* Of course, for females it’s longer

According to the Web site, MIStupid.com (”The online knowledge magazine”), the average life of a baseball is seven pitches.

* New title from Arcadia: Baseball in Long Beach

According to Long Beach’s own Grunion Gazette. The publisher, Arcadia, covers hundreds of topics in a photo album motif, heavy on the illustrations, light on text.

* Another Lost baseball “fact”

From the Lost and Gone Forever blog: (Spoiler alert: if you haven’t seen the episode in question “Something Nice Back Home”, avert thine eyes).

By virtue of the Yankees/Red Sox and Indians/Mariners scores in the newspaper article, only one date is viable for the publication of the paper: August 31, 2007. Article states Yankees finish their sweep of the Red Sox with winning pitcher Chien-Ming Wang beating Curt Schilling 5-0. The only occurrence of this game is the date above.

However, the newspaper also lists “Angels 8 - Astros 4″ but the Astros were playing the St. Louis Cardinals over these dates. As such, the newspaper most likely isn’t able to indicate the correct date.

The Angels-Astros result is from June 20, 2007. The Angels are in the American league, and the Astros play in the National. This was an inter-league game, and the first time these two teams had played against each other since 2004. The box-score is accurate.

The other side of the fold of the newspaper has an article with the headline “Dodgers 8-4 win over Astros” which conflicts with the Angels-Astros box score on the opposite side of the fold.

Personally, I find it a little hard to believe that the Lost prop guys would go to the trouble of painstakingly reproducing an accurate account of the Red Sox and Yankees game from August 31, 2007 – but wouldn’t look and see what other games actually happened on that day… or would include the same team playing two different teams on the same day.

* Twilight time

In the previous entry on Jose Canseco, I included a story from the original Twilight Zone series. Since there are no new stories, the familiar theme of a man thrust back into an alternate universe was repeated for the umpteenth time. Here, in Extra Innings, from one of the program’s later incarnations, Marc Singer plays a former big leaguer whose injury thwarted what was a promising career. He finds solace in the form of an old baseball card (the player, whose carer was cut short by a fatal pitch to the head, looks just like him, of course) and is transported back into time where he can still be a strong, youthful athlete. Needless to say his long-suffering wife thinks he’s a whack job and he’s forced to choose between the real world and his alternative life. Very cliched story, but, hey, it’s baseball.

* NPR: National Pastime Radio

Recent baseball segments on NPR programs include:

• A Man and His Mitt: A love Story, All Things Considered, March 28. The page includes the essay, which appears in the new anthology Anatomy of Baseball
• Also on March 28, The Leonard Lopate Show asked the question “Are Baseball Players Worth Their Salaries?“
• League Catches Fans Using Quirky Names, Mascots All Things Considered, March 31
• Cubs Mark 100 Years Since Last World Series Title, Morning Edition, March 31
• Former MLB commissioner Fay Vincent appeared on The Brian Lehrer Show, March 31
• Singers try out for minor league glory, All Things Considered, April 9 (With all due modesty, I was part of a group that sang the National Anthem last year at a Newark Bears game.)
• Cal Ripken Jr. pushes his new book on Talk of the Nation, April 13
• Throwback Baseball Leagues Catch On, Morning Edition, April 23
• Author Pat Jordan, Only a Game, April 26

* “I read it in The New York Times…

The New York Times has recently published baseball material in non-sports sections.

A review of the American Experience documentary on Robert Clemente ran on Monday, April 21. The program is available for viewing on the American Experience Web site.

In the “Escape” section of the Friday, April 25 weekend Arts, this piece about minor league baseball in Scarnton-Wilkes Barre, PA.

Leading off the Sunday New Jersey section on April 27, Kevin Coyne contributed a piece about “Black Baseball’s Rich Legacy.” The piece heralds the Newark Eagles and includes comments from Monte Irvin and Lawrence D. Hogan, author of Shades of Glory: The Negro Leagues and the Story of African-American Baseball.

Finally, in the Book Review section, Jose Canseco’s Vindicated dropped from No. 5 to No. 15 on the best-seller list. Coming soon to the remaindered section of your favorite bookstore.

* Way high and outside

Because I used to keep model rockets on my bookshelf…

* Those silly Americans

The BBC’s analysis of the American pastime, courtesy correspondent Kevin Connolly. can be read read here, or heard on BBC Baseball (try to zero in on time code 19:22).

