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Kevin Baker

Biography

Kevin Baker

Kevin Baker is a novelist, historian and journalist. He has been a professional writer since the age of 13, working originally for the Gloucester Daily Times as a stringer covering school-boy sports. He is the coauthor of Reggie Jackson’s BECOMING MR. OCTOBER. His work as appeared in Harper’s, where he is also a contributing editor, New York Observer, The New York Times and The New Republic. He lives in New York City.

Kevin Baker

Books by Kevin Baker

by Kevin Baker - History, Nonfiction, Sports

Baseball is “the New York game” because New York is where the diamond was first laid out, where the bunt and the curveball were invented, and where the home run was hit. It’s where the game’s first stars were born, and where everyone came to play or watch the game. With nuance and depth, historian Kevin Baker brings this all vividly back to life: the still-controversial, indelible moments. Did the Babe call his shot? Was Merkle out? Did they fix the 1919 World Series? In Baker's hands, the city and the game emerge from the murk of 19th-century American life --- driven by visionaries and fixers, heroes and gangsters. He details how New York and its favorite sport came to mirror one another, expanding, bumbling through catastrophe and corruption, and rising out of these trials stronger than ever.

by Reggie Jackson with Kevin Baker - Nonfiction, Sports

BECOMING MR. OCTOBER is a revelatory self-portrait of baseball icon Reggie Jackson at the height of his public fame and private anguish. Filled with anecdotes about the notorious “Bronx Zoo” Yankees of the late 1970s and bluntly honest portrayals of his teammates and competitors, this is baseball history as can be told only by the man who lived it.