Review roundup, Aug. 17

♦ The Summer 2012 issue of Jewish Currents features a review by Cynthia Werthamer of Pitching in the Promised Land: A Story of the First and Only Season in the Israel Baseball League, by former IBL hurler Aaron Pribble. Upshot: “While Pribble’s book could do with less foreshadowing…, his retelling of the ups and downs of the IBL’s first season bears a unique perspective. His personal quest for his own Judaism, and his place in the hallowed game of baseball, shows that for him and many others, baseball is a religion every bit as valid as other belief systems — and for that, we baseball fans can be grateful.”

♦ William McGurn published this review of the Peary-Clavin collaboration, Gil Hodges: The Brooklyn Bums, the Miracle Mets, and the Extraordinary Life of a Baseball Legend. Upshot: Hard to find an appropriate excerpt, but it’s a positive review.

♦ James Bailey posted two review in recent weeks: this one on High Fives, Pennant Drives, and Fernandomania: A Fan’s History of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Glory Years (1977-1981), by Paul Haddad (which also features an interview with the author), and this one on Bluegrass Baseball: A Year in the Minor League Life, which links to the review he wrote for Baseball America.

♦ Shane Tourtellote published this piece on on The Hardball Times on what he considers the first “real classic” book on baseball: Johnny Evers’ Touching Second: The Science of Baseball; Science (written with sportswriter Hugh Fullerton).

From the review:

Evers should be familiar to any serious fan and is familiar to anyone who knows baseball’s second-most famous poem. Second baseman for the Chicago Cubs and hinge of their double-play combination between Joe Tinker and Frank Chance, Evers was a key component of a dynastic club. He was a bundle of frayed nerves and a hard man to get along with, but he was also a leading tactician of the game, brimming with ideas. The title refers to his most famous rulebook stratagem, getting Fred Merkle out for missing second in a pivotal game against the New York Giants that eventually won Chicago the 1908 pennant.

Obviously, the book was capitalizing on his fame, not only from the Merkle controversy but from his important role on the best team in the National League. That would be enough to support half a dozen quickie memoirs today, with quality a secondary consideration. Fortunately, Evers was a smart enough ballplayer to give his book some intellectual heft in examining the minutiae of the game. Even more fortunately, he had a great collaborator.

However, Tourtellotte devotes a good deal of his essay to refuting some of the claims made in the book (dates, situations, etc.), a la Rob Neyer in his Big Book of Baseball Legends: The Truth, the Lies, and Everything Else.

Touching Second can be read on-line at Google Books.