Coming down the pike: New baseball titles, Part IV

And the wrap-up…

* denotes items of particular interest (to me, at any rate).

Odds and Ends

** It will be interesting to see how The Hidden Game of Baseball: A Revolutionary Approach to Baseball and Its Statistics has held up since it was first published 30 years ago. Authors John Thorn and Pete Palmer were ahead of the whole sabermetric curve with their “new-fangled” statistics. Kudos on bringing back this classic.

* Not Since Bob Wood’s Dodger Dogs to Fenway Franks have we had a book that deals with The Joy of Ballpark Food: From Hot Dogs to Haute Cuisine, the new offering by Bennett Jacobstein. Fortunately, he has a dedicated website where you can find the table of contents and a few sample chapters. Looks very appetizing and the author’s decision to donate all royalties to a local food bank leaves a nice taste.

** Here’s one I’m really looking forward to: 100 Years of Who’s Who in Baseball. It’s one of several projects in which uber-baseball guru Marty Appel has had a hand this year. According to Appel, “The book is full-page reproductions of all 100 covers……with editorial on the facing page about the cover subjects and about the season past.”

Another topic that makes me wonder about a full-book treatment: Finding the Hidden Ball Trick: The Colorful History of Baseball’s Oldest Ruse, by Bill Deane.

Darryl Strawberry, marriage counselor? Apparently so. He and his wife, Tracy, have published The Imperfect Marriage: Help for Those Who Think It’s Over.

* The idea of analyzing a single game has been done several times, perhaps most notably by Arnold Hano. How different, I wonder, will Sunday with the Tigers: Eleven Ways to Watch a Game be? According to the Amazon page, “The collection provides a detailed look at the experience of attending, watching and sharing a game. This was achieved by sending ten writers and one photographer to Comerica Park on May 25th to document and be inspired by the same game.” It doesn’t say what kind of writers they are. Sports? Fiction? Hard news?

* If the previous entry considers a single game, A History of Baseball in 100 Objects, by Josh Leventhal, is self-explanatory. It will be interesting to see which items the author selects as representative of the national pastime. Any guesses?

* Also looking forward to Josh Wilker’s follow-up to Cardboard Gods, a underrated sweet and sentimental memoir, with Benchwarmer: An Anxious Dads Almanac of Fatherhood and Other Failures

* I’m always in for a book that covers the coverers. This year we have two, one from the new Derek Jeter imprint on Seeing Home: The Ed Lucas Story: A Blind Broadcaster’s Story of Overcoming Life’s Greatest Obstacles. The other comes from James R. Walker about Crack of the Bat: A History of Baseball on the Radio. Walker previously teamed up with Robert Bellamy on Center Field Shot: A History of Baseball on Television.

* I have long enjoyed the baseball art of Gary Cieradkowski and am happy to see his project The League of Outsider Baseball: An Illustrated History of Baseball’s Forgotten Heroes realized.