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Taylor H.A. Bell

Born: 1940 in Blue Island, Illinois
Pen Name: Taylor Bell

Connection to Illinois: Bell was born in Blue Island and currently resides in Chicago.

Biography: Taylor Bell covered high school and professional sports in Illinois for more than forty years, mostly for the ''Chicago Daily News'' and the ''Chicago Sun-Times''. He was inducted into the Illinois Basketball Coaches Association’s Hall of Fame as a charter member in 1971 and received the IBCA’s ''Buzzy O’Connor Award'' for contributions to the game in 2002. He was also inducted into the Chicago Journalism Hall of Fame in 2001 and the Chicagoland Sports Hall of Fame in 2002. The long and exciting history of high school basketball in Illinois is the subject of Taylor Bell's highly praised book ''Sweet Charlie, Dike, Cazzie and Bobby Joe''. This is the first comprehensive history of high school basketball in the state, written by a reporter who is a lifelong fan and authority on high school basketball for more than 40 years. The book is titled for four players who reflet the unique quality of highschool basketball and whose first names are enough to trigger memories in fans who love the sport - Sweet Charlie Brown, Dike Eddleman, Cazzie Russell and Bobby Joe Mason.


Awards:
  • -- Ring Lardner Award for excellence in print journalism, 2005
  • -- Taylor was honored at the 2005 Illinois Authors Book Fair sponsored by the Illinois Center for the Book and the Illinois State Library in Springfield, Illinois.

Primary Literary Genre(s): History; Non-Fiction

Primary Audience(s): Adult readers

Email: gtbell2@rcn.com
Taylor H. A Bell on WorldCat : http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=taylor+h.+a+bell


Selected Titles

Dusty, deek, and Mr. Do-right :
ISBN: 9780252090035 OCLC: 708738112

University of Illinois Press, Urbana, Ill. : ©2010.

Glory days Illinois :
ISBN: 158261945X OCLC: 71243957

Sports Pub., Champaign, IL : 2006.

Sweet Charlie, Dike, Cazzie, and Bobby Joe :
ISBN: 9780252071997 OCLC: 785782156

University of Illinois Press, Urbana : ©2004.

Far from the jaded professionals, the stories in Taylor Bell's Sweet Charlie, Dike, Cazzie, and Bobby Joe are of hungry young men playing their hearts out, where high-tops and high hopes inspire hoop dreams from Peoria to Pinckneyville, and Champaign to Chicago. Bell, a lifelong fan and authority on high school basketball in Illinois for more than 40 years, brings together for the first time the stories of the great players, teams, and coaches from the 1940s through the 1990s. The book is titled for four players who reflect the unique quality of high school basketball, and whose first names are enough to trigger memories in fans who love the sport - Sweet Charlie Brown, Dike Eddleman, Cazzie Russell, and Bobby Joe Mason. Bell offers accounts of their exploits, told with a journalistic flair.--Jacket.

 

 

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