By the way, Mr. Connolly, the name of the song is not “Take Me Out to the Ball Park.” And, dear anchor, it is my understanding that Humphrey Bogart was extolling the joys of a hot dog at the ballpark beating roast beef at the Ritz, not a hamburger winning out over steak.

* Why Conservatives like baseball

This article in National Review Online is all

about how baseball is the professional sport that best embodies conservative principles. The reasons have nothing to do with the game itself — the absence of a clock, the lack of penalties called by officials, the way fans can keep a ball hit into the stands, none of that stuff. In Baseball is meritocratic.stead, baseball is the best conservative sport because it’s a testimony to the success of free markets and limited government.

Among the reasons, as listed by Fred Schwarz, a deputy managing editor for the National review:

• Baseball is meritocratic.
• Baseball is federalist; its central government is the weakest of any major professional sport.
• Baseball is sartorially libertarian. (There used to be a uniform uniform code…)
• Baseball handles immigration the right way, with foreigners recruited
  for specific skills and all legal requirements taken care of.
• Baseball is the closest thing in professional sports to a free market.
• Baseball has no affirmative action.
• Baseball maintains a lean bureaucracy for its on-field decisions.

Announcement: Nine conference slated for March

Herewith, the program highlights for the 15th annual Nine Spring Training Conference held in Tucson, Arizona from March 13-16. Lee Lowenfish, author of Branch Rickey: Baseball’s Ferocious Gentleman, is the keynote speaker for the meeting, which will also pay tribute to the late Bill Kirwin, the journal’s former editor.

Presentations include:

• Frantic Frankie Lane
• The Announcer in the Television Age
• ’Where Have You Gone, Joe DiMaggio?’: Ballplayers as Role Models in Young Adult Literature, 1995-2007
• A Perfect Baseball Day: Black Press Coverage of the East-West Classic
• Missionary to the Democracy: Jackie Robinson and American Civil Religion
• Bucking the Trend: The 1946 Integration of the Cleveland Buckeyes
• ’Do the Right Thing?’: A Case for Inducting Curt Flood into Cooperstown
• Baseball Follows the Flag: Diplomacy and the National Pastime in the Philippines before World War I
• ’One-Hundred Per Cent American’: Nationalism, Masculinity, and American Legion Baseball in the 1920s
• Red Press Nation: The Baseball Rhetoric of Lester Rodney
• Coloring the American Dream: Rewriting the National Pastime through the Negro Leagues Museum
• Ben Harjo’s All-Indian Baseball Club
• ’When Nine of Them Died’: The Story of the 1946 Spokane Indians Minor League Team’s Tragic Bus Crash
• Leo Durocher and the Bricklayer’s Wife
• ’A Big Howl from Property’: A Century of Opposition to Downtown Minneapolis Baseball
• A Test of the Artificial Selection Hypothesis
• Going South: Professional Baseball’s Contraction in Canada
• Earl Toolson and His Legacy in Baseball’s Labor History
• ‘A Mirthful Spectacle’: Race, Blackface Minstrelsy and Base Ball (1874-188
• Send In the Clowns: Reassessing Black Baseball’s Novelty Acts After the Desegregation of the Major Leagues
• Black Business and Black Baseball: An (Un)Easy Alliance
• The Bingo Long Travelling All-Stars and Motor Kings (1976): Placing Negro League Baseball in the American Mainstream
• The Magnolia Ball Club of 1843: Overturning Traditional Notions of Baseball’s Origin
• A Disabilities Studies Perspective on Frank ‘Brownie’ Burke and Other Disabled Mascots
• No Dummies: Deaf Players in Baseball
• Mind Over Batter: The Cubs and the ‘Headshrinker’ in the Late 1930s
• A Bitter Rivalry Long Forgotten: The Cleveland Indians and the New York Yankees, 1947-1956
• Why I Hate the Yankees: Sports Rivalry and Understanding Conflict in America
• Dodging a Bullet: The Potential for Celebratory Riots in Major League Baseball

For more information, visit the Conference Web site.

So you wanna be a sportswriter?

Received this e-mail from Dugoutcentral.com:

DugoutCentral is pleased to announce that the winners of its Spring Training Writing Contest will receive free, one-on-one consulting with esteemed writing coach Susan White for the first half of the 2008 MLB season. For those fan writers who are serious about improving their skills, this is a unique opportunity.Susan White has spent 40 years as a writing coach, editor and writer for newspapers and magazines, including The San Diego Union-Tribune, the Lexington (Ky) Herald-Leader and Indianapolis magazine. Reporters she has coached have won numerous national awards, including the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting. She is especially drawn to smart, strong-willed people who are open to new ideas and determined to do their best work. Susan served as a nominating juror for the Pulitzer Prizes in 2003 and 2004.

