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Mix of Interests Lead Alumnus to
For Immediate Release: RICHMOND, Ind. — A fascination and passion for writing, history and baseball have inspired Earlham College graduate John Shiffert ‘74 to combine those elements in his recently completed first book, Baseball: 1862-2003, being released this month by PublishAmerica.
Shiffert, director of university relations at Clayton College & State University in Morrow, Ga., since 1995, first started writing about baseball on the Internet in 2002. That venue (his Web site is www.baseball19to21.com) gave the Philadelphia native not only an opportunity to write about his beloved sport on a weekly basis, but also provided him with an idea for the basic format of his book that describes the 2003 major league season within a larger, historical frame of reference. “I had a review for the 2003 season and a review of baseball history as it applied to the current game,” says Shiffert. “That’s sort of the angle that I don’t think has been done too much. I could see very clearly in the course of the way things had been happening during the 2003 season that it would be easy to compare current events with past events and to write something about it.” Avis Stewart, Earlham vice president of community relations, was a college classmate of Shiffert’s. The former Quakers basketball standout and EC Athletics Hall of Famer sees his now professional colleague’s new book as a logical extension of his Earlham experience. “John Shiffert was an outstanding scholar and sports enthusiast while attending Earlham,” Stewart remembers. “He was an excellent writer — known for his quick wit and love of athletics — who always thought of creative ways to interest the reader during his years as an Earlham student. Baseball: 1862-2003 is well-written, thought-provoking and a pleasure to read.” “My interest in sports manifested itself very much at Earlham,” confirms Shiffert. Although he was involved with several of the College’s varsity teams, he says it was as a student manager for the men’s basketball squad that he met an individual who had, perhaps, the greatest impact on him in terms of his view of athletics: former head coach Del Harris. “He’s really a remarkable individual,” Shiffert
remarks of Harris, still a legend on the Earlham campus more than
a quarter-century after leaving the College to coach at the international
level and, later, in the National Basketball Association, where
he remains today as assistant coach of the Dallas Mavericks. Blass was a pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates for 10 years in the 1960s and early ‘70s. His best season was 1972 when he was 19-8. Just the next year, however, plagued by the “disease” that now bears his name, Blass’s record fell to 3-9. By 1974 he was out of the major leagues.
“I’d been thinking about that for a long time,” Shiffert says, “because there have been more guys than just Steve Blass who have had this problem. There have been about a half dozen, with [Rick] Ankiel being only the most recent victim.” Ankiel, a left handed hurler with the St. Louis Cardinals, went 11-7 in 2000, helping to lead his team into that year’s playoffs. Then suddenly, in a post-season contest against the Atlanta Braves, Ankiel could no longer deliver strikes, throwing wild pitch after wild pitch over his catcher’s head and into the backstop. He was out of the major leagues during the 2002 and 2003 seasons before finally returning to the Cardinals last summer. Another section of his book that Shiffert likes, in particular, is called, “If I were the commissioner,” wherein the author asks the question, “What would I do to change baseball?” “I had a lot of fun with that,” says Shiffert. “The No. 1 priority is the immediate abolishment of the designated hitter. The second is getting rid of inter-league play, which I don’t like. It detracts from the special nature of the World Series and the All-Star Game, and it’s also unfair competitively.” (A rule Shiffert would like to see to make baseball more competitive is one stating that playoff teams cannot sign free agents during the next year. “I think that would help avoid domination,” he says.) Discussing strange events in baseball was another especially enjoyable part of writing his book, Shiffert says. He still laughs as he recounts the tale of former Pittsburgh Pirates infielder Randall Simon who, unbelievably, hit a Milwaukee Brewers mascot — costumed as a giant kielbasa —with a bat in front of the Pirates’ dugout during a between innings “sausage race” in 2003. There also is a favorite section on previous baseball books. Shiffert’s choice for the best work is Ball Four, written by major league pitcher Jim Bouton as a diary of the 1969 season, with other recollections from his days with the New York Yankees. “It really changed the way people reported baseball,” says Shiffert. “It’s a lot more honest now.” Shiffert says his love of writing began while in high school, when the local newspaper didn’t follow his prep baseball squad. “It irritated me, so I decided if they aren’t going to cover it, I’d do it myself. I started putting out a newsletter after each game.” His abiding interest in baseball as history also started as a youth, recalls Shiffert, who shares that interest today with his wife, Faith, and their four children. “I’ve been a baseball fan since my dad took me to my first game in 1957,” Shiffert explains, “and I’ve always been intrigued by history. I had a very good history teacher at Germantown Friends in Harry Gratwick. He was a strong influence on me in terms of my interest in history. So, there are a lot things that are mixed in together” in the making of Baseball: 1862-2003. As with any undertaking as sizeable and complex as writing a book, Shiffert says there were many issues and distractions that made completing the project difficult. “The hardest part was finding the time to do it,” he says. “Generally, most of the book was written between midnight on Friday night and 2 a.m. on Saturday mornings each week.” Contact:
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Earlham
College · 801 National Road West · Richmond,
Indiana 47374-4095 |