* RK Review: In the Best Interests of the Game?

The Revolutionary Reign of Bud Selig

By Andrew Zimbalist (Wiley, 2007)

The review appears in the current edition of SABR’s Baseball Research Journal.

* RK Review: Satchel: The Life and Times of An American Legend

by Larry Tye (Random House).

As appears on Bookreporter.com.

* “But is it good for the Jews?”

Is an eternal question, and one that Bloomberg.com takes up in this piece, which prominently features Howard Megdal and his book, The Baseball Talmud.

* Letters from Lou

ESPN’s Outside the Lines provided this touching look at the correspondence of the Iron Horse after his diagnosis with ALS and his retirement from baseball. You can read copies of the letters as well as view video of his famous farewell speech, delivered on 70 years ago today. Kirk Minihane from  sports radoio station WEEI serving New England wonders how the Gehrig legend would stand up if he had played in contemporary times, given the way we cover our sports heroes these days.

From Ken Burns’ documentary:

And from Pride of the Yankees, starring Gary Cooper:

RK Review: The bigger comeback trail

Darryl Strawberry and Josh Hamilton. Brothers from different mothers.

Both had all the talent in the world. Both were number one draft picks (Strawberry in 1980, Hamilton in 1999) and were expected to do great things.Both became born-again Christians when their lves turned toward the dark side. And both have autobiographies in which they openly talk about their dependency issues.

In Straw: Finding My Way (Ecco, 2009), the former Met, Dodgers, Giant, and Yankee agonizes over the mistakes he has made over and over again. Like many young athletes, he was given too much too soon when he made it to the big leagues and didn’t know how to hand it. He spent what should have been his Hall of Fame years drinking, drugging, and womanizing. Even when he found God and became born-again, the problems persisted. Numerous trips to support groups might have been a temporary help, but after awhile he found his way back to depravity, including violence against his wives, despite — or maybe because of — the fact the he had to deal with domestic violence himself as a child.

Straw, written with Joh Straugbaugh, is the ballplayer’s purgative, it seems. He wants forgiveness and understanding. He knows he let his fans, family, and friends down and wants to be “good” again. The narrative is frank; he makes no excuses for his behavior other than a lack of discipline.

Then we have Josh Hamilton’s 2008 offering, Beyond Belief: Finding the Strength to Come Back, written with Tim Keown. Hamilton, the top pick by the Tampa Bay Rays, had the family support Strawberry was missing, but that ultimately didn’t help. He, too, fell in with a bad crowd, at first experimenting with tattoos, then turning to drink, then cocaine, and finally, crack. He too, lived with the shame of disappointing a family that didn’t know how to help him, and fans disgusted with the talent he wasted.

Beyond Belief seems to have become a favorite of the inspirational circuit, perhaps because it’s been a round longer, perhaps because Hamilton is still an active player and fresher in the minds of the public. His exhibit of power at the 2007 home run derby will be talked about for years. As a skeptic, I can only wish him the best. His story is even more graphic and frightening than Strawberry’s. At least Straw had relatively lengthy and successful career; Hamilton is still an open book. Unfortunately, he sustained another injury earlier this year. Let’s hope he doesn’t suffer a relapse: that’s how his first foray into substance abuse started.

Perhaps because Hamilton’s story ahs been out awhile, it’s become a favorite on the inspirational circuit. If either of these titles can do some good, if they can help readers of any age or race, I believe that would mean more to the authors than sales figures.

One is retired, his career, while good, could have been so much more. The other is still playing, and the jury remains out. Too many times we have heard promises

* But of course, the Irish love baseball

From the Irish Times, this review of Tye’s new book.

Upshot:

[F]ormer Boston Globe reporter Larry Tye has done a fine job of separating fact from fiction in Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend , published by Random House. Combing through back issues of black-audience newspapers of the day and the memoirs of Paige’s contemporaries, he has produced a book that may not solve the riddle, but is the nearest thing to a definitive account possible.

* TWIBB — July 3

This week in baseball books, featuring the best-sellers according to Amazon.com on Friday, July 3.

