A former Gadsden County High School teacher was available Saturday, December 10 at a Tallahassee bookstore to sign copies of two books he wrote.
Author John Nogowski was seated upstairs at the Midtown Reader, a local business on Thomasville Road in the Midtown area, for an hour starting at 3:30 p.m. to promote updated editions of his two books, Last Time Out: Big League Farewells of Baseball’s Greats and Bob Dylan: A Descriptive, Critical Discography and Filmography 1961-2022.
Last Time Out is a study of the final game appearances of famous Major League Baseball players, and the updated edition includes a twist: a chapter about the debut of the author’s own son, who is a professional baseball player currently signed with the Washington Nationals AAA team.
Bob Dylan is an exploration of the work and cultural impact of the singer-songwriter, including critical analysis and commentary on both his most famous songs and many newly-released rarities.
Nogowski began his career as a sports writer with the National Telegraph in New Hampshire.
“The first actual writing I did for a newspaper was when I was a baseball player playing American Legion ball,” recalls Nogowski. “They needed someone to write up the games. So those were the first articles I wrote.”
Nogowski spent 25 years writing for newspapers in New Hampshire, Connecticut, Michigan, Massachusetts, Florida, and Georgia.
“I came to Tallahassee to work as a columnist for the Tallahassee Democrat when Florida State University won the national championship in 1993,” Nogowski continues. “So I was there for seven years, and then I got into teaching.”
Nogowski taught at Tallahassee Community College, Florida State University, and Bainbridge State College before arriving at Gadsden County High School.
“I knew Gadsden was having a hard time, and I thought, well, maybe I can help. So I stayed there for 12 years, and did the school newspaper, which won first place the last two years among schools our size nationally. I was really proud of that. I just had a lot of great kids. A lot of nice, nice people, and I still hear from them.”
Indeed, not long after Nogowski said these words, one of his students showed up at the bookstore to speak with his old teacher.
Both Last Time Out: Big League Farewells of Baseball’s Greats and Bob Dylan: A Descriptive, Critical Discography and Filmography 1961-2022 were available for purchase and singing at the event, and for those who were not able to attend, are available on Amazon and other major booksellers.
Stephen Klein – Gadsden County News Service
