If you’re planning a visit to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown this week, we’d recommend scheduling your visit for Thursday, June 18, when our Eric Vickrey kicks off the annual Hall of Fame Author Series to discuss Before They Wore Dodger Blue.
With Before They Wore Dodger Blue: Tommy Lasorda and the Greatest Draft Class in Baseball History, Eric Vickrey has written the definitive history of an incredibly important era in both Los Angeles Dodgers and MLB history, as the creation of an Amateur Draft changed the face of the game and the way teams approached talent acquisition–changes still reverberating through baseball today.
Eric is scheduled to discuss Before They Wore Dodger Blue from 1-2 p.m. This year sees some changes at the Hall of Fame Author Series, with the talks moving to a new venue within the Museum: The Baseball Discovery Zone. It’s located on the Hall’s first floor next to the Steele Art Gallery, a new spot with plenty of visibility right off the Plaque Gallery.
If you can’t make it to Cooperstown, the event will be streamed live on the Hall of Fame’s Facebook page.
The Hall of Fame will have copies of Before They Wore Dodger Blue: Tommy Lasorda and the Greatest Draft Class in Baseball History available at the reading and in the newly remodeled Museum Store. If you’re a Dodgers fan, you should read Before They Wore Dodger Blue before attending the talk; heck, you should read it anyway, or gift it to the baseball fan in your life (and save a few bucks on us; see below).
Eric Vickrey is a baseball historian and author of two books, Runnin’ Redbirds: The World Champion 1982 St. Louis Cardinals and Season of Shattered Dreams: Postwar Baseball, the Spokane Indians, and a Tragic Bus Crash That Changed Everything. The latter was a finalist for the 2024 CASEY Award for Best Baseball Book of the Year. He has also contributed to several books and written dozens of online articles as a member of the Society for American Baseball Research and is co-editing a forthcoming book on the 2001 Seattle Mariners. Originally from Illinois, he now lives in Washington state with his wife, Gina, and their two cats, Edgar and Ralphie.