Einstein, Charles 1926-2007

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born August 2, 1926, in Boston, MA; died March 7, 2007, in Michigan City, IN. Journalist and author. Einstein regularly wrote about major league baseball and was the author of an authoritative biography of Willie Mays and a four-volume anthology on baseball. Graduating from the University of Chicago in 1945, he was hired by the International News Service. He worked in Chicago from 1945 to 1953, and then was a freelancer, before joining the San Francisco Examiner staff in 1958. It was while covering the Giants that he really became an avid baseball fan, and the Chronicle made him its baseball columnist in 1965. He wrote "The Einstein Theory" column for the next five years, and from 1968 to 1970 was also a columnist for Sport magazine. Leaving journalism behind in 1970, Einstein went to work for the New York City public relations firm Manning, Selvage & Lee, becoming its senior vice president and editorial director in 1981. He quit in 1986 to return to journalism and wrote an entertainment column for the Newark Star-Ledger. Over the years, Einstein published nonfiction—mostly on baseball—as well as several novels and screenplays. Willie Mays was a favorite topic, about whom he wrote three books and two screenplays. The biography Willie's Time: A Memoir (1979) was the best received. Among his many other titles are Willie Mays: Coast to Coast Giant (1963), How to Win at Blackjack (1968), Captivity: How I Survived 44 Months as a Prisoner of the Red Chinese (1973), written with Mary Ann Harbert, the novels The Bloody Spur (1953), The Last Laugh (1956), and The Blackjack Hijack (1976), and the movies Naked City (1958), A Man Named Mays (1963), and A New Ball Game for Willie Mays (1974), among others. Several of his novels were adapted by others as movie screenplays. He also edited The Fireside Book of Baseball, a four-volume anthology published between 1956 and 1987.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Los Angeles Times, March 16, 2007, p. B9.

New York Times, March 19, 2007, p. 15.

Washington Post, March 19, 2007, p. B6.