People of the (baseball) book (clubs)

Came across an item about a book club created by a Tampa Bay Rays blogging outfit.

The concept

At the beginning of each month, we will pick a book. If you would like to participate, you go out and get a copy of the book and read it during the month. At the end of the month, on a Saturday or Sunday, we will start a thread where we can discuss the book…What we liked, what we hated, questions and anecdotes.

The current selection is The Bullpen Gospels: Major League Dreams of a Minor League Veteran, by Dirk Hayhurst.

This sounded familair, so I Googled the topic and came up with these for your consideration ( make no claims to the continued accuracy/current activity level of these clubs). Some meet on-line, others might gather a a local venue. As they say on TV, check your local listings.

> The Getting Blanked Baseball Book Club. Last title: Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis. Note: the group recently met so look for new of a new book for February.

>PA Book Club (Pinstripe Alley, a Yankees-centric blog)

> The Society for American Baseball Research’s Halsey Hall Chapter

> Baseball Past and Present

Needless to say there are plenty of sites and blogs that post baseball book reviews from time to time, as well as a few (mine included) that concentrate specifically on the topic.

Among the 2011 titles with a Jewish connection include:

• Scorecasting: The Hidden Influences Behind How Sports Are Played and Games Are Won, by Toby Moskowitz and L. Jon Wertheim, a couple of friends who begin the book by reminiscing about their summer together at Jewish camp. Getting a lot of buzz as it’s the first significant sports book of the year.
• Hank Greenberg: The Hero Who Didn’t Want to Be One (Jewish Lives), by Mark Kurlansky (Yale University Press)
• The Way of Baseball: Finding Stillness at 95 mph, by former JML Shawn Green (Simon & Schuster)
• Taking the Field: A Fan’s Quest to Run the Team He Loves, by Howard Megdal, author of The Baseball Talmud: The Definitive Position-by-Position Ranking of Baseball’s Chosen Players (Bloomsbury)
• The Baseball Talmud: The Definitive Position-by-Position Ranking of Baseball’s Chosen Players, by Steve Stone, third on the list for wins by a JML (Triumph)
• The Extra 2%: How Wall Street Strategies Took a Major League Baseball Team from Worst to First, by Jonah Keri (ESPN)
• Baseball in the Garden of Eden: The Secret History of the Early Game, by John Thorn (Simon & Schuster)
• Lipman Pike: America’s First Home Run King, by Richard Michelson (Kids’ picture book. Pike was the first professional ballplayer, and obviously the first Jewish pro)
• Out of Left Field: Jews and Black Baseball, by Rabbi Rebecca Alpert (Oxford University Press)

(More of Megdal at Youtube)

(from his previous book, Baseball Between the Numbers: Why Everything You Know About the Game Is Wrong)

Tagged as: Dirk Hayhurst, Hank Greenberg, Moneyball, The Bullpen Gospels: Major League Dreams of a Minor League Veteran, Toby Moskowitz