“People of the books”

May 19, 2011

Always happy when the mail carrier delivers a package (as long as it’s not ticking).

Recently received Aaron Pribble’s Pitching in the Promised Land: A Story of the First and Only Season in the Israel Baseball League, his memoir about participating the Israel Baseball League, which lasted just one season (2007).

Pribble pitched for the Tel Aviv Lightning, which finished the regular season in second place with a record of 26-14. He led the league with a 1.94 ERA and was named co-recipient of the Commissioner’s Award for Sportsmanship and Character with Brendan Rubenstein of the Ra’anana Express.

Look for a review of the book as well as an interview with the author in the near future.

Also plopping down on my desk: Shawn Green’s The Way of Baseball: Finding Stillness at 95 mph, (with Gordon McAlpine). I just opened to a random page and found a passage about the difficult decision he had to make in breaking his then-active-record streak of 415 consecutive games on Sept. 26, 2001 — Yom Kippur.  He wrote, “While publicly acknowledging Yom Kippur was not a strictly religious decision, it was nonetheless of spiritual importance to me. I wanted to show respect for the customs of my heritage.”

I haven’t explored The Way further for more Judaic material, but from the little I’ve read, Green seems like quite the philosopher. In fact, Amazon does not categorize his as a sports book, but places it in the realm of “personal transformation.”

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Tagged as: Aaron Pribble, Israel Baseball League, Shawn Green, Tel Aviv Lightning

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