From the category archives:

History

* TWIBB — September 11

September 11, 2009

This week in baseball books, featuring the best-sellers according to Amazon.com on Friday, September 11. Title Rank General The Machine: A Hot Team, a Legendary Season, and a Heart-stopping World Series: The Story of the 1975 Cincinnati Reds, Posnanski 1 Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Games, Lewis 2 The Yankee Years, Torre and […]

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* Pass the popcorn

September 8, 2009

The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum will recognize the twin traditions of baseball and film when, for the fourth consecutive year, it hosts the Baseball Film Festival in Cooperstown, Oct. 2-4. Thirteen films, with themes ranging from women in baseball to a baseball league in Israel, will be screened as filmmakers compete for […]

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* TWIBB — September 4

September 4, 2009

This week in baseball books, featuring the best-sellers according to Amazon.com on Friday, September 4. Title Rank General Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Games, Lewis 1 Munson: The Life and Death of a Yankee Captain, Appel 2 Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend, Tye 3 The Yankee Years, Torre and […]

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* Happy days are here again

September 3, 2009

In the form of  Rob Kirkpatrick‘s new book, 1969: The Year Everything Changed. Boomers will get a kick out of this piece of nostalgia, which covers the bad (Vietnam, the Manson murders, Days of Rage) as well as the good (Woodstock, Easy Rider, Wody Allen). But for our purposes, it’s all about the game. Kirkpatrick, […]

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* From the RK vault: 1999

August 31, 2009

Here’s a roundup of reviews I did 10 years ago for Book Page, a “trade” publication available at libraries and bookstores: * * * Perhaps no baseball season has been as closely monitored and analyzed as 1998. Balls were rocketing out of the parks at an amazing rate, and the Yankees were leaving the competition […]

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* TWIBB — Aug. 28

August 28, 2009

This week in baseball books, featuring the best-sellers according to Amazon.com on Friday, August 21. Title Rank General The Machine: A Hot Team, a Legendary Season, and a Heart-stopping World Series: The Story of the 1975 Cincinnati Reds, Posnanski 1 Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, Lewis 2 The Yankee Years, Torre and […]

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Weather permitting, the Mets will honor their 1969 World Championship team. George Vescey wrote an excellent column in yesterday’s New York Times. Which sent me to my library to see what I’ve got specifically on that momentous event. Mant books about the team include a look back at that first championship, but the following titles […]

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* TWIBB — Aug. 21

August 22, 2009

This week in baseball books, featuring the best-sellers according to Amazon.com on Friday, August 21. Title Rank General Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, Lewis 1 Munson: The Life and Death of a Yankee Captain, Appel 2 The Yankee Years, Torre and Verducci 3 Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend, […]

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The Athens (GA) Banner Gazette published this piece on Brissie, the subject of Ira Berkow’s The Corporal Was a Pitcher. The former major leaguer will be at the Borders on Alps Rod in Athens on Aug. 22 at 1 p.m. For information, call 706-583-8647.

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The legendary Detroit Tigers broadcaster Ernie Harwell published this piece praising the improved quality of baseball literature in his Free Press column of Aug. 16. Among the titles mentioned (just to name a few) are Jonathan Eig’s Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig and Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson’s First […]

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* TWIBB — Aug. 14

August 14, 2009

This week in baseball books, featuring the best-sellers according to Amazon.com on Friday, August 14. Title Rank General Munson: The Life and Death of a Yankee Captain, Appel 1 Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, Lewis 2 Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend, Tye 3 The Yankee Years, Torre and […]

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* The old ball game

August 13, 2009

The current issue of American Heritage Magazine incldues this story on the early days of the game adapted from Baseball Americana: Treasures from the Library of Congress by Harry Katz, Frank Ceresi, Phil Michel, Wilson McBee and Susan Reyburn (HarperCollins Publishers).

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Wife and daughter are at the Sawx-Tigers game at the moment, so I thought it appropriate to haul these three reviews out of mothballs. All appeared in A Red Sox Journal, published by The Buffalo Head Society in the late 1990s. * * * Murder at Fenway Park, by Troy Soos. Kensington Publishing: NY. 1994 […]

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Enjoyed many an interesting conversation at the recent SABR get-together in Washington, DC. Spent a lot of down time in the vendors room where publishers hosted some of their authors. The first interview is with Gary Mitchem, acquisitions editor for McFarland, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year. Mitchem discovered the processes he goes through […]

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* Review: Forever Blue

August 7, 2009

From journalists/sports guy Paul Oberjuerger, this considered assessment of the new Walter O’Malley/Brooklyn Dodgers book by Michael D’Antonio. Upshot: What makes this book important? The author had access to “tens of thousands of items” from the O’Malley family archive. And, naturally, that O’Malley-centric material tends to paint Walter O’Malley in a kinder light. If only […]

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TWIBB — Aug. 7

August 7, 2009

This week in baseball books, featuring the best-sellers according to Amazon.com on Friday, August 7. Title Rank General Munson: The Life and Death of a Yankee Captain, Appel 1 Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, Lewis 2 Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend, Tye 3 The Yankee Years, Torre and […]

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For me, as a freelance writer, anyway. My first major published piece was a review of Shoeless Joe and Ragtime Baseball, by Harvey Frommer for Elysian Fields Quarterly in 1993, which you’ll find after the break. I wax nostalgic because I learned at the recent SABR Convention that EFQ might be forced to ceases publication […]

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* Bits and pieces

August 5, 2009 · 8 comments

Trying to catch up with the stuff I missed while at the SABR convention: The Henry Wiggen Blog published this review of Michael Shaara’s For  Love of the Game, which became Kevin Costner’s third baseball movie. Publisher’s Weekly offer this announcement of an upcoming book on Don Larsen’s perfect game: Perfect: Don Larsen’s Miraculous World […]

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The Revolutionary Reign of Bud Selig, by Andrew Zimbalist (John Wiley and Sons, 2007) Allan H. “Bud” Selig has nominally been in charge of the national pastime longer than any commissioner since Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis. Needless to say, the game has expanded beyond what the sixteen original owners could ever have imagined. Such success […]

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Apropos of the interview I did with Favorite PASTimes, here’s a profile on Troy Soos, author of the Mickey Rawlings series of historical baseball mysteries, I did for the Summer 1998 edition of The Mystery Review, a defunct Canadian publication. * * * The manicured grass of the baseball field doesn’t grow under Troy Soos’ […]

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