Graig Kreindler grew up in Rockland County, New York. In 2002, he graduated with Honors from the School of Visual Arts in New York City with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Illustration. His award-winning sports work has appeared in juried shows, galleries and museums across the United States, and has been featured in nationally-distributed books, newspapers, magazines, on
the Internet and television. To Graig, no other sport embodies the relationship between generations and the sense of community like baseball. His goal is to portray the national pastime in an era when players were accessibly human, and the atmosphere of a welcoming ballpark was just as important as what happened on the field. He is proud to act as a visual historian, recreating a history that he has never experienced, yet, like millions of fans, maintains a profound connection with.
W. H. “Bill” Johnson has written over 40 contributions to SABR’s Biography Project and presented papers at the 2011 Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, the 2017 Jerry Malloy Negro League Conference, and the inaugural Southern Negro League Conference. He has published a biography of Hal Trosky (McFarland and Co., 2017) and most recently an article about Negro American League All-Star Art “Superman” Pennington in the journal Black Ball. His newest book, a biography of football Hall-of-Famer Marion Motley, will be published in 2022. Bill and his wife, Chris, currently reside in Georgia.
Gary Gillette is an historian and consultant who has written, edited, or contributed to dozens of baseball books and Websites. He is the foremost expert on the history of the Negro Leagues in Detroit. As founder and chair of the nonprofit Friends of Historic Hamtramck Stadium, Gillette led the successful campaign to restore the historic site, one of only five remaining Major Negro League home ballparks. His research was crucial to getting Hamtramck Stadium listed on the National Register of Historic Places, to installation of a State of Michigan Historic Marker, and to the awarding of two African American Civil Rights Grants by the National Park Service. Gillette founded the Detroit Chapter of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) and is chair of SABR’s Southern Michigan Chapter. In 2021, he received the Negro Leagues Committee’s Tweed Webb Lifetime Achievement Award. He and his wife Vicki live in Detroit.
Tim Odzer enjoys writing for both the SABR BioProject and SABR Games Project. Among the biographies he has written are those of Rube Foster and Oscar Charleston. Tim is a practicing attorney who currently resides in Miami, Florida.
Dave Wilkie grew up in Western Canada idolizing Willie McCovey and the San Francisco Giants. His obsession with Negro League baseball can be traced to a 1983 mail-order purchase of the book, The All-Time All-Stars of Black Baseball, by SABR member James A. Riley. He has written SABR biographies on Negro League greats Sam Bankhead, Johnny Davis, Chester Williams, Cool Papa Bell, Frank Duncan and Judy Gans. Dave lives in Richmond, Virginia, the final resting place for Philadelphia Stars pitching great, Rocky Ellis, who just happens to be his next subject for the SABR Bio Project and a book to be published on the Negro League champion Philadelphia Stars of 1934.
Bill Nowlin, a co-founder of the Rounder Records label, began writing about baseball in the late 1990s and has become active in that regard, writing, co-writing, editing, or co-editing over 100 books on baseball. Based in the Boston area, one of his efforts was Pumpsie and Progress – The Red Sox, Race, and Redemption. Since 2004, he has served on the board of directors of the Society for American Baseball Research.
Carl Riechers retired from United Parcel Service in 2012 after 35 years of service. With more free time, he became a SABR member that same year. Born and raised in the suburbs of St. Louis, he became a big fan of the Cardinals. He and his wife Janet have three children and is the proud grandpa of two.
Justin Oefelein grew up in the Chicago Suburbs playing and loving baseball and collecting cards and memorabilia for his favorite players. At a young age he admired the logos and designs that went into team representation, and it probably helped lead to his love of graphic design and illustration and he went on to graduate with honors from the Art Institute. He got his start in print design and publishing over 20 years ago and has designed hundreds of books including for prominent artists, authors, and museums. He relishes his role in bringing important stories to life with visual design in book form.
Todd Radom is a designer, sports branding expert, and writer. His work includes the official logos for Super Bowl XXXVIII, the 2009 NBA All-Star Game, the 2014, 2016, and 2018 MLB All-Star Games, the graphic identities of multiple Major League Baseball teams—including the Washington Nationals and Los Angeles Angels—and league, team identity, and branding for Ice Cube’s BIG3 basketball league. His work was included in the Worcester Art Museum’s 2021 exhibition, “The Iconic Jersey: Baseball x Fashion,” the first exhibition solely devoted to the baseball jersey in an art museum. Radom is the author of “Winning Ugly: A Visual History of Baseball’s Most Unique Uniforms,” and co-author of “Fabric of the Game: The Stories Behind the NHL’s Names, Logos, and Uniforms.” Todd designed the book cover.
