The Bookshelf Conversation: Lincoln Mitchell

What’s wrong with the national pastime? Seems like everyone has an opinion, but some strike me as more informed than others. That’s the feeling I came away with after reading Lincoln Mitchell‘s new book, Will Big League Baseball Survive?: Globalization, the End of Television, Youth Sports, and the Future of Major League Baseball. I can always tell how much I’ve enjoyed a book by the number of pages I dog-ear and the notes I wrote in the margin, which, in this case, was extreme.

Mitchell is a writer, pundit, and specialist in political development based in New York City and San Francisco. Among many other things, he was the national political correspondent for The New York Observer, a member of the faculty of Columbia University’s School of International Affairs from 2006-2013, and worked for years as a political consultant in New York City advising and managing domestic political campaigns.

He also hosts “Painting the Corners: The Baseball and International Affairs Podcast” which brings together people from worlds of baseball and foreign policy to discuss the two topics in an informal conversational setting.

I usually like to put up these interviews ahead of the author’s appearance at the Bergino Baseball Clubhouse in Manhattan, but I blew it this time. My apologies to all parties involved. You can hear Mitchell’s discussion with Bergino owner Jay Goldberg here. You can still catch him at The Baseball Center on 74th and Broadway this Thursday at 7 p.m.