A reminder: The Amazon rankings are updated every hour, so these lists might not be 100 percent accurate by the time you read them (or even by the time I finish posting them). But close enough for government work, as the saying goes (see my piece on “Why Amazon’s search engine sucks“).

In addition, occasionally the powers-that-be over there try to pull a fast one by including a book in a category in which it should not be listed (in my opinion). For example, The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect has appeared on Amazon’s BBS list. “Why” is a good question. There might be a smattering of the national pastime in it, but not enough to make it a baseball book per se (again, IMO).

Finally, adults only here. That is, no books for younger readers (i.e., 12 and under). Also no “adult” adult books (romance/erotic fiction that features baseball as a theme although goodness knows there are a bunch of those out there).

So, with all that said…

The links under the authors’ names will take you to the Bookshelf Conversations I did with them. An asterisk denotes a book making its debut on the BBS list.

https://i1.wp.com/m.media-amazon.com/images/I/91yTDpt0ZvL._SL1500_.jpg?resize=252%2C383&ssl=1PRINT

  1. Why We Love Baseball: A History in 50 Moments, by Joe Posnanski
  2. Baseball Prospectus 2024
  3. The Wingmen: The Unlikely, Unusual, Unbreakable Friendship Between John Glenn and Ted Williams, by Adam Lazarus
  4. Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis
  5. The Fantasy Baseball Black Book 2024, by Joe Pisapia
  6. Rotoman’s Fantasy Baseball Guide 2024: From Acuña to Zunino
  7. Ron Shandler’s 2024 Baseball Forecaster and Encyclopedia of Fanalytics
  8. The New York Game: Baseball and the Rise of a New City, by Kevin Baker *
  9. The Science of Hitting, by Ted Williams and Tom Underwood
  10. The Ultimate New York Yankees Trivia Book: A Collection of Amazing Trivia Quizzes and Fun Facts for Die-Hard Yankees Fans!, by Ray Walker

KINDLE BOOKS

  1. Baseball Prospectus 2024
  2. The Wingmen
  3. Faithful: Two Diehard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season, by Stewart O’Nan and Stephen King
  4. Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend, by James S. Hirsch
  5. So Many Ways to Lose: The Amazin’ True Story of the New York Mets—the Best Worst Team in Sports, by Devin Gordon
  6. Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy, by Jane Leavy
  7. Why We Love Baseball
  8. The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created, by Jane Leavy
  9. The Fantasy Baseball Black Book 2024, by Joe Pisapia
  10. Moneyball

AUDIBLE

Note: Amazon has changed the way they list audiobooks. No longer under the general category of “biography and memoir,” they are now treated in their own baseball/softball category. Here’s the general link to the section where you will find further links to the individual titles, their reader/narrators, and samples. Note further that these are updated regularly and the top ten list below might no longer be the same.

  1. The Church of Baseball: The Making of Bull Durham: Home Runs, Bad Calls, Crazy Fights, Big Swings, and a Hit, by Ron Shelton (narrated by the author)
  2. Play Hungry: The Making of a Baseball Player, by Pete Rose
  3. Moneyball (unabridged, narrated by Scott Brick)
  4. Why We Love Baseball
  5. The Baseball 100
  6. Ninety Percent Mental, by Bob Tewksbury (read by the author)
  7. Heads-Up Baseball 2.0, by Tom Hanson
  8. Gator: My Life in Pinstripes, by Ron Guidry (read by the author)
  9. Banana Ball, by Jesse Kole with Don Yeager
  10. The New York Game

Glad to see a new baseball book by Kevin Baker, who published Sometimes You See It Coming: A Novel, in 1993. Also greatly looking forward to a Bookshelf Conversation with him in the near future.

Still not in the Amazon top ten? 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. FYI, as of this posting it ranks 2,296,639 overall in books; last time, 1,987,641Hank Greenberg in 1938: Hatred and Home Runs in the Shadow of War ranks 2,892,982; last time, 2,883,375.

Shameless self-promotion: if you’re looking for some good baseball reading during this down time, why not pick up a copy of 501? It’s like the dictionary; it has the other books in it, which reminds me of one of my favorite lines from one of my favorite shows.

A reminder: There’s an Excel “checklist” of the books list in 501. If you’re interested in keeping track of how many you have read or own, drop me a line.

If you have read either of my books, thanks, hope you enjoyed it, and please consider writing an Amazon review; it’s never too late.

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A couple of weeks ago I visited a local shop that purportedly sold comics and baseball cards. Alas, I learned that was not the case. The owner told me there was no real business for cards over the past several years.

https://i1.wp.com/pbs.twimg.com/media/EVfpOf4WoAMUy1v.jpg?resize=371%2C278&ssl=1I would say that that’s a shame but the reality is there have been so many other diversions since I was a kid. Imagine growing up in a time before cell phones, before the Internet, before video games. Recently some co-workers were talking about Internet dating and I mentioned that in my day, personal ads in print publications were a big thing. Then I realized that the majority of my colleagues never knew a world without these electronics as a major component of daily life. And I felt old.

But I digress. I guess that’s what happens when you get older. The powers of concentration wane and you start going off on tangents.

I still “collect” baseball cards, although not with the same passion I had as a kid. Now it’s more or less a curiosity thing. As with everything else, there’s a big difference between now and then, especially when it comes to the quality of the photography. I think that’s what makes the “old days” so quaint.

I wasn’t part of the generation that acquired cards as investment properties. I did not keep them in pristine condition. I “played” with them, sorting them in different categories — numerical, position, team, alphabetically, etc. — without a worry of what they could one day mean financially. No thought beyond trucking on down to the candy store to spend my allowance. (Do they even have candy stores any more?)

