* A conversation with Scott Brick, audiobook narrator

I’m a big fan of audiobooks. It fills in the empty spaces during the commute and increases the number of books I can get to.

The narrator of the individual pieces can make or break the experience. Some are lyrical and others sound almost computer-generated. You can almost hear when they know their subject, that they have a care and pride in what they’re presenting.

Scott Brick has recorded more than 400 titles and has been the recipient of more than 40 Earphones Awards for his work, as well as the 2003 Audie Award for Dune: The Butlerian Jihad. Audiofile Magazine named him “one of the fastest-rising stars in the audiobook galaxy,” and proclaimed him a Golden Voice. He was also the subject of a front-page story in The Wall Street Journal.

Brick, an avowed Dodgers follower and knowledgeable baseball fan, has recorded several audio books on the national pastime, include The Big Bam: The Life and Times of Babe Ruth, and Ted Williams: The Biography of an American Hero, both by Leigh Montville; Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO, & the Steroids Scandal that Rocked Professional Sports, by Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams; and Emperors and Idiots: The Hundred-Year Rivalry Between the Yankees and the Red Sox, by Mark Vaccaro.

Here are some samples of his work:

The Big Bam:

Ted Williams:

Game of Shadows:

Emperors and Idiots:

I had a conversation with Brick, 43, to discuss the arduous process of turning the written word into sound, his love of the game, and the artistic (and laborious) differences between abridged and unabridged versions. He was very generous with his time (i.e., it’s a long interview, logging in at just over 30 minutes).

A conversation with Scott Brick:

* The “other” writer in the Torre kerfuffle

Tom Verducci, Sports Illustrated’s senior baseball writer, was already the subject of an interview about The Yankee Years by his employer, but here’s another.

Does the fact that SI is interviewing one of its own with one of its own (in this most recent case Alex Belth is credited, although there’s no reproter named for the first) bother anyone else? Let alone the fact that they’re jumping on the publicity bandwagon, hoping to attract more readers wanting to read the except in advance of the book coming out this week.

* Sportswriter on Torre book: So what?

Well said, sir.

In another piece about the Torre book, Jay Price of the Staten Island Advance notes what a long, slow off-season it’s been for the sports desks:

Most of the revelations turned out to be as shocking as finding out Rush Limbaugh’s not planning any sleepovers at the Obama White House.

What’s that you say? A-Rod’s needy?

Gary Sheffield’s stand-offish?

Well, knock me down with a feather.

Next thing you know, somebody will be telling us David Wells was fat.

He goes on to say about those sports reporters who have been crying over a perceived betrayal,

Because the guys writing all those frothy stories about narcissism and betrayal at the corner of 161st Street and River Avenue hadn’t read it. [See my previous entry about Wells.]

Not that that it stopped them from being appalled — in much the same way the Vichy police captain in “Casablanca” was shocked to learn there was gambling at Rick’s — that Torre would violate the what-happens-here-stays-here sanctity of the clubhouse.

Anyone who can put baseball and Casablanca in the same paragraph is aces with me. But he should have added Shakespeare, too.

Much Ado About Nothing.

* Another county heard from

I’m surprised it’s taken this long for players who have written books to come out against Joe Torre.

David Wells — no stranger to controversy himself — evidently called his former manager a “punk” for breaking “the code” and dishing dirt.

The story, reported here by the New York Daily News, offers Wells’ thoughts: “When you break the code, you’re a punk,” Wells said on a Los Angeles sports radio talk show. “If he broke the code, he’s a punk, absolutely.”

Note the word “if,” which leads one to wonder if Wells has read the book — or any, judging by his self-proclaimed sloth in his own auto-bio, Perfect I’m Not: Boomer on Beer, Brawls, Backaches and Baseball, published just before the 2003 season.

And as an example of why some people hate blogs, USA Today’s ” Game On” focuses on Well’s meaning of the word “punk.”

“David Wells calls Torre a male prostitute?” the headline reads, noting that “Webster’s New World dictionary has a few definitions of punk. Wells was either calling Torre a male prostitute, a smoldering piece of wood, being of poor quality or a young hoodlum.”

