-Lester Chadwick

Lester Chadwick is one of several pseudonyms used by Howard R. Garis, a prolific writer of children’s stories. Garis used the Lester Chadwick name to write his Baseball Joe series as well as a few other books about baseball outside of that series. On display are two Baseball Joe books, Baseball Joe at Yale and Baseball Joe in the Big League, and Batting to Win, a book about collegiate baseball. Garis wrote fourteen Baseball Joe books, which follow the story of Joe Matson from boyhood through a career as a professional baseball player until he eventually owns his own baseball team. Garis’s hero is the prototypical American boy - an average student who excels at sports, lives clean, eschews alcohol and tobacco, and always plays fair. The Baseball Joe books can be read as a study in an idealized version of American boyhood.