Title	Rank
General
Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend, Tye	1
The Yankee Years, Torre and Verducci	2
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, Lewis	3
As They See ‘Em: A Fan’s Travels in the Land of Umpires, Weber	4
Munson: The Life and Death of a Yankee Captain, Appel	5
Essays and Writing
Moneyball	1
As They See ‘Em	2
Heart of the Game: Life, Death, and Mercy in Minor League America, Price	3
Beyond Belief: Finding the Strength to Come Back, Hamilton and Keown	4
Now I Can Die in Peace: How The Sports Guy Found Salvation Thanks to the World Champion (Twice!) Red Sox, Simmons	5
History
Satchel	1
Munson: The Life and Death of a Yankee Captain, Appel	2
Yogi Berra, Eternal Yankee, Barra	3
Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig, Eig	4
The Road to Omaha: Hits, Hopes, and History at the College World Series, McGee	5
Statistics
Watching Baseball Smarter, Hample	1
Baseball Prospectus 2009: The Essential Guide to the 2009 Baseball Season	2
The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball, Tango et al	3
Baseball Between the Numbers: Why Everything You Know About the Game is Wrong, Baseball Prospectus	4
The New Bill James Historical Abstract	5

Analysis: Two books about the lives and deaths of Yankee captains this week.

* Now hear this: new baseball audiobook titles

Larry Tye’s new biography has generated renewed interst in Paige’s own (purported) autobio.

There are two versions of Jane Leavy’s book on Sandy Koufax, the first abridged (6 hours, 14 minutes), narrated by Robert Pinsky (his named is listed, but it dosn’t sound like a male voice on the sample); the latter, unabridged (almost 10 hours), by sports broadcaster Charley Steiner.

And finally, this abridged audio version of Dan Shuaghnessy’s Curse of the Bambino

* National Pastime Radio update

* Yesterday, Larry Tye, author of the new Satchel Paige biography, was a guest on The Leonard Lopate Show.

Hear it here:

* A recent episode of Radio Lab considered the likelihood of athletics streaks, including Joe DiMaggio’s 56-gamer. Superior ability or just random chance?

You can here it here:

* The June 23 program for Soundcheck looked at music at the ballpark. Which do you prefer? Old-fashioned organ music or blaring rock?

Hear it here:

* Bruce Weber, author of the excellent examination of the lot of aspiring umpires, was interviewed on Talk of the Nation on June 30. The link includes an excerpt of the book.

Hear it here:

* A new old collectible comes under scrutiny by Feds

According to this story in The New York Times, letters from 19th-century baseball luminary Harry Wright was supposed to be put up at auction, butthe FBI thinks they may have been illegally obtained from the NY Public Library.

I’m sure many of my readers remember letters when they were written with pen and ink, not on an electronic device.

* “Dictionary” Dickson project freshens up classic baseball titles

Dover Publications, under the direction of contributing editor Paul Dickson, has just begun a series of classic books on sports with an emphasis on baseball titles, which are running about 3:1 over other sports.

The line will be varied to include fiction but its early emphasis is on autobiography and oral history. Connie Mack’s My 66 Years in the Big League, with a new introduction by Rich Westcott, was published in April and Ty Cobb’s My Twenty Years in Baseball, with a new introduction by Dickson has just been published. It was edited by Ron Cobb (no relation to the Hall of Famer). Forthcoming titles this year include Larry Moffi’s This Side of Cooperstown. In 2010, Dover will re-issue Bill Mead’s Even the Browns, John B Holway’s Voices from the Great Black Baseball Leagues , and a re-discovered Babe Ruth autobiography that was serialized in 1920. The Ruth book will be edited by Ron Cobb who found the original newspaper series.

In addition, Dover recently came to an agreement with Peter Golenbock to re-publish and re-illustrate Bums: An Oral History of the Brooklyn Dodgers and Dynasty—The New York Yankees 1949-1964.

More titles are under consideration at this moment and Dover is looking for other nominations of high-quality works to reprint in both baseball and other sports. Dickson would love to hear directly from others with ideas for the series and can be reached through his webpage: pauldicksonbooks.com. His mailing address for anyone wanted to submit a book or manuscript is P.O.Box 280, Garrett Park, MD 20896.

* No wonder they canned Moneyball

Given the draft of the script.

I’ll watch anything about baseball. Cartoons, documentaries, lousy films (Jackie Robinson was a great ballplayer, but a poor actor). But this draft of the aborted Brad Pitt vehicle would sorely try my patience (Groucho Marx: “Don’t mind if I do. You must try mine sometime.”).

