* Free downloadable baseball books

Wowio.com, a great (albeit somewhat limited) source for free, downloadable books in PDF format offers a few surprisingly high-quality baseball titles in its inventory. All you need to do is register and you can download a maximum of three titles per day.

As of this writing — and new books are added frequently — the baseball collection includes:

• Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella
• The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2007
• The New Ballgame: Understanding Baseball Statistic for the Casual Fan
• Footsteps: Negro Leagues Baseball (juvenile)
• Jackie Robinson (juvenile)
• The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories (a classic by western novelist Zane Grey)
• Behind-the-Scenes Baseball: Real-Life Applications of Statistical Analysis Actually Used by Major League Teams … and Other Stories
• Indians Journal (730 pages!)

* Happy birthday, George Brett

The Royals’ Hall of Famer turns 55 today.

I have always been impressed with players like Brett, Carl Yazstremski, Tony Gwynn, et al, who managed to spend their entire careers with one team. It was more common earlier in the game’s history, but almost unheard of these days. You have to be a combination of lucky (to not get traded as well as stay healthy enough), good (to warrant being kept), and not too greedy (to look for more money elsewhere).

In 1997, Stephen Hall wrote this piece titled “The Loyalists” for The New York Times Sunday Magazine about an elite group of current ballplayers (at that time) who had played for at least ten years and were still with their original club. The piece was accompanied by a lovely graphic which, unfortunately, was not included with the article, but I think I still have it somewhere (on my bookshelf, of course) so look for it in the near future.

The Amazon Report on George Brett:

George Brett: From Here To Cooperstown

George Brett: A Royal Hero

* Announcement: New book celebrates Tigers’ 68 season

From an e-mail via SABR:

Sock It to ‘Em Tigers: The Incredible Story of the 1968 Detroit Tigers, a joint effort of SABR and the Mayo Smith Society, is now available from Maple Street Press. Edited/project-managed by David Raglin and myself In the best tradition of Rounder Books’ tomes on the 1975 and 1967 Boston Red Sox teams, Sock It to ‘Em Tigers follows the SABR BioProject ethic of compiling a biographical profile of each player from the Tigers’ 1968 world championship team. The book also profiles general manager Jim Campbell, manager Mayo Smith and the coaches, and the broadcasters. There are also essays on Tiger Stadium, the city of Detroit in 1968, the gutsy move of outfielder Mickey Stanley to shortstop for the World Series, and several other pieces that celebrate the team and place it in the context of its time. Close to 50 people — most SABR members, many Mayo Smith Society members, some members of both — contributed or aided in some way to the project.

Sock It to ‘Em Tigers will get some prominent bookshelf play for the next month or so at major chain bookstores in the Detroit area and throughout Michigan. The 8.5″-x-11″ book’s cover resembles a 1968 Topps baseball card. If you still can’t find it, you can order it directly from the publisher by going
to its Web site, www.maplestreetpress.com.

And we’re already at work doing a similar book about the 1984 world champion Tigers in time for that club’s 25th anniversary next year.

* Happy birthday, Big Ed Walsh

Born this date in 1881. The Hall of Famer spent most of his career pitching with pre-Black Sox White Sox for whom he won 195 games.

Talk about records that will never be broken, what about this one: Walsh’s career ERA was 1.82!

The Amazon Report on Ed Walsh:

Big Ed Walsh: The Life and Times of a Spitballing Hall of Famer

You can read most of it on Google Books.

* Review: Living on the Black

John Feinstein’s latest — an in-depth look at the 2007 season of Tom Glavine and Mike Mussina — gets the treatment from the Christian Science Monitor.

Upshot:

Feinstein achieves a double play fans should savor for its scrupulous look at what life is like for the 21st-century major leaguer.

* How you can take a simple comment and turn it into something dirty…

This was gleaned (i.e. shamelessly copied) from the always-entertaining Comics Curmudgeon blog:

Gil Thorp, 5/6/08

That’s right, Andrew, it’s time to “unleash that slider”, if you know what I mean, and I think you do. But just in case you don’t, what I mean is that you should drop your pants and expose your genitals to the batter. Here, I’m using “slider” as a double-entendre: though it’s the legitimate name of a style of pitch, it could also, with some imagination, be thought of as a nickname for a penis. Which I think you should show to the opposite team, which would be shocking and amusing. I hope we’re clear on this.

