Baseball’s Early Days On Deck at Smithsonian
If you think you know everything there is to know about baseball, an upcoming Smithsonian Resident Associates event might have some surprises for you.
A panel of baseball experts will discuss “The Greatest Baseball Stories Never Told” on Thursday. The panel is made up of David Block, a baseball memorabilia collector and author of “Baseball Before We Knew It: A Search for Early Roots of the Game”; John Thorn, an expert on early baseball history and commentator for The History Channel; Tom Shieber, curator of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum; and Frank Ceresi, former curator of the National Sports Gallery. Together, the four will discuss the early days of baseball, including some little-known stories about the game. This panel discussion will be followed by a book signing.
The discussion takes place from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Thursday at the Smithsonian’s S. Dillon Ripley Center. Admission is $25 general and $20 for Smithsonian Resident Associates. For more information, visit residentassociates.org.
Author to Discuss Significance of ‘Five Days’
Charles Peters, longtime editor of The Washington Monthly, will discuss his new book, “Five Days in Philadelphia,” on Thursday at Politics and Prose.
Subtitled “The Amazing ‘We Want Willkie!’ Convention of 1940 and How It Freed FDR to Save the Western World,” the book examines the 1940 Republican National Convention in Philadelphia, in which a little-known businessman, Wendell Willkie, was chosen out of four contenders to be the Republican nominee for president. Peters further writes that the nomination of the dark horse candidate was a key element of Roosevelt’s role in Great Britain and the United States’ entry into World War II.
Peters will discuss “Five Days in Philadelphia” at 7 p.m. at Politics and Prose, 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW. The event is free and open to the public. For more information, call (202) 364-1919.
–Amy Carlile