Looking over the over-looked in baseball book (etc.) news…
Now that the Yankees have once again spent a gagillion dollars restocking their pond, it’s time for another book examining how eeeeee-vil they are. And that’s the premise (and most of the title) of The Little Book of Yankees Evil by Brook Zelcer and Jelena Aleksich.
The very appropriately named “Just because” feature on the CBS sports site offers this item on “That time Larry MacPhail tried to kidnap the Kaiser,” apropos of absolutely nothing.
Reading this one now and even though I’m learning a lot, I’m frankly amazed that people spend so much time on it. But there must be a lot of you out there, judging by all the books and magazines on the subject.
Here’s a nice profile of Craig R. Wright, author of Pages from Baseball’s Past, which has gotten quite a bit of praise.
I had heard years ago that Richard Ben Cramer — author of the eye-opening Joe DiMaggio: The Hero’s Life, (as well as a smaller bio following the death of Ted Williams) — was working on “the” definitive volume on Alex Rodriguez, but that’s obviously not going to happen. S.L. Price — who published the sadly wonderful Heart of the Game: Life, Death, and Mercy in Minor League America about Mike Coolbaugh — reminds us of that in his recent Sports Illustrated piece,”The writer and the puzzle: Richard Ben Cramer couldn’t crack A-Rod.” Rob Neyer opines on the article on Baseball Nation.
Cramer’s DiMaggio bio and Price’s Heart of the Game are included in 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die.
Rick Wilber, son of another former (non-Jewish Major Leaguer, Del Wilber, recently published Something Real, a short-form science fiction story available only as an e-book about Moe Berg and his spying days. It won the 2012 Sidewise Award for Alternate History, so it must be pretty good. Too bad you can’t tell from the paltry sample available via Amazon. It’s part of a series, so look for more to come.
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