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SportsJam with Doug Doyle: Baseball Author and Former AP Sportswriter Dan Schlossberg

Dan Schlossberg
Doug Doyle for SportsJam

Dan Schlossberg, who grew up in Passaic, New Jersey and now lives in Fairlawn, NJ, is one of the premier baseball experts and is an award-winning baseball and travel journalist.

Dan and SportsJam host Doug Doyle got together in Clifton, NJ for this edition to discuss Sclossberg's latest book titled The New Baseball Bible: Notes, Nuggets, Lists and Legends from Our National Pastime (Skyhorse Publishing).

Schlossberg has written more than 25-thousand articles and 40 books about baseball during his amazing 50-plus year career for media outlets such as The Associated Press, MLB.com, Baseball Digest, The Sporting News, USA Today Sports Weekly and Forbes.com.

In honor of his favorite team and the fact that The New Baseball Bible was released this past St. Patrick's Day, Schlossberg wore his St. Patrick's Atlanta Braves hat for the interview.  Schlossberg's dad, Ezra, was an old New York Giants fan who would turn down a black and white Zenith television during baseball game broadcasts and explain the game to his youg son.  Dan would become a life-long Braves fan.

"That was the first World Series I ever watched Doug,  1957 Milwaukee Braves against the New York Yankees and my dad told me what was going on.  The Braves did win that World Series.  As a result I became a Braves fan.  It was a great team, Hank Aaron, Lew Burdette, Warren Spahn, Eddie Mathews, a great team."

The New Baseball Bible
Credit Dan Schlossberg

The New Baseball Bible is filled with fun stories, in-depth articles written by Schlossberg, memorable nuggets and incredible photos that Dan has collected during his impressive career as a writer and author.  It's 480 ages of fun and information.  Schlossberg says his love of the game hasn't wavered during the coronavirus pandemic and he's anxious for Major League Baseball to go back to a 162-game regular season.  Schlossberg wrote about baseball while he was at Passaic High School and Syracuse University.  Who gets the credit for helping him develop as a writer?

"That's a good question and I'm not sure I can really answer that except when I was very young I designed my own comic books using high school or even junior high school classmates as the stars of the comic books.  And then I got into writing for the school newspaper, feature writing, sports writing, news writing and then went on to The Associated Press after college.  It was something I always wanted to do.  I knew when I left for college at age 17 in 1965 I wanted to write."

The book contains emotional stories about Schlossberg's close friends and associates in the game like  AL umpire Al Clark and long-time Yankees reporter Ed Lucas.  Schlossberg calls Lucas, who has been blind since the 1950's, the most remarkable man he's ever met.

"He (Ed Lucas) made baseball his career after losing his sight playing baseball.  He writes columns, he does interviews, he knows more baseball than anybody I've ever met and has got a great self-depricating sense of humor.  Everybody loves Ed Lucas."

Schlossberg says The New Baseball Bible has something for everyone.

"This book is a hybrid.  It's both a coffee table book and a bathroom book.  You can put it on your coffee table because it's so beautifully designed to look like the old Sporting News which is why it's called The New Baseball Bible and it's also a bathroom book because you can pick it up and read it backwards and still enjoy it."

Click above to hear the entire SportsJam interview with Dan Schlossberg.

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Doug Doyle has been News Director at WBGO since 1998 and has taken his department to new heights in coverage and recognition. Doug and his staff have received more than 250 awards from organizations like PRNDI (now PMJA), AP, New York Association of Black Journalists, Garden State Association of Black Journalists and the New Jersey Society of Professional Journalists.