Major links dump, Volume 1

Update: As an indication of just how far behind I am, this was originally created on Feb. 26. Didn’t feel like abandoning all the hard work so…

* * *

Because, yes, that’s how far behind I am.

I use this neat little application, Read It Later, which allows me to, well, read it later. It retains the link, regardless of whether the website/blog still has it up on the site (oops. no it doesn’t. Dammit. They lied!).

That’s the good news; the bad news is that for a lazy slug like me, it can often stay here til waaaaay later.

So in attempt to clean up, here goes:

Robert Skole published Jumpin’ Jimminy – A World War II Baseball Saga, a novel of “American flyboys and Japanese submariners [who] battle it out in a Swedish World Series.” Here’s the blurb, you decide:

When the Jumpin’ Jimminy — a Flying Fortress shot up in a raid over Nazi Germany — crash lands in neutral Sweden in the autumn of 1944, its crew couldn’t dream they would wind up playing a World Series. Especially a Series against tough enemy Japanese sailors from a submarine that went aground on Sweden’s rocky coast.

The Jumpin’ Jimminy crew, the best ball team in the Eighth Air Force, is a heaven-sent gift to the baseball-crazy Swedish Major responsible for American internees.

The Japanese have made meatballs of the Major’s amateur Swedish ball players. Now, he can field a hard-hitting, determined American team to battle the Japanese in a Swedish World Series..

Waiting for Spring training, the Yanks get “essential” jobs. Two carry out daring undercover assignments for the OSS. The team’s shortstop, the only black GI assigned to a U.S. bomber crew, speaks fluent Swedish which he learned working for Swedes in Chicago. He helps his Swedish moonshining “cousins” create Sweden’s absolutely greatest akvavit. And the other Yanks valiantly help the Allied war effort in the cold, grim, oasis of peaceful Swedish neutrality.

And then it’s Spring of 1945 and “Play Ball” in the first and only Swedish World Series.

Holley Music of Cooperstown (“For music and baseball lovers”) offer this list of baseball songs from various CDs.

Again, I know nothing about art, so I couldn’t tell you what the style is. But I know I like The Patricks Art. (And another nod to one of my old favorites.)

From SABR’s Quebec Chapter, this chart of baseball books in French, about the Expos, about baseball in Canada, etc. Tres interesant.

Speaking of the Expos, here’s an interview with Alain Userau, author of L’Époque glorieuse des Expos (which I still have to read).

J. Conrad Guest promotes his novel, Backstop: A Baseball Love Story in Nine Innings, here. You can read an excerpt here.

Even the Cleveland Cavaliers have won more games than Charlie Brown’s baseball team.

Not sure if I mentioned this piece from Mental Floss about the long-defunct sports daily, The National. It was a very cool publication, especially the full scorebook-type recaps of the Mets and Yankees games.