Donald Hall

Donald Andrew Hall Jr.

• School Harvard University
• High School Phillips Exeter Academy

• Born September 20, 1928 in New Haven, CT USA
• Died June 23, 2018 in Wilmot, NH USA

Biographical Information

Poet Donald Hall was the Poet Laureate of the United States in 2006 and 2007. His work has often focused on baseball. Hall began writing as a high school student at Phillips Exeter Academy. He graduated from Harvard University in 1951, the same year as actor Fred Gwynn and writer Ursula K. Le Guin. He was first published in 1955.

In 1973, he attended spring training with a group of other writers, working out at the Pittsburgh Pirates major league camp in Bradenton, FL. None of them were athletes by any stretch, but the team went along with the idea and they even got to appear briefly in some Grapefruit League games. The purpose was to turn the experience into a litterary work, the book Playing Around which came out the following year. While there is no author mentioned on the book's cover, Hall is generally credited as its main writer.

Among Hall's baseball works:

• Playing Around: the million-dollar infield goes to Florida (1974)
• Dock Ellis in the Country of Baseball (1976)
• Fathers Playing Catch with Sons: Essays on Sport (Mostly Baseball) (1985)
• When Willard Met Babe Ruth (1996)

Further Reading

• Michael Clair: "When a bunch of writers (briefly) became Pirates: True fantasy baseball", mlb.com, April 3, 2022. [1]