Bits and Pieces, Aug. 17, 2015

The Sports Illustrated for Kids blog ran this Q&A with Dick Flavin, public address announcer for the Boston Red Sox and author of Red Sox Rhymes: Verses and Curses.

The Kansas City Star ran this profile on W.P. Kinsella, author of too many great baseball stories to mention.

The Desert News posted this review of Base Hits and Home Run Relationships: What Women Wish Guys Knew, by Trina Boice. I’m curious, since the review heads the piece “Mom-son duo offer advice…” why his name is not on the cover as well. But kudos for the frankness when the reviewer writes, “The baseball analogy gets a little cheesy, of course, but it shows that this book does not take itself too seriously, preventing the preachiness that pervades too many self-help books.” Personally, I have a get peeve about non-baseball books trying to get attention by using baseball metaphors.

Maybe I’m Montreal-biased, but I always thought their logo was one of the best in the big leagues. Confirmed.

Another book about Mickey Mantle? Apparently so, according to this item on The Night Mickey Mantle Came to Town, available only as a Kindle e-book.

Seems this sounds very familiar: An aging ballplayer trying for one more chance at success with the stock characters and issues of any number of baseball novels: daddy issues, sportswriters, ageism. Still I might give Approaching Twi-Night a shot, at least trying a sample from Amazon. Here’s a Q&A with the author, M. Thomas Apple. You have to take it with a grain of salt as it’s posted by a company that markets books for authors. The questions are extremely generic and would seem to apply to any of the clients, regardless of subject matter.

Here’s a piece from NewYork.CBSLocal.com on one of those formulaic books from Triumph, Numbers Don’t Lie: Mets: The Biggest Numbers in Mets History.

Anyone who takes over when LA Dodgers broadcasting legend Vin Scully steps down will be in the spotlight, so why not Molly Knight, author of the best-seller, The Best Team Money Can Buy: The Los Angeles Dodgers’ Wild Struggle to Build a Baseball Powerhouse?