From the category archives:

2010 title

by Dan Fost. MVP Books, 2010. A book such as Giants Past & Present caters to multiple readerships. On the one hand you have long-time fans of the team, both in the East and West Coast incarnations. You also have younger fans, who grew up on the San Francisco version. In addition, there are the […]

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In addition to my mini-review on Timothy Gay’s latest baseball title in the baseball , here is a sampling of others: Steve Penn, Kansas City Star: “There’s nothing like a good baseball story. And the era of barnstorming, when black players competed against white players despite the color ban, is full of good baseball stories.” […]

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* Giants steps

April 5, 2010

Dan Fost, author of Giants Past & Present, posted this preseason video on his favorite team. A reminder, Fost will be at the Yogi Berra Museum on April 11 at 4 p.m. See here for further info. And thanks to all of you out there who became fans of The Bookshelf — the roll has […]

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Roger Angell has long contributed excellent essays to New Yorker magazine. Now he has company in Ben McGrath (the next generation?), who wrote this piece on spring training and the possible surprise stars f0r 2010 in the April 7 issue. Now you have a chance to ask your questions of these entertaining writers. From the […]

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My annual Spring Baseball Roundup appears on the current edition of Bookreporter.com: 2010 Spring Baseball Roundup In a baseball era when much of the discussion has centered on who may have taken shortcuts to superstardom, it’s refreshing that 2010 sees several titles harkening back to a simpler time and heroes who won their glory through […]

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* TWIBB — April 2

April 2, 2010

This week’s best-selling baseball books, according to Amazon.com as of Friday, April 2. Title Rank General The Bullpen Gospels: Major League Dreams of a Minor League Veteran, by Dirk Hayhurst 1 The Baseball Codes: Beanballs, Sign Stealing, and Bench-Clearing Brawls: The Unwritten Rules of America’s Pastime, by Jason Turbow and Michael Duca 2 Willie Mays: […]

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Paraphrasing a great line from a TV show from long ago (I know forget which one, might have been M*A*S*H), i I were stranded on a dessert island and could only have one book, it would be the dictionary, because it has all the other books in it. That’s kind of the way I feel […]

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Congratulations to Mike Lynch at Seamheads.com, winner of this month’s Bookshelf Facebook Fan drawing for a copy of Jason Turbow and Michael Duca’s The Baseball Codes. This month the Bookshelf will give away a copy of Dan Fost’s new book, Giants Past & Present. Fost will be appearing at the Yogi Berra Museum in Little […]

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Jeff Pearlman weighs in, briefly, on two new titles: 90% of the Game is Half Mental, by Emma Span (“Stellar”), and The Baseball Codes, by Turbow and Duca (“especially fascinating. Bulldog effort.”).

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From Publishers Weekly and going with the premise that any mention of baseball qualifies: We Are Never as Beautiful as We Are Now: Stories Adam Gallari. Ampersand (SPD, dist.), $15.95 paper (150p) ISBN 978-0-9841025-3-2 Focusing on baseball fields and bars from New York to Los Angeles, promising newcomer Gallari presents nine fleeting tales of desultory […]

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* Now hear these

March 31, 2010

Several authors are making the rounds on radio shows and podcasts lately (I’ll be posting my interview with Danny Peary, co-author of Roger Maris: Baseball’s Reluctant Hero, shortly.) Among them: Danny Peary on New York Baseball Digest. Chris Donnelly, author of the book the Best Series Ever, the story of the 1995 ALCS between the […]

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From Openpage, “the blog of the Florida Center for the Literary Arts at Miami Dade College”: King’s announcement arrives –not so coincidentally — just in time for Opening Day. King, a lifelong citizen of Red Sox Nation (he lives part-time on Florida’s west coast so he can catch spring training games), is one of America’s […]

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The co-authors of Roger Maris: Baseball’s Reluctant Hero sat down for this interview, courtesy of Simon and Schuster.

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Here’s a sneak preview of The New York Times Sunday Book Review: (Grateful for the opportunity to reproduce the cool graphic that ran with the piece.) Bruce Weber, author of As They See ‘Em: A Fan’s Travels in the Land of Umpires, gives his take on The Baseball Codes: Beanballs, Sign Stealing, and Bench-Clearing Brawls: […]

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* TWIBB — March 26

March 26, 2010

This week’s best-selling baseball books, according to Amazon.com as of Friday, March 26. Title Rank General Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend, by James S. Hirsch 1 Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis 2 Baseball Prospectus 2010 3 Mint Condition: How Baseball Cards Became an American Obsession, by Dave Jamieson […]

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Josh Wilker launched his blog, CardboardGods (Motto: “Voice of the mathematically eliminated”) as a link to a simpler time, when all a boy needed to be happy was a nickle, a dime, or at most a quarter, to buy a pack of baseball cards. For a ten-year-old, these guys were, in fact, gods. All you […]

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* Bits and pieces

March 25, 2010

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY behind here, so in an attempt to catch up, and let you all know I’m still here, I submit, for starters, a list of recent items: Our old friend Zack Hample is busy with his own writings (note to self: get cracking on the manuscript), but he has had time to glance through a […]

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* Code-breakers

March 22, 2010 · 3 comments

I’ve always been curious about the timing of a book’s release. For example, one title getting a fair bit of buzz this year is The Baseball Codes: Beanballs, Sign Stealing, and Bench-Clearing Brawls: The Unwritten Rules of America’s Pastime, by Jason Turbow with Michael Duca. I have this on my “to-read” pile (think Jenga), but […]

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* Nothing to spit at

March 21, 2010

Spitball magazine is running several reviews on its website, including: High Heat Rum Point Fifty-Nine in ’84 Roger Maris: Baseball;’s Reluctant Hero

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* Hats off to Larry

March 21, 2010

Congratulations to Larry Tye, whose biography Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend was named winner of Spitball Magazine‘s Casey Award and the Seymour Medal from the Society for American Baseball Research. Read (most of) it on Googlebooks.

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