And Here's The Pitch...

     As high heat melts snowballs into fastballs and as spring’s batters pinch hit for winter’s bitters- Everybody Reads is very excited to announce our first annual “Baseball Extravaganza,” to be held on Wednesday February 21^st from 5 – 9PM at 2019 E. Michigan Avenue in Lansing. The event is absolutely free and will be suitable for all baseball fans! 

            The evening’s events will feature four Michigan baseball writers, baseball cards and memorabilia, and fun stuff from the Tigers, Lugnuts and Spartan baseball and softball teams. What’s more, there will be free veggie dogs, and peanuts and baseball treats for all children!

The event was conceived by Haslett-based author Peter Morris. Mr. Morris’s 2003 book, Baseball Fever: Early Baseball in Michigan, was selected for a Michigan Notable Book Award and won the Seymour Medal as the year's best baseball book. His recently released two-volume series, A Game of Inches: The Stories Behind the Innovations That Shaped Baseball, has been lauded by baseball critics (including Keith Olbermann), was just featured on ESPN’s website and the winner of the 2007 Casey Award.

         During his days, Dr. Bill Anderson sits in Governor Jennifer Granholm’s cabinet as the director of the Michigan Department of History, Arts and Libraries- a position created for him by Governor John Engler in 2001. But by night, while most of us slept and the Tigers engaged the Angels, Dr. Anderson wrote The Detroit Tigers: A Pictorial Celebration of the Greatest Players and Moments in Tigers’ History, and his latest, published by the University of Michigan Press – The View from the Dugout:  The Journals of Red Rolfe.  His history of the Detroit Tigers recently won the Award of Merit from the Historical Society of Michigan. 

Tom Stanton, a journalist for twenty-five years, is a founder of The Voice Newspapers in suburban Detroit. He has won state and national press awards, including a prestigious Michigan Journalism Fellowship at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Stanton is author of Hank Aaron and the Home Run That Changed America (2004, William Morrow/HarperCollins), The Road to Cooperstown (2003, Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press) and The Final Season (2002, Thomas Dunne Books/Griffin), which was named best baseball book of the year as winner of both the Casey and Dave Moore awards. Stanton is also the editor of The Detroit Tigers Reader (2005, University of Michigan Press). For several years, Stanton served as a journalism professor at the University of Detroit Mercy. 

East Lansing writer Bob Roth has published three books and hundreds of articles and columns for state and national publications, most recently as a regular contributor to Sojourners magazine.  Bob's undying loyalty to the Detroit Tigers (since he first visited Tiger Stadium for a game in 1963) evolved into a passion for all things baseball with the inception of the Lansing Lugnuts in 1996.  His book OUR LUGNUTS : Year One! remembers a magical year of baseball in Lansing, reminding both the casual fan and the energized enthusiast exactly what brought us all together at Oldsmobile Park.

 Rick Mettert, owner of Extra Innings in Mason, will bring part of his store’s amazing sports collectible collection, most of which will be available for purchase at the event.

For more information please contact: Scott Harris at 517 346-9900 or 517 290-0099. He can also be reached by e-mail at: harriss@voyager.net