While doing research for another project, I re-read Josh Wilker’s Cardboard Gods: An All-American Tale Told Through Baseball Cards, which was originally published in 2010. It was an extension of the author’s blog, Cardboard Gods: The Voice of the Mathematically Eliminated which he had started a few years earlier. It’s a very personal book, mostly about growing up in the 1970s and how the players who appeared in various packs took on a significance connected to what the author was going through at home. To be honest, I think the “All-American” part might have been a bit different had someone else had written it 30 years earlier; Wilker’s reminiscences were different than those of a kid growing during the Eisenhower or Kennedy administrations.

I found Cardboard Gods took on a different, deeper meaning now than it had more than a dozen years ago and I wondered if Wilker felt the same. So we talked.

 

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A reminder: The Amazon rankings are updated every hour, so these lists might not be 100 percent accurate by the time you read them (or even by the time I finish posting them). But close enough for government work, as the saying goes (see my piece on “Why Amazon’s search engine sucks“).

In addition, occasionally the powers-that-be over there try to pull a fast one by including a book in a category in which it should not be listed (in my opinion). For example, The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect has appeared on Amazon’s BBS list. “Why” is a good question. There might be a smattering of the national pastime in it, but not enough to make it a baseball book per se (again, IMO).

Finally, adults only here. That is, no books for younger readers (i.e., 12 and under). Also no “adult” adult books (romance/erotic fiction that features baseball as a theme although goodness knows there are a bunch of those out there).

So, with all that said…

The links under the authors’ names will take you to the Bookshelf Conversations I did with them. An asterisk denotes a book making its debut on the BBS list.

https://i2.wp.com/m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71lTArvCMrL._SL1500_.jpg?resize=251%2C379&ssl=1PRINT

  1. Baseball Prospectus 2024
  2. Why We Love Baseball: A History in 50 Moments, by Joe Posnanski
  3. The Wingmen: The Unlikely, Unusual, Unbreakable Friendship Between John Glenn and Ted Williams, by Adam Lazarus
  4. Ron Shandler’s 2024 Baseball Forecaster and Encyclopedia of Fanalytics
  5. The Fantasy Baseball Black Book 2024, by Joe Pisapia
  6. Rotoman’s Fantasy Baseball Guide 2024: From Acuña to Zunino
  7. The Cloudbuster Nine: The Untold Story of Ted Williams and the Baseball Team That Helped Win World War II, by Anne R. Keene
  8. The Science of Hitting, by Ted Williams and Tom Underwood
  9. The Ultimate New York Yankees Trivia Book: A Collection of Amazing Trivia Quizzes and Fun Facts for Die-Hard Yankees Fans!, by Ray Walker
  10. Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis

KINDLE BOOKS

  1. Faithful: Two Diehard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season, by Stewart O’Nan and Stephen King
  2. Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig, by Jonathan Eig
  3. The Wingmen
  4. Joe DiMaggio: The Hero’s Life, by Richard Ben Cramer
  5. The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created, by Jane Leavy
  6. Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy, by Jane Leavy
  7. Wait Till Next Year, by Doris Kearns Goodwin
  8. Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend, by James S. Hirsch
  9. Fifty-Nine in ’84: Old Hoss Radbourn, Barehanded Baseball, & the Greatest Season a Pitcher Ever Had, by Edward Achorn
  10. The Fantasy Baseball Black Book 2024, by Joe Pisapia

AUDIBLE

Note: Amazon has changed the way they list audiobooks. No longer under the general category of “biography and memoir,” they are now treated in their own baseball/softball category. Here’s the general link to the section where you will find further links to the individual titles, their reader/narrators, and samples. Note further that these are updated regularly and the top ten list below might no longer be the same.

  1. Moneyball (unabridged, narrated by Scott Brick)
  2. Why We Love Baseball
  3. The Baseball 100
  4. Ball Four: The Final Pitch, by Jim Bouton (narrated by the author)
  5. Ninety Percent Mental, by Bob Tewksbury (read by the author)
  6. Banana Ball, by Jesse Kole with Don Yeager
  7. Heads-Up Baseball 2.0, by Tom Hanson
  8. Rickey: The Life and Legend of an American Original, by Howard Bryant
  9. The Greatest Summer in Baseball History: How the ’73 Season Changed Us Forever, by John Rosengren
  10. Baseball Heaven: Up Close and Personal, What It Was Really Like in the Major Leagues, by Peter Golenbock

So much for new. Nothing in the print section but a few new items in audio, including Golenbock’s latest.

Still not in the Amazon top ten? 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. FYI, as of this posting it ranks 1,987,641 overall in books; last time, 1,627,796Hank Greenberg in 1938: Hatred and Home Runs in the Shadow of War ranks 2,883,375; last time, 2,849,591.

Just for fun: Greenberg ranks 2,276 in the category of “baseball biographies.” The top ten (and this time I’m not editing the listing as I would normally do):

  1. The Wingmen (Print)
  2. Luckiest Man (Kindle)
  3. The Wingmen (Kindle)
  4. The Most Incredible Baseball Stories Ever Told (Print)
  5. A Grand Slam for God: A Journey from Baseball Star to Catholic Priest (Print)
  6. In a League of Her Own: Celebrating Female Firsts in Sports (Print)
  7. Joe DiMaggio: The Hero’s Life (Kindle)
  8. The Big Fella (Kindle)
  9. Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy (Kindle)
  10. Wait Till Next Year (Kindle)

Unfortunately, the list only includes the top 100 books, so I’ll never know who’s 2,275.

Shameless self-promotion: if you’re looking for some good baseball reading during this down time, why not pick up a copy of 501? It’s like the dictionary; it has the other books in it, which reminds me of one of my favorite lines from one of my favorite shows.

