A brief return: Bits and pieces

The wife and daughter are making a college tour, so I’m taking the opportunity to visit an antiquarian bookstore down the street, make a few entries, and work on another project. So here’s a bit of what’s going on lately:

• Birthday greetings, Rocky Colavito, who turns 77 today. The slugger primarily played for the Tigers and Indians with brief dalliances with the White Sox, Dodgers, and Yankees. Colavito was a beloved figure, especially in Cleveland. Handsome, strong at the plate, and endowed with a rifle for an arm (he appeared twice as a pitcher, once in 1958  and again 10 years later, in his last major league season). Many baseball fans have heard of the Curse of the Bambino, but how many have heard of The Curse of Rocky Colavito, which was the subject of a book by Cleveland writer Terry Pluto?
• “Shotgun Spratling” (if that is his real name) seems to be creating the literary equivalent of DVD commentary: writing about his adventures on the rode while researching for his historical novel about the 1935 Pittsburgh Crawfords, a Negro League powerhouse back in the day.
• Really sorry to have missed the SABR convention this year. Cecilia Tan blogged about “The Research Process: Seymour Medal Winners Panel
  Dorothy Seymour Mills, David Block, Tom Swift.”
• The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review posted this author profile/review of Howard Bryant and The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron.
• The San Francisco Chronicle ran this about Allen Barra’s latest, Rickwood Field:A Century in America’s Oldest Ballpark.
• Still reading this one, but NPR writes about Rick Moody’s quirky novel, The Four Fingers of Death which has some baseball references in it. The piece includes a pertinent excerpt.

That’s it for now. Back to the pool.

Tagged as: baseball books