From the category archives:

Business of baseball

Survey Says…

May 7, 2010

Today’s Wall Street Journal ran this extensive article about the differences (and similarities) between Met and Yankee fans. I took a brief on-line interactive survey, which rendered me — incorrectly — a fan of the Bronx bombers. (Only 14 people took the poll, which indicates that WSJ readers have better things to do with their […]

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This week’s best-selling baseball books, according to Amazon.com as of Friday, May 7. Title Rank General The Baseball Codes: Beanballs, Sign Stealing, and Bench-Clearing Brawls: The Unwritten Rules of America’s Pastime, by Jason Turbow and Michael Duca 1 The Bullpen Gospels: Major League Dreams of a Minor League Veteran, by Dirk Hayhurst 2 Moneyball: The […]

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Chicago Magazine published this profile of former Cub and current author/ESPN BBTN analyst Doug Glanville following the release of his excellent new memoir, The Game from Where I Stand, which it describes as “a blend of recast Times columns and new baseball-centric ruminations filed under broad chapter headings such as ‘The Stresses of the Game’ […]

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This week’s best-selling baseball books, according to Amazon.com as of Friday, April 23. Title Rank General The Baseball Codes: Beanballs, Sign Stealing, and Bench-Clearing Brawls: The Unwritten Rules of America’s Pastime, by Jason Turbow and Michael Duca 1 The Bullpen Gospels: Major League Dreams of a Minor League Veteran, by Dirk Hayhurst 2 Moneyball: The […]

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And Other Tales from the Edge of Baseball Fandom, by Emma Span (Villard, 2010) As much as I love baseball, there are times when I take a step back and wonder, “What am I doing with this nonsense? Surely, there are better ways to spend my time and energies.” And at the risk of being […]

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Less and less, it seems the answer to this age-old riddle is newspapers. Speaking from personal and practical experience, we have cut the stand-alone sports section at my weekly publication; instead I write the occasional sports-related piece. One kind old soul called to complain. He suggested we ditch the obituaries and put back the sports […]

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* TWIBB — April 9

April 9, 2010

This week’s best-selling baseball books, according to Amazon.com as of Friday, April 9. 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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* 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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* 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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Fill in the blank

March 18, 2010

Had to get a tire replaced this morning. While sitting in the waiting room, I picked up a recent copy of The Sporting News which carried feature about the questionnaires the publication would hand out to players each year in preparation for the defunct Baseball Register. This article included reproductions of the forms from Willie […]

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Rutgers alum Steven Goldman is co-editor of the very popular Baseball Prospectus series and website. Barely on the bookshelves, this perennial favorite is already the top sports best-seller on Amazon.com and no. 15 in the top 100 overall. I must admit, I have never been one for such publications, siding with the veteran baseball writer […]

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This week’s best-selling baseball books, according to Amazon.com as of Friday, Feb. 19. Title Rank General Baseball Prospectus 2010 1 Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend, by James S. Hirsch 2 Baseball America 2010 Prospect Handbook: The Comprehensive Guide to Rising Stars from the Definitive Source on Prospects 3 2010 Baseball Forecaster (Ron Shandler’s Baseball […]

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* TWIBB — Feb. 19

February 19, 2010

This week’s best-selling baseball books, according to Amazon.com as of Friday, Feb. 19. Title Rank General Baseball Prospectus 2010 1 Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend, by James S. Hirsch 2 Baseball America 2010 Prospect Handbook: The Comprehensive Guide to Rising Stars from the Definitive Source on Prospects 3 2010 Baseball Forecaster (Ron Shandler’s Baseball […]

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To mark the opening of spring training, I will be making my podcast debut tomorrow (Feb. 16) at 11 p.m. Eastern, on BBA Baseball Talk, a weekly program on Blog Talk Radio. The Baseball Bloggers Alliance is a confederation of 132 blogs working together for collaboration and discussion possibilities. This one-hour show will discuss the […]

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How Baseball Sold U.S. Foreign Policy and Promoted the American Way Abroad, by Robert Elias. (The New Press) As per SFGate.com (Elias teaches law and politics at the University of San Francisco). Upshot: Elias has written both fiction and nonfiction about baseball and his love for the game shines through. But he also doesn’t hold […]

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Madcap Memoirs of the Early LA Dodgers, by Flo Thomasian Snyder (Desert Publications). This comes via TheCalifornian.com. Upshot: The collection of photos alone is worth the price of admission for this behind-the-scenes look at the L.A. Dodger organization. Fans who bleed Dodger blue will love this book, and even those who follow the San Francisco […]

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* It's the economy, stupid.

January 21, 2010

Was anyone else bothered by this story on Johnny Damon in today’s New York Times? Damon, one of the heroes of the 2009 World Series, is currently unemployed. A free agent, the Yankees have displayed little interest in resigning him and at the moment, there are no other takers as teams have filled their high-profile […]

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* Everybody's an expert

January 19, 2010

Former ballplayers and managers. Commissioners and broadcasters. Groundskeepers and concessionaires. Seems like everyone knows what’s wrong with baseball and how to make it better. Case in point from StudyofSports.com about the new book Hi Anybody!: “Legendary [Kansas City] Royals’ broadcaster Denny Matthews oozes with baseball lore and love.  The subtitle describes perfectly the contents of […]

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Marty Appel, former director of public relations for the New York Yankees during the tumultuous 1970s, has, to my mind, one of the dream jobs. These days he runs his own PR company and has his finger in many pies. As an author, his recent biography, Munson: The Life and Death of a Yankee Captain, […]

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* Bits and pieces

December 25, 2009

Sorry, almost done with this catching up business, so bear with me. For those of you who haven’t seen it, here’s my take on the November session of Yankees Fantasy Camp in the Dec, 17 issue of the New Jersey Jewish News. In addition, My teammate Ira Jaskoll wrote this piece for the Jewish Magazine […]

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