Book Talk: Kevin Baker | The New York Game

EventIn Person

In Partnership with Housing Works

On Wednesday, August 14, join us for an installment of the Municipal Art Society + Housing Works author series, featuring a discussion with The New York Game novelist, historian, and journalist Kevin Baker and writer Darin Strauss. The pair will do a deep-dive on New York City baseball history and Kevin’s work as a historian. Celebrate the summer baseball season by attending this talk and picking-up a copy of the book!

Light refreshments and snacks will be available for purchase. Additionally, there will be copies of Baker’s book available for purchase at the event. Doors at 6 PM. Event at 6:15 PM. Email events@mas.org with any questions.

About the Book

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? Here are all the legendary players, managers, and owners, in all their vivid, complicated humanity, on and off the field.

In Baker’s hands the city and the game emerge from the murk of nineteenth-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.

From the first innings played in vacant lots and tavern yards in the 1820s; to the canny innovations that created the very first sports league; to the superb Hispanic and Black players who invented their own version of the game when white baseball sought to exclude them. And all amidst New York’s own, incredible evolution from a raw, riotous town to a new world city. The New York Game is a riveting, rollicking, brilliant ode to America’s beloved pastime and to its indomitable city of origin. Read more here >

Wednesday, August 14
6:00 PM — 8:00 PM

Housing Works Bookstore
126 Crosby Street
New York, NY 10012

Tickets:
Free!

Attend
  • Author Kevin Baker (Photo: © Nina Subin) and moderator Darin Strauss.
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  • The New York Game: Baseball and the Rise of a New City by Kevin Baker. Penguin Random House.
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Meet the Speakers

Kevin Baker, Featured Writer
Kevin Baker is a novelist, historian, and journalist. He is the coauthor of Reggie Jackson’s Becoming Mr. October, and the author of the novel Paradise Alley, among others. His work has appeared in Harper’s, where he is also a contributing editor, New York Observer, The New York Times, and The New Republic. Raised in Rockport, Mass., he is a graduate of Columbia University and lives in New York City. His latest book is The New York Game: Baseball and the Rise of a New City.

Darin Strauss, Moderator
The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Book Critics Circle Award, an American Library award, and numerous other prizes, DARIN STRAUSS is the author, most recently of The Queen of Tuesday (August 2020), a Washington Post and Millions best book of the year, and a finalist for the Joyce Carol Oates Award in Fiction. He’s also the author of the bestselling novels Chang & Eng, The Real McCoy, More Than It Hurts You, the NBCC-winning memoir Half a Life, and a bestselling comic-book series, Olivia Twist.  These have been New York Times Notable Books; and Newsweek, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Amazon, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and NPR Best Books of the Year, among others. 
 
Strauss has been translated into fourteen languages and published in nineteen countries. In addition, Darin has collaborated on screenplays with Gary Oldman and Julie Taymor, and is a Clinical Professor of Fiction at New York University.