About the author
Baseball Novelist
JB Manheim
JB Manheim is Professor Emeritus at The George Washington University, where he developed the world's first degree-granting program in political communication and was later founding director of the School of Media & Public Affairs. In 1995 he was named Professor of the Year for the District of Columbia.
He learned his love of baseball watching Dizzy Dean on the Game of the Week and huddling with his grandfather for warmth on July nights at The Mistake By The Lake, AKA, Cleveland Municipal Stadium, and renewed it when the National Pasttime finally returned to the Nation's Capital.
Manheim brings to life his expertise in propaganda and strategic communication through his fictional stories of baseball behind the scenes. His writing will lead you to question whether what you think you know about the history of the game and about the powers who control it is real, or whether it's just a carefully nurtured product of lies, deceptions, misdirections, and propaganda.
JB Manheim is a member of the Society for American Baseball Research and the Internet Baseball Writers Association of America.
“I've made up stuff that's turned out to be real, that's the spooky part. ”
Tom Clancy
Some Further Musings by the Author
The Cooperstown Trilogy has become a series, The Deadball Files, and moved to a new publisher. Listen to my conversation with Lawrence Knorr, CEO of Sunbury Press, "J.B. Manheim Brings "The Deadball Files" to the Sunbury Press Books Show," May 19, 2023, and learn about plans that have already (in September 2023) produced classy new covers and a new book, The Federal Case.
My review of Loserville by Clayton Trutor appeared in the November 2022 issue of Outside the Lines, the newsletter of the Business of Baseball Committee of the Society for American Baseball Research.
In April 2022, a promotion at Nationals Park in DC caused a panic on Capitol Hill. Read my thoughts on good promotions and bad baseball, "Nationals Stunt Didn't Threaten National Security," in the May 7, 2022, issue of Here's the Pitch.
Major League Baseball has been on a mission to shorten its games. But what if that's the wrong way to go? What if it is just plain unfair to the fans? Counterintuitive? See my tongue-in-cheek argument, titled "Why MLB Games Should Be Longer, Not Shorter," in the October 9, 2021, issue of Here's the Pitch.
You can find more information about the story behind This Never Happened, the book itself, and how I came to write it in my interview by Paul Semendinger posted on the June 24, 2021, issue of the Start Spreading The News blog.
My take on the restructuring of minor league baseball, titled "That Championship Season," can be found in the June 12, 2021 , issue of Here's the Pitch.
If you are interested in becoming a writer, check out some thoughts about the challenges and rewards of that pursuit in my interview by Stacey Gotsulias on the IBWAA Baseball Writers podcast of June 9, 2021. You can hear the interview starting around minute 39:30.
Read a little more about JT Willett in "A Baseball Writer's Last Big Story" in the May 1, 2021, issue of Here's The Pitch, the newsletter of the Internet Baseball Writers Association of America.
If you are a member of Goodreads, I invite you to visit my Goodreads Author's Page. And if you are not yet a member, well, you can visit the page anyway! It is, you should know, a work in progress.