Two San Antonio authors capture baseball, memory, and paths of purpose in these two works of nonfiction. Nelson W. Wolff’s The Elysian Fields of Baseball: The Spiritual Evolution of America’s Game is a passionate and personal journey through the evolution of America’s national pastime, seen through the eyes of one of Texas’s most revered and respected public servants. Catherine Nixon Cooke writes a thrilling biography in Dodgers to Damascus: David Lesch’s Journey from Baseball to the Middle East, following a baseball player who adapted to a life of academia, spies and subterfuge, and conflict resolution.
Photo Credit: Robert Maxham
Catherine Nixon Cooke is a former journalist and the author of many books, including In Search of Tom Slick: Explorer and Visionary and Juan O’Gorman: A Confluence of Civilizations. She lives in San Antonio, Texas.
Her latest book is Dodgers to Damascus: David Lesch’s Journey from Baseball to the Middle East.
Photo Credit: Alexis Velasquez
Nelson W. Wolff was a founder, together with his brother George and his dad, of Alamo Enterprises, a building materials store that established eight locations in San Antonio and South Texas. They sold the company in 1978 to a national corporation. In 1979, he and his brothers, George and Gary, along with Ron and Don Herrmann, founded Sun Harvest Farms, a natural foods supermarket that became a nine-store chain in central and south Texas. They sold that company in 2000 to another national corporation.
Wolff has served over 33 years in public office. He served in the Texas House of Representatives and the Texas Senate in the 1970s. From 1987 to 1995 he served two terms as a city councilman and two terms as mayor of San Antonio, the seventh largest city in the United States.
He was appointed Bexar County Judge (the top executive officer in Texas county government) in 2001 and was reelected five times. He chose to not run for a sixth term and completed his term of office in December 2022.
A San Antonio Express-News editorial on December 30, 2022, said Wolff had redefined county government and that he “retires from political life as the most consequential public figure of the modern San Antonio era.”
He has written eight books and has coauthored one book with his wife, Tracy, the founder and chairperson of the Hidalgo Foundation. Together they have six children and eight grandchildren.
Judge Wolff joins the Book Festival to discuss his latest book, The Elysian Fields of Baseball: The Spiritual Evolution of America’s Game.
Tom Kayser spent over 40 years in professional sports, all but two years in baseball. Among his experiences were operating minor-league teams in Double A and Triple A; two seasons owning a team in Holyoke, Massachusetts, in the Double A Eastern League; and positions in Player Development and Scouting with Pittsburgh and Cincinnati. The final 25 years of his career were as the President of the Texas League. He is also the coauthor, along with David King, of two books: one of Texas League stories and one a day-by-day history of significant game events.
