What is this? Joe DiMaggio Campanella Brooklyn’s got a winning team Mickey Mantle California baseball First one to get it right wins an autographed copy of 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die.
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From the category archives:
“Oddballs”
Wasn’t expecting to have more to say about Vermont baseball following Tuesday’s post but… We discovered a library on the Smugglers Notch premises, the type where guests “borrow” books and leave behind those they have finished while vacationing, rather than schlep them back home. I had read […]
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Rather than pull something out of the Bookshelf archives, I thought for something a bit different this week. The good news is that I got to watch the Yankees beat the Giants, 7-0, in the season opener. Normally, I would not be able to watch a game with an 8 p.m. start because I have […]
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As a partner to “Throwback Thursday”… In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, I hauled out this article I wrote for Irish America magazine some 13 years ago on the influence that community had on the national pastime. Irish ballplayers have helped to shape baseball ever since the game took its first foundering steps on the playing fields […]
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Or not. For some, 13 is actually a lucky number. But for others… Baseball is notorious for have superstitions. Remember this scene from Bull Durham (WARNING: Explicit language) Here are just a few books that deal with baseball superstitions: The Incomplete Book of Baseball Superstitions, Rituals, and Oddities, by Mike Blake Field of Magic: Baseball’s […]
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At Texas Women’s University, “Fiction class goes deep into baseball literature.” There is a literary quality to baseball. From the lyrical of W.P. Kinsella’s Shoeless Joe to the irreverence of Jim Bouton’s Ball Four, the chronicles of David Halberstam, the eccentricity of Bill Veeck’s Veeck As In Wreck and the satire of Philip Roth’s The […]
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I love backstories, whether they’re superhero original tales or something like “Revealed: The TV Manufacturer Whose Set Design Was Used on 1955 Bowman Baseball Cards” from the Sports Collectors Daily website. Bonus points for citing one of my favorites, The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading, and Bubble Gum Book, first published by Brendan C. […]
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As I mentioned in the previous entry, Topps traditionally reserved baseball cards ending in “00” for the cream-of-the-crop elite players (not sure about other sports). With one exception, there were at most only seven available “00” slots. Yearly output ranged from 210 in 1955 to a whopping 825 in 1993. It makes sense that the […]
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My wife has been in a number of book groups over the past twenty or so years. Once a year, the husbands are invited to participate. In all that time, we’ve only discussed one book about sports (if you consider Lance Armstrong’s It’s Not About the Bike a sports book). So this story from the Washington […]
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Except replace “still” with “not” and “rock and roll” with “baseball.” 60 Minutes featured a segment on the Savannah Bananas in its April 13 episode. Jesse Cole, the man behind the (yellow) curtain, has written several books about the team and marketing, including Banana Ball: The Unbelievably True Story of the Savannah Bananas, which is […]
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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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What do Ichiro Suzuki, CC Sabbathia, and Billy Wagner all have in common? Oh, yeah, sure, they were all just elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. But wait, there’s more. That’s right; they’ve all written memoirs. Ichiro’s book was published in 2004. There are other books about him, including The Meaning of Ichiro: […]
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I am a great believer in the serial (Oxford) comma. It;’s pretty much in the stylebook for every outlet for which I’ve written. And you can find lots of arguments for and against its use. But I’ve never seen in discussed in respect to baseball books until now. Submitted for your entertainment and/or amusement, this […]
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Because you can keep them on your bookshelf. Not that I’m a fashion maven, but I never liked the flat brim look. A pet peeve of mine. Kudos to the writers of Reacher.
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Passover is over. Inevitably, we buy too many boxes of matzo and the question then becomes, what do you do with the leftovers? Sure, you can eat this stuff all year round, but would you really want to? I suppose I could ship it off to Alex Bregman…
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This popped up on my daily Google alerts for baseball book-related stuff from Fine Books & Collections: “Early Baseball Sheet Music, Arrowsmith’s Maps, JFK Presentation Copy: Auction Preview” Image: Potter & Potter — “The earliest known baseball lithograph, for “The Live Oak Polka,” offered at Potter & Potter this week.” According to the accompanying story […]
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is available on Amazon.com,
