* Bits and pieces

With the dawn of the season, news coverage is picking up substantially. Several topics constitute the bulk of the early buzz:

• The final season of Yankee and Shea Stadiums. There are several new and revised titles about The House That Ruth Built; there are none, as of this moment, specifically about Shea. Go figure.
• Anniversaries are always rife for discussion. This year we mark the centennial of the last Cubs’ World Championship, the 60th of the last Indians’ World Series victory, and the 50th anniversaries of the Dodgers and Giants in California. Oh, and the tenth since Mark McGuire broke Roger Maris’ home run record.
• The book reviews are coming in fast and furious. It almost seems as though, if they don’t catch the readers attention at the beginning of the season, they won’t be able to make the sale.

So with that, here are a few bits and pieces:

• From the Los Angeles Times book section, “Reflections on the Baseball Encyclopedia and the keeping of a sport’s records,” by blogger Mark Lamster. Fans of a “certain age” will remember the Encyclopedia, which pre-dated Total Baseball, The Elias Sports Bureau annuals, and the Bill James Analyses. It was nothing but numbers, and, speaking with the brilliance of hindsight, “bad” numbers, as James and his fellow SABRen have opined.
• From The Wall Street Journal, a review and lengthy excerpt (Brooks Robinson) from Fay Vincent’s new oral history We Would Have Played the Game for Nothing: Baseball Stars of the 1950s and 1960s Talk About the Game They Loved.
• Via the Staten Island Advance Web site, this AP story about the new book, Baseball Greatest Hit.
• From the Seamheads.com blog, a review of Rob Neyer’s Big Book of Baseball Legends.
• From Joe Posananski’s blog, an interview with said Neyer. Posnanski is the Kansas City Star columnist and author of The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O’Neil’s America.
• Mike Lupica’s assessment of Vindicated from the New York Daily News.
• A Philadelphia Inquirer review of Chris Coste’s new book, The 33-year-old Rookie.

Tagged as: baseball book reviews, Bits and Pieces