* Movie Time

Lists

Another top ten list of baseball flicks, this one from the folks who bring you the VideoHound’s Golden Movie Retriever: Bull Durham Field of Dreams The Natural Pride of the Yankees Major Leagues The Bad News Bears (1979) The Stratton Story A League of Their Own Eight Men Out The Rookie

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* Review: The Bill James Handbook 2009

2008 title

From those great folks at TheBaseballAnalysts, part one of a multi-part deconstruction of the James’ essential.

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* Author Q&A: Kevin Goldstein

Author Profile / interview

The Baseball in Arlington blog (Texas Rangers oriented) featured this two-part reader-contributed Q&A with Goldstein, a writer for Baseball Prospectus. Part 1 Part 2

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* Review: The Postwar Yankees

2008 title

From one of my “competitors,” the GreatBaseballBooks blog, this brief item on David Surdam’s The Postwar Yankees: Baseball’s Golden Age Revisited. Upshot: Surdam’s writing is straightford [sic] but not boring. If you need to read something by an economist, you could do much worse.

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* "The Spaceman" lands on NPR

"Ripped from today's headlines..."

Bill “The Spaceman” Lee weighed made a guest appearance on NPR’s Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me yesterday, regarding the recent “shoe attack” by Muntadar al-Zeidi, a correspondent for Al-Baghdadiya television. Sagal: A lot of people were talking about the political ramifications of this [and] what it means for Preient Bush’s legacy, but that’s not what […]

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* For the reader on your gift list

Mini-reviews

Alex Belth, author of Stepping Up: The Story of All-Star Curt Flood and His Fight for Baseball Players’ Rights, posts a list of book suggestions on his Brxon Banter blog (say that fast 10 times). About half of them seem to be those titles commemorating Yankee Stadium.

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* Lest we forget: Will Stevens

"Ripped from today's headlines..."

Stevens was not a baseball player, manager, coach, front office exec, peanut vendor, or team mascot. Rather, Stevens, who passed away on Dec. 8 at the age of 60, was lawyer. His claim to fame? According to his obituary in The New York Times, his slyly humorous law-review note on the relationship between baseball’s infield […]

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* It takes a big man to admit his mistakes…

interview

And they don’t come much bigger than John Goodman. “Babe Ruth (sic) is one of those things I wish I could go back and do over. It’s like being in that dream where you’re in the subway with no clothes on.” Talking about his portrayal of the Yankee legend in The Babe (1992) in the […]

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* Take our poll: Who's your favorite ballplayer/writer?

Because I can...
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* Sourcebooks buys Cumberland House

"Ripped from today's headlines..."

According to this item from the daily Publishers Weekly e-mail. Why is this significant? Both companies have put out several baseball titles over the last few years. Sourcebooks titles include: Do You Know the New York Yankees?: Test your expertise with these fastball questions (and a few curves) about your favorite team’s hurlers, sluggers, stats […]

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* "William Blake?" "This is your post?"

Because I can...

An amazing piece of cinematic coincidence. Now compare that scene with the one in Costner’s Academy Award-winning Dances With Wolves in which his character, John Dunbar, and his drover, Timmons (the late Robert Pastorelli), argue abut the sagicity of remaining at Fort Sedgewick. The dialog is provided by script-o-rama.com: Timmons: There ain’t nothing here, Lieutenant. […]

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* ESPN overhaul

"Ripped from today's headlines..."

Technically, this doesn’t belong here (although you can keep a laptop on a bookshelf), but it’s an important resource so, from The New York Times, this announcement about the reorganization of ESPN.com. The problem with several major news outlets, including the Times and Sports Illustrated, is that the designers try to cram too much info […]

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* The most infamous baseball card, 20 years later

Baseball Cards

Why were those naughty words written on the knob of Billy Ripken’s bat in his 1989 Fleer card? More on the card here, from CNBC.

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* Review: Phillies Photos: 100 Years of Philadelphia Phillies Images

2008 title

As per the Philadelphia Inquirer, this combo review/author profile of Mark Stang and his new collection of snapshots about the Phillies, published by Orange Frazier. I’m guessing the book was planned before the Phillies won their championship, but the timing can only help sales. Key point: “According to Stang, the majority of baseball photos through […]

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* Baseball has no politics

2007 title

So if a Republican, conservative, and libertarian blog posts an entry about a baseball book, “it fits here.” And so they have with this brief item about Gary Moore’s Playing with the Enemy.

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* Author interview: Josh Chetwynd

Author Profile / interview

Chetwynd, a native of Great Britain, is author of British Baseball and the West Ham Club. He was interviewed by BaseballGB , a surprising and excellent source of baseball news of our friends “across the pond.”

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* You know your book has made the big time when…

Because I can...

It appears on a hit TV show like CSI. I don’t normally watch the show, but I caught a recent episode “on demand” and noticed this from a scene in a prison library. It comes about 20 seconds in and you have to be alert: as Gil Grissom is looking for a book an inmate […]

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* 2B or not 2B, encore

Baseball humor

Once again proving that a) baseball is the most intellectual of sports and b) fans get very confused at this time of year as players move from team to team.

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* Lest we forget: Sal Yvars

"Ripped from today's headlines..."

Sal Yvars, the catcher for the New York Giants who spilled the beans about sign stealing during the famous playoff game against the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1951, died Dec. 10 at the age of 84. Richard Goldstein does his usual excellent job in the NY Times‘ obituary. Yvars, the Giants’ back-up receiver from 1957-53 (with […]

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* What did you just call me?

Newspapers

I noted with some amusement a piece by Dan Graziano, the baseball writer for The Star-Ledger, in which he finds it necessary to spell out the phonetic pronunciation of the newly-acquired relief pitcher J.J. Putz (sounds like “pootz”). Putz, who had spent his entire six-year career with the Seattle Mariners, is used to being his […]

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