Edward Achorn

Edward Achorn eulogized the great baseball scholar Frederick Ivor-Campbell at a memorial ceremony in Wareham, Mass., on Saturday, May 22:

I can’t begin to tell you what a high honor it is to share some thoughts today about Frederick Ivor-Campbell. He was a brilliant and wonderful man who touched many lives, especially in the world of baseball, which is how I knew him.

When I was writing a book about the Hall of Fame pitcher Charles “Old Hoss” Radbourn, I knew there was one man I had to see. He was the world’s foremost authority on Radbourn and his team, the Providence Grays. I had followed Fred’s elegant writing and research for decades. He was recognized as a master in the field of Radbourn and early baseball. But, to tell the truth, I was worried about meeting him. Some researchers can be strange people, haughty and jealous, fiercely protective of their turf.

While I was trying to gather up my courage to give him a call, I gave a talk at a local library. And afterwards, a lovely older couple came up to me with smiles on their faces. The gentleman had a white beard, a gentle voice, an infectious giggle and sparkling eyes. It was the very man I had been worried about meeting – the legendary Frederick Ivor-Campbell, and his beautiful wife Alma.

I had to beg him to let me buy him lunch. “Oh no, you don’t have to do that!” But eventually I wore him down. And what I discovered in Fred was not some arrogant baseball know-it-all, but one of the kindest, most generous, most decent men I have ever had the privilege of meeting. He seemed not just willing, but eager, to help me. He went through his basement, dug up his research and early baseball treasures, and put me in touch with people who had their own baseball collections.

And he took my manuscript under his arm and read it – for no compensation other than the joy of delving into a topic he loved. When you write something, it’s your baby and you tend to feel protective. Fred was tough on me, a rigorous editor, but somehow he did it in such a generous way that I only felt honored for his criticism. He returned it with probably 100 meticulous notes, catching errors and improving the flow of the writing. I have been around professional editors all my working life, and have rarely, if ever, seen a better job.

I got to know Fred, spending hours in his living room, laughing about baseball and its crazy characters, talking about books, wondering if Alma sitting in the seat across from us thought we were out of our minds. Wow, it was fun. I cherish those memories.

And I was not alone. There is a whole universe of baseball researchers who loved and admired Fred the same way, and always enjoyed meeting up with him and Alma –always at his side, sharing everything.

Peter Morris, who has published several greatly admired baseball books, called him “one of the real giants in the field.” Peter said of Fred: “He was a deeply scholarly man. His letters were detailed and meticulous. When I first met him, I expected someone scholarly, and he was. But then he would almost giggle and he had a really delightful sense of humor.”

“Any favor anybody asked of him, he would drop his own research. Unlike most of us, what he was after was not knowledge, but wisdom. He was able to tie in all his intellectual interests with his background in literature and the classics. He would illuminate parts of baseball history in ways no one else would think of.”

Peter said Fred reminded him of time of the kindly and brilliant wizard Albus Dumbledore of Harry Potter fame. I can hear Fred giggling at that.

Everyone speaks of his generous spirit and his brilliant work in the field.

These were not just words. In 2003, Fred won the highest honor bestowed by the Society for American Baseball Research. He edited and contributed to numerous books, including the Official Encyclopedia of Major League Baseball. He wrote a magnificent essay about the New York Knickerbockers that won a prize as the best historical essay of 2007 on baseball. The annual conference at Cooperstown on 19th Century baseball has been renamed the Frederick Ivor-Campbell Conference. He will long be remembered for his historical contributions.

On the weekend he was taken from us, Valerie and I had invited Fred and Alma to our house for a lobster dinner celebrating completion of my Radbourn book and to thank him for everything he had done.

I think part of the email exchange is classic Fred: “We’re happy to accept your kind invitation, though a copy of the book would be more than enough thanks for what was, to me, a pleasure that turned into a renewal of enthusiasm over Radbourn and the Grays … We like lobster, though I’m uneasy with the extravagance.”

He was always uneasy with the fuss made over him, but the people who loved and admired him couldn’t help it.

It is disappointing that Fred did not live to see the publication of the book and the terrific reviews. Those are his reviews, too. He was the top name in my acknowledgments for doing so much to make it a success.

When someone like Fred passes, you start to think about big questions. You wonder about the nature of God and whether there is any justice in this world. Why would a man who has made so many lives better, a man who was the living embodiment of a gentleman – a gentle man – be taken from us?

But I do know that Fred’s beautiful spirit lives on in hundreds of lives. I know I try extra hard to be open and generous and helpful with other researchers because of the noble example Fred set. I look on him as a wonderful model of what a good man can be. I’m sure everyone in this room, Alma and his terrific family, and every one of those who are with us in spirit, has been touched in a similar way.

I also like to think that he is in a better place, savoring some of the things that made him so happy here. It’s not hard to imagine his kind of paradise: an old-fashioned ballpark with a plush green field beneath a cloudless blue sky on a June day, with a gorgeous symphony hall and a magnificent library nearby. I can just see him, giggling over solving some baseball mystery, and passing the time of day chatting with Old Hoss Radbourn. I hope someday I will meet up with Fred again.