Obviously, you can rule out the wood business, but — and maybe it’s my age — what percentage of readers would jump immediately to male prostitute? Is that what the common usage is these days? The problem with the written word is that it often loses something in translation.

It’s just like these teaser headlines one constantly finds on their AOL or Comcast home page: “Grey’s Anatomy star caught in love triangle.” Except the “star” is some third-string actor who appeared on one episode. But they’ve piqued your interest and gotten you to make that all-important “click.”

* Close on Updike, but no cigar

I went looking online to see if I could find an audio rendition of Updike’s essay, “Hub fans bid Kid adieu.” I know it was recorded during a Symphony Special performance of stories and poems about the national pastime (the recording was released in 2006), but wouldn’t you know it: the two portions of the program made available as separate podcasts omitted that particular piece.

If you can’t find it on iTunes (through Public Radio International), you can purchase it through Audible.com. It’s well worth the price. Just look at this lineup. In addition to Updike’s essay, read by Jack Davidson, you have:

• Roger Angell and A. Bartlett Giamatti’s “Play by Play”
• Rolfe Humphries’ “Polo Grounds” read by Fritz Weaver
• Robert Francis’ “Pitcher” and “Base Stealer” read by Arthur French
• Robert Fitzgerald’s “Cobb Would Have Caught It” read by Jonathan Hadary
• Roger Angell’s “Game Six” read by the author
• Yusef Komunyakaa’s “Glory” read by Isaiah Sheffer
• W.P. Kinsella’s “The Thrill of the Grass” read by John Shea
• Ken Kalfus’ “The Joy and Melancholy Baseball Trivia Quiz” read by Davidson
• T.C. Boyle’s “The Hector Quesadilla Story” read by Jerry Zaks
• Giamatti’s “The Green Fields of the Mind” read by the author

Here’s a sample from the Angell/Giammati segment:

* Lest we forget: “Rabbit” at rest

John Updike, one of the great writers of the 20th century, passed away yesterday at the age of 76.

Although he was known primarily for his novels, particularly his series of “Rabbit” books, Updike found the time to write one of the most famous (baseball) essays of all time. “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu,” about Ted Williams’ final game, has long been a staple in sportswriting anthologies and includes a paragraph stands out and is often excerpted as an example of premium writing:

Like a feather caught in a vortex, Williams ran around the square of bases at the center of our beseeching screaming. He ran as he always ran out home runs—hurriedly, unsmiling, head down, as if our praise were a storm of rain to get out of. He didn’t tip his cap. Though we thumped, wept, and chanted “We want Ted” for minutes after he hid in the dugout, he did not come back. Our noise for some seconds passed beyond excitement into a kind of immense open anguish, a wailing, a cry to be saved. But immortality is nontransferable. The papers said that the other players, and even the umpires on the field, begged him to come out and acknowledge us in some way, but he never had and did not now. Gods do not answer letters.

The story originally appeared in the Oct. 22, 1960 issue of The New Yorker, and can be read here.

One of the great headlines marking the author’s passing comes from the Quincy (MA) Patriot Ledger: “Readers bid Updike adieu.” King Kaufman, who handles sports for Salon.com, wrote this tribute, “John Updike, baseball writer.”

* Torre: The saga continues

A feeling of discomfort brought on by the use of  the word “betrayal” by many sports pundits has Joe Torre on the defensive.

In this piece from yesterday’s NYTimes.com, the former Yankee manager seeks to right the wrong impressions that the publisher’s marketing department probably looooves.  You can practically see them rubbing their hands with glee. Or maybe it’s Purel.  I can’t see from here. More controversy means more sales, so as long as you can keep your product in the public eye. And ear, let’s not forget about sports talk radio. I wonder if they deliberately screen callers to get those in the anti-Torre camp on the air. I wonder how many of the people yelling about what a terrible thing this is — or not — have actually read the book?

Here’s another item from USA Today’s “Game On” blog, wondering if the book will hurt Torre’s reputation.

