Spartan Profiles: Michael Steinberg

STILL PITCHING

            Few writers have mastered the art of memoir as well as  Michael Steinberg, M.A. ’67. Ph.D. ’74, founding editor of Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction, an award-winning journal of creative nonfiction, and teacher of creative writing at MSU for more than 25 years.  His new memoir, Still Pitching (MSU Press, 2003), has earned high praise from reviewers. “With adroit precision and quiet enthrallment, Mike Steinberg leads us into the American Epoch that was New York and baseball in the 1950s,” writes Dennis Lehane, author of Mystic River.  “But to say that Still Pitching is simply about baseball is to say that Moby Dick was a good little book about whales.” 

            A New York native, Steinberg grew up in the 1950s when three local teams—the Yankees, the Giants and the Dodgers—won 9 of 10 World Series.  “It began as a memoir about how my passion for baseball led to my becoming a writer,” he explains.  “The strongest shaping force in my childhood, I found, was my love for baseball.  So I organized around that discovery.”  The result is a book that is “suspenseful, cinematic, crackling with sensual detail, and juiced with lively dialogue,” in the words of one reviewer. 

            The high praise for Mike’s book comes as no surprise, since he has won several national awards, with two pieces cited as Notable Essays in Best American Essays (1995 and 1999), and one in Best American Sports Writing (1995);  four others have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.  Mike has directed national writing workshops and conferences and has been a contest judge for the Annie Dillard Award in Creative Nonfiction and written reviews for The New York Times Sunday Book Review.