Bits and pieces, December 6, 2022

♦  Several baseball titles are mentioned in this list of 2022 sports books — most with a local angle — posted by Cleveland.com including

• Stolen Dreams: The 1955 Cannon Street All-Stars and Little League Baseball’s Civil War, by Chris Lamb
• Covey: A Stone’s Throw from a Coal Mine to the Hall of Fame, by Harry J. Deitz, Jr.
• The Saga of Sudden Sam: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of Sam McDowell, by Sam McDowell and Martin Gitlin
• Hebrew Hammer: A Biography of Al Rosen, All-Star Third Baseman, by Joseph Wancho
• Gabe Paul: The Long Road to the Bronx Zoo , by William A. Cook
• Eli – The Phenom’s Story: A Historical Novel of the 1946 Baseball Season, by Mark Zimmerman
• Spitter: Baseball’s Notorious Gaylord Perry, by David Vaught
• The Grandest Stage: A History of the World Series, by Tyler Kepner
• Playing Through the Pain: Ken Caminiti and the Steroids Confession That Changed Baseball Forever, by Dan Good
• Red Barber: The Life and Legacy of a Broadcasting Legend, by Judith T. Hiltner and James R. Walker

♦  Speaking of Cleveland, there’s a new documentary ostensibly based on Mike Sowell’s book about the death of Indians’ shortstop Ray Chapman, The Pitch That Killed. From what I’ve seen of it so far, it’s more about the rivalry between the blue-collar Clevelanders and entitled New Yorkers. War on the Diamond is now streaming on services like Amazon, Google, and YouTube.

♦  Would love to see a baseball novel by Haruki Murakami, since he’s such a fan of the game.

♦  American Songwriter posted this about “The Story Behind the Baseball Classic ‘Take Me Out to the Ball Game’.” The seventh-inning stretch standard has been used in the title for lots books but as far as I know there are only two that deal with the tune itself: Take Me Out to the Ball Game: The Story of the Sensational Baseball Song by Amy Wharf McGuiggan and Baseball’s Greatest Hit: The Story of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” by Robert Thompson, Tim Wiles, and Andy Strassberg.

♦  Remember when I marveled that a book about college baseball would be on the Amazon Baseball Best-Seller list? Here’s a story on that from the Mississippi Today website.

♦  From SpotlightNews.com, a piece about Jean Fruth’s two coffee table books (just in time for the holidays), Grassroots Baseball: Where Legends Begin and Grassroots Baseball: Route 66. Here’s my Bookshelf Conversation with Fruth.

♦  Some 30 years later, Dan Kennedy posted this review of Ken Burns’ Baseball documentary.