Speaking of frustration…

Another team-devoted Web site, BleedingCubbieBlue.com, offers these reviews of The Cubs, by Glenn Stout, and First Class Citizenship: The Civil Rights Letters of Jackie Robinson, edited by Michael B. Long.

Stout’s latest is much more entertaining, a coffee table book just meant for holiday giving. First Classis more scholarly. I’m reading that one now (or will be in the very near future) and will have a review of it up soon,

 

New book recalls 1977 foundering Phils

From PhilliesNation.com, this announcement of The Fall of the 1977 Phillies: How a Baseball Team’s Collapse Sank a City’s Spirit, written by Mitchell Nathanson, an associate professor at Villanova’s Law School.

 

The Bookshelf marks 10,000 hits

“I’d like to thank you on behalf of the group and I hope we passed the audition.”

Ron Shelton to turn Game of Shadows into HBO film

According to a report in Variety, Ron Shelton, who brought the baseball classic Bull Durham to the big screen, has been signed to turn Game of Shadows, the expose on Barry Bonds and steroids,  into a HBO project.

Shelton will write the script with his “Tin Cup” writing partner John Norville as soon as the writers strike ends. The film will be exec produced by Ross Greenburg, the HBO Sports president who exec produced Roger Maris biopic “61*,” and Michael Greenburg (“Stargate SG-1”), who’s now exec producer of Score Prods.

Shelton, a former minor league player, also wrote and directed Cobb, Tin Cup and White Men Can’t Jump.

istorically, it’s been difficult to turn baseball non-fiction into a feature film (See Cobb and the majority of other bio-pics. Most recently, ESPN aired The Bronx is Burning, based on Jonathan Mahler’s book about the 1977 Yankees, to mixed reviews.
No timetable for the project was released in the Variety story.

The Amazon Report: Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO, and the Steroids Scandal that Rocked Professional Sports

For a smart guy, Miller doesn’t seem to learn

A piece by Kostya Kennedy in the Dec. 3 edition of Sports Illustrated does not exactly gush over Dennis Miller’s latest venture.

Anyone tuning into Sports Unfiltered, writes Kennedy in an item titled “Snark Attack,”  “with expectations heightened byMiller’s work on HBO or his inspired stint as a weekend update anchor on Saturday Night Live is in for a disappointment.”

The program, which airs weekly on the Versus cable channel following NHL games, “doesn’t rise above the shtick, and Miller’s shtick feels increasingly forced. His analogies are often flat and strained. Sometimes they’re just false.”

I could go on; Kennedy does, but the point is made. Miller fell out of favor on Monday Night Football because of his “intellectual antics.”

Anyway, here’s a clip of Miller and Bob Costas discussing the de-merits of the latest Alex Rodriguez contract. And an interview Miller did for TV Guide.

More auction news

In addition to the Black Sox papers that mysteriously resurfaced recently, another piece of baseball history is heading to auction.

Memory Lane, Inc, a Tustin, Calif. sports collectible enterprise, will be offering Christy Mathewson’s rookie contract, dated 1900.

“Vintage baseball contracts have become more sought after in recent years by collectors, and that demand has resulted in escalating values for the items. The record for player- signed contracts is the $996,000 price realized for Babe Ruth’s 1919 rookie-year contract, which sold in June of 2005. Collectors will be watching the sale of this Mathewson contract closely to see where it ranks among the highest- priced contracts sold to date.”

According to a press release, bids on the Mathewson contract are currently being accepted online (www.memorylaneinc.com) or by phone at 877-606-LANE. The auction closes at 8 p.m. (Eastern) on Dec. 8.

The Amazon Report: Among the more highly-regarded non-fiction books on Mathewson are:

• The Player: Christy Mathewson, Baseball, and the American Century
• Pitching in a Pinch: or Baseball from the Inside (Bison Book reprint)
• Matty: An American Hero: Christy Mathewson of the New York Giants

Additionally, one of the books adjudged the best pieces of baseball fiction is Eric Rolfe Greenberg’s Matty: An American Hero: Christy Mathewson of the New York Giants

Albom’s For One More Day soon to be a minor motion picture

Sportswriter Mitch Albom, famous for his Tuesdays with Morrie best-seller, will have his latest creation For One More Day airs as an ABC-TV movie with the Oprah seal of approval.

According to IMDB.com, Day tells the story of “A suicidal former baseball player, played by Michael Imperioli, is granted one more day with his deceased mother (Ellen Burstyn).

Imperioli sat down for a Q&A for the Dec. 3 issue of Sports Illustrated (as the only baseball item, there will be no need for an additional “This week in SI“). Among other things, the actor, best known for his role on The Sopranos, says it’s all right for a Yankee fan to portray a Mets player, as long as it’s in the name of acting.

The movie airs Dec. 9. “Check your local listings for time.”

The Amazon Report: For One More Day

Basic Black Sox

A Nov. 25 article in the Chicago Sun-Times reveals that

A mysterious box of letters, memos and legal documents pertaining to the White Sox team accused of throwing the 1919 World Series — some of the papers thought to be lost since the middle of the last century — is bound for the auction block this week after being uncovered by two Chicago-area collectors.

