Attention “K”-mart shoppers

Baseball art

In this case, the “K” stands for Koufax. Artist Loren Kantor  is offering woodcuts of the Hall of Famer. A 5″ x 6″, hand-pulled block print on acid-free archival paper will cost you a C-note.  

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Reminder: Bill Veeck program opens

2012 title

The Baseball Reliquary program on Bill Veeck and his contributions to the game opens today in Arcadia, Calif. Paul Dickson, whose new biography, Bill Veeck: Baseball’s Greatest Maverick, will be at the event. His essay on Veeck has appeared in several publications over the past few days.  

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Baseball Cards books, courtesy of SABR

Baseball Cards

This list appeared on a SABR post and it seemed like a good resource, so I’m recreating it (sans links) here, FYI: Bloom, John, A House of Cards: Baseball Card Collecting and Popular Culture (Univ. of Minn. Press, 1997) Boyd, Brendan and Harris, Fred, The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading and Bubble Gum Book […]

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Review roundup, April 9

2012 title

♦ Catching up with Tom Hoffarth’s 30 days/30 books project, we have reviews of Andy Strasberg’s Baseball Fantography, Under the Halo: The Official History of Angels Baseball, Jim Abbot’s Imperfect: An Improbable Life, and Paul Dickson’s Bill Veeck: Baseball Greatest Maverick. ♦ The Trentonian ran this review on The Rotation:A Season with the Phillies and […]

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Lest we forget: Mike Wallace

Lest We Forget

The journalism world lost another icon with the passing of Mike Wallace, the veteran CBS newsman known to more recent viewers as one of the original members of the 60 Minutes team. But Wallace, who passed away on Saturday at the age of 93, was also a straight news reporter and anchor, as well as, […]

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Mr. Postman: Recent acquisitions for the Bookshelf

2012 title

♦ Sophomore Campaign, by Frank Nappi, the second installment in the Mickey Tussler fiction series. ♦ Wherever I Wind Up: My Quest for Truth, Authenticity and the Perfect Knuckleball, by R.A. Dickey with Wayne Coffey. ♦ Calico Joe, John Grisham’s first baseball novel. ♦ Jewish Major Leaguers in Their Own Words, by Peter Ephross with […]

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The Bookshelf Podcast: Rob Fleder

2012 title

Some of the contributions for the new collaboration  Damn Yankees: Twenty-Four Major League Writers on the World’s Most Loved (and Hated) Team are dewy-eyed tributes, either about the team in general, or a player in particular, or a personal moment with a family member, bonding over a shared love. On the other end of the […]

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Chicago, Chicago, that toddlin’ town…

Essays on baseball

What the heck is toddlin’ anyway? The Chicago Tribune posted several items of literary baseball interest recently. ♦ Rob Manker on the 30th anniversary of the publication of W.P. Kinsella’s Shoeless Joe. One of the scarier points: many kids who first read the book now have kids of their own. ♦ James Finn Garner, who […]

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A match made in heaven?

2012 title

John Thorn, MLB’s official historian, posted this piece about the launch of a new program, the Baseball Memory Lab. As Thorn explains: Baseball Memory Lab is a collaboration of MLB’s Origins Committee, which I chair, and MLB.com. Focusing on the intersection of personal history and baseball, this new forum  initially will spotlight two aspects of […]

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Review roundup: April 5

2012 title

♦ Tom Hoffarth’s newest installment in his 30 books/30days feature: The Baseball Stadium Insider: A Comprehensive Dissection of All Thirty Ballparks, the Legendary Players and the Memorable Moments, by Matt Lupica. ♦ The Seattle Post-Intelligencer published this piece on Shipwrecked: A People’s History of the Seattle Mariners, by Jon Wells.  

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There’s an app for that (UPDATE)

2012 title

My wife gave me a Kindle Fire for the holidays. Sorry, dear, but so far I have more apps than books, which I know was not what you intended. I’ll have to try out some of these baseball-related items, as per this New York Times article by Bob Tedeschi. Among them are regular (i.e., full-price) […]

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Review roundup, April 4

2012 title

♦ The Hardball Times posted this review of Mitchell Nathanson’s A People’s History of Baseball. Nathan was also a recent guest on Only a Game, which you can hear here. ♦ The Washington Post ran this roundup of kids’ titles, which I am passing along only because I’m for anything that gets the little buggers […]

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New biopic on Hank Aaron in the works (UPDATE)

Baseball movies

According to this piece on The Hollywood Reporter site, there’s a new feature film in the works (or at least on the drawing board) focusing on Hank Aaron’s career as he marched towards the all-time home run record between 1972 and 1975. The film, which will be directed by Barry (The Natural) Levinson, was adapted […]

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Time begins again (again)

Because I can...

Bill Miller over at The On Deck Circle blog offers “Ten Reasons Why Baseball is Better Than Football,” which gives me an excuse to bring out this again: (As a bonus, you get to brush up on a foreign language.)

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If you’re in Boston on April 19…

Baseball program

Check this out: Relive a century of Fenway Park at a special launch event for The Boston Globe’s Fenway 100 magazine. The Globe posted this special feature on the beloved ballpark.

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Gelf marks Opening Day with authors’ program

2010 title

Gelf magazine begins the season with a “Varsity Letters Baseball Night” on Thursday, April 5, at 7:30 p.m., at The Gallery at LPR, 158 Bleecker St. (between Sullivan St. and Thompson St.), NYC. Four writers of recent baseball books will read from and talk about their work, including New York Times columnist Dan Barry (interview […]

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An ode to Homer is Extra Hot Great

"Oddballs"

I have a handful of podcasts I listen to religiously, mostly on my way to work. It’s very ritualistic. I start each Monday with Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me. From then on it’s Pardon the Interruption and Extra Hot Great Minis, a scaled down, one-topic version of Extra Hot Great, one of my favorite pop […]

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Shout-outs to a couple of publishers

2012 title

The two small publishing houses that comprise most of the high-brow literature about the National pastime both got a little love recently. David Davis wrote this nice  company profile in The New York Times on the University of Nebraska Press, which will be putting out my 501 book next year (God willing). Rob Neyer over […]

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Review roundup, April 3

2011 title

Tom Hoffarth’s third installment in his 30 books/30 days series: The Greatest Show on Dirt, a novel by James Bailey. The Rafu Shimpo, Los Angeles’ Japanese daily newspaper, published this review of Transpacific Field of Dreams: How Baseball Linked the United States and Japan in Peace and War, by Sayuri Guthrie-Shimizu. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch […]

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Silver anniversary of a major mistake: Al Campanis on Nightline

"Ripped from today's headlines..."

Can it really be 25 years ago since Al Campanis appeared on what might just be the most (in)famous episode of Nightline (when it was a real news program)? Campanis, then the general manager of the LA Dodgers, was on to discuss the lefacy of Jackie Robinson and ended up losing his job for his […]

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