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VOL.19, NO.12

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More than 125,000 readers throughout Greater Baltimore

New sports memoir hits home

A Baltimore start Callahan, 76, is now retired from the dailies and weeklies that printed his bylined

DECEMBER 2022

I N S I D E …

By Robert Friedman “I saw Brooks Robinson dive to his right, I saw Cal Ripken Jr. dive to his left” in magical fielding plays for the Baltimore Orioles, writes Baltimore-raised Tom Callahan in his latest book, Gods at Play: An Eyewitness Account of Great Moments in American Sports. “I saw [Johnny] Unitas hand the ball off and still go through his many fakes” to fool would-be tacklers, Callahan writes of the Baltimore Colts’ all-star quarterback. Callahan recalls in the book basketball behemoths Wes Unseld and Elvin Hayes leading the Washington (formerly Baltimore) Bullets (now Wizards) to three NBA finals, with one championship, in 1978. And that’s just the local sports scene. Gods at Play also captures these quintessential quotes from sports deities of the last half-century: “Ain’t worried about the spotlight. Ain’t worried about the money. Ain’t worried about all the heavyweights. Ain’t worried about nothin’ but being immortal,” the late, great Muhammed Ali once said. Seven-foot, two-inch basketball icon Kareem Abdul Jabbar recalled the shame he felt in high school because of his height. His only role models, he said, were “the Empire State Building and the redwood trees.” Callahan writes about what baseball superstar, Hank Aaron, experienced in 1974 in Cincinnati. The first home game of the season happened to fall on the anniversary of the day Martin Luther King Jr. was slain. (The day before, in Atlanta, Aaron had tied Babe Ruth’s 714 homerun record.) Aaron was asked by team managers, “Is there anything we can do for you?” Aaron asked for “a moment of silence for Dr. King.” The Reds’ executive replied, “We don’t get involved in politics.” Then, just before the game got underway, the first symbolic pitch of the season was thrown by politician Gerald Ford. Aaron, notes Callahan, “didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.” It’s all there, and much more, in Callahan’s Gods at Play, published by W.W. Norton in 2020 and released in paperback this year.

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Cal Ripken Jr. is just one of many famous athletes about whom reporter Tom Callahan shares personal stories in his sports memoir Gods at Play: An Eyewitness Account of Great Moments in American Sports. Callahan grew up in Baltimore and started his sports writing career here.

stories and columns for more than 50 years. Born in Chicago, Callahan grew up in Baltimore and graduated from Loyola High School. “I’m really a Baltimore guy,” he said. Still, his journalism career has taken him from coast to coast. He did work close to home with stints at the Washington Post, Washington Star and Baltimore Evening Sun. But he also saw sports writing action at the San Diego Union and the Cincinnati Enquirer, as well as Golf Digest, Newsweek and Time, where he worked as a senior writer for 11 years. He now lives in Reston, Virginia, with Angie, his “high school sweetheart and wife of 55 years,” he said. They live close

to their children and grandchildren. It all began, Callahan writes in his book, when “halfway through my senior year [at Mount St. Mary’s College], I wondered what an English major does to make a living.” Soon after, he wandered into the Baltimore Evening Sun, “was passed from editor to editor,” and, because he had some knowledge about a college basketball player (Earl Monroe, who later became a star for the New York Knicks), was hired by the sports department. Callahan moved on to the Cincinnati Enquirer in the 70s, where he wrote a daily column. There, he said, he wrote “what I See SPORTS WRITER, page 20

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