A reminder: There’s an Excel “checklist” of the books list in 501. If you’re interested in keeping track of how many you have read or own, drop me a line.

If you have read either of my books, thanks, hope you enjoyed it, and please consider writing an Amazon review; it’s never too late.

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Since you can out baseball cards on your bookshelf…

SABR’s Baseball Cards Research Committee has bestowed its highest honor — the Jefferson Burdick Award — to legendary artist Dick Perez.

From the Committee’s announcement:

While Dick is best known to many collectors for his fifteen-year run (1982-96) creating Donruss Diamond Kings, these cards only scratch the surface of Dick’s overall oeuvre, which also includes hundreds of Perez-Steele Hall of Fame postcards, other Donruss collaborations such as the 1983 Hall of Fame Heroes and 1984 Champions sets, later collaborations with Topps, and last year’s independently produced Diamond Immortals set.

Back to me.

His work is instantly recognizable and works in both a old-fashioned and modern way.

As the saying goes, I don’t know about art, but I know what I like. And I like the work of Dick Perez. He published a massive volume of his work in The Immortals: An Art Collection of Baseball’s Best, co-authored with William C. Kashatus in 2010. In this case, it’s true that you cant judge a book by its cover.

https://i2.wp.com/m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71BRApAd-7L._SL1000_.jpg?resize=363%2C363&ssl=1

Here’s the full story from SABR’s card committee.

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This popped up on my daily Google alerts for baseball book-related stuff from Fine Books & Collections:

“Early Baseball Sheet Music, Arrowsmith’s Maps, JFK Presentation Copy: Auction Preview”

Image: Potter & Potter — “The earliest known baseball lithograph, for “The Live Oak Polka,” offered at Potter & Potter this week.”

According to the accompanying story about sales the writer would be watching this week

At Potter & Potter on Thursday, 660 lots of Ephemera, Americana & Historical Memorabilia, including a c.1908–1909 photographic portrait of the Cuban Almendares Baseball Club of Key West, Florida ($10,000–20,000). A volume of sheet music which includes a copy of the first known baseball sheet music (“The Live Oak Polka“) and the earliest known baseball lithograph could sell for $8,000–16,000. A collection of some 240 nineteenth-century tobacco labels is estimated at $6,000–10,000.

Click here to see what a $10,000-20,000 photo looks like.

Happy shopping.

 

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Hello, Old Friend

March 4, 2024 · 0 comments

Street and Smith's 1975 Official Baseball Yearbook (Catfish Hunter - New York Yankees cover): Dick Dozer: Amazon.com: BooksWhile looking for Robert Benson’s The Game for last week’s BBS post, I found my collection of baseball annuals, specifically Street and Smith’s Official Baseball Yearbook for 1975. What a treat.

The articles included profiles of Frank Robinson and designated hitters;  Lou Brock’s 118 stolen bases and the impact that had on other thieves in 1974; a look at baseball’s fastest pitchers (Nolan Ryan topped the list at 100.8MPH, which also seems routine these days); a recap of the longest game of the previous year — the 25-inning marathon that saw the St. Louis Cardinals edging the New York Mets, 4-3; and many more. There was even a paean to sacrifice hits! Plus lots of pages about award winners, unusual events, and stats galore.

Of course there were the projections. S&S tapped the Phillies and Dodgers to win the NL pennant, with the Yankees and Rangers taking the AL flags. Wrong on all counts. It was the Pirates and Reds and the Red Sox and A’s. I’ve often said that sports pundits and weather people are the only professions where you can be wrong so often but still keep your job.

It was also cool to go over the extended rosters for each team. Can’t quite tell if these were the 40-man squads, but the Mets list included five catchers.

But the item I enjoyed most, year after year, was “Players’ Targets,” which showed what heralded numbers were in reach. Home runs, RBIs, and hits for batters; wins, strikeouts, and shutouts for pitchers. It was fun to look at the current players of the day — listed in all caps — and how far they might realistically move up over the course of the 1975 campaign. “Old timers” had certain cutoffs to be included on the lists: 300 homers; 2,873 hits; 1,500 RBIs / 2,000 Ks and 300 wins (no such limitations on shutouts). At the time, Hank Aaron topped the home run list with 733. Frank Robinson was in fourth place.

The publication had three covers: Catfish Hunter (the one in my stash), Dodgers’ reliever Mike Marshall, and Brock, cost just $1 and was available at newsstands everywhere. In contrast, I just spent $14.99 plus shipping for the 2024 edition of Lindy’s.

Perhaps even more enjoyable for me as an adult looking back are the ads. A complete set of 1975 Topps — the only card set available at the time — cost just $13.50 plus postage. A 2’x3′ posters of your favorite player could be had for just $2. A subscription to Sports Illustrated? Just 19 cents an issue! There were also a surprisingly large number of simulation games available as well as other souvenirs and knick-knacks; I actually bought one of the baseball cards lockers. Overall, however, there were relatively few ads compared with modern magazines.

I once started a “book” on just the advertisements in Sports Illustrated over the years to see how times and styles changed, as well as the kind of services and products were deemed acceptable in any given time-frame. Maybe this will entice me to revisit that project.

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A reminder: The Amazon rankings are updated every hour, so these lists might not be 100 percent accurate by the time you read them (or even by the time I finish posting them). But close enough for government work, as the saying goes (see my piece on “Why Amazon’s search engine sucks“).

In addition, occasionally the powers-that-be over there try to pull a fast one by including a book in a category in which it should not be listed (in my opinion). For example, The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect has appeared on Amazon’s BBS list. “Why” is a good question. There might be a smattering of the national pastime in it, but not enough to make it a baseball book per se (again, IMO).

