Clifton Blue Parker

Clifton Blue Parker has written and edited four books on baseball: "Bucketfoot Al: The Baseball Life of Al Simmons," "Big and Little Poison: Paul and Lloyd Waner, Baseball Brothers," "Fouled Away: The Baseball Tragedy of Hack Wilson," and "Sweet '60: The 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates." Parker is a former newspaper journalist, communications director at Stanford University, Congressional press secretary, and copywriter. He has a bachelor's degree in political science from Pennsylvania State University, and attended graduate school in political science at the University of Pittsburgh and in journalism at the University of Florida. Before college, Parker spent his teen summers growing up in Pittsburgh on the baseball diamonds, sandlot and organized. When he rolled up his sleeves to make a buck, he did so working at baseball batting cages and cutting countless lawns as a landscape laborer. In high school, he wrestled and in college played rugby. Parker is a member of the Society for American Baseball Research and an aficionado of Strat-O-Matic baseball.