Posts tagged as:

New York Giants

Lest We Forget: Arnold Hano

October 26, 2021

The long-time sportswriter and the first author to focus on a single-game analysis passed away Sunday at the ripe old age of 99. I had interviewed Arnold Hano back in 2012 to discuss A Day in the Bleachers, a classic about the 1954 World Series between the New York Giants and Cleveland Indians. It would […]

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No, not Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. But the “Shot heard ’round the world,” the game that regularly brings up “The Giants win the pennant” call. The game that forever link the names Thomson and Branca a generation before Wilson and Buckner.   I was reminded of the platinum anniversary by a piece in […]

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Your cheatin’ heart

January 17, 2020

The latest batch of cheating accusations and ensuing scandals? This isn’t the first time complaints about the use of technology have been raised. I wrote about this over a decade ago and it seems like an appropriate time to revisit the conversation I had with Joshua Prager, author of The Echoing Green: The Untold Story […]

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M*A*S*H note

October 28, 2019

One of my comfort TV shows is M*A*S*H. If I’m home (and awake) when it airs on ME TV (hold the jokes, please), that’s what I’m watching. The episodes are usually played sequentially, so it was especially interesting that “A War for All Seasons” (season nine, episode six) was on tonight’s schedule. This one follows […]

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  My latest feature for Bookreporter.com includes Glenn Stout’s The Selling of the Babe: The Deal That Changed Baseball and Created a Legend Murray Klein’s Stealing Games: How John McGraw Transformed Baseball with the 1911 New York Giants Erik Sherman’s Kings of Queens: Life Beyond Baseball with the ’86 Mets

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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 […]

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Great expectations?

January 19, 2016

It hasn’t even been released yet (official date: March 22) but Stealing Games: How John McGraw Transformed Baseball with the 1911 New York Giants by Maury Klein leads off this Examiner.com article on “The Write Stuff: A look at some of this year’s most notable books.” According to the piece, “The book gives a great—yet […]

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With apologies to Chicago (the band, not the city). Feast or famine. Either I never get to Manhattan, or I’m there too much. After commuting from the New jersey suburbs to NYC for more than 15 years, I have to say it’s a culture shock whenever I go back and I’m not thrilled with it. […]

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The New York Public Library posted this list of five books that concentrate on a single season, including: 1954: The Year Willie Mays and the First Generation of Black Superstars Changed Major League Baseball Forever by Bill Madden Summer of ’68: The Season That Changed Baseball—and America—Forever by Tim Wendel Stars and Strikes: Baseball and America in […]

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Literary birthday greetings: 1919 – Jackie Robinson, infielder; All-Star, Hall of Famer Since I addressed this last year — and there are soooo many books about Robinson — I just thought I’d link to that entry for everyone’s convenience. 1931 – Hank Aguirre, pitcher; All-Star 1931 – Ernie Banks, infielder; All-Star, Hall of Famer 1947 […]

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As mentioned in a previous post, Arnold Hano wrote one of the must-read books for any serious student of the national pastime. A Day in the Bleachers was the first, and in many ways the best, of the single-game analyses genre. His deconstruction of the first game of the 1954 World Series between the New […]

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by Arnold Hano. Da Capo Press, 2004. This is one of those things you always figure you’ll get to, like a New Yorker visiting the Empire State Building or The Statue of Liberty. It will always be there, so you figure you have time. Well, Hano will be receiving the the Hilda Chester Award, which […]

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By Christy Mathewson, 1912 A “pinch” is a tight spot, when one is expected to suck it up and give it that extra 10 percent; Mathewson had to do that a time or two in an era when starting pitchers were expected to go the distance. Hard to believe that Mathewson, one of the original […]

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Authors Dan Fost and Steve Steinberg will be appearing in NYC to celebrate the recent World Championship of the San Francisco Giants through their own published works. Fost and Steinberg will discuss their respective books — Giants Past & Present and 1921: The Yankees, the Giants, and the Battle for Baseball Supremacy in New York, […]

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Neo-oldies but goodies

May 17, 2010

Both the topics and the release dates of these books could be considered appropriate here. The first looks at Frank Deford’s The Old Ball Game: How John McGraw, Christy Mathewson, and the New York Giants Created Modern Baseball, while the second considers Mike Vacarro’s The First Fall Classic.

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* Author Q&A: Fred Stein

April 27, 2010

I challenge anyone’s imagination to think of a time before 24-hour cable sports coverage. Before the Internet. Before sports-talk radio. Before TV coverage (before color coverage). Fred Stein can. The author of Under Coogan’s Bluff: A Fan’s Recollection of the New York Giants Under Terry and Ott grew up in an age when newspaper ruled […]

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Who says you can’t go home again? Bloomfield-born journalist Dan Fost returned to his old stomping grounds to give a talk and book-signing for his Giants Past & Present at the Yogi Berra Museum this afternoon. Fost, who grew up and still is a Yankees fan, became enamored with the team shortly after moving to […]

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by Dan Fost. MVP Books, 2010. A book such as Giants Past & Present caters to multiple readerships. On the one hand you have long-time fans of the team, both in the East and West Coast incarnations. You also have younger fans, who grew up on the San Francisco version. In addition, there are the […]

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* Giants steps

April 5, 2010

Dan Fost, author of Giants Past & Present, posted this preseason video on his favorite team. A reminder, Fost will be at the Yogi Berra Museum on April 11 at 4 p.m. See here for further info. And thanks to all of you out there who became fans of The Bookshelf — the roll has […]

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By Bob Mitchell. Kensington, 2008. As a lover of the TV show Lost and sci-fi in general, I always welcome the chance to mix the genre with baseball (see, Baseball Fantastic, edited by W.P. Kinsella). So it was with a sense of joy when Bob Mitchell’s Once Upon a Fastball swerved from a regular work […]

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