The New York Times Book Review section celebrates its 125th anniversary this year. As could be expected, they gathered some of the most influential books over the decades, including classics such as The Bell Jar, Ulysses, Roots, The Road, and How to Win Friends and Influence People. With the millions of books that have been […]
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Babe Ruth,
New York Times,
Roger Angell
The NY Mets beat the Washington Nationals in the season opener, 2-0. As most baseball fans know, this marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Miracle Mets. Their first opponent that year? The expansion Montreal Expos who moved to D.C. in 2005. Coincidence? There will be no shortage of material about the Golden Anniversary. Just finished […]
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New York Mets,
New York Times
I don’t know how I missed this. Robinson would have been 100 years old on January 31. The Museum of the City of New York recently launched an exhibit titled “In the Dugout with Jackie Robinson: An Intimate Portrait of a Baseball Legend.” And a brand new JR Museum — also located in New York […]
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Claire Smith,
Georve Vecsey,
Jackie Robinson,
New York Times
Here we go again. Man, is this a dull off-season or what? Aside from the Yankees getting richer with the acquisition of Giancarlo Stanton, what is has really rocked your socks? SO, trying to make lemonade out of lemons… Let’s start off with a little shameless self-promotion: Paul Hagen offers this piece — “Looking back […]
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Aaron Judge,
Casey Stengel,
Dick Enberg,
Houston Astros,
Leo Durocher,
Marty Appel,
Mickey Mantle,
New York Times,
Paul Dickson,
Richard Sandomir,
Troy Soos
Marty Appel, who knows a thing or two about baseball, New York, and literature, recently contributed this article about the 75 baseball titles that earned recognition as a New York Times best-seller to the online National Pastime Museum. There might be a little local bias here: 33 of the titles were written by or about […]
Tagged as:
Marty Appel,
New York Times
In addition to the regular reasons — the signaling of the start of summer, the lazy evenings, the smell of the grass, etc. — I love the beginning of the baseball season because of the previews in the newspapers. These have often come in the form of supplements of substantial length and breadth and tailored, […]
Tagged as:
Bad News Bears,
baseball previews,
interleague play,
New York Daily News,
New York Times
There’s a scene in the excellent baseball film Bull Durham in which Nuke LaLoosh, the prodigy pitcher, played by Tim Robbins, exults as he comes into the dugout after a strong inning of work. As he does so, his catcher, veteran baseball lifer Crash Davis, played by Kevin Costner, chews him out for all the […]
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New York Times,
Spring Training
Since I posted the first of these on a Thursday, which is known on social media as a time of reflection, I thought to make it a regular thing under this rubric. These are kind of fun; it’s like a box of chocolates — you never know what you’re gonna get. (Actually, I never understood […]
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baseball bats,
baseball equipment,
baseball library,
baseball plays,
baseball quiz,
ESPN,
George F. Will,
Jimmy Breslin,
Manny Ramirez,
New Republic,
New York Mets,
New York Times,
R.A. Dickey,
Richard Sandomir,
trivia
Since I posted the first of these on a Thursday, which is known on social media as a time of reflection, I thought to make it a regular thing under this rubric. These are kind of fun; it’s like a box of chocolates — you never know what you’re gonna get. (Actually, I never understood […]
Tagged as:
Baseball All-Star Game,
baseball fiction,
Daily Beast,
Jimmy Breslin,
Marx Brothers,
New York Times,
Richard Sandomir,
Tony Lazzari,
Zack Hample
Apropos to my remarks in the previous “Best-Seller” post about the lack of baseball book reviews in the Times… For some reason, the paper posts to its website on Friday reviews that will appear in the book supplement a week hence. That is, the reviews below (at least according to the time stamp) will appear […]
Tagged as:
baseball business,
Charles Leerhsen,
Jon Pessah,
New York Times,
Ty Cobb
I highly recommend Pocket as a way to hold onto links you come that you want to keep. Unlike bookmarks, Pocket keeps the entire page and makes it relative easy for you to find stuff you “pocketed.” I have keepers going back six years — more than 5,000 links — and I’ve decided it’s time […]
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Babe Ruth,
Bang the Drum Slowly,
baseball book reviews,
Baseball Cards,
baseball contracts,
baseball fiction,
baseball poetry,
Futurama,
Harry Turtledove,
New York Times,
Philip Roth,
TEGWAR,
Wall Street Journal
The Viva el Birdos blog, a St. Louis Cardinals-centric site, hosts a book discussion from time to time. Their first foray was Ed Achorn’s The Summer of Beer and Whiskey. The current selection is Bang the Drum Slowly by Mark Harris. Intro here; discussion questions here. Bonus: Here’s a review from The New York Times […]
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Bang the Drum Slowly,
Mark Harris,
New York Times
What? The season is almost over? Where did the time go? Went to the Mets-Marlins game last night. Pretty depressing. The announced attendance was 23,892, or 57 percent of capacity. Seemed like whole sections were empty. With just three home games left, against the Houston Astros over the last weekend of the season, doesn’t look […]
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Associated Press,
baseball writing,
New York Mets,
New York Times
A few weeks ago, I believe I was among the first in baseball circles to mention the passing of Jim Brosnan. In fact, I take at least some credit for his obit in The New York Times since Bruce Weber, who wrote the piece, had not heard of Brosnan’s death prior to my e-mail to […]
Tagged as:
Bruce Weber,
Jim Brosnan,
New York Times
Last month I received a copy of Chasing Dreams, the companion volume to the baseball exhibit at the National Museum of American Jewish History. Thumbing through it, I found this portrait of Bernard Malamud, author of The Natural, one of the highest regarded baseball novels of all time. A few days afterwards, the cover story […]
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Bernard Malamud,
Cynthia Ozick,
Daniel Okrent,
New York Times,
The Natural
In a scene from the film version of Eight Men Out, Albert Austrian, the crackerjack attorney hired by Chicago White/Black Sox owner Charles Comiskey to defend his wayward players, is introducing his law partners to the defendants: Austrian: Their names may not sound familiar, but I’d say that these men are the Ty Cobb, the […]
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Alex Rodriguez,
New York Times,
New York Yankees
The New York Times‘ Ben Strauss published this profile of old-school White Sox broadcaster Ken “Hawk” Harrelson (the subject of a recent MLB Network documentary), who is unabashedly anti-Moneyball (and perhaps, by extension, anti-The Extra 2%). I must admit, I was kind of surprised to look at his stats: Considering he hit 23 homers in […]
Tagged as:
Ken Harrelson,
Moneyball,
New York Times,
Sports Illustrated curse,
The Extra 2%
Excellent piece in the NY Times by my neighbor Harvey Araton on the lost art of keeping score. My daughter, Rachel, was manager for her high school baseball team for three seasons, winning the job for her ability to keep score (and take pictures and bake cupcakes). We don’t go to a lot of games, […]
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Harvey Araton,
New York Times,
scorekeeping
With all due respect and this is a fascinating, if sad, story, but how else to explain this story about the murder of ex-Pittsburgh Pirate infielder Sammy Khalifa’s father and the psychic toll it took on the ballplayer over the years that starts on the first sports page then jumps to a full-page continuation? Rob […]
Tagged as:
New York Times,
Rob Neyer,
Sammy Khalifa
(To borrow The New York Times‘ motto) Marty Appel recently revised his helpful list of baseball titles that have appeared on the Times‘ best-seller list. The article appears on the Sports Collectors Digest website. As Appel, a former PR director for the New York Yankees, notes there are several familiar books that are conspicuous in […]
Tagged as:
Marty Appel,
New York Times