John Batteiger is new in his role as The Lambs’ historian/librarian, having joined the Council in January 2023. He also chairs the House and Pool committees. He was elected a member of The Lambs in November 2019, just a few months before the Clubhouse (and all of New York and much of the world) shut down amid the Covid pandemic. But that’s just a coincidence.
John lives on Manhattan’s upper east side and works as deputy managing editor of The New York Times News Service. (He works an evening shift, which is why he doesn’t get to Low Jinks as often as he’d like.) John has worked 40-plus years as a reporter and editor at newspapers and websites. He finally got smart and moved to New York City in 2013, after 20 years in San Francisco and 10 years before that in South Carolina and Ohio.
John was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, and is the ninth of 10 children in his family. He attended Ohio University (in Athens, Ohio, not Columbus) and left with a Bachelor of Science in Journalism degree when his professors weren’t looking.
In his time away from work and The Lambs, John is writing a biography of Don Marquis, a 1920s New York newspaper columnist and humor writer who, tragically, was not a Lamb. (He belonged instead to a club off Gramercy Park that shall not be named.) Marquis was the author of the humor classic “archy and mehitabel” (Doubleday, 1927), and John maintains a related website and Facebook page. Be careful: John will bore you to tears if you ask him about any of it.
As chair of the House Committee, John assists the Shepherd and the Boy in maintaining the Clubhouse and communicating members’ wants, needs, and complaints. As chair of the Pool Committee, he encourages you to have fun and take advantage of our beautiful, classic pool table. Heck, go ahead and challenge him to a game of pool, and don’t worry: You’ll probably win.