I guess that all those who are coming out against Torre are disappointed that he wasn’t a good soldier and kept his mouth shut, as if he isn’t allowed to express an opinion. Where is it written (obviously not in his book) that you can’t say anything negative about a player? In fact, is he really saying anything a significant number of Yankee fans have already expressed? That Rodriguez is very concerned with his image, perhaps more than his contributions to the team? How hypocritical is that?

* Torre update

Now begins the backpedaling.

Torre and Cashman are still pals, says this article by Jack Curry in today’s NY Times. And Richard Sandomir contributes this thoughtful column on the style the author’s used (third person): “a hybrid in the sphere of celebrity autobiographies, in which a star hires a writer to render his or her life, thoughts, antics and deeds in a first-person narrative.”

The book has something of a split personality: part Verducci’s reporting, part Torre’s words. The book’s credit line could be “by Tom Verducci with the extraordinary cooperation of Joe Torre.”

Bill Thomas, Doubleday’s senior vice president, editor-in-chief and publisher, said the merged structure was envisioned from the beginning, back in 2007.

“It was designed to be a full-fledged narrative of baseball in those years, the Yankees and all of baseball, so a first-person narrative would have been clumsy,” Thomas said in a telephone interview.

Sandomir notes that readers might find the format a bit odd:

If the structure is not confusing (Torre’s quotations are all over the place), readers may occasionally wonder: what did Torre say that does not appear in quotation marks? When, if ever, did Torre (or Verducci) mute the manager’s strongest views to let other characters voice them? When Verducci asserts that some Yankees called Alex Rodriguez “A-Fraud” (which you don’t doubt because of Verducci’s great reputation), is Torre’s concurrence implicit in more tempered assessments?

On yesterday’s Pardon The Interruption, Michael Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser discussed the situation as their second story (after the Super Bowl).

“It’s very smart to create an environment where you can sell a book and to leak stuff where Joe Torre allegedly says of Alex Rodriguez he’s A-Fraud instead of A-Rod and he’s critical of Brian Cashman and then is able to back away from it,” said Kornheiser. “Nothing I have heard so far seems unreasonable [as far as Torre's taking "shots" against A-Rod].”

Wilbon agreed, “There’s nothing inflammatory in here,” although a lot of people — especially New Yorkers, he said, — probably wish there was. “Joe doesn’t do that,” said Wilbon. Kornheiser concluded the segment by adding that based on the past collaboration between Torre and Verducci, he believed that “everything that’s in there Torre has said and resaid.”

Here’s an audio sample from their first book:

and an excerpt.

* The Great Experiment

(No, not Jackie Robinson. Actually this should probably be called the tiny experiment.)

I spoke with the prolific author Paul Dickson on the painstaking tasks involved in creating and editing the third edition of The Dickson Baseball Dictionary, which will be released in March by W.W. Norton and Son.

Dickson specializes in intensely-researched baseball titles which have become neo-classics, including The Hidden Language of Baseball — How Signs and Sign-Stealing Have Influenced the Course of Our National Pastime; The Joy of Keeping Score: How Scoring the Game Has Influenced and Enhanced the History of Baseball, Baseball: The President’s Game (With William B. Mead), and Baseball’s Greatest Quotations.

Let us know what you think.

The Amazon Report on Paul Dickson:

The Hidden Language of Baseball

The Joy of Keeping Score: How Scoring the Game Has Influenced and Enhanced the History of Baseball

Baseball’s Greatest Quotations Rev. Ed.: An Illustrated Treasury of Baseball Quotations and Historical Lore

Baseball: The Presidents’ Game

* “Get me re-write.”

One man’s ceiling is another man’s floor. The election of Jim Rice to the Baseball Hall of Fame will necessitate author Kevin Hunt to re-write at least part of his manuscript — and definitely update the title, which was The Baseball Hall of Fame: Why Jim Rice Belongs There and Mark McGwire Does Not, For Now.

Hunt hasn’t found an agent or publisher as of yet. Good luck with that one, man.