From The Baseball Toaster
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From the category archives:
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From The Juice blog on Baseball Toaster: Let’s start with a baseball book. You should read Buzz Bissinger’s (yeah, that guy) Three Nights in August. It’s not a perfect book, as Bissinger’s dislike of Moneyball elements demonstrate. Even if you have a sabermetrical view of the game, it is hard to deny the charms of […]
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His name might not be as familiar as David Halberstam or Maury Allen or other prolific baseball authors, but Jules Tygiel was a master of the social importance of the game. He wrote several volumes about Jackie Robinson, but managed to keep his material fresh and pertinent. Tygiel passed away yesterday at the age of […]
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On the 20th anniversary of the publication of Dodger Dogs to Fenway Franks: The Ultimate Huide to America’s Top Baseball Parks, Baseballmusings.com reports on its author, Bob Wood. This is definitely one title in desperate need of revision, bot only because there have been so many new ballparks built since, but in the change in […]
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Mark Harris, author of Bang the Drum Slowly and other seminal works of adult baseball fiction, passed away a year ago due to complications from Alzheimer’s disease at the age of 84. His 1956 novel about the relationship between star pitcher Henry “Author” Wiggen (think Tom Seaver combined with Jim Bouton) and his doomed catcher, […]
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From the Washington Post (includes a silly two-picture slide show; what was the point of that?). The Chicago Tribune mirrored the NY Times obit. Jeff Kallman contributed this piece on The MLB Source portion of MCN.com.
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The author of the watershed book on the Black Sox Scandal died yesterday at the age of 88. Asinof published Eight Men Out in 1963; and was released as a John Sayles film in 1988, starring John Cusak, David Strathairn, Charlie Sheen, D.B. Sweeny, and Gordon Clapp, Christopher Lloyd, John Mahoney, Michael Werner, Studs Terkel, […]
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Speaking of oldies, here’s a blast from the past: Roger Angell’s collection of baseball writing, from the POV of Things Above, “Reflections on Christian spirituality and other of life’s important issues”…such as baseball.
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This piece from Bloomberg.com suggests that Willie Randolph follow the example of Lakers’ coach Phil Jackson and give some of his players reading assignments in the hopes that it might open their minds to philosophies that will help the team win. As for the connection to athletes and reading, I recall an anecdote about Yogi […]
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A blast from the past courtesy of the Lansing State Journal. Upshot: …[O]ne book is not responsible for the seismic shift in sports media during the past 40 years, or even the past five years. But it’s part of it, and Bouton’s book is among the first insights that the game, the strategy and the […]
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In a May 3 piece for The Wall Street Journal, Dawidoff — author The Catcher was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg and, the just-released The Crowd Sounds Happy — lists his top choices in the genre: You Know Me, Al by Ring Lardner The Natural, by Bernard Malamud The Universal Baseball Association, […]
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There’s a lot of material that’s fallen by the wayside as I try to keep this blog fresh with the latest in baseball book publishing information. But in the words of the revered philosopher, Regis Philbin, “I’m only one man!” So I’m using this space to try to catch up. Some of the items might […]
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I always get a kick out of seeing an old book “discovered” by a new generation of fans/readers. Case in point, Jules Tygiel’s examination of Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey. His remains one of the best on the subject, a notion with which Blackathlete.net seems to agree.
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Another oldie but goodie, this one from Play by the Book, a blog of books and baseball.
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An “all-time” list, including: Ball Four No Cheering in the Press Box, by Jerome Holtzman (an overlooked classic) Moneyball A Whole Different Ball Game, by Marvin Miller Clemente, by David Maraniss The Bill James Handbook Casey at the Bat
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‘Nuff said.
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is available on Amazon.com,
* Life imitates art
June 20, 2008
In the current issue of ESPN The Magazine, Rick Reilly writes about a high school pitcher who deliberately threw at a home plate umpire, instructing his catcher to let the ball go on through. You can read that piece here. The scenario is eerily reminiscent of a scene from Philip Roth’s The Great American Novel […]
Tagged as: baseball fiction, Philip Roth, Rick Reilly, The Great American Novel
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