What’s your baseball “beach reading?”

Since I began working at Trader Joe’s I find my time for intellectual pursuits such as reading and writing greatly curtailed. Truth is, I’m usually just too damn tired by the time I get home to delve into anything that requires too many brain cells. Since I only get a half-hour for lunch, there’s not enough time to get any real reading done, but I’m trying.

I think the best way to do that is to pick something that I can digest a few pages at a time. I finally got around to Keith Law’s Smart Baseball: The Story Behind the Old Stats That Are Ruining the Game, the New Ones That Are Running It, and the Right Way to Think About Baseball and am now into Russell Carelton’s The Shift: The Next Evolution in Baseball Thinking. Both are thought-provoking and highly recommended, especially to those fans “of a certain age” who think the old ways are the best ways.

Two bo Image result for rob neyer anatomy oks not out yet (both are due in October) that I’m greatly looking forward to are The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created, a new look at Babe Ruth, by Jane Leavy who has already given baby b Image result for jane leavy the big fella oomer fans great bios on Mickey Mantle and Sandy Koufax, and Power Ball: Anatomy of a Modern Baseball Game, by Rob Neyer. Sure, there have been other books that dissect a single game (Nine Innings, by Daniel Okrent; Pure Baseball, by Keith Hernandez; and I’m blanking on the third one, forgive me; not to mention Buzz Bisinger’s Three Nights in August: Strategy, Heartbreak, and Joy Inside the Mind of a Manager), but I’ve always had a soft spot for Neyer’s work ever since his Big Book of Baseball Legends: The Truth, the Lies, and Everything Else. That one had a big influence on my when it comes to taking things at face value, not just in baseball, but in general. One of my most visited entries was this one based on an appearance by Moose Skowron on NPR’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, which I parsed out after having read Legends.