* Mr. Bookshelf goes to Washington

Taking a few days off to head down to our nation’s capital where I’ll be conventioning at the annual Society for American Baseball Research get-together. Looking forward to finally meeting so many good people I’ve only known through the Internet and e-mail.

Talk amongst yourselves ’til I get back next week.

* RK author profile: Troy Soos

Apropos of the interview I did with Favorite PASTimes, here’s a profile on Troy Soos, author of the Mickey Rawlings series of historical baseball mysteries, I did for the Summer 1998 edition of The Mystery Review, a defunct Canadian publication.

* * *

The manicured grass of the baseball field doesn’t grow under Troy Soos’ feet. The Cincinnati Red Stalkings, the fifth in the Mickey Rawlings mystery series (Kensington Books), is due out this spring. And he’s already working on his next book. And the one after that.

Mixing well-researched fact with fiction, Soos depicts the travels and travails of Mickey Rawlings, a journeyman ballplayer in the early 20th century. Rawlings possesses a keen mind, if mediocre athletic skills. He must contend not only with the tenuous nature of the athlete’s career, with all its peculiarities and Runyonesque characters, but with becoming enmeshed in the murders that somehow crop up at each of his venues.

As a young man, Rawlings left home to pursue his dream to become a professional ballplayer. His journeys took him to factory towns where work was often secondary to playing for the company team. He caught the eyes of major league scouts and wound up on the Boston Braves of 1911, only to be released after the season. He hooked up with the crosstown Red Sox, where his exploits begin.

In his debut, Rawlings must deal with a Murder at Fenway Park. By the time his train arrives in Boston, he’s missed his first game with his new team. Except for the guard who lets him in, there’s no one left to greet him as he wanders the tunnels of the new stadium – no one except a bloody corpse. Now he has to prove to the authorities thathe’s not the murderer. Before long he will also need to be wary not to become the next victim.

During a recen t conversation with Soos from his home in Winter Park, Florida, the author discussed the complexities of the historical mystery novel.

Soos was born in New Jersey in 1957, two weeks after the Brooklyn Dodgers migrated to the West Coast. He attended his first major league game in 1963, primarily to see Duke Snider, a former Dodger winding down his career with the fledgling New York Mets. Watching his idol sparked a lifelong interest, not in modern baseball, but in the game’s history.

* RK Review: In the Best Interests of Baseball?

The Revolutionary Reign of Bud Selig, by Andrew Zimbalist (John Wiley and Sons, 2007)

Allan H. “Bud” Selig has nominally been in charge of the national pastime longer than any commissioner since Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis. Needless to say, the game has expanded beyond what the sixteen original owners could ever have imagined. Such success has been a blessing and a curse, and the complexities for those in the game’s highest office have grown exponentially.

Andrew Zimbalist — his previous sports titles include Baseball and Billions: A Probing Look Inside the Big Business of Our National Pastime; May the Best Team Win: Baseball Economics and Public Policy; and National Pastime: How Americans Play Baseball and the Rest of the World Plays Soccer — presents a generally withering look at the nine men who have held the august office. He titles two chapters “The Undistinguished Middle I” and “II,” which might strike some readers as overly harsh. Only half the book actually deals with Selig’s background and administration; the rest is a brief history of those who came before him.

* Caesar’s wife

This one is a toughie.

Omar Minaya took time out in yesterday’s press conference announcing the firing of Tony Bernazard to point an accusing finger at NY Daily News sportswriter Adam Rubin. Aaccording to Minaya, Rubin had perhaps politicked (my phrase) for a player development job some time back and was therefore somewhat predisposed to be anti-Bernazard, who had that position with the Mets.

Rubin addressed the situation at length in today’s Daily News:

…instead of focusing on the horrors Bernazard inflicted upon Mets farmhands and team employees, Minaya tried to redirect the story from Bernazard’s reprehensible actions – which were validated or the Mets wouldn’t have fired Bernazard – to me. In an attempt to link my reporting to occasional discussions with Mets front office people about possible careers in baseball, Minaya basically left the impression that I had written the stories with some kind of ulterior motive in mind.

His fellow sportswriters are circling the wagons in his defense. Filip Bondy, a colleague of Rubin’s at the Daily News wrote that Minaya took a ‘cheap shot.”

Even the competition, recognizing the import of the issue, put aside their differences to back Rubin.

* National pastime radio

I listened with extra care to this week’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me. The guest for the “Not My Job” segment was ex-major leaguer Doug Glanville. I was waiting for a Moose Skowron/ Rob Neyer moment, but as far as I can tell, it never came. (In fact, part of me fantasized that host Peter Sagal warned Glanville that there’s some nut out there  who goes around slaying myths, so watch it!)

Glanville, a thoughtful and amusing fellow who, among  other interests,  contributes the Heading Home column on The New York Times website, brought up an incident in the minors when he charged the mound after being hit by a pitch, but I’m not about to start digging to see if it’s wholly accurate.

And if you enjoy his HH columns, look for a book next year, according to his website,

Times Books editorial director Paul Golob acquired world rights to an untitled book by Doug Glanville, former centerfielder for the Philadelphia Phillies, Chicago Cubs and Texas Rangers; David M. Larabell at David Black made the sale. Glanville’s debut, an account of a year in the life of major league baseball players, will open a window on how players prepare for games, spend their free time, deal with trades or injury, and the interactions with managers and coaches. The project grows out of Heading Home, Glanville’s online column for the New York Times. Expected pub date is spring 2010.

In other NPR/baseball items:

• Zev Chafets, author of Cooperstown Confidential,  was interviewed on Only a Game, riding on the coattails of the HoF induction weekend
• Larry Tye (Satchel) was the guest on WAMU’s Diane Rehm Show.

