An interesting story about the transformation of For Love of the Game from novel to screen? Perhaps, but this piece from The Athletic is behind a paywall so I can’t tell for sure.
Speaking of baseball movies, here’s a touching piece in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette about Robert Redford and The Natural as it relates to the writer and paper’s film critic Philip Martin and his own father.
I always wanted to write a story about baseball players as musicians, but in the meantime here’s a little something from American Songwriter on “How Neil Diamond’s ‘Sweet Caroline’ Became a Boston Baseball Tradition.”
Another Curt Smith piece in Sports Broadcast Journal.
Normally I don’t write about books for kids and young adults, but I hate book-banning so this story about how “A children’s book that focuses on Hank Aaron overcoming segregation as a teenaged baseball player in Jacksonville is under review to be rejected by Duval Schools” in Jacksonville, FL strikes me as noteworthy.
From NWITimes.com (Munster, IN), this item on “Author chronicles little-known history of Mexican baseball leagues in East Chicago.”
So sorry I missed this, not that I would have driven down to their headquarters in North Carolina, but how neat: “Baseball America to let fans take home magazine memorabilia as Durham office closes.” That took place last week. Don’t worry; BA is itself is not closing down, just transitioning to a full-time remote situation.
Finally, The Sporting News still exists? Who new? Happy to hear it, though. Here’s a story on “Ranking the Junk Wax Era years of baseball cards, from 1987 to 1993,” by Ryan Fagan who offers this definition of “Junk Wax Era”:
It’s a term of endearment, at least for me and most of the collectors I know. For a lot of us, it was our entry into the hobby, one pack at a time from pretty much any gas station, card shop, grocery store or other random retail place that had a box sitting on the bottom row of the candy aisle. And, yeah, the packs were everywhere. Topps was the first company to set a cinder block on the “print cards” button and walk away for days and weeks and months, but Donruss, Fleer and others soon followed.
We didn’t call it the Junk Wax Era back then, of course. It’s a label given in retrospect. Junk because of the massive print runs — they printed so many cards that they’re all, essentially, worthless junk — and Wax because most of the packs were sealed with wax. As for how many cards were printed, the companies either don’t have or won’t release the real numbers — believe me, I’ve asked — so last February, while reporting my ode to the iconic 1987 Topps set, I spoke with Rich Klein, a long-time collector and store owner who then worked for Beckett as a price-guide guru for a couple decades.
is available on Amazon.com,
Comments on this entry are closed.