Finally, adults only here. That is, no books for younger readers (i.e., 12 and under). Also no “adult” adult books (romance/erotic fiction that features baseball as a theme although goodness knows there are a bunch of those out there).

So, with all that said…

The links under the authors’ names will take you to the Bookshelf Conversations I did with them. An asterisk denotes a book making its debut on the BBS list.

PRINT

  1. https://i2.wp.com/m.media-amazon.com/images/I/A1m5+k9JKFL._SL1500_.jpg?resize=225%2C340&ssl=1Baseball Prospectus 2024
  2. Why We Love Baseball: A History in 50 Moments, by Joe Posnanski
  3. The Franchise: Atlanta Brave: A Curated History of the Braves, by Mark Bowman *
  4. The Fantasy Baseball Black Book 2024, by Joe Pisapia
  5. My Mets Bible: Scoring 30 Years of Baseball Fandom, by Evan Roberts (available April 4)
  6. The Wingmen: The Unlikely, Unusual, Unbreakable Friendship Between John Glenn and Ted Williams, by Adam Lazarus
  7. Charlie Hustle: The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose, and the Last Glory Days of Baseball, by Keith O’Brien (available March 26)*
  8. The Cloudbuster Nine: The Untold Story of Ted Williams and the Baseball Team That Helped Win World War II, by Anne R. Keene
  9. Ron Shandler’s 2024 Baseball Forecaster and Encyclopedia of Fanalytics

KINDLE BOOKS

  1. Nine Innings: The Anatomy of a Baseball Game, by Daniel Okrent
  2. The Wingmen
  3. Rickey: The Life and Legend of an American Original, by Howard Bryant
  4. Ball Four: 50th Anniversary Edition, by Jim Bouton
  5. Faithful: Two Diehard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season, by Stewart O’Nan and Stephen King
  6. Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend, by James S. Hirsch
  7. Why We Love Baseball
  8. The Bad Guys Won, by Jeff Pearlman
  9. Moneyball
  10. The Babe: The Legend Comes to Life, by Robert Creamer

AUDIBLE

Note: Amazon has changed the way they list audiobooks. No longer under the general category of “biography and memoir,” they are now treated in their own baseball/softball category. Here’s the general link to the section where you will find further links to the individual titles, their reader/narrators, and samples. Note further that these are updated regularly and the top ten list below might no longer be the same.

  1. Moneyball (unabridged, narrated by Scott Brick)
  2. Why We Love Baseball
  3. Charlie Hustle
  4. Smart Baseball: The Story Behind the Old Stats That Are Ruining the Game, the New Ones That Are Running It, and the Right Way to Think About Baseball, by Keith Law
  5. The Baseball 100
  6. The Captain: A Memoir, by David Wright and Anthony DiComo
  7. The Science of Hitting, by Ted Williams and John Underwood
  8. Ball Four: The Final Pitch, by Jim Bouton (narrated by the author)
  9. The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg, by Nicholas Dawidoff
  10. The Methany Manifesto, by Mike Methany with Jerry B. Jenkins

Finally, some new items. Although how many books do we need about Pete Rose? Reading it now to see if it sheds any new light on this complicated situation.

Hard to believe we’re celebrating (well, some of us anyway) the 20th anniversary of the Red Sox breaking the Curse of the Bambino.

But to me, the most interesting appearance this week is Dan Okrent’s classic examination of baseball through a single game. It’s been done a few times since Nine Innings came out all the way back in 1985, including Pure Baseball: Pitch by Pitch for the Advanced Fan, by Keith Hernandez and Mike Bryan (1994); The Game: One Man, Nine Innings, A Love Affair with Baseball, by Robert Benson (2001); and, most recently, Power Ball: Anatomy of a Modern Baseball Game, by Rob Neyer (2018). Given how much baseball has changed in just the past few years, I wonder when a new title taking these things into consideration might be coming out. I asked Neyer in an e-mail if he might do an update of Power Ball, but he said he had no plans for that. So I hereby offer to do so; interested publishers know where to find me.

https://i1.wp.com/m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51tX7UYSZuL.jpg?resize=198%2C307&ssl=1https://i0.wp.com/m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51gzJdGiWYL._SL1200_.jpg?resize=200%2C304&ssl=1https://i1.wp.com/m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81pzxD-cVtL._SL1500_.jpg?resize=200%2C302&ssl=1

Still not in the Amazon top ten? 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. FYI, as of this posting it ranks 1,627,796 overall in books; last time, 978,917Hank Greenberg in 1938: Hatred and Home Runs in the Shadow of War ranks 2,849,591; last time, 2,824,288.

Shameless self-promotion: if you’re looking for some good baseball reading during this down time, why not pick up a copy of 501? It’s like the dictionary; it has the other books in it, which reminds me of one of my favorite lines from one of my favorite shows.

A reminder: There’s an Excel “checklist” of the books list in 501. If you’re interested in keeping track of how many you have read or own, drop me a line.

If you have read either of my books, thanks, hope you enjoyed it, and please consider writing an Amazon review; it’s never too late.

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Congrats to Larry Gerlach, Leslie Heaphy, and Sarah Langs, this year’s recipients of the Henry Chadwick Award given by the Society for American Baseball Research, “established to honor the game’s great researchers — historians, statisticians, annalists, and archivists — for their invaluable contributions to making baseball the game that links America’s present with its past.”