Two winners will be selected – one by reader voting and the other by a jury of Mike Pagliarulo, Adam White and Steve Caimano – based on writer performance from February 15 to March 30, 2008.

Susan will work with each winner to develop and write a weekly feature article from March 31st to July 15th, 2008.

In addition, the writers’ weekly articles will then be featured on www.DugoutCentral.com as a featured columns.

 

“Record” numbers

Not for nothing, but I think we can eliminate the adjective “record” when describing how baseball salaries increase every year.

Baseball’s average salary rose 4.6 percent last year to a record (emphasis added) $2.82 million, and the New York Yankees set a high for teams at $7.47 million.

Like they’re ever going to go down? Perhaps after Manny Ramirez and Alex Rodriguez retire, but other will probably come along to take up the slack.

 

Greatest sports book of ‘07? One man’s opinion

And not this one. Mind you, The Stark Truth was definitely interesting and thought-provoking, but the best? anyway, Tom Morgan of the Connecticut-based Voices newspaper chain thinks so.

 

Review: The Glory Days: New York Baseball, 1947-57

Edited by John Thorn, Collins, 2007.

Don’t let the slim size of this elegant book fool you. Inspired by an exhibit sponsored by the Museum of the City of New York, with essays from some heavy hitters, The Glory Days recaptures a simpler time for baseball and the country. Ballplayers who lived in our neighborhoods, pulling down a salary not too out of touch with our ow, providing entertainment in an era without as many distractions

John Thorn puts together his usual solid effort, managing a team of contributors that include:

• Jules Tygiel, on “Breaking the Color Barrier in Brooklyn,” the introduction and legacy of Jackie Robinson and those African-American players that followed. Tygiel ha made almost a cottage industry out of Robinson, Rickey, et al.
• Michael Shapiro, author of The Last Good Season: Brooklyn, The Dodgers, and Their Final Pennant Race Together, on “Fans.”
• Lee Lowenfish, author of the new expansive biography on Branch Rickey, on the “Giants-Dodgers Rivalry”
• George Vecsey, veteran columnist for The New York Times, on “Media” and its increasing influence on the game during TV’s infancy.
• Andrew Zimbalist and Steven A. Reiss on “Ballparks,” taking a look at the economics of the game and how they chased the two National League franchises from Gotham.
• Jonathan Eig on “The World Series,” in particular the 1947 Fall Classic that ushered in a new era of Subways Series. With his books on Robinson and Lou Gehrig, Eig has written two-thirds of a New York troika; now all he needs is a suitable Giant.
• Kevin Baker, whose novels about 19th century New York life are both entertainign and educational, has the honors of the seventh-inning stretch with “Great games and Moments.”
• Jane Leavy, author of Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy, likewise honors “Great Players and Managers,” with an emphasis on Mickey Mantle.
• Ray Robinson, Yankees historian, takes a forlorn look at “The End,” when the Dodgers and Giants shuttered their gates for points West.
• Alan Schwarz handles an extra inning with “What Came Next,” as the Mets eventually came to fill the NL void.

The essays are only half of the joy of The Glory Days. The photos and illustrations — magazines covers, newspaper clippings, action shots, and other memorabilia — complete the nostalgic picture. It is particularly poignant when one considers that it’s been 50 years since the Dodgers and “Jints” began to ply their baseball trade on the West Coast.

In the Biz: Behind the scenes at Thomas Dunne Books with Joseph Rinaldi

A few months back, I had the opportunity to chat with Joseph Rinaldi, director publicity for Thomas Dunne Books (an imprint of St. Martin’s Press), on how his company picks its baseball titles and what works best in a discriminating, and relatively small readership.

In 2007, TD released Ty and The Babe: Baseball’s Fiercest Rivals; A Surprising Friendship And The 1941 Has-Beens Golf Championship, by Tom Stanon; Big Papi: My Story of Big Dreams and Big Hits, by David Ortiz with Tony Massoritti; and Is This a Great Game or What? From A-Rod’s Heart to Zim’s Head–My 25 Years in Baseball, by ESPN baseball analyst Tim Kurkijan.Bookshelf: So what makes a baseball book right for Thomas Dunne?

