Holder of a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, Ritter was a finance professor at NYU. His book, The Glory of Their Times: The Story of Early Days of Baseball Told by the Men Who Played It (1966), is the first and best collection of interviews with former players. He also wrote The Image of Their Greatness (with Donald Honig), an Illustrated History of Baseball from 1900 (1979), 100 Greatest Baseball Players of All Time, with Honig (1981), The Story of Baseball (1983), and The Babe: A Life in Pictures with Mark Rucker (1987), a book that was re-released in 1997 as The Babe: The Game that Ruth Built. Ritter died on February 15, 2004.