SABR on X: "The #SABR Henry Chadwick Award honors baseball's greatest  researchers, historians, statisticians, and archivists. Congratulations to  the 2024 recipients: Larry Gerlach, @lheaphy, and @SlangsOnSports! Learn  more: https://t.co/NSrCokm7Xm ...From the SABR press release:

  • Larry Gerlach opened up the world of umpires as a source of baseball scholarship with the publication of The Men in Blue: Conversations With Umpires, named one of SABR’s top 50 baseball books of the past 50 years in 2021. A SABR member since 1979, he served one term as a Board president, was the founder and longtime chair of the Umpires and Rules Committee, and co-editor of The SABR Book of Umpires and Umpiring. He is an Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Utah, where he taught from 1968 to 2013 and also wrote extensively on the American Revolution.
  • Leslie Heaphy has been a recognized authority on the Negro Leagues and women in baseball for more than three decades. She has led SABR’s Women in Baseball Committee since 1995 and has helped organize the annual Jerry Malloy Negro League Conference since 1998. She is the founding editor of the journal Black Ball, editor of The Encyclopedia of Women and Baseball, and author of The Negro Leagues, 1869-1960.
  • Sarah Langs is an educator, a historian, a true fan of the game as she has launched her career as a baseball researcher at ESPN and Major League Baseball. Her trademark phrase, “Baseball is the best,” is an all-encompassing maxim highlighting every aspect of the game. ALS has robbed Sarah of her ability to run and walk but not fly, as her passion and eternal optimism on social media and frequent appearances on MLB platforms continue to inspire fans worldwide.

By honoring individuals for the length and breadth of their contribution to the study and enjoyment of baseball, the Chadwick Award will educate the baseball community about sometimes little known but vastly important contributions from the game’s past and thus encourage the next generation of researchers.

The criteria for the award reads in part: The contributions of nominees must have had public impact. This may be demonstrated by publication of research in any of a variety of formats: books, magazine articles, websites, etc. The compilation of a significant database or archive that has facilitated the published research of others will also be considered in the realm of public impact.

For a complete list of Chadwick Award winners, click here.

 

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Well, spring training is well underway. And this year, pretty much like every year, I promise myself I will keep up with every team, not just the Mets.I finally shelled out for a subscription to Baseball Prospectus, even though I consider it a bit too analytics-driven for a numbskull like me who has no interest in fantasy baseball.

https://i0.wp.com/i.etsystatic.com/22808125/r/il/5a3f7d/4726958281/il_1588xN.4726958281_1zwi.jpg?resize=269%2C348&ssl=1I used to relay on the annual baseball magazines, but they seem to have gone the way of the dodo. I can’t seem to find any at my local CVS. As much as I want them, I’ll be damned if I’ll spend $20 to order online (although, to be fair, I did order directly from Lindy’s for $10.95 plus $4 shipping). Athlon seems to be out of the physical-print realm. There’s no more Sporting News and it’s a toss-up whether the formerly weekly, formerly monthly Sports Illustrated will produce anything. Smith and Street — my old favorite — was absorbed  by some company I don’t remember but that’s not available either.

And don’t get me started with long-gone magazines like Sports World, Sport Magazine, Sports Quarterly’s Baseball, and many others that are growing increasingly yellow and crumbly in my attic.

And now, on with the show.

♦  I’ve become almost obsessed with learning foreign languages. It started with a German colleague at work. I started Duolingo with the absurd notion that I would be able to have real conversations with him. Then that extended to other languages but especially Spanish. Unlike most of my classmates throughout my my lower-education days, I chose French, mostly because my mother came from Montreal. But there are a lot more people in my circle now who speak Spanish than French so I wanted to dive into that. One thing led to another and I go back and forth between those and several other tongues, including Japanese, Russian, Yiddish, Latin, and, of course, German.

I recently received a fascinating book, The Spanish Lexicon of Baseball: Semantics, Style, and Terminology, by John M. Chaston and Robert N. Smead, which I supplemented with Daring’s English-Spanish Baseball Dictionary, a slim paperback. I’m also slowly trying to get through BP’s regular articles en Espanol. (Just FYI, I also have a copy of Glossary of Baseball Terms: English-French, French-English, a 1984 publication by Pierre Dalliere. Looking for similar books for other languages so fill me in if you know of any.)

I’m old enough to remember when managers like Al Dark showed their craven side by complaining that the Latin players on their teams were a disruption because they continued to talk among each other in Spaniosh. I’m working on a piece about the subhead/first line in ballplayers’ obituaries. The one for Dark, who passed away in 2014, read: “Alvin Dark, who was the All-Star shortstop and captain of the New York Giants’ pennant-winning teams in the 1950s and went on to manage the team to a pennant in San Francisco, but who was later shadowed by controversy over his attitude toward black and Latino players, died on Thursday at his home in Easley, S.C.” (emphasis mine).)

In recent years, teams are encouraging their foreign-born players to learn English. Just this week there was this about the Mets’ catcher Francisco Alvarez.

♦   https://i2.wp.com/m.media-amazon.com/images/I/818KOt8m79L._SL1500_.jpg?resize=247%2C375&ssl=1Wish I’d known about this at the beginning of Black History Month, but I’m getting it in just under the wire. The Athletic posted a series of articles by Jason Joines about The Black Aces, “the 15 Black pitchers from either the United States or Canada to win 20 games in a Major League Baseball season.” The list includes Don Newcombe, Bob Gibson, Al Downing, Jim “Mudcat” Grant, Dwight Gooden, Sam “Toothpick” Jones, Fergie Jenkins, Earl Wilson, Mike Norris, J.R. Richard, Dave Stewart, Vida Blue, Dontrelle Willis, C.C. Sabathia, and David Price. For more, read The Black Aces: Baseball’s Only African-American Twenty-Game Winners, by Grant with Tom Sabellico and Pat O’Brien. Since it was published in 2007, it obviously does not include Sabathia, who accomplished the feat in 2010, and Price, who won 20 in 2012. Because The Athletic is a paywall thing, you might not be able to read these pieces; my apologies.

