Bits and pieces, April 4

April 4, 2014

Been a hectic week, so I’ve let a few things slide.

https://i1.wp.com/img2.imagesbn.com/p/9780385535939_p0_v2_s260x420.JPG?resize=182%2C277bbiconFirst and foremost, the next books in Tom Hoffarth’s annually excellent 30-in-30 series: John Feinstein’s Where Nobody Knows Your Name and Ed Sherman’s Babe Ruth’s Called Shot.

bbiconHere’s another Feinstein item from WRALSPortsfan.com. And maybe you can find the link in this piece from Business Week that purportedly contains an audio interview with Feinstein; I couldn’t.

bbiconHere’s an interview with Tim Wendel with his alumni magazine at Johns Hopkins University prompted by the release of his new book, Down to the Last Pitch: How the 1991 Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves Gave Us the Best World Series of All Time.

bbiconSpeaking of alma maters, Wesleyan did a great job of producing baseball authors, including Daniel Gilbert ’98, (Expanding the Strike Zone: Baseball in the Age of Free Agency) and Benjamin Baumer ’00 and Andrew Zimbalist P’02 (The Sabermetric Revolution: Assessing the Growth of Analytics in Baseball).

bbiconThe Los Angeles Times marked the beginning of the baseball season and April Fol’s Day with this appreciation of George Plimpton’s novel, The Curious Case of Sidd Finch: A Novel.

bbiconThis GreenwichTime.com piece has lots of recommendations for baseball reading. So does Philly.com. And the WIllougby (Ohio) News-Herald (older titles, though).

bbiconA brief interview with Sally Cook, co-author of How to Speak Baseball in the Litchfield County Times.

bbiconJonah Keri has pretty much corned the market as there is a pronounced dearth of books about the Expos. Like his last release about the Tampa Bay (Devil) Rays had a lot to do with the economics (Sportonomics?) of baseball, he enjoys “dual citizenship” in the book stores, suitable for both the sports and business sections (“It’s two, two, two books in one!”)

bbiconHow much responsibility should a writer feel when a story contributes to the downfall of its subject? Jeff Pearlman’s Sports Illustrated piece bout John Rocker came out 15 years ago and many attribute the fall-out to the redneck reliever’s “red-flag.” Rocker recently wrote about this for Bleacher Report.

bbiconSpeaking of anniversaries, it’s already been a decade since the Boston broke the curse. Allan Wood and Bill Nowlin just published an oral history of the Red Sox’s 2004 playoff run in Don’t Let Us Win Tonight, which was recently reviewed in the Boston Globe.

bbicon2013 seems to be the year of the umpire memoir. First Doug Harvey, now Al Clark, whose title — Called Out but Safe: A Baseball Umpire’s Journey — is much more modest than They Called Me God. I’ll be reviewing and talking with Clark soon, but in the meantime, here’s a piece from The Virginia Gazette (he’s is a local resident there).

 

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