At the risk of sounding jingoistic, if the Fall Classic doesn’t take place in New York, it posts a problem for local sports pages. How much should they be writing, and would their readers care that much. So you go looking for filler. In this case The New York Times published this cool piece last week on “Get Your World Series Programs Here!,” by Ken Belson. (There’s also a neat slideshow of programs past.)
I understand the need to market outside the fans of the two teams involved, but come one — isn’t the above much more personal than the more generic stuff (below) they come up with more recently?
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One aspect mentioned is the price for the publication. Of course everything has gone up astronomically since our grandparent’s day, but I was at a supermarket in town and found, improbably, the Yankees 2011 Yearbook in the magazine rack, which in itself is an indication on on the industry has changed; used to be teams would never stoop so low as to peddle their yearbooks anywhere outside their home stadium. But $25!?! For a publication where the ratio of editorial content to advertising seems like less than 50 percent? Please, child. Again, when I was a kid a yearbook was 50 cents which got you players’ profiles, stats, and some black and white photos (plus adverts). And that was fine. But, like baseball in general, they’re not taking the young fans into account. Just sayin’.
is available on Amazon.com,
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Come one? As in “come one. Come all?” I believe you mean “come on.” As in “Come on. Let’s find an INTERESTING blog where the writer isn’t a COMPLETELY presumptuous asshole.”
If a typo makes one a “COMPLETELY presumptuous asshole,” I hope you’re not an English teacher, because I would hate for my kid to be branded on the basis of an error like that. And feel free not to read the Bookshelf anymore and enjoy the many interesting blogs out there.
Ron, that’s the Dude, Lenny Dykstra, writing in. He’s got problems–you have to take him with a grain of salt.
Anyway, nice piece (both yours and the NYT one), and I agree with you on the attractiveness of the covers. Here’s another thing that slightly annoys me–the fact that there are now three different covers albeit the same content (I believe). I’m a collector of these items, and for the older ones, one of the fun things is to get both teams’ versions. In 1974, MLB combined them, and then at some point (maybe then, maybe later__I haven’t yet determined), they started adding a small section of pages to the version sold in each stadium. So, e.g., there were pages KC1 to KC24 for the issue sold at Kansas City in 1980 and pages PHL1 to PHL24 for the version sold in Philadelphia. The national version excluded those pages. Then, in the 1990s I believe, they started including both sets of pages in both issues, so there was nothing special about the stadium edition. Now I see there are three different covers. I guess it’s all in pursuit of a buck. But if they are going to go with three different covers, I wish they would make each issue a bit different as well.
Somehow I have a hard time believing that Dykstra would have the time or inclination to read this humble blog (especially not carefully enough to pick out typos), but thanks for the kind words.
I understand the need for publishers to make their product more marketable; they’ll have better luck putting a local favorite on the cover than a single, nationally-recognized player. The first time I became aware of this practice was through the Street & Smith annuals, but since I only bought the edition available in New York, I don’t know: did each edition feature a story on the cover athlete, or was all the content the same? I’m not that much of a collector that I would shell out the bucks to get all the variations.
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