March 2007
Baseball authors on the radio
According to a March 30 post on Publisher’s Weekly.com:
In honor of baseball’s opening day this Sunday (April 1), The Bob Edwards
Show re-airs Bob’s conversation with Pulitzer winner David Maraniss about Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball’s Last Hero, just out in paperback. PW’s starred review considered it a “respectful and dispassionate account. Maraniss deftly balances baseball and loftier concerns like racism; he presents a nuanced picture of a ballplayer more complicated than the encomiums would suggest, while still wholly deserving them.”
On The Leonard Lopate Show (March 30), Baseball Hall of Famer Dave
Winfield will hump his book Dropping the Ball: Baseball’s Troubles and How We Can and Must Solve Them. The show also features a segment on "Baseball Films from the SIlent Era, "a new two-disc collection of early (and in many cases, extremely rare) baseball films made between 1899 and 1926. Leonard talks to producer Jessica Rosner and Ben Model, who composed music for the package.
Listen to Wingate segment (audio requires Real Media Player)
I’m not sure about the Edwards show, since it’s on XM Radio, but Lopate’s should be available as a podcast at some point shortly after it airs. 
Actually, a visit to Edwards’ web site announces that he will be speaking with Alex Belth, author of Stepping Up: The Story of Curt Flood and His Fight for Baseball Players’ Rights, and makes no mention of the Clemente segment.
Geoffrey C. Ward, non-baseball fan?
Who would have thunk it? The co-author of the printed version of Ken Burns’ 
Baseball documentary claims he was never much of a baseball fan, prior to the project. The reason is reminiscent of Ray Kinsella’s rationale in Field of Dreams:
I’ve never liked baseball much, in part because my father has always loved it so.
Stricken by polio at age 11, Ward distanced himself even further from the game.
When he decided to particpate in Burns’ film, he writes in "Learning to Like Baseball," an article in American Heritage in 1994 that his father was less than impressed:
“Boy,” he said, frowning, “you don’t know a ****** thing about baseball.”
That was pretty much true, and I’m frank enough to say that even after months of poking around in the daunting literature—battalions of players and teams and leagues, whole libraries of cabalistic statistics—I was still not at all sure how to go about my task.
Ward’s ignorance, it seems, was not much of a hindrance. The book, originally published by Knopf in 1994 and re-released as a paperback two years later, is a marvelous collection of essays and photographs, Each time period, usually a decade in duration, is presented as an "inning" and supplemented by contributions from the likes of Roger Angell, Tom Boswell, Bill James, Doris Kearns Goodwin, George F. Will, John Thorn, and Robert W. Creamer, among others.
Like the game itself, the book, which faithfully follows the video format, is best enjoyed in a leisurely fashion.
Adam Greenberg profiled in NY Times Magazine
Is Adam Greenberg the new Moonlight Graham? The unlucky young man was beaned in his first plate appearance for the Chicago Cubs and hasn’t been back to the majors since. At least he has a plate appearance. His story appeared in the NY Times Sunday Magazine on March 25.
Terry McDonell, SI editor profile
The March 26 issue of Sports Business Journal features a profile of Terry McDonell, editor of Sports Illustrated Group.
McDonell says his best decision was joining the SI family:
I was not a sports guy. I was a magazine editor, and when I started talking to [Time Inc. editor-in-chief] John Huey, it was not clear that he was talking about Sports Illustrated. As we got to know each other and he learned a bit about my background, it came to him that it might be interesting to have me come to Sports Illustrated.
On the dangers of the medium becoming the message, of highlights and fluff taking over the story:
I think packaging is a good thing if it simplifies and if it’s got some irony in it. Packaging can have its own voice. It’s a lot better than reading sentence after sentence that tells you what people’s batting averages are. It’s much easier to read a chart. And that goes for everything from, you know, the best sports bars east of the Mississippi to the play list of the swimsuit models. But that will never replace, you know, Frank Deford on Bill Russell.
Julio Franco, bibliophile
"I also will read a lot on the computer and a lot of baseball books. I like to read about other players to see how they think and what they went through."
