So I managed to get through the Amazon list of titles scheduled for release next year. Suffice it to say, it’s not complete. You know there will be a few books about the 2016 World Series that were not previously scheduled (so if any publisher is looking for someone to do a quick turn-around, give me a holla).
Every time I do another one of these searches I am reminded of what still should get some consideration. Anniversaries make a great starting point and there are a couple of middling-to-major ones coming in 2017, depending on your point of view. Among them:
- 100th anniversary of Baseball Joe in the World Series, by Lester Chadwick; Second Base Sloan by Christy Mathewson, and Guarding the Keystone Sack by Burt L. Standish.
- 90th of Babe Ruth’s 60 home run season.
- 80th of the beaning that ended Mickey Cochrane’s playing career.
- 70th of the debut of Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby and Dan Bankhead, who always gets short shrift. I think he deserves a book, don’t you?
- 60th the first World Championship for the Milwaukee Braves. Unless you’re a Braves fan, I don’t see much call for this one.
- 50th of “The Impossible Dream” Boston Red Sox. No new book on that, as far as I’ve seen.
- 40th of Reggie Jackson’s three home runs in the World Series. Not enough for a whole book, but what about Lenny Randle punching out his Texas Rangers manager Frank Lucchesi?
That’s as far as I’m willing to go; 30 years seems too recent, IMO.
One other interesting factoid in the centennial category.
Recall the scene in the movie Eight Men Out where Eddie Ciccotte goes to Charles Comiskey at the end of the 1918 season to argue that he deserves a bonus for winning 30 because he was held out of several games once he reached 29 victories. According to The Baseball Timeline, the timeline for that was wrong: that actually occurred the year before and the manager was Pants Rowland, not Kid Gleason. And it was 28 wins, not 29. More dramatic that way, I guess.
is available on Amazon.com,
Comments on this entry are closed.