Eastern Shore League

Baseball has always been prevalent on the Eastern Shore.

From Little League to the Delmarva Shorebirds, the area has always embraced the action on the diamond. However, teams from 50 or 60 years ago are rapidly fading from memory.

To combat that, Seaford resident Mike Lambert has come out with a book, "Eastern Shore League," a collection of vintage photos chronicling teams from early to middle part of the 20th century. The book will be available April 5 at www.arcadiapublishing.com, and Lambert will have a small book signing tour in the next few weeks.

What inspired you to write this book?
There has been very little written about the Eastern Shore League, and when I discovered the Images of Baseball series from Arcadia Publishing, it was a perfect fit and I knew that I could accomplish it.

How long did it take you to research the book? Where did you get your material from?
I have been collecting, studying and researching the Eastern Shore League for several decades. The images in the book are virtually all from two personal collections, mine and Donnie Davidson's from Cambridge. Donnie and I are not only competing collectors, but we have become close friends over the past couple of years.

Was there anything in particular that you discovered about Eastern Shore baseball while researching the book?
While working on the book, Donnie and I both had many items in our respective collections that the other had never seen. Most of the items in the book have rarely, if ever, been seen by most of the Eastern Shore citizens, and the memorabilia is much rarer than I had thought.

Do you think many people today know about the area's baseball history?
Not as many as you would think. Whenever I talk or write about the Eastern Shore League, I usually surprise people with how vast the professional baseball history on Delmarva is.

What is the one thing you'd like a reader to learn from your book?
My goal is to educate as many people as I can on the history of Eastern Shore League. I would like most readers to understand how huge professional baseball was during the three eras of the Eastern Shore League, and that back then, the players played for the love of the game, not for money.