MLB.com

By Carrie Muskat / MLB.com

Holtzman was discharged after one week at Evanston (Ill.) Hospital and credited his wife Marilyn for his quick return home.

"She saved my life," Jerome Holtzman said Sunday.

Because Marilyn Holtzman brought her husband into the hospital so quickly after he started showing signs of a stroke, doctors were able to apply a new procedure and he was treated and released.

"My doctor said I was very, very fortunate," Jerome Holtzman said.

And now? He's looking forward to the All-Star Game, to be played at U.S. Cellular Park in Chicago on July 15.

"I'll be there," he said.

Commissioner Bud Selig named Holtzman the official historian in June 1999. He was a baseball columnist and national writer for the Chicago Tribune from 1981-99, joining the Tribune after 38 years at the Chicago Sun-Times and Daily Times.

A member of baseball's Hall of Fame, he was assigned to cover Major League Baseball in 1957 and traveled with the Chicago Cubs and the Chicago White Sox for 28 years, dividing his time equally between the two clubs.

He wrote the book, "No Cheering in the Press Box," a collection of interviews with some of America's greatest sportswriters.

Holtzman is credited with inventing the save for relief pitchers in 1959, deriving a formula that evolved into the official statistic in 1966.

Carrie Muskat is a reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.