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, October 26: For the love of a woman
(A daily diary of the greatest season a major-league pitcher ever had.)
NEW YORK — Before the Providence Grays break apart for the season, there is a little matter of Old Hoss Radbourn’s free agency to settle. He has won his release by virtue of pitching the Grays to...
Column: To boost economy, clean up the mucky R.I. Senate
Rhode Island Senate President Teresa Paiva Weed did excellent work last year in helping reform the state pension system, fending off a financial disaster and bringing the state much-needed positive press. This year, she is admirably looking at improving our disastrous business climate.
But if she wants to signal that Rhode...
Kidnapped catcher wins 2011 Radbourn Award
Washington Nationals catcher Wilson Ramos, who vowed to keep playing winter ball after getting kidnapped in Venezuela, and Texas Rangers outfielder Josh Hamilton, who gutted it out after his unintentional role in a fan’s tragic death, top the list of winners for the 2011 “Radbourn Award” for combined grit and...
Rave reviews greet Fifty-nine in '84
Washington Post: “An astonishing book … a romantic book, equal parts heroic quest, tragic tale and doomed love story.”
Los Angeles Times: “It’s the vibrancy of his story that resonates, the sense of Radbourn and these others not as historical figures but as human beings. The game they played was brutal,...
Radbourn's hometown paper hails Fifty-nine in '84 for giving great pitcher his due
The Bloomington (Ill.) Pantagraph, the first newspaper to report on Charles “Old Hoss” Radbourn’s pitching feats, covered Edward Achorn’s acclaimed biography of the man, Fifty-nine in ’84, in a Sunday news story.
The paper reported: “The book is getting great reviews across America. They are so good, in fact, it may...
Boston Globe: Fifty-nine in '84 a top Father's Day gift!
Boston Globe book critic Kathleen A. Powers says Edward Achorn’s “Fifty-nine in ’84: Old Hoss Radbourn, Barehanded Baseball, and the Greatest Season a Pitcher Ever Had” would be on her Father’s Day wish list if she were a dad.
She writes in The Sunday Globe: “Achorn has dug deep into newspaper...
