* Baseball beach reading, via ESPN

An “annotated” list of several general sports titles from ESPN’s D.J. Gallo includes baseball books such as:

• Baseball Places to See Before You Strike Out” by Josh Pahigian. Hey, who says I’m going to strike out, jerk? I was a two-time Little League All-Star. Two times! Be a bit more complimentary with your title and perhaps I will consider getting your book. Not buying it, mind you, but borrowing a copy at my local library for free.
• Yankee for Life: My 40-Year Journey in Pinstripes by Bobby Murcer. Gross. This guy could probably use a shower and some clean laundry.
• Dugout Wisdom: Life Lesson from Baseball by Dan Migala. If how to spit tobacco or spot hot chicks in the stands are the life lessons you seek, this is the book for you.
• Get in the Game: 8 Elements of Perseverance That Make the Difference by Cal Ripken Jr. It’s a good thing Ripken wasn’t No. 54 or 99 or something. This would have been a ridiculously long book.
• Red Sox Rule: Terry Francona and Boston’s Rise to Dominance by Michael Holley. Finally! A book about the Boston Red Sox. You know what I would like to read? A book about Red Sox players who golf.
• We Would Have Played for Nothing: Baseball Stars of the 1950s and 1960s Talk About the Game They Loved by Fay Vincent. No doubt all the ex-players included in this book talk about how they donated all of their baseball income to charity.
• Facing Clemens: Hitters on Confronting Baseball’s Most Intimidating Pitcher by Jonathan Mayo with a foreword by Roger Clemens. Soon to be followed by the book: Facing Clemens: Congressmen on Confronting Baseball’s Most Awesome Hero,” by Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-NC
• Living on the Black: Two Pitchers, Two Teams, One Season to Remember by John Feinstein. This book follows the 2007 seasons of New York pitchers Mike Mussina and Tom Glavine. I can’t wait for the 2008 follow-up about Phil Hughes and Oliver Perez called Dying on the White: Two Pitchers, Countless Meatballs, One Season to Forget.
• The Last Real Season: A Hilarious Look Back at 1975 — When Major Leaguers Made Peanuts, the Umpires Wore Red, and Billy Martin Terrorized Everyone by Mike Shropshire. I wasn’t alive in 1975, but my dad says that back then in the good old days, book titles stayed under 130 words.
• Yankee Stadium: The Official Retrospective by Al Santasiere. Thankfully this is not a scratch-and-sniff book.
• The Greatest Game: The Yankees, the Red Sox, and the Playoff of ‘78 by Richard Bradley. Wait a minute … I thought the Giants-Colts game in 1958 was the best game ever? Author fight! Author fight! They’ll draw their laptops at dawn at Starbucks.
• The 33-Year-Old Rookie: How I Finally Made it to the Big Leagues After Eleven Years in the Minors” by Chris Coste. Coste’s name wasn’t in the Mitchell report, so this book might actually have a surprising and inspirational story to tell.
• The View from the Upper Deck by DJ Gallo. This book isn’t brand-new like the rest of these. But any book that has stayed entrenched in the top 350,000 of the bestsellers list for an entire year must be really, really good.

* Lest we forget: Pete Gray

The one-armed outfielder for the St. Louis Browns, the poster boy for baseball during World War II, passed away in 2002.

Although said to be something of a curmudgeon, he was turned lovable in A Winner Never Quits, a pretty poor made-for-TV movie featuring Keith Carradine as the ballplayer, Mare Winningham as the obligatory love interest, Dennis Weaver and Fionula Flanigan as his “Litvak” parents, and Huckleberry Hound, I mean Huckleberry Fox (no, really, that’s the name. What the hell where his parents thinking?), as the kid who melts Gray’s heart. (Icch).

The Amazon Report on Pete Gray:

One-Armed Wonder: Pete Gray, Wartime Baseball, and the American Dream

* Leitch out as Deadspin editor

Will Leitch, founder and editor of Deadspin.com, is stepping down to take a job as a contributing editor of New York magazine. You can read his abdication announcement here.

I use that term with some consideration, since he writes of himself using the “Royal We.”

It is with heavy heart — yet mirthful disposition! — that we announce that our time as Deadspin editor is about to draw to a close. After almost three years of plugging away around here, we are leaving as editor of Deadspin on Friday, June 27.

There are always those who will find some blogs smarmy (including this one, I’m sure). After all, it’s an ego thing to think people are and/or should be interested in what you think. But some are more smarmy than others, especially those that seem to exist for no other reason that to point out the worst in people, under the guise of free speech and journalism. And those who dare complain about such blogs are considered uninformed dinosaurs (See Buzz Bissinger’s rant on the Costas Now show).

Anyway, the new editor is A.J. Daulerio and you can read about his coronation here. It will be interesting to see what changes will be forthcoming.

* History in the making

I usually don’t get overly sentimental about the game, especially the purple prose of those sportscasters around World Series and All-Star Game time, when they go off about the majestic history of the national pastime, etc.

But 2008 marks the final season of Yankee Stadium (and Shea, let’s not forget about Shea). As such the Bronx landmark was given the honor of hosting the AS Game this year and as much as I can’t stand the way FOX  handles baseball with its horrible pre-game show and its endless self-promotion, they do put out some nice commercials.

* Reports from SABR Nation

The Pastime.net reports the daily happenings at the 38th SABR convention, now wrapping up in Cleveland.

* Review: Strike Four: Adventures in European Baseball

“And now for something completely different….”

From the Baseball in Great Britain blog.

* Author profile: Fay Vincent

Author of We Would Have Played for Nothing from the Springfield, MA Republican.

Upshot: Vincent is a nice guy.

* Author profile: Steve Garvey

Author of My Bat Boy Days, from Tampa Bay Online.

Upshot: “It’s an idyllic little baseball book, 149 pages of pure Eisenhower- Kennedy era nostalgia.”

* Review: Two from Texas

From a broader review of Texas-pertinent books from the Abilene Reporter News:

Baseball history: Two historians at the University of Texas at
Arlington, Donald G. Kyle and Robert B. Fairbanks, have edited a
collection of six scholarly essays on Baseball in America &
America in Baseball (Texas A&M University Press, $29.95 hardcover).

The essays were written by professors from throughout the United
States, including one from Texas David Vaught, who teaches history at
Texas A&M. Vaught’s piece looks at baseball in rural California
from 1850 to 1890.

Other chapters consider Japanese Americans and baseball in the
1930s; the Baltimore Black Sox (winner of the American Negro League in
1929); the profitability of Major League Baseball from 1900 to 1956,
before the Dodgers and Giants moved west; the global influence of
baseball between the two World Wars; and the violent life of baseball
legend Ty Cobb.

* Review: We Are The Ship

From the SF Chronicle’s Web presence, SFGate.com.

Metaphor alert: “Baseball is more than a game. It is a microcosm of America….”