Bits and pieces

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… the breakfast cereal of AMC’s The Killing. Very cool.

Anyway…

* Ben Platt posted this review of Kostya Kennedy’s new biography of Joe DiMaggio on MLB.com.

* The “Bats” baseball blog of The New York Times ran this profile of Steve Stone, author of the new book Said In Stone: Your Game, My Way.

Sorry, but this premise sounds very familiar: “Stone wrote a chapter describing each position on the field, and others about managing, the front office, the commissioner and the future of the sport. But the highlights come in the stories Stone sprinkles along the way, including the trick he devised with his college catcher, Thurman Munson, to pick a runner off third base in eight consecutive games; the time Dick Allen stood him up for dinner by convincing him he had been traded; and the day Ron Santo’s hairpiece caught on fire in the press box at Shea Stadium.” Seems I’ve read this type of “analysis and anecdotes” book before (Keith Hernandez, Mike Schmidt, Ron Darling, Dave Winfield, et al). Still, I’ll give it a shot.

* WickedLocal/Hamilton ran this profile on local author Tim Goehlert, who recently published Baseball Franchise Rankings: A Unique Book About Baseball History & Statistics.

* The Louisville Courier-Journal ran this review on John Thorn’s Baseball in the Garden of Eden: The Secret History of the Early Game.

* He said/he said: ESPN analyst and former Major leaguer Rick Sutcliffe “blasted” Ian O’Connor, author of the new and, according to some, controversial biography, The Captain: The Journey of Derek Jeter. According to this piece by Bob Raissman, sports media guy for the New York Daily News,

“Derek says he (O’Connor) hasn’t talked to ‘anybody close to me.’ Supposedly there was like a coach that he played for when he was in the ninth grade. And there was some cousin that he was talking about that Derek didn’t even know,” Sutcliffe said Monday night. “He (Jeter) was upset about it. A lot of it, like Tim said Brian Cashman told him, is stuff that happened a long time ago.”

In the “Sources” section of the book, O’Connor writes

Derek Jeter agreed to do a number of clubhouse interviews for this book during the 2009 season but did not agree to do a lengthy sit-down. In piecing together the narrative, I leaned on scores of interviews with Jeter that I either conducted or participated in over the course of his fifteen-year career.

Of the dozens upon dozens of players, coaches, managers, and executives approached to discuss Jeter specifically for this book, only a handful declined…. Their quotes on these pages were pulled from previous interviews and news conferences, including some in which I participated.

I have just started the book, so I’m not qualified to opine on whether Jeter or O’Connor is “more correct.” But O’Connor’s remarks reminded me of something else I just saw this afternoon.

Here’s the NY Post‘s take on the book. It’s labeled “exclusive,” but from I can tell the writer is just as guilty as Jeter claims O’Connor to be. It reads more like a book review than anything else. Can’t see where the writer actually spoke to someone for this story. Just sayin’.