and so much antiquated charm manages to seep into these pages as a result. For example, listen to how the Bambino begins his recollection of the famed "Called Shot" (which may or may not have actually happened) against the Cubs in the 1932 World Series: "What blankety-blank fool would-a done what I did that day. When I think of what-a idiot I'd a been if I'd struck out and I could-a, just as well as not because I was mad and I'd made up my mind to swing at the next pitch if I could reach it with a bat. Boy, when I think of the good breaks in my life..." Ruth leads off the volume, and merely sets the table. The 46 who follow acquit themselves equitably in bringing My Greatest Day home.