* Curses, Haunted Baseball again

"Ripped from today's headlines..."

The recent release of the Indiana Jones movie allows for the tangential connection with Haunted Baseball: Ghosts, Curses, Legends and Eerie Events, wherein coauthor Mickey Bradley is interviewed for this piece in Newsday.

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* Bits and pieces

2008 title

Catching up a bit: Bob Murcer’s autobiography as reviewed on MLB.com The Griddle on Baseballtoaster.com considers Peter Morris’ latest, But Didn’t We Have Fun? wickedlocal.com, a Massachusetts Web site, reports on an appearance by author Jim Collins at a Cape Cod high school. Collins is the author of The Last Best League: One Summer, One […]

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* Comic baseball

Bits and Pieces

Riffing on the cover of this week’s Sports Illustrated, “Richie Rich” on homerunderby.com, posts this entry on the sports as played by superheroes.

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* Column: The Real Jerry Coleman

2008 title

Not a review of the former big leaguer’s new autobiography, per se, but a testimony to the man by Tom Shanahan of the Voice of San Diego.

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* New title from Arcadia: Baseball in Long Beach

2008 title

According to Long Beach’s own Grunion Gazette. The publisher, Arcadia, covers hundreds of topics in a photo album motif, heavy on the illustrations, light on text.

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* What am I bid…?

Annoucements

According to this story in the Los Angeles Daily News, the court martial papers for Jackie Robinson are being auctioned by Memory Lane, a sports memorabilia dealer in Tustin, in public event that ends at 5 p.m. Saturday, May 24. So there’s still time.

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Review: But Didn't We Have Fun?

2008 title

A lengthy treatise of the Peter Morris book via Popmatters.com.

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* The skinny on Foul Balls

Older title

By Alison Gordon (left). Interesting concept, this “Blue Jays Library in a Box,” from battersbox.ca. Might catch on. Pity there aren’t a lot of books on the subject.

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* This Week in Sports Illustrated

Magazines

The cover story by Tom Verducci features the crazy way the season is shaping up so far. Up is down and down is up as the Rays and Marlins — aong other surprise franchises — are reading their divisions. A second feature profiles the Indians’ pitcher Cliff Lee.

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* Farewell, Mike Piazza

Bits and Pieces

The future Hall of Fame catcher called it quits on May 20. I felt bad for Piazza and the handful of veterans from last season who weren’t able to find a job in 2008. It’s not so much that they weren’t, as how they were basically ignored and just left to blow away in the […]

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* Athletes get the word out about reading

"Ripped from today's headlines..."

From the weekly White Bear Lake (MN) Press, this article about the Twins’ Justin Morneau’s appearance at a local public school. Morneau said he liked reading about baseball. Shocker.

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* Baseball on NPR

2008 title

Brian Lehrer discusses The Zen of Bobby V with documentary filmmaker Andrew Jenks. Meanwhile, on Soundcheck, Tim Wiles, co-author of Baseball’s Greats Hit, discusses Take Me Out to the Ball Game. http://audio.wnyc.org/bl/bl051908bpod.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

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* Now hear this: Rob Neyer on podcast

Audio

from the Detroit Tigers podcast. http://media.libsyn.com/media/detroittigerspodcast/DTP-49.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

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* Announcement: Author of We Are The Ship in La Jolla

Annoucements

From the La Jolla Light Web site: Negro League baseball author at D.G. Wills May 24 Acclaimed Author and Illustrator Kadir Nelson will discuss his new book We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball on Saturday May 24 at 7 p.m., at D.G.Wills Books. Nelson will be introduced by baseball historian Bill […]

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* Dennis hates baseball

Bits and Pieces

From Joshreads.com, aka. The Comics Curmudgeon Dennis the Menace, 5/16/08 America = freedom Baseball = “America’s pastime” Dennis hates baseball Dennis hates freedom? Dennis is a terrorist and/or communist? Dennis is menacing? Good enough. Tee time!

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* Nicholas Dawidoff picks his favorite baseball fiction

Classic title

In a May 3 piece for The Wall Street Journal, Dawidoff — author The Catcher was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg and, the just-released The Crowd Sounds Happy — lists his top choices in the genre: You Know Me, Al by Ring Lardner The Natural, by Bernard Malamud The Universal Baseball Association, […]

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* Happy birthday, Monty Stratton

Birthday greetings

If they ever made a movie about my life, I’d want to be played by a post-WW II era Jimmy Stewart. He exudes a sense of humor but at the same times plays dark very well. Stewart played Chicago White Sox pitcher Monty Stratton — born this day in 1912 — in The Stratton Story, […]

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* Review: We Would Have Played the Game for Nothing

2008 title

Jonathan Mahler, author of Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx is Burning: 1977, Baseball, Politics, and the Battle for the Soul of a City, gives Fay Vincent’s book the treatment in The New York Times. Upshot: Mahler considers the effort serviceable. Nothing especially glowing, nothing especially critical. I have often thought that having reviews coming from […]

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* ForeWord sidebar: "And now a word from our druggist"

2008 title

[This appears as a sidebar to the “Class in Session” article in the May/June 2008 issue of ForeWord Magazine.] And now a word from our druggist Raymond Angelo Belliotti’s Watching Baseball, Seeing Philosophy devotes a chapter to Jose Canseco and the questionable use of performance enhancing drugs. The December 2007 release of the Mitchell Report—the […]

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* Class in session

2008 title

[This piece appears in the May/June issue of ForeWord Magazine.] Baseball books: Class is in session The notion that baseball is a metaphor for life has been around since man first took bat to ball. In reality, it’s more appropriate to say that the national pastime is a metaphor for education; academic disciplines that baseball […]

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