Rinaldi: That’s a editorial concern; they have to deal with the contract. I just have to deal with the finished product and run with it with the media and hope that the author – whether a terrific writer or a celebrity athlete – is available and a terrific interview.

There’s a different kind of passion applied to Tom Stanton’s and Tim Kurkjian’s books that to David Oritz’s book. But Tom and Tim are baseball writers; this is their life. From their standpoint, they bring a totally different view of the game, expressing their love of the game, whether it’s Tim stories or Tom’s research on Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth.

I think more often than not from looking at the best seller lists and my experience, the Tim Kurkjians and the Tom Stantons are more successful; maybe not in big explosive momentary best sellers, like a superstar’s name lends it self, but I think in the long run there’s more success and there’s more to do with them because their time is devoted to promoting their book, that’s their baby. For David or [other author/athletes], their “baby” is first playing. Of course, they are respectful of their book; they want to promote it, too, but they’re pulled in a lot of directions. Tim’s a busy man, too; he’s all over the country for ESPN , but this [book] is his baby.

The type of book: Stanton’s is more historical, Kurkjian’s more anecdotal.

They apply to two different readerships. Tim is readily available to fans, in his capacity as a baseball analyst, several times a week. Tom, on the other hand, is a baseball historian and writer. But when your title says Ty and The Babe, these are icons who are recognizable even to younger readers.

The story took place in 1941, long after both players had retired. It’s about two guys who were not the best of friends brought together by series of golf exhibitions for charity. Turns out after the course of the events, they found out they had a lot more in common than they originally thought and eventually became good friends.

Stanton had done several books for TD/SMP, including The Final Season, which chronicled the shuttering of Tiger Stadium.

It was told in such a marvelous way, it transcended its regional confines. Tom got stories from his families, friends, old-timers; he took his dad to several games, and it was like ‘let’s remember our youth and the great moments we had.’

At a time when there’s so much – too put it bluntly – crap on the sports page and we may idolize these players but there’s an awful lot of them in a lot of sports who are doing more damage than they could ever do good…to go back and think of a time when the game really was a game, also for the fans. I think a lot of fans take it way too seriously, the vitriol that many fans have today. ‘I want the Red Sox to go 162-0 every year.’ It’s not going to happen. So when they don’t, I don’t sit there and curse that the opposing team comes down with a dreaded disease on the plane ride to their next ballpark. They won; move on.

But this was a time when the games were easier, they were fun and the fans had fun. They also weren’t paying $100 to sit in the nosebleed sections either, and I think that’s the appeal to Tom’s books. They [all] recapture a time that was wonderful.

In 2005, TD published Praying for Gil Hodges, written by Boston Globe columnist Tom Oliphant.

Such as lovely book. Obviously writing a book of that nature would be foreign since Oliphant was known for his political writing.

In one of my favorite chapters, he is a young boy watching the final game of the 1956 World Series with his father and celebrating when the Dodgers won their only championship in Brooklyn.

Oliphant and Stanton wrote about a game at a time when, if your team won, There was just heartfelt joy. There wasn’t burning half of the city down like fans took to doing a few years ago. And if you lost, it was painful but it wasn’t, ‘let’s go burn the city down,’ either.

How has the Internet affected readership?

Any and every venue has been tremendously helpful. If you’re a sports fan and you’re hooked on the sports sites, even just a slight mention about a book that sounds slightly interesting will get you looking for another site to find out more.

I think it’s because in baseball – it doesn’t work with a lot of the other sports – there is still that large enough faction of the crowd that will go buy the book, even the younger crowd.

Baseball is the only sport that still really relies on its history and what that history meant. I think it’s the only sport where you can actually catch even a young reader’s attention by saying ‘Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Ted Williams, Cy Young.’ A lot of the awards are named for these guys, many are still talked about as mythical, legendary figures.

Yeah, you’ll go out and but the book even though we live in that age where we just want to score and move on. Young football and basketball fans don’t have that connection. They really have to care about the game to know the history to appreciate the old players.

One of the greatest things I heard was from Willie Mays: “Every time I look in my wallet, I see a picture of Jackie Robinson,” because of what Robinson went through. It’s because of [that] that today’s players are doing so well.

Rinaldi had harsh words for a player who had won an award several years ago, named after one of the game’s legends. Said recipient confessed in an interview that he had no idea who the player for whom the award had been named was.

Even if that’s the true answer, don’t say it. You sound like an idiot! You should damn well know who the award is named for; you just won it!

