♦ Bill Jordan posted this review of Paul Dickson’s Bill Veeck: Baseball’s Greatest Maverick, on Baseball Reflections. Upshot: “Anyone who considers themselves to be a fan of baseball history should pick this work up. Whether you were familiar with Veeck or not before reading the book, you stand to learn a lot about this interesting character.”
♦ From Jason Linden/The Hardball Times comes this review of Third Base for Life, about a group of 10-year-old ballplayers. Upshot: “While I certainly can’t give a wholehearted recommendation to this book, if you have experience with the bond baseball can forge between a parent and child, it will be hard not to enjoy much of it, even if you’ll find yourself wanting to skim in places.”
♦ Jim Bailey posted this one on Trading Manny on his blog, Bailey’s Baseball Book reviews. Upshot: “Gullo cultivates occasional chuckles with tales of an ill-fated afternoon playing ball with Al Franken and Paul Simon or memories of softball games with his late father. He clearly values his relationship with his son and his family above all else, which is always refreshing to see. But the repeated hammering home of the same points and questions wears thin at times, especially when in the end both Gullos were willing to return to baseball’s flock demands unmet.”
♦ eBookReader posted this review of Grisham’s Calico Joe. Upshot: This one agve the book Five Stars. “The most praiseworthy attribute of this book is that it is a timeless baseball story that can be enjoyed by any reader, whether they cheer for the Cubs or the Mets or whether they have never followed baseball at all. Grisham makes all of us become baseball fans, at least for the duration of his book.”
Sometimes I wonder if the people who review like this aren’t literature fans with relatively little baseball background. They might be easily impressed by the author’s attention to detail when it comes to the statistics, but more “hardcore” fans actually find such methods a crutch that distracts from the actual story. The same could be said for Chad Harbach’s The Art of Fielding, which was just honored by the Book of the Month Club with the organization’s 2011 First Fiction Award, awarded for an “original debut that introduces a great new American voice in literature.” I know I’m running against the crowd here, but I still respectfully disagree and think all this adulation is an “emperor’s new clothes” scenario, with no one wishing to disagree for fear of being considered unenlightened, something I’ve always freely admitted and never especially cared about.
More on Calico Joe from The Oklahoman (“Grisham hits a home run with this touching novel.”).
is available on Amazon.com,
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