Moneyball, the non-fiction neo-classic by Michael Lewis about Billy Beane, former failed-ballplayer turned general manager of the Oakland Athletics, was a great book but I never understood how anyone could possibly believe it could be turned into a feature film, regardless of star power.

The movie version, again judging solely from the script, is such a cliched story: Beane is an iconoclast who bucks the system to turn his team around, making them a contender for the American League pennant. He has a nebishy sidekick (supposedly to have been played by Dmitri Martin, a hot-comedian-du-jour), a computer geek and advocate of statistical guru Bill James (another system bucker). Together they battle conventional wisdom spouted by crew-cut wearing veteran baseball scouts and develop a new and unorthodox way of evaluating ballplayers, which, according to said scouts will never work. Along the way they pick up a broken down player on whom everyone else has pretty much given up; if he was a drunk he could be the Dennis Hopper character in Hoosiers.

This is a combination of Bad News Bears and Major League. According to the draft – and I don’t know if this was the final one; there was lots of speculation about problems with the script — there are lots of overdone effects, including voice overs, freeze frames, and slow motions included to drive the point home.

* A new slant on baseball issues

Thanks to the NY Times’ Freakonomics blog, I came across FlipFlopFlyball, an off-shoot of flipflopflyin.com, which offers some unusual charts regarding the national pastime. In one, we see just how many Native Americans actually live in Cleveland (which gave me a few ideas for future charts)*, an unusual representation of when teams broke the color line, how far the average number of pitches in a single season might extend, and how much stolen bases are really worth.

The site is the brainchild of Craig Robinson, a 38-year-old ex-pat Brit living, for a little while at least, in Bellingham, Wash., though through a series of unfortunate circumstances, he will be moving to Berlin in the near future. But he graciously took a few minutes to answer some questions about FlipFlopFlyball.

***

Bookshelf: Where did the idea for FlipFlopFlyball come from?
Robinson: Well, it all came about because I’m relatively new to the game. There’s so much history to learn, and I think baseball does a good job at keeping the history important and relevant. I’m not very good at retaining information, so making visual aids helps. That and I’m just curious about a lot of things. As I’m sure you’re well aware, baseball lends itself well to thinking about stuff while the game is going on.

I’m English. I’ve been a frequent visitor, I spent last summer here, and I’ve been here for eight months, but things didn’t work out, so I’m going back to Europe and late nights watching games on MLB.com. I was on a business trip, and expressed an interest in going to see a game, so one of the guys I was working with — a Yankee fan — sorted out tickets and we went a couple of days later.  It was that that sparked the interest. I sometimes have moral conflicts about the organization, but you can’t help which uniform you root for, huh? My favorite player, though, is Ichiro. Always a joy to watch, even if he’s seemingly doing nothing, just stood around in right field.

Bookshelf: How long have you been doing these?
Robinson: Since about 2006, but most of the stuff has been doing this year.

Bookshelf: How do you create the graphics?
Robinson: I use Excel to statistically create the charts, but I pretty them up in Photoshop.

Bookshelf: I see the posts are fairly sporadic. Are they time consuming to produce?
Robinson: Some more so that others. I tend to do them when an idea for something pops into my head. I’m a freelance illustrator and I create these when my work schedule allows me the time to get into it. I don’t really like starting and stopping during making one, so it’s good to have a day or two to concentrate.

Bookshelf: So, what’s up with the minipops (right)?
Robinson: Ha. Erm, I dunno, I started drawing those in 1999, just to see how small I could draw people and have them still be recognizable. The baseball ones are filleted out of a much larger collection on my main website.

* More team-related queries:

• How many native Americans reside in Atlanta?
• What is the bear, tiger, diamondback, blue jay, oriole, marlin, cardinal, and devil ray population in those respective locations?
• How many inmates are there in the Pittsburgh prison system?
• How many astronauts live/work in Houston (and NASA employees in general)?
• How many communists live in Cincinnati?
• How many members of royal families in KC?
• How many America-born Northerners live in NY?
• How many brewmeisters live in Milwaukee?
• How many fisherman in Seattle, both professional and recreational?
• How many members of the Texas Rangers law enforcement department in Texas?
• How many people over 6′10″ in San Francisco?
• How many clergymen (and/or nurses or theatrical producers) in Los Angeles/Anaheim and San Diego (Christian only)?
• How many sets of twins live in Minn./St. Paul?
• How many athletes (people who participate in sports) in Oakland, again, professional and recreational?
• How many U.S. citizens in reside in Washington DC?
• How many clothing stores in Chicago and Boston that sell socks (well assume red and white would be included)?