Ortiz, however, was one player who had respect for the game, Rinaldi said. After Big Papi broke Jimmy Foxx’s Red Sox home run record in 2006,

He took the time to go research who … Foxx was so when that moment happened and people asked him about it, he knew who Jimmy Foxx was and what he meant. Hat’s off to you, David , because you didn’t have to do that. You’re trying to help your team stay in a pennant race and you have enough things to deal with. You took the time to talk intelligently about this long-since retired and deceased great star for your team and you knew what he meant.

Ortiz was an example of how a involved player can help sales.

I need a star to help me sell the book and that star has more time in the off-season to give than during the season when he’s worried about playing. Hey, that’s what they’re paying him all that money for. I would rather roll the dice and take the gamble with doing something in the off-season. I don’t mean months after, I mean right after when it’s still on people’s mind.

David did four events, he averaged close to 700 books sold per event in a restricted time frame, usually on a day he was playing. Two were in Boston, a third in Framingham, and a Barnes and Noble in New York City after the first Yankee-Red Sox series in late April. The crowd for him in New York was as large as the crowds in Boston, there was a large number of displaced Red Sox fans who live in the area who wouldn’t miss the chance. This was a dream come true. David was very generous, very hard working with his time.

Rinaldi offered this scenario on the importance of timing a book’s release:

Let’s say the Sox win it all, and we have brought Big Papi’s book out the first week in November. Even if the book was already finished and wouldn’t even have included what’s just happened at the end of October with the World Series win, does it matter? Of course not. Not in a million years would that matter, there would still be thousands of people lining up at all of his bookstore singings and he wouldn’t feel the pressure to rush to the ballpark.

It’s always a difficult juggling act; if you bring it out in the off-season, no one cares but the player has more time to promote the book. But at the same time, the season’s over and people are moving on to the next seasonal sport.
But a guy who’s as popular as David Ortiz could get a humungous crowd out at three o’clock in the morning in the dead of winter in a church parking lot because he’s David Ortiz and Red Sox fans adore him and rightfully so and will go anywhere to meet him. He could show up and sign a cocktail napkin and a thousand people will be there. If he can put in the time with interviews – local and national – over a short period of time so the word gets out, especially during the season, that’s enough to make that book fly.

What type of book works best for TD/SMP? Biography? Memoir? Statistical?

I hate to sound wimpy, but I’ll say all three.

The big star memoir will work. You’re agonized over every minute on the way to the event — including [him] getting hit by a pitch the night before a book-signing. Stanton’s book appeals to the nostalgia, the old-time baseball fan and it always will and that’s the only sport where that will be the case. And Tim’s book… [because] he has this viable national TV and radio platform several times a week, he is his own publicity machine, people know who he is. People see him and hear him. So that will work because his stories are wonderful. He’s loved the game, it comes through in every story he recites in the book.

Do you think the Red Sox can repeat the same success at the book stores as they did following their 2004 World Championship?

I’m not sure. If you’ve got a specific fan base, it’s going to work. Put “Yankees” on anything and it’ll sell. Just put pinstripes on the jacket; done. Even if it doesn’t make the best-seller list, you’ll probably make a profit. That’s just the way it is.

With all due respect to the White Sox, who ended their own pain (in 2005), do you remember one White Sox book? But if the ‘fuzzy Cubbies’ win, you can rest assured…Their 99-year rebuilding plan has finally paid off. If they ever win, everybody and his uncle is going to have a book. Pinella will have one, they’ll find some old Cubs from years ago…

* * *

Read an excerpt from Tim Kurkjian’s Is This a Great Game or What?

Read an excerpt from David Ortiz’s Big Papi

Read an excerpt from Tom Stanton’s Ty and The Babe

TD/SMP have published some wonderful baseball titles over the years, including:

• The Road to Cooperstown (2003)
• The Book on the Book (2005)
• The Numbers Game (2004)
• The Zen of Zim (2004)
• Clearing the Bases (2002)
• Brushbacks and Knockdowns (2004)
• The Gift of the Bambino (2004)
• Planet of the Umps (2003)
• The Magnificent Season (2004)
• NY Yankees Illustrated History (2002)
• Sultans of Swat (2006)
• You’re Out and You’re Ugly Too (199
• The Rivals (2004)
• Smart Baseball (2005)
• The Minors: The Struggles and Triumphs of Baseball’s Poor Relations (1991)
• Amazin’ (2002)