The timing is somewhat amusing, since it comes hard on the heels of the greatest modern-day scandal in the game: Barry Bonds and his fellow steroidians.

There have been several books about the Sox, including one by Gene Carney, author of Burying the Black Sox: How Baseball’s Cover-Up of the 1919 World Series Fix Almost Succeeded, a treatise that focuses on the 1921 trial of the eight players accused of throwing the World Series against the Cincinnati Reds. Carney calls the findings a potential treasure trove. The discoveries include “drafts of memos, author-unidentified, that presaged the creation of the commissioner of baseball,” “papers apparently from the … criminal trial…and a 1924 suit in which some of those players sued the team for back pay.”

The Amazon Report: Burying the Black Sox: How Baseball’s Cover-Up of the 1919 World Series Fix Almost Succeeded

Bits and pieces

Perhaps jumping on the drug bandwagon/confessional, Otis Nixon, a former outfielder for the Atlanta Braves and other teams, is reportedly working on a book that describes his battle with drugs.

***

Actress Laraine Day passed away Nov. 10. She was dubbed the “first lady of baseball” for her marriage to Leo Durocher, then the manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Not that he needed any help, but their relationship landed him in a good deal of hot water. From The Washington Times:

Laraine was a devout Mormon who neither smoked nor drank and specialized in prim and proper B-movie roles like that of a nurse in the popular series of “Dr. Kildare” flicks. Apparently Durocher, a high-roller who was suspended from baseball for the 1947 season by commissioner Happy Chandler for associating with gamblers and other unsavory types, swept Day off her feet.

When the two began dating, if that’s the word, Laraine was married to an airport executive named Ray Hendricks who accused Durocher of seducing his wife. The Los Angeles Examiner reported the affair with a bold, black headline that screamed “DUROCHER BRANDED LOVE THIEF.”

Following Laraine’s subsequent divorce, she and Durocher were married in January 1947. A bit later, Brooklyn’s Catholic Youth Organization threatened to have its young members boycott Dodgers games because Leo had wed a divorced woman. Durocher’s suspension rendered that matter moot.

In 1952, with Durocher now in charge of the Dodgers’ crosstown rival, Doubleday published Day with the Giants, described by Biblio.com as “A wonderful book subtitled ‘Mrs. Leo Durocher tells about the drama, the humor, and the heartbreak of being a baseball wife.’”

The Amazon Report: Day with the Giants
***

The My Baseball Bias Blog carries a report that Jon Heyman will replace Tom Verducci as co-author of the upcoming Joe Torre book.

***

From The Wall Street Journal column, The Numbers Guy, this piece on why baseball players might be underpaid. Good luck convincing fans on that one. Another article, by Vince Gennaro, baseball economist and author of Diamond Dollars: The Economics of Winning in Baseball, opines about how A-Rod’s big bucks contract “makes sense” for the game.

***

From the About.com economics category, a list of sports business books, including a few older but nonetheless interesting baseball titles.

***

Peripatetic sportswriter John Feinstein’s next book will be Living on the Black: Two Pitchers, Two Teams, One Season to Remember, an study of two New York hurlers: the Yankees’ Mike Mussina and Tom Glavine of the Mets. Both achieved lofty marks this year with Glavine winning his 300th game and Mussina his 250th. One of my favorite all-time books was his prescient Play Ball: The Life and Troubled Times of Major League Baseball, published in 1993 — before the strike.

The Amazon Report: Living on the Black: Two Pitchers, Two Teams, One Season to Remember

***

A review of The Best Sportswriting of 2007 by Jerry Greene of the Orlando Sentinel.

***

***

Catching up: Bonds

Hope you all enjoyed your holidays. Gave me a chance to catch up on some reading.

Here’s a brief clip of Jose Canseco on Dennis Miller’s Sports Unfiltered discussing — what else — his use of steroids. Word is that Canseco is working on a sequel to Juiced. With the Bonds’ situation, his book will probably become a topic of interest again, similar to Game of Shadows.

You hear a lot of sports pundits talk about removing Bonds’ statistics from the record books. But here’s my question:

What do you do about the Giants’ records? How many of Bonds’ home runs and RBI contributed to the team’s won-loss mark? Many, undoubtedly. Does that mean you have to adjust the pitchers’ statistics, too, since their victories were the result of Bonds’ “cheating?” And if you remove his personal stats, wouldn’t that have a concurrent affect on the team’s offensive numbers? How do you “make it up” to the pitchers who were the losing victims in such games? Just a thought.

This whole thing of making Bonds’ the example is starting to annoy. “If” he did all of which he’s accused, he was not the only one. Should the records of those other players suspected (but not proven) of taken PHDs be similarly vacated? And what about those who were caught and suspended?

This week (Nov. 26) in Sports Illustrated

One might have expected a feature item on Barry Bonds’ indictment, but instead Tom Verducci opines on a much smaller scale in “The Age of Innocence, Take 2.” On a recent episode of Pardon the Interruption, Dan Le Betard and Tony Kornheiser parried back and forth about whether Alex Rodriguez is a likely successor to the throne of greatest player. Perhaps, but God forbid he ever tests positive for anything.