* Announcement: Center Field Shot: A History of Baseball on Television

Duquesne University “promotes from within” as it issues this press release about the book, published by the University of Nebraska Press, co-authored by Robert V. Bellamy Jr., an associate journalism professor at DU.

You can visit the book’s Web site here.

* Review: Baseball Field Guide

From the interestingly-named blog about Baltimore sports, The Loss Column.

Upshot:

The end result is the kind of book I love to have around, one I can just pick up anytime, open to a random page, and enjoy for a few minutes.

* Baseball book roundup: The New York Times

But the story on these books — Anatomy of Baseball, Branch Rickey: Baseball’s Ferocious Gentleman, and Baseball’s Greatest Hit: The Story of Take Me Out to the Ball Game – did not appear in the Sunday Book Review section, but rather these Big Apple-centric titles appeared in “Reading New York” on May 11.

* Announcement: New baseball titles from University of Nebraska Press

For some, it’s Christmas catalogs. For others, it’s gardening. For me, it’s book catalgs from publishing houses.

The Fall/Winter ‘08 issue from University of Nebraska just arrived and, past being prelude, there are some interesting baseball titles sprinkled throughout.

• Wally Yonamine: The Man Who Change Japanese Baseball, by Robert K. Fitts: In an odd switch, Yonamine was the first American-born Japanese to play pro ball in his ancestral home. In a sense, he was a Jackie Robinson figure, inexplicably drawing the ire of the native-born, but eventually letting his bat speak for him. Fitts has previously written on the subject in Remembering Japanese Baseball: An Oral History of the Game.
• The Warsaw Sparks: A Memoir, by Gary Gidner. The adventures of the author, who was working at the University of Warsaw on a Fulbright scholarship, as he takes over coaching the Polish professional team.
• The Postwar Yankees: Baseball’s Golden Age Revisited, by David G. Surdam. “…Surdam deconstructs this idyllic period to show that while the Yankees piled on pennants and World Series titles throughout the 1950s, Major League baseball attendance consistently declined and gate-revenue disparity widened through the mid-1950s. Contrary to popular belief, the era was already experiencing many problems that fans of today’s game bemoan….”
• UNP is also re-issuing Farewell to Sport, by NY Daily News columnist Paul Gallico; Three Finger: The Mordecai Brown Story, by his grandchildren Cindy Thomson and Scott Brown; and Harvey Frommer’s Shoeless Joe and Ragtime Baseball.

* Review: The Code

From the Johnstown, Pa. Tribune Democrat, this review of the aforementioned book by Bernstein.

Upshot:

The problem is, Ross Bernstein’s [book] has more holes in it than Mario Mendoza’s swing.

Ouch.

* Author interview: The Code’s Ross Bernstein

From Seamheads.com, this extensive Q&A with the author of The Code: Baseball’s Unwritten Rules and It’s Ignore-at-Your-Own-Risk Code of Conduct

* Review: Hammerin’ Hank, George Almighty, and the Say Hey Kid: The Year that Changed Baseball Forever

From The Hardball Times Website, this evaluation.

Upshot:

In general, Rosengren does a good job telling these tales, and the book
makes a nice, light read. If reading about the above sounds interesting
to you, check it out.

* Review: Classic Cubs

Another example of using your place of work to promote your extracurricular activities. Here Chris DeLuca, a Sun-Times’ writer, teams up with artist John Hanley in a collaboration, Classic Cubs: A Tribute to the Men and Magic of Wrigley Field.

Upshot:

The book celebrates the rich history and bittersweet moments created by
the players, managers, owners and broadcasters who have taken part in
Cubs baseball through the years with more than 125 original oil
paintings and drawings by Hanley.

* Author interview: Michael Holley

The former Boston Globe columnist was the subject of this nepotistic interview in his former employer’s Sunday Magazine for his new book, Red Sox Rule: Terry Francona and Boston’s Rise to Dominance.