Books About Transforming Moments in Chicago’s History & Sports
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Books About Transforming Moments in Chicago’s History & Sports
Dr. David J. Fletcher is the founder of the Chicago Baseball Museum and the President, CEO, and Chief Medical Director of SafeWorks Illinois. He is the co- author of Chili Dog MVP: Dick Allen, The 1972 White Sox and A Transforming Chicago (2022, with John P. Owens) and many other articles on baseball history. He graduated from Chicago’s Rush Medical College and practiced medicine in the U.S. Army. In 2003, he founded the Clear Buck campaign with members of Buck Weaver’s family and he was honored for his efforts with the Baseball Reliquary’s Hilda Award during the 2005 Shrine of the Eternals ceremony. In 2007, the Chicago Baseball Museum acquired the private baseball library and papers of sportswriter Jerome Holtzman, Major League Baseball’s first Official Historian. Dr. Fletcher grew up in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, where he played baseball and sometimes took three trains as a teenager to go to baseball games at Wrigley Field and Comiskey Park.
Books: Chili Dog MVP, Joe Jackson vs Chicago Baseball Museum Never-Before-Seen Trial Transcript
Jacob Pomrenke is the Director of Editorial Content for the Society for American Baseball Research. He has been a SABR member since 1998 and is the chairman and newsletter editor for the Black Sox Scandal Research Committee. He is the editor of Scandal on the South Side: The 1919 Chicago White Sox (2015) and the Eight Myths Out project (2019). He has been interviewed as a subject-matter expert on baseball scandals for MLB Network, ESPN, PBS, the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and many other TV, radio, print, and online outlets. Before he joined the SABR staff in 2011, he spent 10 years working as an editor and reporter for newspapers in Southern California and in his hometown of Gainesville, Georgia. He currently lives in the Bay Area with his wife, Tracy Greer, and their Deadball Era cat, Nixey Callahan. Find more of his work at jacobpomrenke.com.
Book: Joe Jackson vs Chicago Baseball Museum Never-Before-Seen Trial Transcript
John Owens is an award-winning media professional with more than 30 years of experience as a writer, journalist, producer, director and videographer.
He has worked in a variety of capacities in broadcast, print and online — from producer to executive producer to director to videographer to writer to reporter.
Owens has produced numerous full-length documentaries and programs for broadcast and online platforms. His film “The City’s Pastime” received the Chicago/Midwest Emmy Award for best historical documentary in 2005, and his film “Kenwood’s Journey” won the Chicago/Midwest Emmy Award for best topical documentary in 2015.
Owens also received honors for his work from the Chicago Headline Club, the Illinois Associated Press Broadcasters Association, the Digital Edge Awards, the Telly Awards and the National Association of Black Journalists.
His work as a writer and reporter has been featured in the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Reader, Block Club Chicago, New City, Reel Chicago, Neiman Reports and other publications.
Owens’ broadcast work has been featured on the Decades Network, Me-TV, WGN-TV, CLTV, WYCC-TV (PBS), Fox News Chicago and Link-TV.
In addition, Owens is also an adjunct professor at the City Colleges of Chicago, where he teaches broadcast writing and interactive media.
He is also the President for the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Chicago/Midwest Chapter.
Book: Chili Dog MVP
George Castle Editor George Castle is one of the top authors and historians in baseball and broadcasting today.
An author of 21 books and historian for the Chicago Baseball Museum, Castle turned an avocation into a vocation. A native of Chicago’s far North Side, he grew up in the cheap seats of Wrigley Field and old Comiskey Park, paying just $1 to get into the bleachers of the former in the early 1970s. Sometimes he’d splurge to spend $1.75 on grandstand seats.
On an off-day from his summer stockboy job at the downtown Goldblatt’s Department Store, Castle was an eyewitness to Dick Allen’s prodigious center field homer on Aug. 23, 1972, described in Chili Dog MVP: Dick Allen, the 1972 White Sox and A Transforming Chicago.
Castle began covering baseball in 1980 at both Chicago ballparks. Castle went on to write for a variety of newspapers and magazines. He founded “Diamond Gems”, his own syndicated weekly baseball radio show, in 1994. Through spit, gum and wire, Castle kept “Diamond Gems” on the air for 17 seasons. Castle began his author’s career with the first book published on Harry Caray after his death in 1998.
Castle has built longstanding connections to a number of Hall of Famers and top baseball personalities, who have helped him in his coverage. He co-authored The 1969 Cubs with Hall of Famer Fergie Jenkins in 2019.
He is a longtime North Suburban Chicago resident.
Book: Chili Dog MVP