Joyce Stearnes Thompson is the youngest daughter of Norman “Turkey” Stearnes, the Negro Leaguer/Major Leaguer posthumously inducted into the Afro American Sports Hall of Fame in 1987, the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2000 in Cooperstown, New York, the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame in 2007, the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame in 2010 and the Royals Hall of Fame at Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri. Joyce is classically trained and was a soprano soloist with the Brazeal Dennard Chorale for 25 years and performed in Europe. Joyce recorded her CD, Turkey Stearnes’ Daughter Sings “Church Favorites” in 2006. She completed a Bachelor of Science in Education and a Master of Education in Administration (4.0 GPA) from Wayne State University. Joyce taught deaf and hard of hearing students in Detroit and Bloomfield Hills Public Schools for 36 years. She spoke at her father’s permanent plaque unveiling at Comerica Park in 2007. Joyce and her sister Rosilyn have been singing the national anthem at Comerica Park since 2009 and sang it at the grandstand renovation ceremony at Norman “Turkey” Stearnes Field at Historic Hamtramck Stadium in 2021. Joyce and her loving husband Malcolm have 2 adult daughters, Karen and Vanessa and adult twin sons, Cary and Gary.
Chris Whitehouse is the principal digital colorist at ManCave Pictures. Born & raised in Illinois, Chris has lived in Thailand & Hong Kong since the 1980’s. As an athlete & avid sports fan, Chris’ passion is to take faded, scratched, & dusty historical black & white sports images & breath fully-colored life into them for all to experience in a new, dramatic, re-imagined way. There are no tricky short cuts, simple filters, or single clicks of the mouse used here. Each image begins with days of obsessive research of historical source references for accuracy in color, followed by dozens of hours of intensively detailed, digital archival art restoration & coloring. ManCave Pictures, established in 2015 in Fredericksburg, Virginia, has many notable clients, including the National Baseball Hall of Fame, the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, the Shoeless Joe Jackson Museum, the Chicago White Sox, the Oakland Athletics, Baseball Digest, & GelatoVFX
Shawn Williams created the index for the book. He started playing baseball when he was six years old. Shawn continued to play baseball as a third baseman and left fielder through his sophomore year of high school where he then began to redirect his focus on playing music. Over the years Shawn was reintroduced to baseball through his son Jace, helping Jace’s teams at practices and with coaching. Currently, Shawn is actively involved with the Pacific Little League where he coaches Majors (12U) teams. Shawn’s favorite memory of baseball growing up was when he saw the Seattle Mariners play for the first time at the Kingdome and Ken Griffey, Jr., his favorite player of all time, hit a home run. Shawn has a deep-rooted love for baseball and plans on volunteering as an umpire in the future for Little League once he is done coaching. He currently lives in Seattle, WA.
Graig Kreindler grew up in Rockland County, New York. In 2002, he graduated with Honors from the School of Visual Arts in New York City with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Illustration. His award-winning sports work has appeared in juried shows, galleries and museums across the United States, and has been featured in nationally-distributed books, newspapers, magazines, on
the Internet and television. To Graig, no other sport embodies the relationship between generations and the sense of community like baseball. His goal is to portray the national pastime in an era when players were accessibly human, and the atmosphere of a welcoming ballpark was just as important as what happened on the field. He is proud to act as a visual historian, recreating a history that he has never experienced, yet, like millions of fans, maintains a profound connection with.
W. H. “Bill” Johnson has written over 40 contributions to SABR’s Biography Project and presented papers at the 2011 Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, the 2017 Jerry Malloy Negro League Conference, and the inaugural Southern Negro League Conference. He has published a biography of Hal Trosky (McFarland and Co., 2017) and most recently an article about Negro American League All-Star Art “Superman” Pennington in the journal Black Ball. His newest book, a biography of football Hall-of-Famer Marion Motley, will be published in 2022. Bill and his wife, Chris, currently reside in Georgia.
Gary Gillette is an historian and consultant who has written, edited, or contributed to dozens of baseball books and Websites. He is the foremost expert on the history of the Negro Leagues in Detroit. As founder and chair of the nonprofit Friends of Historic Hamtramck Stadium, Gillette led the successful campaign to restore the historic site, one of only five remaining Major Negro League home ballparks. His research was crucial to getting Hamtramck Stadium listed on the National Register of Historic Places, to installation of a State of Michigan Historic Marker, and to the awarding of two African American Civil Rights Grants by the National Park Service. Gillette founded the Detroit Chapter of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) and is chair of SABR’s Southern Michigan Chapter. In 2021, he received the Negro Leagues Committee’s Tweed Webb Lifetime Achievement Award. He and his wife Vicki live in Detroit.
Tim Odzer enjoys writing for both the SABR BioProject and SABR Games Project. Among the biographies he has written are those of Rube Foster and Oscar Charleston. Tim is a practicing attorney who currently resides in Miami, Florida.