♦  I feel like I’m back in school since I’m reading several books at a time. One — also with a connection to Black History Month — is The Mountain Empire League: A Novel, by Marshall Adesman. The synopsis, as reported in the Citizen Tribune (Morristown, Tennessee), has this as “the fictional story of Appalachian-based minor league placed mostly in fictional cities. All of the main characters are fictional, but their stories are drawn from the experiences of people like Curt Flood, Bill White, Joe Morgan and others. It is based on stories Adesman learned during his career in professional baseball as well as the stories real life ballplayers shared in their memoirs.”

♦  Another book I’m reading now is Frank Chance’s Diamond: The Baseball Journalism of Ring Lardner by Ron Rapoport. They don’t make them like Ring any more. I will be having a “Bookshelf Conversation” with Rapoport soon and will ask him how the advent of broadcasting impacted newspapers. When radio came along, team owners were concerned that it would reduce attendance but they were wrong. Same for TV. But we know what print journalism is like today: they’re failing left and right. New York Times sports department? Gone. Sports Illustrated? Gone. Pretty soon it will be like a scene out of The Time Machine.

 

By the way, it’s amazing the likeness between Lardner and John Sayles, who portrayed the sportswriter in his classic film, Eight Men Out.

Ring Lardner - Wikipedia   Randy S. Robbins on X: "@sigg20 John Sayles, the director, resembled sportswriter Ring Lardner so closely that Sayles portrayed him in the film. "I'm forever blowing ballgames..." https://t.co/bEkaoAU6ol" / X

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A reminder: The Amazon rankings are updated every hour, so these lists might not be 100 percent accurate by the time you read them (or even by the time I finish posting them). But close enough for government work, as the saying goes (see my piece on “Why Amazon’s search engine sucks“).

In addition, occasionally the powers-that-be over there try to pull a fast one by including a book in a category in which it should not be listed (in my opinion). For example, The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect has appeared on Amazon’s BBS list. “Why” is a good question. There might be a smattering of the national pastime in it, but not enough to make it a baseball book per se (again, IMO).

Finally, adults only here. That is, no books for younger readers. Also no “adult” adult books (romance/erotic fiction that features baseball as a theme although goodness knows there are a bunch of those out there).

So, with all that said…

The links under the authors’ names will take you to the Bookshelf Conversations I did with them. An asterisk denotes a book making its debut on the BBS list.

https://i0.wp.com/m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71fTGRvUdEL._SL1200_.jpg?resize=250%2C385&ssl=1PRINT

  1. Baseball Prospectus 2024
  2. Why We Love Baseball: A History in 50 Moments, by Joe Posnanski
  3. The Fantasy Baseball Black Book 2024, by Joe Pisapia
  4. The Wingmen: The Unlikely, Unusual, Unbreakable Friendship Between John Glenn and Ted Williams, by Adam Lazarus
  5. Ron Shandler’s 2024 Baseball Forecaster and Encyclopedia of Fanalytics
  6. Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis
  7. The Science of Hitting, by Ted Williams and Tom Underwood
  8. The Catcher Was a Spy, by Nicholas Dawidoff
  9. The Last Folk Hero: The Life and Myth of Bo Jackson, by Jeff Pearlman
  10. Rotoman’s Fantasy Baseball Guide 2024: From Acuña to Zunino

KINDLE BOOKS

  1. The Wingmen
  2. Rickey: The Life and Legend of an American Original, by Howard Bryant
  3. Ball Four: 50th Anniversary Edition, by Jim Bouton
  4. Francona: The Red Sox Years, by Terry Francona and Dan Shaugnessy
  5. 42 Today: The Legacy of Jackie Robinson, edited by Michel Long
  6. House of Nails: A Memoir of Life on the Edge, by Lenny Dykstra
  7. Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend, by James S. Hirsch
  8. Moneyball
  9. The Grandest Stage: A History of the World Series, by Tyler Kepner
  10. Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson’s First Season, by Jonathan Eig

AUDIBLE

Note: Amazon has changed the way they list audiobooks. No longer under the general category of “biography and memoir,” they are now treated in their own baseball/softball category. Here’s the general link to the section where you will find further links to the individual titles, their reader/narrators, and samples. Note further that these are updated regularly and the top ten list below might no longer be the same.

  1. Moneyball (unabridged, narrated by Scott Brick)
  2. Why We Love Baseball
  3. Smart Baseball: The Story Behind the Old Stats That Are Ruining the Game, the New Ones That Are Running It, and the Right Way to Think About Baseball, by Keith Law
  4. The Catcher Was a Spy
  5. Ball Four: The Final Pitch, by Jim Bouton (narrated by the author)
  6. Heads-Up Baseball 2.0, by Tom Hanson
  7. The Baseball 100
  8. The Methany Manifesto, by Mike Methany with Jerry B. Jenkins
  9. The Bad Guys Won, by Jeff Pearlman (read by the author)
  10. Heads-Up Baseball, by Tom Hanson

The first six books on the print list have not moved one iota.

I’m attributing the appearance of Dykstra’s book to the fact that he recently suffered a stroke. But in typical Nails fashion, he seems to be handling it in his own unique way. Not for nothing, but I found it amusing that there’s no credited co-author for his memoir. But this was explained in a 2019 article in The New York Times by Richard Sandomir

The veteran collaborator Peter Golenbock worked with Dykstra for seven or eight months, only to be fired by him. Dykstra said he had needed to take control of the book to preserve his singular voice….

Dykstra said he rewrote the book alone, and had help from a husband-and-wife copy editing team and one of his doctors.

“I had to be alone while I was writing,” he said. “I can think better. I wrote one piece of my life at a time. It was a very hard process.”

Indeed, he claimed, he left blood on his keyboard. “Oh, yeah, that’s how I roll,” he said.

