Thomas W. Gilbert

Thomas W. Gilbert looks at baseball history in a fresh new way. This is what Earl Weaver biographer John W. Miller said about my latest book, Death in the Strike Zone: The Mystery of America's First Baseball Hero: "[Tom] has invented a brilliant new kind of baseball book, a mystery biography that’s a history of an incandescent American folk hero, a masterful study of the physics of pitching, and a survey of the wild, weird 19th century. Because Gilbert is an expert on still-relevant topics like gambling, pitching mechanics, and baseball economics, Death is the Strike Zone is endlessly enlightening. Creighton died young, but I’ve never read anything about 19th century baseball that’s so alive.”

Gilbert is also the author of How Baseball Happened, which won the Casey Award for best baseball book of the year, Baseball and the Color Line, Roberto Clemente, Playing First and other books.

He and his sweet-tempered wife Lisa live in Brooklyn, New York, near his grown children Wesley and Susannah, both of whom can swing the bat, and his son-in-law Akif. Tom plays ball on the weekend, goes on shooting excursions in the country, socializes with firefighters and is active in local politics. He hopes someday to join the dozens of baseball’s amateur founding fathers residing in Brooklyn's Green-Wood cemetery, but there is no rush.