* I don’t want to say “I told you so,” but…

Joe Mauer on the June 29 cover of SI? He was batting .407 when the story was published, which according to Baseball-Reference.com, must have been June 21. Since then? Five hits in 25 at bats, dropping his average 21 points to .386. Zack Greinke had a similar drop off shortly after he appeared.

I wonder if any one has ever declined the honor of being the cover story?  If I were an athlete on a hot streak and I saw an SI rep coming my way, I’d run screaming in the opposite direction.

* New York, New York: A “Freaky” assessment

From Stephen J. Dubner on The New York Times‘ Freakonomics blog (It’s okay; the original Freakonomics still sits on my bookshelf), this assessment of the decline of Western civilization, as evidenced by the boorish behavior of fans at last night’s interleague game between the Mets and Yankees.

* Review: Heart of the Game

Tuls World published this review/profile of S.L. Price’s consideration Heart of the Game: Life, Death, and Mercy in Minor League America, the story of Mike Coolbaugh, who was killed by a line drive foul while coaching first abse for the Tulsa Drillers.

* Review: Satchel and The Baltimore Elite Giants

Paul Dickson, editor of the popular Dickson Baseball Dictionary, published this double review of Negro L:eague baseball in The Washington Times.

* Author Q&A: Bill Reynolds

Dugout Central conducted this interview with Reynolds, author of ‘78: The Boston Red Sox, A Historic Game, and a Divided City

* Review: Satchel

The Christian Science Monitor published this review of Larry Tye’s well-received biography of the Negro League legend.

Upshot:

It’s about time somebody wrote a good biography of Satchel Paige, the great baseball pitcher, personality, showman, and entrepreneur. In Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend, journalist Larry Tye has done just that.

Likewise, the Boston Globe:

Tye’s writing is a pleasure, relaxed but economical, providing a more vivid sense of life in black baseball than any of the several other books on Paige and the Negro Leagues.

By the way, congratulations to Tye for having his book break into The New York Times‘ best-seller list this week. It debuted at number 15 last week and is at number 13 this week. Joe Torre’s The Yankee Years is in the ninth spot, having spent 14 weeks on the list.

* Review: Pull Up a Chair

The American Spectator published this review of Curt Smith’s new book, embelmatic of an increasing sentiment.

Upshot:

Unfortunately, Smith gives us a wealth of good information in a pedestrian writing style, clipped and choppy and occasionally incoherent. He sometimes changes subject in the middle of a paragraph. There are quotes where it’s hard to tell who is being quoted. Smith often uses a quirky kind of shorthand, full of words followed by colons, so that the book sometimes has the feel of a Power Point presentation rather than a coherent, flowing narrative. The reader has to work harder than he should have to in order to get the sense of Smith’s presentation. Just the opposite of listening to Scully.

* Lest we forget: Thurman Munson

The collaborator and biographer work at different ends of the life story spectrum. The former writes an as-told-to memoir controlled (but not always read) by the star.

The biographer broadens the story in ways that may upset the star or his family.

Formers Yankees PR director Marty Appel, who worked with the late Yankees catcher on his “autobiography” in the 1970s, comes out with a book all his own, generating this thoughtful piece by Richard Sandomir in today’s New York Times.

Munson passed away 30 years ago, this Aug. 2.

* Chafets opines on steroids and the Hall of Fame

Zev Chafets, author of Cooperstown Confidential, published this Op-Ed piece in the June 19 edition of The New York Times (”Let steroids into the Hall of Fame“). will Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, et al now become loyal Times readers?

[T]oday’s superstars have lawyers and a union. They know how to use the news media. And they have plenty of money. The only way to punish them is to deny them a place in Cooperstown. The punishment has already been visited on Mark McGwire, and many more are on deck.

