Lawrence Baldassaro

The grandson of Italian immigrants, Lawrence Baldassaro is Professor Emeritus of Italian and former director of the Honors College at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he received the Spaights Plaza Award for significant and lasting contributions to the university. He is the author of Beyond DiMaggio: Italian Americans in Baseball, Baseball Italian Style: Great Stories Told by Italian American Major Leaguers from Crosetti to Piazza, and Tony Lazzeri: Yankees Legend and Baseball Pioneer, as well as the editor of Ted Williams: Reflections on a Splendid Life, and co-editor of The American Game: Baseball and Ethnicity. He has published articles in numerous sports encyclopedias and journals, has been a contributing writer for the Milwaukee Brewers magazine since 1990, and wrote the chapter on sports for The Routledge History of Italian Americans. In addition to his works on baseball, he has published numerous articles on Italian literature and culture in American and Italian scholarly journals, and served on the Executive Council of the Dante Society of America.