There is little that I can offer that would be as eloquent as what others have said and written about the legendary broadcaster who passed away Tuesday at the age of 94. From what I know, Scully was a modest person and a real mensch. He declined to tell his own story and was almost […]
The long-time Red Sox favorite passed away Saturday after a long battle with cancer. He was 68. Remy, a native Bay Stater, was drafted by the California Angels in 1971. He played for the Halos from 1975-77 and was traded to Boston in the off-season. The diminutive second-baseman made the All-Star team for the first […]
Tagged as:
Boston Red Sox,
broadcaster,
Jerry Remy
There are some people for whom you know how the first line of their obituary will read. Don Larsen is one those. The only man to throw a perfect game in a World Series died yesterday at the age of 90. (Four cents!) Richard Goldstein in The New York Times: Don Larsen, an otherwise ordinary […]
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Don Larsen
NOTE: I have been posting these things long enough now that a few have commented that the introductory section isn’t necessary anymore. But I’m leaving it in because, to paraphrase Joe DiMaggio when asked why he played so hard all the time, there may be people who’ve never read the best-seller entries before. So on […]
Tagged as:
baseball analytics,
baseball history,
Boston Red Sox,
Chicago Cubs,
Dustin Pedroia,
instructionals,
Michael Lewis,
Oakland As,
Tom Verducci,
World Series
I wonder if Curt Smith plans on issuing an updated version of his 2009 bio, Pull Up a Chair: The Vin Scully Story. Seems like it’s not only warranted, but given that Scully called it quits after the Dodgers’ final game of 2016 practically a necessity. Now Smith could include more tributes to the iconic […]
Tagged as:
Curt Smith,
Vin Scully
It’s widely agreed that baseball movies as a rule don’t do well either at the box office or with critics. Sure there are exceptions — Bull Durham, Field of Dreams, and the original Bad News Bears immediately come to mind. But by and large, meh. Case in point: I recently watched a MLB Network presentation […]
Tagged as:
Cheech Marin,
Jackie Robinson,
Little League,
Lou Gossett Jr.,
St. Louis Cardinals
This is how I remember Fritz Peterson. A smiling, happy-go-lucky ballplayer. And why not? When this Topps card came out, he had just finished a successful rookie year for the New York Yankees, finishing 12-11 with a 3.31 ERA and allowing just 196 hits in 215 innings. Unfortunately, the good times were few and far […]
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Fritz Peterson
Books have been written about the use of baseball as an imperialist tool by the United States. We send people to foreign countries; they bring baseball with them, and pretty soon the residents of those foreign have embraced the game to a degree even more enthusiastic than back in the good ole U.S.A. Case in […]
Tagged as:
Japanese baseball,
Masanori Murakami,
Rob Fitts,
San Francisco Giants,
Wally Yonamine
Sorry, but there’s really no way to do this respectfully. Every time I try to come up with something, it just leads to puns, innuendo, and euphemism, so I’ll just go with it. In her recent memoir, Ted Williams, My Father, Claudia Williams has nothing good to say about Alcor Life Extension, while saying almost […]
Tagged as:
Alcor Life Extension,
Claudia Williams,
John-Henry Williams,
Ted Williams
Because you can keep your tablet and/or smartphone on a bookshelf. It’s not enough that he’s got several best-selling books out, now he’s expanding into the realm of apps? Dirk Hayhurst, who has more titles in print than years played in the majors (four to two), just released Bush League, described as “essentially a baseball […]
Tagged as:
Dirk Hayhurst,
PED
The World War II veteran who returned from devastating injury sustained in the service of his country to play Major League baseball, passed away yesterday at the age of 89. Brissie, who earned a Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts, pitched seven seasons for the Philadelphia Athletics and Cleveland Indians, compiling a 44-48 record with […]
Tagged as:
Ira Berkow,
Lou Brissie
Suzy Beamer Bohnert, author of a series of sports primers designed for women, is the subject of this interview from The Authors Show, a web-only source, in which she discusses Game-Day Goddess: Learning Baseball’s Lingo. You can listen to it here, but apparently only today (Oct. 15), even though the book was published in 2009. […]
Thanks to KoolKat_1960, who suggested this as one of the classic baseball vidgame adverts following yesterday’s post on the subject: Which led me to a few more, featuring Dustin Pedroia, that should go into whatever Baseball (Video Game) Hall of Fame there might be (or should be, if such an entity does not yet exist).
Tagged as:
Dustin Pedroia,
Joe Mauer,
Playstation
As part of the continuing process to make 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die a multimedia experience, I have resumed the author interviews that was put on hold while I was on jury duty. First up, Howard Megdal, author of The Baseball Talmud: The Definitive Position-by-Position Ranking of Baseball’s Chosen Players, which […]
Tagged as:
Baseball Talmud,
Howard Megdal
The inspiration for the character of Dottie Henson in A League of Their Own, died on Saturday at the age of 88. Davis published her memoir, Dirt in the Skirt, (which weighs in at over 500 pages) in 2009. There was also a website in her name. I just visited the spot and there’s some music […]
Tagged as:
A League of Their Own,
Geena Davis,
Lavonne Paire Davis,
Pepper Paire Davis
Or “Methinks he doth protest too much.” I feel sorry for a lot of today’s celebrities, especially athletes. After years of (self?) denial, Lance Armstrong admitted he used performance enhancing drugs. Ballplayer after ballplayer swears on a stack of bibles that he’s clean, only to have the evidence turn out to prove him “misstating.” The […]
Tagged as:
Alex Rodriguez,
Joe Torre,
Mike Piazza,
New York Mets,
New York Yankees,
steroids
I’m a big fan of audio books. I recently borrowed two titles from the library — The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives, by Mlodinow, Leonard, and 1861: The Civil War Awakening, by Adam Goodheart — that would seem to have nothing to do with the national pastime. But lo and behold the former […]
Tonight’s World Series game will honor America’s veterans. The New York Times ran this piece about Lou Brissie, who managed to have a brief Major League career despite being grievously injured in world war II. He was the subject of the 2009 biography The Corporal Was a Pitcher: The Courage of Lou Brissie, by former […]
Tagged as:
Ira Berkow,
Lou Brissie
Rob Neyer at SB Nation posted this item about Gary Bedingfield, host of Baseball in Wartime and author of Baseball’s Dead of World War II: A Roster of Professional Players Who Died in Service. Awhile back I had a chance to e-chat with Bedingfield, a native of Great Britain, about his interest in paying tribute […]
Tagged as:
Gary Bedingfield,
Rob Neyer,
SB Nation,
World War II
I had mentioned Tom Hoffarth’s annual “30-books-in-30-days” project for the LA Daily News in an earlier entry today, not knowing that he posted this preview column (in which he was kind enough to give the Bookshelf a nod). Asa bonus, his entry has links to all the books he’s covered in the past, from 2008-2011, […]
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Tom Hoffarth