Anthony Castrovince on Mike Donlin book
Jan. 18, 2025
Paul Vogelsang Interview with Steve on “The Not Old-Better Show”
SABRcast with Rob Neyer - Episode #166 with Steve
Steve's 20-minute interview with sports executive Pat Williams 
Steve discusses The World Series in the Deadball Erawith Brian Kenney of MLB NOW.
Read more about the book
Steve Steinberg joins MLB Now to discuss his book about Yankees' pitcher Urban Shocker
Chris "Mad Dog" Russo talks to Steve about
the Deadball Era
Steve's Latest Book Won 2 Awards!
| 2025 Larry Ritter Book Award | Doug Skpper Article Larry Ritter Book Award |
| Steve Steinberg, Lyle Spatz win 2025 SABR Larry Ritter Book Award | Steinberg and Spatz' Mike Donlin Biography Wins 2025 Larry Ritter Award |
| "In recognition of their illuminating and informative biography of one of the Deadball Era’s most colorful and controversial stars, Steve Steinberg and Lyle Spatz are the winners of the 2025 Larry Ritter Book Award..." | "Carefully researched and captivatingly written, Steinberg and Spatz’s biography recounts the family tragedies of Donlin’s childhood and his contentious and confrontational rise to major league stardom. |
| SABR Baseball Research Award, 2025 | |
| 2025 Sporting News-SABR Baseball Research Award winners announced | |
| "The 2025 Sporting News-SABR Baseball Research Awards, which honor outstanding research projects completed during the preceding calendar year that have significantly expanded our knowledge or understanding of baseball." | |
Mike Donlin was a brash, colorful, and complicated personality. He was the most popular athlete in New York and was a star on the powerful New York Giants teams of 1905 and 1908. Though haunted by tragedy, including the deaths of both of his parents as a boy, Donlin was a charming, engaging, and kind-hearted man who also had successful careers on the stage and in film.
One of the early “bad boys” among professional athletes, Donlin’s temper and combativeness—compounded by alcoholism—led to battles with umpires and fans, numerous suspensions from the game, and even jail time. In 1906, when Donlin married vaudeville actress Mabel Hite, his life changed for the better, and their love story captivated the nation. Donlin left baseball after his sensational comeback for the dramatic 1908 season and joined Mabel on the stage, likely losing a Hall of Fame career. Then in 1912, at the age of twenty-nine, Mabel died of intestinal cancer.
After making a final comeback as a player in 1914, Donlin starred in baseball’s first feature film. He became a drinking buddy of actors John Barrymore and Buster Keaton and married actress Rita Ross. The couple moved to Hollywood, where Donlin became a beloved figure and appeared in roughly one hundred movies, mostly in minor roles. Despite his Hollywood career, Donlin stayed connected to the game he loved and was seeking a coaching job with the Giants when he died of a heart attack in 1933. At the dawn of the celebrity era of sports, Donlin was one of the nation’s first athletes to capture the public’s attention. This biography by Steve Steinberg and Lyle Spatz shows why
Steve Steinberg is a baseball historian and author of Urban Shocker: Silent Hero of Baseball’s Golden Age (Nebraska, 2017), winner of the SABR Baseball Research Award, and The World Series in the Deadball Era. Lyle Spatz is the author of many baseball books and the coauthor (with Steve Steinberg) of The Colonel and Hug: The Partnership that Transformed the New York Yankees (Nebraska, 2015), winner of the SABR Baseball Research Award, and 1921: The Yankees, the Giants, and the Battle for Baseball Supremacy in New York (Nebraska, 2010), winner of the Seymour Medal.
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Welcome to Steve's Website
I'm glad you stopped by www.stevesteinberg.net. This site focuses on my research, writing and publishing, most of which revolve around the history of our National Pastime, the game of Baseball.
As I approached the age of 50, my world turned upside down when my career in retail came to an end. It was then that I discovered my passion for baseball's past, especially the people who took part in it. Within each one of them lies a story of significance and a vital part of the game's memories. My role has been to help rekindle those memories, to bring them back to life.
(l-r), Toni, Mollett (Casey Stengel's grandniece), Dave Kaplan (Director of Yogi Berra Museum and Learning Center), Yogi Berra (seated), and Steve Steinberg
Time travel is possible. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Whether you access it from a book, photograph, film, web site, or the Dakota apartments, it can be done. Time and Again. It takes a special mix of believing and suspending belief. The rewards are beyond measure.
In the past few years, I have made acquaintances with people in their 80s and 90s, who remember baseball in the 1920s. New friends, old friends. They are not simply links to the past; they facilitate my travel to that past.
Many of my friends do indeed live in the `teens and 1920s. I visit their world with respect and awe. It is a world of a stick and a ball and a vast expanse of grass. While things around the ballpark have changed beyond belief, the world within has stayed the way it was.
Books, articles, and research projects are taking shape in my mind every day. I hope you stay here a while and see what I see, a timeless world of a perfect game, and the people who took part in it.
