The best way to play catch-up is via a “Bits and Pieces” entry so here goes: James Bailey offers this appreciation for W.P. Kinsella’s The Iowa Baseball Confederacy. Rob Neyer, Grant Brisbee, and Murray Chass on Mike Piazza and his new book, Long Shot. Don’t know where this excellent Simpsons/Moneyball mashup came from, but Brisbee [...]
Former Red Sox skipper Terry Francona’s self-named memoir debuts on the NY Times‘ Best Seller list at number 2. Gregory Cowles included it in the print edition of the Sunday Book Review’s “TBR: Inside the List” column. Unfortunately, it’s not on-line as of this writing so you’re own your own, since it’s too long for [...]
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New York Times Best Seller,
Terry Francona
Literary birthday greetings: 1895 – Babe Ruth, outfielder; All-Star, Hall of Famer (d. 1948) Previous Babe Ruth birthday entry. Lest we forget: 2007 – Lew Burdette, pitcher; All-Star (b. 1926) Lew Burdette of the Braves, by Gene Schoor, Putnam, 1960. Also on this date: 1934: New York sportswriter and broadcaster Ford Frick is named the [...]
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1994 baseball strike,
Babe Ruth,
Ford Frick,
Lew Burdette
Value Over Replacement Grit offers a baseball-themed crossword puzzle. At the risk of appearing sexist, I must say this is the first time I’ve encountered a woman who collects baseball cards with such a passion as Cee Angi, who wrote this mournful “Requiem for the 00s: The Decline of Topps Baseball Cards,” in which she [...]
Literary birthday greetings: Poor Feb. 1. It has a tough act act to follow with Jan. 31, which celebrates the arrival of such legends Jackie Robinson, Ernie Banks, and Nolan Ryan, who, between the three of them, have been the subjects of scores of books. Turns out there are no players who were born on [...]
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baseball pension,
Happy Chandler,
Hughie Jennings,
Jon Miller,
Monte Irvin,
Negro Leagues
Just received Francona: The Red Sox Years. Hope it’s better than the last couple managerial memoirs (Tony LaRussa, Joe Torre). One person who’s evidently looking forward to reading it is current Red Sox outfielder Ryan Kalish. As per the Boston Herald, “I absolutely plan on reading it,” Kalish told the Track. “I’m 2 1⁄2 books [...]
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Terry Francona
It’s the Winter Baseball Meetings, which runs through Dec. 6 in Nashville (so I guess it doesn’t have to be a heavy overcoat). I came across this item from SB Nation about the meetings and it reminded me of Josh Lewin’s Getting in the Game: Inside Baseball’s Winter Meetings, published in 2003. Lewin, who currently [...]
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Josh Lewin
The Baseball Hall of Fame ballots were released today. This promises to be perhaps the most controversial elections ever. Of the first time players, several have had the words “performing enhancing drugs” (and juicer) associated with their names, to greater or lesser degrees, including: Barry Bonds, the all-time home run leader with 762. Roger Clemens, [...]
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Barry Bonds,
Roger Clemens,
Sammy Sosa,
Shawn Green
Brought to you as a public service announcement. MLB.com is seeking stats stringers to cover these clubs in 2013 and beyond: Baltimore/DC (both clubs) Houston Kansas City Oakland/SF (both clubs) Philadelphia Pittsburgh San Diego Seattle Texas (Arlington) Toronto Stats stringers are responsible for digitally scoring games from the MLB ballparks, which provides the data used [...]
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Bob Uecker,
Major League Baseball,
Official Scorer,
STATS LLC
The man responsible — for better or worse — for the astronomical salaries baseball players receive these days, died this morning at the age of 95. He had been battling cancer for more than a year. Miller was one of the most powerful men in sports during his tenure as head of the players union. [...]
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Marvin Miller
As this episode of ESPN’s Outside the Lines begins, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” This episode of the network’s sports documentary focuses on the most recent Marlin’s “fire sale,” with Jeffrey Loria the chief arsonist. The commentators note this is not the first time the art dealer/baseball owner [...]
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Jeffrey Loria
♦ I’m including this piece just because I find it amusing. I hope the Brits don’t get all their baseball info like this. ♦ Who says fiction about the national pastime has to be confined to literature? Here’s a case of fictitious baseball merchandise. ♦ Dan Epstein, author of Big Hair and Plastic Grass: A [...]
First it was PunditTracker, which analyzed the proficiency of baseball experts in their preseason prognostications. Now it’s this Sam Miller article in Baseball Prospectus, which concentrates questions put to general managers over the course of nine years. Upshot: “[P]redicting baseball might just be impossible, and a team that puts too much faith in its own [...]
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Baseball Prospectus
even if the games are never played. And even if they’re just paper printouts rather than traditional tickets. I don’t know why I expect pro sports businesses to “do the right thing.” It usually turns out to the bad. I guess I’m just too naive. My daughter decided at the last minute to go Game [...]
♦ The Washington Post published this piece on Tony La Russa’s memoir, One Last Strike: Fifty Years in Baseball, Ten and a Half Games Back, and One Final Championship Season. ♦ Better late than never: It seems the Seattle Post-Intelligencer finally got around to posting a review of Zack Hample’s 2007 publication, Watching Baseball Smarter: [...]
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Baseball America,
Huffington Post,
Minor League,
Tony LaRussa,
Washington Post,
Zack Hample
Now that the 501 manuscript has been returned to — and received by — the copy editor, I can take a breath and get back to the business of blogging. So here’s an attempt to catch up with a few items from recent days. ♦ The RadioIowa site posted this piece on Bob Meyer, author [...]
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Art of Fielding,
Cardboard Gods,
Joe Rudi,
R.A. Dickey,
Tony LaRussa
Time for the occasional declutter of the accumulated links and stories, so here goes. “Dan Barry’s Bottom of the 33rd has won the PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing, which honors a nonfiction book on the subject of sports.” More here. From the Yogi Berra Museum: Former Yankee star second baseman Bobby Richardson, a cornerstone [...]
A Documentary of the Game of Baseball, by Branch Rickey with Robert Riger. Simon and Schuster, 1965. I discovered this gem on the Facebook “Baseball Book” Group. Had I known about this beforehand, I probably would have included it in my forthcoming 501 Books Baseball Fans Must Read Before They Die. Rickey, who served in [...]
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Branch Rickey,
Robert Riger
Some vacation. Actually it was no vacation at all. This is the first time since Aug. 1 I’ve been upright, pain-free, and clear-headed enough to post. Following my 11-seconds of fame as one of the first-pitch-throwers at a Trenton Thunder game, I’ve been suffering with a respiratory infection that had me feverish, coughing, and otherwise [...]
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Arnold Hano,
Branch Rickey,
Ron Kaplan,
Sandy Koufax,
Trenton Thunder
Interesting premise. Just one of several though-provokers in Bad Sports, by Dave Zirin. Not exactly sure why a review of a two-year old book was posted on the Los Angeles Review of Books site at this time (other than the fact that it was recently released as a paperback), but here it is. And while [...]
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Dave Zirin
Bits and pieces
August 30, 2012 · 0 comments
Time for the occasional declutter of the accumulated links and stories, so here goes. “Dan Barry’s Bottom of the 33rd has won the PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing, which honors a nonfiction book on the subject of sports.” More here. From the Yogi Berra Museum: Former Yankee star second baseman Bobby Richardson, a cornerstone [...]
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