SI also noted the death of Joe Nuxall, who, at the tender age of 15, became the youngest player in Major League history in 1944. Greg Hoard wrote Nuxhall’s biography, Joe: Rounding Third and Heading for Home, which was published by Orange Frazer Press in 2004.

Speaking of A-Rod, he earns several caricatures in various forms, including Ole-Rod, Gray-Rod, Sleigh-Rod, A-Zod, Beret-Rod, A-God, and, my favorite, Oy Vey-Rod.

On the negative side, a list of “Sports’ Biggest Losers” includes the Royals’ Mikey Sweeney who has played in 1,282 losing efforts for a .404 winning percentage.Rounding out the top five are Greg Norton, Aubrey Huff, Carl Crawford, and Frank Catalanotto.

The Amazon Report: Joe: Rounding Third & Heading for Home

DiMaggio biographer to pen A-Rod book

Richard Ben Cramer, author of Joe DiMaggio: The Hero’s Life, is working on a biography of American League MVP Alex Rodriguez.

Last month, he told Publishers Weekly he expected A-Rod, who had declared free agency, to re-sign with his old team. So basically there were only two options: Either he would or he wouldn’t. Cramer had a 50-50 chance of being right. It wasn’t as if there were five or six clubs from which to predict where the superstar would end up. Is that such a big deal that PW needs to crow that he got it right, other than to add an extra promo for the upcoming project?

In a separate article, Cramer told PW he’d been working on the project for “more than a year,” although he had yet to start the actually writing yet, and that it would be “a full biography. It’s also a look at what the modern sports star is. It’s a whole different life than we think of from prior days.” He said would not be “doing a ‘DiMaggio’ on Rodriguez.” The 2000 bio on the Yankee Clipper received mixed reviews and was criticized for its portrayal of the man who was considered the Greatest Living Player as cheap, selfish and misanthropic.

There is no scheduled publication date at this point.

Cramer can be thankful that Rodriguez will be staying in New York. He understood how the change in locale could affect the book’s sales. “I mean if he goes to the Arizona Diamondbacks, that’s different from going to the Dodgers or the Angels,” he told PW.

As for his move from S&S to Twelve, the upstart house that is still in its first year, Cramer said, . “S&S did not want this book, so we took it to Jon Karp and, God bless him, he’s very excited. There’s a second book in the deal. I’m not sure what it is. I guess I’ll have had my say about baseball at that point.”

“We’re thrilled, honored and ecstatic about publishing Richard Ben Cramer,” Jonathan Karp, publisher/editor-in-chief of Twelve told PW. “He’s a singular writer. I’m a bigger Richard Ben Cramer fan than I am an A-Rod fan and this is all about publishing one of America’s greatest literary journalists, that’s what this is about.”

“I didn’t start out [thinking] that it was going to get done quick,” continued Cramer, “so that I could take advantage of the news of the month or the news of the week. Everybody recommends acceleration to me, but I’ve never tried it.” Cramer laughs before adding, “This guy’s news value is not going to diminish. He’s a crossover star.”

In an e-mail to RKsBaseballBookshelf, Cary Goldstein, Twelve’s director of publicity and acquisitions editor, wrote, “Richard Ben Cramer is one of the great writers of our time, and we are proud to be his publisher. His A-Rod book promises to be a classic.”

Bonds of The Week

From The Week, a small sampling of the coverage of the Bonds indictment,

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Today’s audio selection: Clemente

Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball’s Last Hero, by David Maraniss, narrated by the author.

There was a multiple full-page advertisement in the Nov. 18 sports section of The New York Times urging that Clemente’s number 21 be retired from the game, a la Jackie Robinson in 1997. The first Latino superstar, the sponsors argue, faced just as much animosity as the Dodgers’ infielder with the added burden of a language barrier. Needless to say, there is a fair amount of controversy here. One camp says that adding anymore baseball-wide retired numbers diminishes the honor paid to Robinson, while others say it is a fitting tribute to a man who gave his life trying to help others.

Listen here:

The “Amazon” report: Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball’s Last Hero

As predicted…

Game of Shadows Given New Life With Barry Bonds Indictment
from today’s Publishers Weekly e-mail:

Lisa Johnson, Gotham’s v-p/executive of publicity/director of marketing for Gotham/Dutton books, told PW that Gotham is looking into resoliciting the book, as well as conducting a radio interview tour. “Stations have been calling,” publicity manager Beth Parker told PW, “and I’ve actually been passing stuff along directly to the San Francisco Chronicle where Lance [Williams] has been taking a lot of stuff. He did a bunch of interviews yesterday. It’s in all of the papers today. It’s on the front page of the New York Times and the New York Post, the Daily News. Every timeline that mentions Barry Bonds mentions Game of Shadows.”

So far Game of Shadows has sold 200,000 copies in hardcover and has 65,000 copies in print in trade paperback after four printings. “We saw a big blip in sales during the home run race in August,” Parker said, “and we’re expecting another surge in sales [because of the indictment].” At present there are no plans to go back to press, “but if it warrants it we will,” added Parker.

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