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April 28th, 2026

Goodbye, Babe Ruth! Hello, Ballpark Lights!

Local author Phil Coffin talks about unconventional histories of the game of baseball, from the first game under the lights to one of Babe Ruth's last showstoppers. 

Pick any month in baseball history, and you can find fascinating stories. Take the two that took place on back-to-back days in May 1935: On a chilly night in Cincinnati, the first major league game under lights was played, more than a half-century after the sport’s initial experiment with night baseball. The next day, Babe Ruth smacked three home runs in a game, the last hits of his superlative career. Local author Phil Coffin talks about these tales and more from his unconventional histories of the game, “A Baseball Book of Days: Thirty-One Moments That Transformed the Game” and “When Baseball Was Still Topps: Portraits of the Game in 1959, Card by Card.”

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