Bits and pieces, Nov. 19

November 19, 2012

♦  Here’s an oldie but a goodie via eBay: a copy of H. Allen Smith’s classic Rhubarb, about a cat who inherits a baseball team.

♦  The novel was turned into a 1951 feature film starring Ray Milland (who was also the lead in the 1949 baseball comedy It Happens Every Spring), Jan Stirling, Gene Lockhart, and William (“Fred Mertz”) Frawley, who seemed to turn up in every baseball picture produced in that era. The film also marked the film debut, if I recall correctly, on one Leonard Nimoy in a uncredited role as a player.

♦  Not exactly sure what the overall site is all about, but this entry deals with baseball as offered in video games.

♦  Frivolous law suit of the day? Veteran Simpsons voice actor “Hank Azaria Sues Craig Bierko to Keep Ownership of Baseball Announcer Character” (via The Hollywood Reporter).

♦  Baseball scout Jim Pransky is evidently looking to supplement his earnings. He has two books coming out in a short time-span,according to Quad-Cities Online. “His first book, Championship Expectations, will be released this month. The second, Payoff Run, is set for release next spring.”

♦  The University of Nebraska Press blog proudly announces that two of its books are under consideration for the 2012 CASEY Award: Connie Mack: The Turbulent and Triumphant Years, 1915-1931  by Norman Macht, and Banzai Babe Ruth: Baseball, Espionage, and Assassination during the 1934 Tour of Japan, by Robert Fitts. UNP will publish my 501 Books Baseball Fans Must Read before They Die next April.

♦  If you can’t be a player for the Yankees, at least you can smell like one.

♦  You know you have the “Baseball Jones” when you have to come with ideas like this to keep it uppermost in your thoughts. David Bry on The Classical writes puts Prince’s album Purple Rain in the context of a batting order. As he explains, “And recently, and luckily (and importantly!), now that baseball season’s over, and thoughts about baseball lack the daily the purchase they formerly found in the box scores, I was struck by an idea that I liked mostly for its simplicity: Just find classic albums that have nine songs on them and re-sequence the songs as if we were making a batting order.”

 

 

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