“Baseball: The Numbers Game”

What: The Belden Lecture in Sports Journalism is an annual lecture dealing with topics relating to sports in American Studies, culture, and history. The lecture was established by a generous gift of Thomas G. Merrill ’83, of New York, NY, and  named in loving memory of his uncle, Francis R. Belden, Trinity Class of 1930.
 
This year’s lecturer and Belden Visiting Scholar will be Alan Schwarz.  He will discuss his book, The Numbers Game: Baseball’s Lifelong Fascination with Statistics, which reached No. 1 on the Amazon sports bestseller list when it was published in 2004, and later was named ESPN’s Baseball Book of the Year.  In The New York Times Book Review, George Will called Schwarz’s book, “an Information Age story … in Schwarz’s lively telling, The Numbers Game is a history of eccentrics whose unshakeable thirst for baseball numbers is shared by millions of Americans.”

 

When: Monday, April 7 ~ 4:00 p.m.  Reception and book signing to follow.

 

Where: Rittenberg Lounge, Mather Hall, on the Trinity College campus

 

Background:  Alan Schwarz joined The New York Times as a sports staff writer in March 2007 after being a frequent contributor to the paper for eight years. He had been the Senior Writer of Baseball America magazine since 1991 and was the host of ESPN’s daily “Baseball Today” podcast, the top-rated individual-sport podcast on iTunes in 2006. Schwarz appears as a frequent analyst on ESPN’s “Outside the Lines” and National Public Radio’s “Talk of the Nation”.

 

For more information, please contact the American Studies Program at 860-297-4228.

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