March 28, 2024

Bales’ Newest Baseball Book Reviewed in The Free Lance-Star

Reference and Humanities Librarian Emeritus Jack Bales. Photo Credit: Erin Wysong.

Reference and Humanities Librarian Emeritus Jack Bales. Photo Credit: Erin Wysong.

Reference and Humanities Librarian Emeritus Jack Bales’ latest book, “The Chicago Cub Shot for Love: A Showgirl’s Crime of Passion and the 1932 World Series,” was recently reviewed in The Free Lance-Star newspaper.

Baseball fans, rejoice!

In “The Chicago Cub Shot for Love,” Jack Bales unearths a story that may have been the impetus for one of the most celebrated and debated moments in baseball history—Babe Ruth’s called home run in the 1932 World Series.

With the research of a librarian (Bales was a librarian at the University of Mary Washington for 40 years) and the storytelling of a Hemingway, Bales unfurls the story of Cubs’ shortstop Billy Jurges and showgirl Violet Popovich and their doomed relationship that almost led to Jurges’ murder in summer 1932. Read more.