All of these programs are available on iTunes, as well as through their respective websites.

* Dustin Pedroia prepares for life after baseball

New MLB 09 commercials discovered!

The original:

On the other hand, don’t give up your day job just yet. I guess it’s a matter of motivation.

(Does that Sullivan guy remind anyone else of Grandpa from The Munsters? Use your imagination; picture him with slicked-back hair and a cape.)

What do you think, Sullivan’s granddaughter?

I remember visiting Montreal some 30 years ago. They had this series of dreadful local spots about Dorrian Suits, a mens clothing company. They often used sports figures (Expos, Canadiens). There was one guy with a very French Canadian accent who closed with the line, “There are no ‘assles at Dorrian Suits.” Of course, with that regional dialect, it came out with quite a different  connotation.

* The shape of things to come

“Japanese researchers develop baseball playing robots.”

Scott Boras is on his way.

By the way, the blog title is an homage to a 1936 sci-fi movie about life in the future. It was ahead of its time.

* Why baseball is like (fill in the blank)

In this case, it’s “writing,” at least according to this entry on Seekerville, a blog about the writing craft.

In baseball, like any other sport, in addition to having that natural talent, the players must spend years preparing: learning the nuances and rules of the game, conditioning themselves, practicing, playing, learning the “market” (how other teams play, what to expect), going out every game with a winning attitude, and learning how to be a gracious loser (though in professional sports, we’re losing this more and more each year).

As a writer, I have spent years preparing: from the basic fundamental of learning how to write, learning grammar, learning to type, to learning the rules of good writing; conditioning myself and practicing by writing, writing, writing, as well as by working with critique partners and learning how to edit and revise; studying the market—determining which publishers to target and what they’re looking for; approaching each writing session, editor/agent pitch, or contest entry with a positive, “winning” attitude; and learning how to graciously accept rejection from said editors/agents/contests.

Just putting it ut there. Talk amongst yourselves,

* Too much, too late?

This two-page overview of three Yankees titles — The Yankees Years, by Joe Torre and Tom Verducci; A-Rod: The Many Lives of Alex Rodriguez, by Selena Roberts; and American Icon: The Fall of Roger Clemens and the Rise of Steroids in America’s Pastime, by Thompson, Vinton, O’Keeffe and Red — appears in this weeks New York Times‘ Sunday book review section. And I have several problems with it.

For one thing, the timing. These books were released so long ago, relatively speaking (Years in February, the other two in May). Now in my day job at a weekly publication, I’m pretty liberal in the book review policy as farm as timing goes. But because we’re a speciality publication and the books we consider are pretty narrow in scope, we do what we want. We are not The New York Times, which should be concentrating on the cutting edge in all things newsworthy.

So why these books and why now? Each of them had been reviewed when they were originally released? With all the complaints about shrinking book sections, why did the editors decide it was worth re-examination, considering they were pretty much panned the first time around by the general reviewing public.

Second — and with all due disrespect — who the heck is Touré? The Times‘ bio describes him as “an on-air contributor to NBC and the author of “Never Drank the Kool-Aid,” a collection of essays.” Does a reviewer need any expertise in the topic of e book he or she is critiquing? When it comes to this genre (of which I’m obviously not very objective), I would say yes, but Touré doesn’t seem to have any. According to his MySpace page, he’s had a lot of experience covering the Hip-hop world, but when it comes to sports,

He has often evoked the participatory journalism of Tom Wolfe and George Plimpton, for example, playing high-stakes poker with Jay-Z, two-on-two basketball with Prince, one-on-one basketball with Wynton Marsalis, tennis with Jennifer Capriati, or writing illegal graffiti with known graffiti artists.

Sorry, I don’t get it. Nicholas Dawidoff, author of a couple of highly-regarded baseball-themed books, reviewed A-Rod, while the other two were handled by NYT staffer Michiko Kakutani.

Thirdly, Touré brings nothing new to the table, nothing we haven’t already read, as he infers in writing about American Icon, “[It] mostly covers ground that serious baseball fans already know, but it may answer some lingering Yankee questions,” he writes. I beg to differ: at this point, I don’t know if they even care any more.

You folks know me. I read anything about baseball, even bios on the Wheaties boxes, but given the publishing situation these days, I wish more thought would be given about needless duplication.

* Wait til you have grandkids of your own some day

According to Bill James, those science fiction books we’ve read for generations about “building” superior humans is never far from he truth. In this blog entry by Dan Steinberg on The Sporting News website, James opines that “steroids serve the function of prolonging youth, that fighting aging and death has been one of civilization’s greatest goals, and that therefore, steroids will be like bread and water within 50 years.” The story links to the ACTA website offering a preview of the 2010 Bill James Goldmine that includes a PDF download of the essay. For the sake of convenience, here it is.

On the positive side, Steinberg note

Having read and digested all of that, which is truly one of the most interesting arguments on the topic I’ve ever encountered, this is what I’m left with: we’re all going to live to be 300! Hot damn! After retiring at 65, I’m spending the next 193 summers playing golf on the coast of Florida, and that still leaves 42 years to yell at roided-up neighborhood kids for hitting wiffle balls 400 feet into my roided-up tomato plants! My two-year old soon-to-be-juicing daughter better start saving for my greens fees fund right now, and also for my stash of Deca-Durabolin! Oh, and buy Denny’s stock now, while you still can; imagine their bottom line with a country full of 200-year olds! If Barry Bonds is acting like such a grouch in his mid-40s, what will be like in his mid-240s? I don’t know, and I don’t care, because there’s an early-bird special with my name on it!

Can you say “Nietzsche“?