My favorite pieces of mail, aside from the books I receive, are the catalogs announcing the books I will shortly receive. Like gardeners, I look forward to these colorful brochures that hold the promise of hours of enjoyment during the months to come.
The University of Nebraska Press and its imprint, Bison Books, publish some of the more enjoyable and thoughtful titles on the game. This year the batch includes:
- Ed Barrow: The Bulldog Who Built the Yankees’ First Dynasty, by Daniel R. Levitt, coauthor of Paths to Glory: How Great Baseball Teams Got That Way, which won the Sporting News/SABR Baseball Research Award. Barrow is a legendary character, on par with the likes of Theo Epstein, Sandy Alderson, and other modern GMs who have put together dynasties on a much smaller scale.
- Chief Bender’s Burden: The Silent Struggle of a Baseball Star, by Tom Swift. In this case, the burden was being born a native American. Swift hosts a Web site for his project.
- Venezuelan Bust, Baseball Boom: Andres Reiner and Scouting on the New Frontier, by Milton H. Jamil (Bison). The story of how the Houston Astros scout revolutionized his craft by expanding his territory to the baseball-rich nation. Jamil previously wrote about Latin American baseball in Full Count: Inside Cuban Baseball.
- Center Field Shot: A History of Baseball on Television, by James R. Walker and Robert V. Bellamy Jr. (Bison). Of all the new books on the horizon, I think I’m looking forward to this one most of all, since it combines my two favorite pastimes. The authors, professors from St. Xavier University and Duquesne University, respectively, have a Web site for the book.
is available on Amazon.com,
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