Note there are two “Heads Up” titles on the audio list.

Still not in the Amazon top ten? 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. FYI, as of this posting it ranks 978,917 overall in books (#96 in Literary Bibliographies & Indexes); last time, 1,009,932Hank Greenberg in 1938: Hatred and Home Runs in the Shadow of War ranks 2,824,288; last time, 2,804,953.

Shameless self-promotion: if you’re looking for some good baseball reading during this down time, why not pick up a copy of 501? It’s like the dictionary; it has the other books in it, which reminds me of one of my favorite lines from one of my favorite shows.

A reminder: There’s an Excel “checklist” of the books list in 501. If you’re interested in keeping track of how many you have read or own, drop me a line.

If you have read either of my books, thanks, hope you enjoyed it, and please consider writing an Amazon review; it’s never too late.

{ 0 comments }

A reminder: The Amazon rankings are updated every hour, so these lists might not be 100 percent accurate by the time you read them (or even by the time I finish posting them). But close enough for government work, as the saying goes (see my piece on “Why Amazon’s search engine sucks“).

In addition, occasionally the powers-that-be over there try to pull a fast one by including a book in a category in which it should not be listed (in my opinion). For example, The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect has appeared on Amazon’s BBS list. “Why” is a good question. There might be a smattering of the national pastime in it, but not enough to make it a baseball book per se (again, IMO).

Finally, adults only here. That is, no books for younger readers. Also no “adult” adult books (romance/erotic fiction that features baseball as a theme although goodness knows there are a bunch of those out there).

So, with all that said…

The links under the authors’ names will take you to the Bookshelf Conversations I did with them. An asterisk denotes a book making its debut on the BBS list.

https://i2.wp.com/m.media-amazon.com/images/W/MEDIAX_849526-T2/images/I/71-SNRk7KTL._SL1500_.jpg?resize=249%2C372&ssl=1PRINT

  1. Baseball Prospectus 2024
  2. Why We Love Baseball: A History in 50 Moments, by Joe Posnanski
  3. The Fantasy Baseball Black Book 2024, by Joe Pisapia
  4. The Wingmen: The Unlikely, Unusual, Unbreakable Friendship Between John Glenn and Ted Williams, by Adam Lazarus
  5. Ron Shandler’s 2024 Baseball Forecaster and Encyclopedia of Fanalytics
  6. Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis
  7. Rotoman’s Fantasy Baseball Guide 2024: From Acuña to Zunino
  8. The Baseball 100, by Joe Posnanski
  9. A Fan’s Guide to Baseball Analytics: Why WAR, WHIP, wOBA, and Other Advanced Sabermetrics Are Essential to Understanding Modern Baseball, by Anthony Castrovince
  10. The Science of Hitting, by Ted Williams and Tom Underwood

KINDLE BOOKS

  1. Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend, by James S. Hirsch
  2. The Wingmen
  3. Ball Four: 50th Anniversary Edition, by Jim Bouton
  4. Moneyball
  5. The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created, by Jane Leavy
  6. Love Me, Hate Me: Barry Bonds and the Making of an Antihero, by Jeff Pearlman
  7. Why We Love Baseball
  8. Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy, by Jane Leavy
  9. Why We Love Baseball
  10. The Grandest Stage: A History of the World Series, by Tyler Kepner

AUDIBLE

Note: Amazon has changed the way they list audiobooks. No longer under the general category of “biography and memoir,” they are now treated in their own baseball/softball category. Here’s the general link to the section where you will find further links to the individual titles, their reader/narrators, and samples. Note further that these are updated regularly and the top ten list below might no longer be the same.

  1. Moneyball (unabridged, narrated by Scott Brick)
  2. Why We Love Baseball
  3. The Baseball 100
  4. Smart Baseball: The Story Behind the Old Stats That Are Ruining the Game, the New Ones That Are Running It, and the Right Way to Think About Baseball, by Keith Law
  5. Ball Four: The Final Pitch, by Jim Bouton (narrated by the author)
  6. The Science of Hitting
  7. Astroball: The New Way to Win it All, by Ben Reiter
  8. The Bad Guys Won, by Jeff Pearlman (read by the author)
  9. Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig, by Jonathan Eig (narrated by Edward Herrmann who played Gehrig in the TV movie, A Love Affair: The Eleanor and Lou Gehrig Story)
  10. Ninety Percent Mental, by Bob Tewksbury (read by the author)

Nothing really new save for the return of A Fan’s Guide to Baseball Analytics, a good primer for the beginning of the season.

Still not in the Amazon top ten? 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. FYI, as of this posting it ranks 1,009,932 overall in books (#88 in Literary Bibliographies & Indexes); last time, 1,918,343Hank Greenberg in 1938: Hatred and Home Runs in the Shadow of War ranks 2,804,953; last time, 2,785,238.

Shameless self-promotion: if you’re looking for some good baseball reading during this down time, why not pick up a copy of 501? It’s like the dictionary; it has the other books in it, which reminds me of one of my favorite lines from one of my favorite shows.

A reminder: There’s an Excel “checklist” of the books list in 501. If you’re interested in keeping track of how many you have read or own, drop me a line.

If you have read either of my books, thanks, hope you enjoyed it, and please consider writing an Amazon review; it’s never too late.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Oh, the weather outside is frightful…

Funny how you never hear songs about winter after Christmas. Why is that? It’s still the season. “Walking in a Winter Wonderland” doesn’t seem to have any holiday significance. Same for “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” which has certain problems but we won’t go into that now.

Moving on…

♦  More on the Sports Illustrated debacle, as compiled by Newslit.org, a most interesting site.

Sports journalism is more than just game coverage and stats — it also plays a watchdog role in holding the array of powerful interests in the sports world accountable. Though sports content — including sports-focused social media accounts, commentary and entertainment shows — has never been more plentiful, there’s substantially less sports-accountability journalism today.

