Review roundup, June 21

♦ James Bailey posted this review of Baseball Prospectus’ Extra Innings: More Baseball Between the Numbers from the Team at Baseball Prospectus. Upshot: “Overall, this is a satisfying and thought-stoking release, with much of it coming from a different angle than you might be accustomed to given the heavy dependence in most sabermetric resources on statistics and formulas.”

And while I’m thinking of it, can I put in a formal request to future authors: Don’t use “Extra Innings” in your title! We’ve reached maximum capacity. In addition to the BP, we have on the market Bruce Spitzer’s novel about a reanimated Ted Williams; another fiction by Lane Strauss and another by Joe Boschi; a novel based on the life of real-life ballplayer Jack “Lucky” Lohrke; a profile of the short-lived Senior Baseball League; a collection of writings about baseball; and one of Frank Robinson’s memoirs, to name just a few. And that doesn’t include what I’m guessing are several books for young adults and smaller kids. Enough. You’re creative people; come up with something new!

♦ TwinkieTown, a twins-centric site, posted this about Harmon Killebrew: Ultimate Slugger. Somewhat ambivalent upshot: “Ultimately, then, this book is for your dad, to remind him of the days that his dad took him to Met Stadium, and Killebrew hit one that went four hundred feet high and four hundred feet deep to left, like he’d smashed a golf ball with a pitching wedge. But for those of us in the younger generation, I direct you to the last chapters…. Most of the readers of this site wouldn’t name Harmon Killebrew as their favorite baseball player. But most of us had a favorite player, whether it was Kent Hrbek or someone else. And this book is written for those people.”

Tagged as: Baseball Prospectus, Harmon Killebrew