In a vain attempt to clear out my inbox, here is the final B&P for the year. Hope you’ve enjoyed learning about these things as much as I have.
Don’t read anything political into the posting of this piece about “How Bernie Sanders brought professional baseball to Vermont,” via The Sporting News.
From outsports.com, this profile of Kenny Arena, author of the novel Third Base… A Love Story, which deals with a fictional Mets third baseman who is gay and falls for Jake, loosely based on the book’s creator.
It’s not entirely about baseball, but Roger Angell‘s This Old Man: All in Pieces has been making the rounds, including this piece from NPR’s Fresh Air and this one from the Chicago Tribune.
Here’s a piece featuring some backstory for Jim Bouton‘s watershed memoir Ball Four.
From FishStripes, a Marlins-centric blog, this review of Travis Sawchick‘s Big Data Baseball.
Off to a bad start when the headline gets it wrong as in this: “‘The Cubs Book of Rap’, a grandfather recaps the 2016 Cubs season.” Cool, except the 2016 season hasn’t happened yet (unless the book is fiction). All the editor had to do was read the title of the book, long as it may be.
Just received a copy Robert Hilliard‘s massive (750-plus pages) The Circus Is In Town: A Baseball Odyssey, which was the subject of this piece from NJHerald.
The Daily Beast posted this article about Pitch by Pitch, Bob Gibson‘s memoir co-written with Lonnie Wheeler. Here’s another from Gibson’s home town Omaha World Herald and one more from NewsOK.
The Taipei Times published this story on “Chung Meng-shun’s comic book Violent Baseball [which] was based on match-fixing that he heard of or witnessed during the period he worked for the CPBL.”
Should come as no surprise that baseball players would write about something other than baseball. In this case, former player and Manager Dusty Baker recently published Kiss the Sky: My Weekend in Monterey for the Greatest Rock Concert Ever, as reported in the San Jose Mercury News.
Shows how far behind I am: KPBS posted this story in October about Growing up with Tony Gwynn: A Lifetime of Swinging for the Fences, which was published in 2014.
American Libraries Magazine published this paean to the Baseball Hall of Fame and their own library.
From the Boston Globe, this review of Pudge, Doug Wilson‘s biography on Carlton Fisk. That title was included among four suggested by the Christian Science Monitor in their article, “4 baseball books to lure late-season readers.” The other three, while great books, are head-scratchers, considering all the other great titles out there.
From the Jackson, Miss., Clarion Ledger, this review of Black Baseball, Black Business: Race Enterprise and the Fate of the Segregated Dollar by Roberta J. Newman and Joel Nathan Rosen.
A fun piece: “The Sublime Simplicity of Baseball-Reference.com,” in Rolling Stone magazine (not by Dan Epstein)
Whew!
Happy New Year, everybody!
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