This makes no sense. On any given day, the stands are packed with youngsters on Adderall and Ritalin (stimulants used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) and college students who use Provigil (an anti-narcolepsy drug) as a study aid. The guy who sings the national anthem has probably taken a beta blocker to calm his stage fright. Like it or not, chemical enhancement is here to stay. And it is as much a part of the national game as $5.50 hot dogs, free agency and Tommy John elbow surgery.

Purists say that steroids alter the game. But since the Hall opened its doors, baseball has never stopped changing. Batters now wear body padding and helmets. The pitcher’s mound has risen and fallen. Bats have more pop. Night games affect visibility. Players stay in shape in the off-season. Expansion has altered the game’s geography. And its demography has changed beyond recognition. Babe Ruth never faced a black pitcher. As Chris Rock put it, Ruth’s record consisted of “714 affirmative-action home runs.” This doesn’t diminish Ruth’s accomplishment, but it puts it into context.

Needless to say, the piece generated a fair amount of comment, most con.

* Moneyball and the big screen…or not

I must admit, I agree with the SF Chronicle’s Gwen Knapp in her column where she avers that the book was not meant to be a feature film.

In fact, the fate of the movie might have been more dramatic than any material “Moneyball” could have provided. What would have constituted the big moments in the film? Billy Beane in a confrontation with old-time scouts, holding up a laptop and saying: “Gentlemen, this is the future?”

You certainly weren’t going to see the players sitting around the clubhouse pondering their disadvantages of small-market status and getting a “Win one for the Gipper” speech from Art Howe.

And here’s another county heard from, TV comedy writer Ted Levine (M*A*SH, Cheers, The Simpsons, etc.):

What puzzles me is how this project got on the fast track in the first place. First off, it’s a baseball movie. They usually tank overseas (as my international readers who are probably thinking of bailing just reading the word baseball can attest). And it’s from a non-fiction book. Here’s what I imagine was the pitch. You tell me if you’d buy this.

One more piece, slightly more favorable, which includes a link to a draft of the actual script.

* Timeless classics

Is it just me, or does that seem like a redundancy? Anyway three all-time favorites are on this list posted to Hoopla.com. And sorry, but as the years go on, I wonder if Ball Four will, in fact, lose its edge.

* TWIBB — June 26

This week in baseball books, featuring the best-sellers according to Amazon.com on Friday, June 19.

Title	Rank
General
Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend, Tye	1
The Yankee Years, Torre and Verducci	2
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, Lewis	3
The Science of Hitting, Williams	4
As They See ‘Em: A Fan’s Travels in the Land of Umpires, Weber	5
Essays and Writing
Moneyball	1
As They See ‘Em	2
Heart of the Game: Life, Death, and Mercy in Minor League America, Price	3
Beyond Belief: Finding the Strength to Come Back, Hamilton and Keown	4
Now  I Can Die in Peace: How The Sports Guy Found Salvation Thanks to the World Champion (Twice!) Red Sox, Simmons	5
History
Satchel	1
Yogi Berra, Eternal Yankee, Barra	2
The Road to Omaha: Hits, Hopes, and History at the College World Series, McGee	3
Thurman Munson: The Life and Death of a Yankee Captain, Appel	4
Now  I Can Die in Peace	5
Statistics
Watching Baseball Smarter, Hample	1
The New Bill James Historical Abstract, James   The Book, Tango, Lichtman et al	2
The Bill James Gold Mine 2009	3
The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball, Tango et al	4
Baseball Prospectus 2009: The Essential Guide to the 2009 Baseball Season	5

Analysis: Marty Appel’s new bio of Munson is scheduled for release 30 years after Munson died in a plane crash. Larry Tye is maing the rounds discussing his bio of Paige. He’s been on NPR’s Only a Game and Fresh Air within the past couple of weels. Books on A-Rod and Clemens drop off the list this week. The news about the  Moneyball movie (and its problems) could mean even more sales for the popular title. continues to be a favorite. Surprisin to seen an old classic instrucional back on the list (Williams).

The Heart of the Game is the too-sad story of Mike Coolbaugh, killed last year when he was hit in the head by a foul line drive while coach first base in the minors. Reading this one now. Wouldn’t be surprised if it became a movie, on the We Are Marshall mode.