Wisdom

It's the birthday of novelist and essayist Wilfrid Sheed (books by this author), born in London, England (1930). He moved to Pennsylvania when he was a boy and grew up in a tiny village where there were almost no other children, and he spent most of his free time playing baseball by himself. He said, "I became perhaps the outstanding solitary baseball player of my generation."

He wrote several satirical novels about journalism, including The Hack (1963) and Max Jamison (1970). He also wrote several memoirs, including My Life as a Fan (1993), about his love of baseball, and In Love with Daylight: A Memoir of Recovery (1995).

Sheed once said, "The American male doesn't mature until he has exhausted all other possibilities."