David Wilkie grew up in Western Canada idolizing Willie McCovey and the San Francisco Giants. His obsession with Negro League baseball can be traced to a 1983 mail-order purchase of the book, The All-Time All-Stars of Black Baseball, by SABR member James A. Riley. He has written SABR biographies on Negro League greats Sam Bankhead, Johnny Davis, Chester Williams, Cool Papa Bell, Frank Duncan and Judy Gans. Dave lives in Richmond, Virginia with his wife, Lillian and son, Monte and plans to continue writing biographies on these forgotten legends with the hopes of publishing his own book some day.
Bill Nowlin, a co-founder of the Rounder Records label, began writing about baseball in the late 1990s and has become active in that regard, writing, co-writing, editing, or co-editing over 100 books on baseball. Based in the Boston area, one of his efforts was Pumpsie and Progress – The Red Sox, Race, and Redemption. Since 2004, he has served on the board of directors of the Society for American Baseball Research.
Carl Riechers retired from United Parcel Service in 2012 after 35 years of service. With more free time, he became a SABR member that same year. Born and raised in the suburbs of St. Louis, he became a big fan of the Cardinals. He and his wife Janet have three children and is the proud grandpa of two.
Justin Oefelein grew up in the Chicago Suburbs playing and loving baseball and collecting cards and memorabilia for his favorite players. At a young age he admired the logos and designs that went into team representation, and it probably helped lead to his love of graphic design and illustration and he went on to graduate with honors from the Art Institute. He got his start in print design and publishing over 20 years ago and has designed hundreds of books including for prominent artists, authors, and museums. He relishes his role in bringing important stories to life with visual design in book form.
Todd Radom is a designer, sports branding expert, and writer. His work includes the official logos for Super Bowl XXXVIII, the 2009 NBA All-Star Game, the 2014, 2016, and 2018 MLB All-Star Games, the graphic identities of multiple Major League Baseball teams—including the Washington Nationals and Los Angeles Angels—and league, team identity, and branding for Ice Cube’s BIG3 basketball league. His work was included in the Worcester Art Museum’s 2021 exhibition, “The Iconic Jersey: Baseball x Fashion,” the first exhibition solely devoted to the baseball jersey in an art museum. Radom is the author of “Winning Ugly: A Visual History of Baseball’s Most Unique Uniforms,” and co-author of “Fabric of the Game: The Stories Behind the NHL’s Names, Logos, and Uniforms.” Todd designed the book cover.
Joyce Stearnes Thompson is the youngest daughter of Norman “Turkey” Stearnes, the Negro Leaguer/Major Leaguer posthumously inducted into the Afro American Sports Hall of Fame in 1987, the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2000 in Cooperstown, New York, the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame in 2007, the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame in 2010 and the Royals Hall of Fame at Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri. Joyce is classically trained and was a soprano soloist with the Brazeal Dennard Chorale for 25 years and performed in Europe. Joyce recorded her CD, Turkey Stearnes’ Daughter Sings “Church Favorites” in 2006. She completed a Bachelor of Science in Education and a Master of Education in Administration (4.0 GPA) from Wayne State University. Joyce taught deaf and hard of hearing students in Detroit and Bloomfield Hills Public Schools for 36 years. She spoke at her father’s permanent plaque unveiling at Comerica Park in 2007. Joyce and her sister Rosilyn have been singing the national anthem at Comerica Park since 2009 and sang it at the grandstand renovation ceremony at Norman “Turkey” Stearnes Field at Historic Hamtramck Stadium in 2021. Joyce and her loving husband Malcolm have 2 adult daughters, Karen and Vanessa and adult twin sons, Cary and Gary.
Chris Whitehouse is the principal digital colorist at ManCave Pictures. Born & raised in Illinois, Chris has lived in Thailand & Hong Kong since the 1980’s. As an athlete & avid sports fan, Chris’ passion is to take faded, scratched, & dusty historical black & white sports images & breath fully-colored life into them for all to experience in a new, dramatic, re-imagined way. There are no tricky short cuts, simple filters, or single clicks of the mouse used here. Each image begins with days of obsessive research of historical source references for accuracy in color, followed by dozens of hours of intensively detailed, digital archival art restoration & coloring. ManCave Pictures, established in 2015 in Fredericksburg, Virginia, has many notable clients, including the National Baseball Hall of Fame, the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, the Shoeless Joe Jackson Museum, the Chicago White Sox, the Oakland Athletics, Baseball Digest, & GelatoVFX.
Shawn Williams created the index for the book. He started playing baseball when he was six years old. Shawn continued to play baseball as a third baseman and left fielder through his sophomore year of high school where he then began to redirect his focus on playing music. Over the years Shawn was reintroduced to baseball through his son Jace, helping Jace’s teams at practices and with coaching. Currently, Shawn is actively involved with the Pacific Little League where he coaches Majors (12U) teams. Shawn’s favorite memory of baseball growing up was when he saw the Seattle Mariners play for the first time at the Kingdome and Ken Griffey, Jr., his favorite player of all time, hit a home run. Shawn has a deep-rooted love for baseball and plans on volunteering as an umpire in the future for Little League once he is done coaching. He currently lives in Seattle, WA.
