About
Edward Achorn, a Pulitzer Prize finalist for Distinguished Commentary, is the deputy editorial pages editor of The Providence Journal. He has won numerous writing awards and his work appears in Best Newspaper Writing, 2007-2008.
Achorn’s “must read” weekly columns often touch on baseball, which he considers the best game ever invented, but usually center on the weird and contentious politics of Rhode Island. He inspired revolutionary change in the state’s Constitution, championing an amendment that balanced power and put an end to a 340-year legacy of inordinate control by the legislature. Pulitzer judges cited his “clear, tenacious call to action against government corruption in Rhode Island,” while Common Cause Rhode Island declared: “Ed Achorn’s clear trumpet turned the tide in this historic battle.”
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News
Radbourn’s immortal season September 3, 1884: Unstoppable Rad wins 15th straight
PROVIDENCE – Before a crowd of 1,158 at the Messer Street Grounds, “demon pitcher” Old Hoss Radbourn works again, however much his arm is crying out in pain.
Providence holds a 2-0 lead in the fourth inning when Buffalo second baseman Hardie Richardson, Radbourn’s hunting pal, catches onto one of...
Thank you, Benjamin Medbery (1759-1778)
I rode my bike Sunday afternoon, August 29, 2010, out to Latham Park in Barrington, Rhode Island, five minutes from home, to watch the fabulously expensive yachts and lesser stinkpots pour in and out of the marina-lined cove to sparkling Narrangsett Bay. It was a beautiful sight on a hot,...
Washington Post hails Fifty-nine in ’84 as ‘an astonishing book’
In a glowing review, The Washington Post describes Fifty-nine in ’84 as “an astonishing book about 19th-century baseball.”
Reviewer Sean Callahan writes: “Fifty-nine in ’84 is a romantic book, equal parts heroic quest, tragic tale and doomed love story.”
Callahan notes that Achorn explores Radbourn’s heroic performance of winning 59 games in...
Boston Herald praises ‘wonderfully written book’
Steve Buckley, baseball guru of the Boston Herald, warmly praises “Fifty-nine in ’84” in a piece about the best baseball books under the sun.
“Baseball fan or not, you will lose yourself in this wonderfully-written book. You will smell the manure on the streets of Providence. Your throat will burn from...
Boston Globe’s Bob Ryan ‘envious’ of Achorn for book idea!
Legendary Boston Globe columnist Bob Ryan says “Fifty-nine in ’84” is one of the best reads of the summer.
“Edward Achorn’s “Fifty-nine in ’84’’ (Smithsonian) left me envious, as in “Why didn’t I do that?’’ writes Mr. Ryan in The Globe. “Mr. Achorn, the deputy editorial pages editor of the Providence...
Hollywood goes for “Fifty-nine in ’84”
Kirker Butler, a co-executive producer and writer on Fox series “The Cleveland Show,” has optioned movie rights to Edward Achorn’s “Fifty-Nine in ’84: Old Hoss Radbourn, Barehanded Baseball, and the Greatest Season a Pitcher Ever Had,” the Hollywood Reporter reveals.
“Butler said he’s not a baseball buff, just a fan of...
