I was a reference librarian at the University of Mary Washington’s Library for more than 40 years, retiring in August 2020 as Reference and Humanities Librarian Emeritus. It was a marvelous job, and I worked with wonderful colleagues and great students. I had been planning on retiring at that point for some time, but leaving in the middle of the pandemic was, for me, a good thing, as I had always enjoyed in-person instruction and one-on-one help with students. COVID, of course, changed all that, though I’ve managed here and there to come back to campus and meet with students and talk about some of my research and writing experiences.
And those experiences continue. I still talk to students occasionally about their research, and I stay extremely busy in retirement. On this page and on my WrigleyIvy.com website I talk about my various projects, most recently my books and articles on the Chicago Cubs. My books include The Cubs’ First Dynasty: 1880s Baseball in Chicago (2027), The Chicago Cub Shot for Love: A Showgirl’s Crime of Passion and the 1932 World Series (2021), and Before They Were the Cubs: The Early Years of Chicago’s First Professional Baseball Team (2019). (I also discuss my research during PowerPoint presentations with chapters of the Society for American Baseball Research.)
–Jack Bales (James E. Bales), jbales@umw.edu