* New web site gives chance to rediscover an old classic

April 6, 2010

Veteran journalist Daniel Okrent has launched a web site to promote his new book, Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition. Frankly, it’s kind of bare bones, but it does include a page (mostly blurbs) about 9 Innings: The Anatomy of  Baseball Game, originally published in 1984 and revised in 2000. Here’s a review by Christopher Lehmann-Haupt (point) and one by Roger Kahn (counterpoint) that appeared in The New York Times in 1985.

(Okrent didn’t invent the concept on analyzing a single game in book form. Arnold Hano wrote A Day in the Bleachers based on the opener of the 1954 World Series between the NY Giants and Cleveland Indians. It was re-released in 2004 by Da Capo and Hano wrote a 50th anniversary essay on the subject. In 1995, Keith Hernandez published Pure Baseball from a player’s point of view. And Buzz (Friday Night Lights) Bissinger covered a single series between the Cardinals and Cubs in Three Nights in August a few years back.None of this detracts from Okrent’s contribution. Each person brings his or her own thoughts, issues, distractions (“Oh, look, another plane.”) to the reporting.)

Those with the opportunity to see Ken Burns’ Baseball documentary on the MLB Network in recent months will recognize Okrent as one of the featured “talking heads.”

But, like it or not, he is also one of the people responsible for the greatest time-waster ever conceived: fantasy (nee Rotisserie) baseball.


 


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