Review roundup: May 25

2012 title

Baseball Reflections posted this review of Ozzie’s School of Management: Lessons from the Dugout, the Clubhouse, and the Doghouse.

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‘Bizarro’ beach reading

2012 title

If you’re so inclined, skip the best-selling edition (Fifty Shades of Grey, anyone?) and dig into this: The 2012-16 Collective Bargaining Agreement. Hours of endless entertainment. Or you can wait for the movie to come out. (Hey, if they did it for Moneyball…)

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Author appearance: Dave Anderson

2012 title

Well, to be accurate, editor appearance. Anderson helmed the fascinating and entertaining The New York Times Story of the Yankees: 382 Articles, Profiles and Essays from 1903 to Present, a real time-capsule about the Bronx Bombers. Just as interesting as reading about Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, Mantle, Maris, Mattingly, Jeter, et al, is — from a […]

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The 501 project: Moving right along

"Oddballs"

Well, the first round of edits are done. Now it goes to line editing, for a more careful going over. I must say I was disappointed in myself when I got the files back and found so many typos. There are always going to be artistic conflicts over wording. Perhaps if this was a novel […]

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Review roundup, May 23

2012 title

Louisiana Voice (Tagline: “Politics at its worst!”)  posted this review of Dirty Rice: A Season in the Evangeline League, by Gerald Duff. Upshot: “If you are a fan of the grand old game and you are into baseball lore, this book is for you” (isn’t that kind of the same thing?). Slim pickings today, folks.

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Kinda cool: Bookshelf/Bookreporter review finds expanded audience

2012 title

I was tooling around for new baseball book reviews and came across this from The Advocate, a website of “news, arts, & events from Berkshire & and Bennington Counties.” Ever craved a good book and just not been inspired by anything you see? Or felt annoyed that you bought a book that was merely so-so? […]

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This week (May 28) in Sports Illustrated

Magazines

♦ Albert Chen wrote this Matt Kemp feature. ♦ Joe Sheehan’s stat corner: players whose HR/Fly Ball ratio are pretty impressive. ♦ Sheehan on the surprising Baltimore Orioles.

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Right place, right time

"Oddballs"

Here’s something you don’t see every day. Or ever. Are you paying attention, Zack Hample?

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It is to weep: The bizarre story of Sullivan’s Sluggers and Kickstarter

2012 title

What does this say about society when a couple of guys wishing to raise $6,000 to fund their graphic novel about baseball players and flesh-eating monsters get more than 1,100 folks to pledge more than $38K…with 25 days left to go!  

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Hammerin’ Hank hamsa

"Oddballs"

A hamsa is the Jewish symbol for protection. Although I know my daughter doesn’t cotton to such gestures, I have her one before she started college. Here’s one “featuring” Hank Greenberg that appears in an on-line baseball magazine published by EephusLeague.com, wonderfully eclectic baseball entity for the artistically oddball items of the game. The navigation […]

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Review roundup: May 21

2012 title

MLB Reports reported on David Stinson’s Deadball: A Metaphysical Baseball Novel. Upshot: “…David Stinson accomplished his mission. I read. I learned. I experienced. I thought. I questioned the baseball past and starting looking to my baseball future. I am. Therefore baseball is the answer. The Metaphysics of Baseball. Welcome to Deadball.” The Jackson (Miss.) Clarion […]

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Bookshelf review: Sparky and Me

2012 title

My review of Dan Ewald’s new book, Sparky and Me: My Friendship with Sparky Anderson and the Lessons He Shared About Baseball and Life, appears on Bookreproter.com. It appears below for your convenience: A caveat before we begin. When I first started as a freelancer, I was asked to do an interview with Sparky Anderson […]

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Mazal tov to Got Balz

Documentary

The documentary about a young man trying to donate sports equipment to Cuba — the country that gave his grandfather’s family refuge during the Holocaust — made its Kickstarter goal of$40,000 in time.

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The Bookshelf Podcast: Dan Ewald

2012 title

The first celebrity interview I ever did was with Sparky Anderson. I got my freelance start doing book reviews (surprise, surprise), which led to author interviews, which led me to Anderson, who had just come out with They Call Me Sparky (1998). As one might expect in the presence of greatness, I was a bit […]

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It’s a mag mag mag mag world

Magazines

Recent baseball items from non-sports publications include: “Why Baseball Managers Don’t Make The (Relative) Big Bucks,” from Time. April may be the cruelest month, but it was also a weird one, according to The Atlantic website.

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Weekend reading

2012 title

One of the “problems” working on my book is that I haven’t had as much time to read other books. Several authors have been kind enough to send me their work and I apologize for be so slow to get to them and hope to remedy that in the near future. At the moment, I’m […]

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Bits and pieces

"Ripped from today's headlines..."

A periodic attempt to catch up on recent items and links. ♦ I love this entry by SB Nation’s Grant Brisbee on the 17-inning game between the Red Sox and Orioles on May 6 because it’s so damn literary, comparing the sportswriter’s hyperbole to the epic storyteller. ♦ And this one brief from The Hardball […]

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Review roundup, May 16

2012 title

♦ Macleans, Canada’s version of Time magazine, ran this review of Harvey Araton’s Driving Mr. Yogi: Yogi Berra, Ron Guidry, and Baseball’s Greatest Gift. Upshot: Well, there isn’t any per se. “After years of steroid scandals and cold-hearted business decisions, Araton has given us an old-fashioned story about the redemptive power of baseball.” The writer […]

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What’s that you say? More author interviews

2012 title

John Smoltz discusses his new book, Starting and Closing: Perseverance, Faith, and One More Year. It’s kind of funny: Smoltz spent 20 out of his 21- years in the Majors with the Atlanta Braves, yet the headline for the St. Louis TV station refers to him as an ex-Cardinal. Sure, he was with the Cards […]

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Talk about your “Curse of the Billy Goat”

"Oddballs"

This screen cap comes from the trailer for Revolution, a new NBC science fiction program coming this fall. The show is set 15 years into the future, when electrical power has disappeared all over the planet. With the Cubs’ luck, they were probably leading in the ninth inning of the seventh game of the World […]

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