From the category archives:

Baseball and pop culture

Remembering Roger Angell

August 24, 2025

It’s a daunting task, following in the footsteps of a legend. The players who came after Mickey Mantle or Ted Williams or Willie Mays didn’t have it easy. They were faulted for not being able to replicate the feats of their predecessors. How unfair. I was thinking about that when I came across this piece in […]

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♦  Congrats to Jan Powal, who was recognized for her breaking the gender line for Major League umpires and was the subject of a question in the latest weekly New York Times quiz. ♦  Greatly looking forward to Jane Leavy‘s forthcoming, Make Me Commissioner: I Know What’s Wrong with Baseball and How to Fix It. […]

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A reminder: The Amazon rankings are updated every hour, so these lists might not be 100 percent accurate by the time you read them (or even by the time I finish posting them). But close enough for government work, as the saying goes (see my piece on “Why Amazon’s search engine sucks“). In addition, occasionally […]

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♦  Adding to the previous B&P item about gathering Hall of Fame induction speeches: you would expect writers to be more comfortable with the process than the players. Washington Post columnist Thomas Boswell was the 2025 winner of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America’s Career Excellence Award. Here is his acceptance speech. Side note: According […]

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A thought occurred to me as I was posting about the passing of Ryne Sandberg. Although I still subscribe to the physical edition of The New York Times, I also have the app which sometimes will publish several days ahead of the print version. I have frequently found that an obituary not not appear for […]

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A reminder: The Amazon rankings are updated every hour, so these lists might not be 100 percent accurate by the time you read them (or even by the time I finish posting them). But close enough for government work, as the saying goes (see my piece on “Why Amazon’s search engine sucks“). In addition, occasionally […]

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A reminder: The Amazon rankings are updated every hour, so these lists might not be 100 percent accurate by the time you read them (or even by the time I finish posting them). But close enough for government work, as the saying goes (see my piece on “Why Amazon’s search engine sucks“). In addition, occasionally […]

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When I was a kid, the legends of the game included the likes of Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and other players from the game in the post-Black Sox era (i.e., during and after the Roaring Twenties). But needles to say there were superstars before then, many of whom today’s fans have never heard. (As an […]

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A reminder: The Amazon rankings are updated every hour, so these lists might not be 100 percent accurate by the time you read them (or even by the time I finish posting them). But close enough for government work, as the saying goes (see my piece on “Why Amazon’s search engine sucks“). In addition, occasionally […]

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A reminder: The Amazon rankings are updated every hour, so these lists might not be 100 percent accurate by the time you read them (or even by the time I finish posting them). But close enough for government work, as the saying goes (see my piece on “Why Amazon’s search engine sucks“). In addition, occasionally […]

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{ Comments on this entry are closed }

A reminder: The Amazon rankings are updated every hour, so these lists might not be 100 percent accurate by the time you read them (or even by the time I finish posting them). But close enough for government work, as the saying goes (see my piece on “Why Amazon’s search engine sucks“). In addition, occasionally […]

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{ Comments on this entry are closed }

A reminder: The Amazon rankings are updated every hour, so these lists might not be 100 percent accurate by the time you read them (or even by the time I finish posting them). But close enough for government work, as the saying goes (see my piece on “Why Amazon’s search engine sucks“). In addition, occasionally […]

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{ Comments on this entry are closed }

A reminder: The Amazon rankings are updated every hour, so these lists might not be 100 percent accurate by the time you read them (or even by the time I finish posting them). But close enough for government work, as the saying goes (see my piece on “Why Amazon’s search engine sucks“). In addition, occasionally […]

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Posting a bit earlier than usual today because we’re heading “down the shore” for a 5K run for organ donor awareness, sponsored by the New Jersey Sharing Network. My wife received a kidney from a friend in her book group, so we do this every year. If you feel like donating to this very worthy […]

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A reminder: The Amazon rankings are updated every hour, so these lists might not be 100 percent accurate by the time you read them (or even by the time I finish posting them). But close enough for government work, as the saying goes (see my piece on “Why Amazon’s search engine sucks“). In addition, occasionally […]

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When it comes to poetry, I readily admit my deficiency. But my ignorance didn’t stop me from seeking out two of the best poets as guests on The Bookshelf Conversations. E. Ethelbert Miller and Bill Littlefield helped kick off (can you say that when talking about baseball?) the recent Baseball Poetry Festival, held May 2-4 […]

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A reminder: The Amazon rankings are updated every hour, so these lists might not be 100 percent accurate by the time you read them (or even by the time I finish posting them). But close enough for government work, as the saying goes (see my piece on “Why Amazon’s search engine sucks“). In addition, occasionally […]

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This is really getting to be old-home month, give or take. First it was Danny Gallagher, author of several titles about the Montreal Expos. Then it was Robbie Hart, with his new documentary. Next week, Curtis Pride, the deaf ballplayer who made his Major League debut with the team in 1993, the first of six […]

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Pete Peterson’s national public radio program, Reading Baseball, just celebrated its 400th episode! Mazel tov. Pittsburgh pitcher Paul Skenes is included in Esquire’s “Mavericks of Sports 2025” feature. Skenes is also featured in today’s New York Times Magazine piece, “How Analytics Marginalized Baseball’s Superstar Pitchers: Why has pro baseball made it so hard for today’s […]

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A reminder: The Amazon rankings are updated every hour, so these lists might not be 100 percent accurate by the time you read them (or even by the time I finish posting them). But close enough for government work, as the saying goes (see my piece on “Why Amazon’s search engine sucks“). In addition, occasionally […]

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