(POINT PLEASANT BEACH, NJ) -- America's Pastime is in full swing. Baseball chatter is everywhere, and everyone's got an opinion. Hear an expert of the sport's history, longtime New York Times editor Phil Coffin, in his Author Talk at the Ocean County Library Point Pleasant Beach Branch on Monday, May 5, 2025. The event begins at 7:00pm.

The Point Pleasant Beach resident will circle the bases about his highly entertaining, history-filled books, the newly-published A Baseball Book of Days: Thirty-One Moments That Transformed the Game and 2024’s When Baseball Was Still Topps: Portraits of the Game in 1959, Card by Card.

Phil poured his 30-plus years as a member of the Society for American Baseball Research and his lifelong fandom into his books, copies of which he’ll bring along for all those interested in purchasing one or both.

When Baseball Was Still Topps, available at the Ocean County Library, profiles each of the 572 cards in the 1959 Topps collection, with stories about the players, the game and the era of mid-20^th century baseball. There’s the slugger who had his arms around Marilyn Monroe – before Joe DiMaggio did. There’s Mickey Mantle’s 10 longest home runs, and the pitcher who never got over giving up one of them. There’s the pitcher from Mayberry. And there’s a lot more.

A Baseball Book of Days is described as an “Advent calendar” of baseball legend, using 31 dates to detail transformative moments, from the strictly serious (Jackie Robinson’s first game in the majors) to the fairly frivolous (first-and-only games of 3-foot, 7-inch Eddie Gaedel and Moonlight Graham) to the highly historical (the debut of the first of 1,000 Dominican ballplayers, and the last major league team to integrate).

Please register https://tinyurl.com/OclPhilBB at to attend this free program. For more information, stop by the OCL Point Pleasant Beach Branch, 710 McLean Avenue, or call (732) 892-4575. See the full schedule of Library programs in the online Calendar of Events.

OCL turns 100 this year and you’re why they’re celebrating! See details on Facebook, Instagram, X, YouTube, Spotify, Pinterest and https://theoceancountylibrary.org.