This pullback coincides with the rise of legalized gambling and new rules that allow college athletes to be paid, both of which are trends with impact far beyond the sports world. Experts also worry that without sports reporters on the ground, scandals and corruption will go undetected and important stories untold.

♦  Before there was Travis and Taylor, there was Monroe and DiMaggio, described by History.com as “the ultimate power couple.” And before that — waaaay before — there was John Montgomery Ward and Helen Dauvray (kids, ask your great-great-great grandparents), as descrbed by Scott D. Peterson, author of Reporting Baseball’s Sensational Season of 1890: The Brotherhood War and the Rise of Modern Sports Journalism.

https://i1.wp.com/www.nydailynews.com/wp-content/uploads/migration/2023/01/13/YY54G4SNR5GDPOKKT3OEEW2HFQ.jpg?resize=351%2C447&ssl=1

♦  The Citizen Tribune (Morristown, Tennessee) ran this profile of Marshall Adesman, author of The Empire Mountain League, a novel about minor league baseball following Jackie Robinson’s debut, especially pertinent during Black History Month. Adesman “tells the fictional story of Appalachian-based minor league placed mostly in fictional cities. All of the main characters are fictional, but their stories are drawn from the experiences of people like Curt Flood, Bill White, Joe Morgan and others. It is based on stories Adesman learned during his career in professional baseball as well as the stories real life ballplayers shared in their memoirs.” (Another article appeared in The Rogersville (TN) Review.)

Marshall Adesman

♦  The Babbo Italian Eatery in Phoenix is hosting its hosting its third annual Baseball for Babbo Day of Giving event on Feb. 29. All eight Valley Babbo Italian Eatery locations will donate 100% of profits made that day to the Seena Magowitz Foundation, to fund pancreatic cancer research at HonorHealth Research Institute, according to a press release.

♦  The Binghamton Baseball Booster Club (Binghamton, NY) is set to light up the Phelps Mansion Museum with an event titled ‘Baseball at the Phelps Mansion,’ slated for February 17. The program will “bring together history, opera, and baseball. Highlights include a one-act play about Lou Gehrig’s life, a historical baseball video, and an address by the Binghamton Mayor”

♦  Looks like Netflix is venturing into the “Hard Knocks”-type sports doc biz with two new programs. Great, but do they both have to be about the Red Sox? “The first project will follow the team over the course of the 2024 season, with Netflix saying it will gain ‘unprecedented access’ to players, coaches and execs.” The second looks back at the 2004 World Championship season that broke “the curse of the Bambino” (geez, twenty years ago?)

♦  One of the (many) books I’m reading right now is Frank Chance’s Diamond: The Baseball Journalism of Ring Lardner, by Ron Rapaport. Here’s a piece on it by the Chicago Tribune. It’s behind a paywall, but you get a few free articles before they start to nudge you to subscribe.

♦  Finally, has any out there seen any baseball magazines on the shelves of bookstores, newspaper stands (is there still such a thing), or wherever mags are sold? I haven’t and could only find Lindy’s online.

 

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Baseball Best-Sellers, February 9, 2024

2023 title

A reminder: The Amazon rankings are updated every hour, so these lists might not be 100 percent accurate by the time you read them (or even by the time I finish posting them). But close enough for government work, as the saying goes (see my piece on “Why Amazon’s search engine sucks“). In addition, occasionally […]

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Bookshelf Review: The Body Scout

2022 title

The Body Scout: A Novel, by Lincoln Michel I was going to hold off on this until I finished A Mound Over Hell, the first book in a trilogy by Gary Morgenstern, because both were about baseball in a dystopian world. But then I came across an article posted on The Athletic — “Why the […]

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National Pastime Radio: Wait, Wait… A Baseball Limerick

"Oddballs"

If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you’ll know my affection for the NPR news quiz, Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me. And every now and then, they’ll throw me a bone my including some baseball content. Examples include an interview with Moose Skowron which led me down a rabbit hole when it comes […]

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Baseball Best-Sellers, February 2, 2024

2023 title

Happy Groundhog Day! I never understood it: if the groundhog sees its shadow, doesn’t that mean that the weather is nice and that there should not be six more weeks of winter? Meteorologists and sports pundits are the only professions where you can be wring half the time and still keep your job. Moving on… […]

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Award season, continued

"Bookshelf Conversations"

It should come as no surprise that this year’s CASEY Award, presented by Spitball Magazine, goes to Joe Posnanski for his latest masterpiece, Why We Love Baseball: A History in 50 Moments. It almost seems unfair that such great work should come from the same writer in such quick succession. From the press release from […]

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The Bookshelf Conversation #174: Jim Gilmore and Tracy Halcomb

"Bookshelf Conversations"

The things one finds wandering down the rabbit hole. I was doing some research and just happened to come across the new film, Fielding Dreams: A Celebration of Baseball Scouts. It’s a fascinating look at an under-reported part of the game. The first thing I thought of was the scene in Moneyball in which Billy […]

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Baseball Best-Sellers, January 26, 2024

"Annuals"

A reminder: The Amazon rankings are updated every hour, so these lists might not be 100 percent accurate by the time you read them (or even by the time I finish posting them). But close enough for government work, as the saying goes (see my piece on “Why Amazon’s search engine sucks“). In addition, occasionally […]

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Say it ain’t so, SI

"Ripped from today's headlines..."

What is this world coming to? It was bad enough when Sports Illustrated laid off many of the staff that made the magazine “illustrated” to begin with. I was bad enough when it went from a weekly to a bi-weekly to a monthly to just online. But now? “Sports Illustrated lays off most of its […]

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