48-year-old Julio Franco, Mets bench player, on what he likes to do to keep his mind in the game during his down time.
SABR announces Seymour Award winner
From SABR.org
Cleveland, Ohio – The Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) is happy to announce that the multi-volume Game of Inches: The Stories Behind the Innovations That Shaped Baseball (Ivan R. Dee) by Peter Morris was selected to receive this year’s Seymour Medal, which honors the best book of baseball history or biography from the preceding year.
Mr. Morris will receive the medal at the Ninth Annual Seymour Conference, which will be held at the Baseball Heritage Museum in Cleveland on April 27-29 and is sponsored by the Cleveland Indians.
Game of Inches was selected from one of five finalists for the Seymour Medal Award. The judging remarks about the multi-volume work included: “The scope of these books evoke the spirit of the Seymour’s books…comprehensive, well researched, exhaustive.”
The remaining finalists included (in alphabetical order by author):
- "When to Stop The Cheering?: The Black Press, the Black Community, and the Integration of Professional Baseball by Brian Carroll (Routledge) – Judges’ comments: “This is a groundbreaking volume on an important and hitherto, largely ignored aspect of baseball history.”
- The Origins and History of The All American Girls Professional Baseball League by Merrie Fidler (McFarland & Co.) – Judges’ comments: “This book is both a great narrative tale as well as an important reference book on the women’s league. The section on the women following their baseball days is touching and informative.”
- Spalding’s World Tour: The Epic Adventure that Took Baseball Around the Globe – And Made It America’s Game by Mark Lamster (PublicAffairs)
- Judges’ comments: “This book reads like a great novel with Spalding
reigning as baseball’s Barnum and Elmer Gantry rolled into one. This
book is as much a ‘tale of the Republic’ as Kashatus’s sad story of Albert Bender.” - A Well-Paid Slave: Curt Flood’s Fight for Free Agency in Professional Sports by Brad Snyder (Viking)
Members of the Seymour Medal judging committee were Richard Johnson (chair), Jon Daniels and Ron Kaplan.
John Thorn will deliver the keynote speech at the conference, which is in its ninth year. Mr. Thorn is the author of countless articles on baseball history and has written, co-written, and edited more than two dozen books, including The Hidden Game of Baseball, Total Baseball, and The Armchair Book of Baseball. He was founding editor of SABR’s The National Pastime and founding publisher of Total Sports Publishing in 1998. Currently, he is editor of BASE BALL: A Journal of the Early Game, a new McFarland & Co. scholarly semiannual launching in Spring 2007, and serves as curatorial consultant to the Museum of the City of New York for an upcoming baseball exhibit.
The Seymour Medal, named in honor of Dr. Harold Seymour and Dorothy Jane Mills (formerly Seymour), is awarded to the book judged the best work of baseball history or biography in the preceding year. The Seymour Medal Conference, held annually, attempts to continue the promotion of baseball scholarship begun by its namesakes, and to celebrate fine baseball writing in all forms.
Bits and Pieces
A review of Crazy ’08 from the Washington Times. 
Sometimes I wonder who reads books like this, like Mark Lamster’s Spalding’s World Tour – titles that consider the infancy of the game and the beginnings of its marketing to a broader audience. There are history buffs who follow all sorts of arcane knowledge, but will non-academic modern fans find these stories of interest? Or has baseball become something for fantasy enthusiasts? Look at the plethora of publications on the newsstands; it’s one "roto" journal after another, offering advice and analysis for picking your ideal team. Does the term "Star Trek geek" ring a bell?
Author Cait Murphy hosts a website for her book, which includes reviews, her introduction, and a foreword by Robert Creamer, author of Babe: The Legend Comes to Life and other baseball titles.
Ballplayers as authors
The March 19 issue of Street & Smith’s Sports Business Journal features a story on how "Athletes hope books will inspire children." Titles include Alex Rodriguez’s Out of the Ballpark, David Eckstein’s Have Heart, and Eric Gange’s Breaking Barriers.
Rodriguez writes about his early failures as a little leaguer and how perserverance made him the star he is today.
Eckstein tells about not letting his diminuitive stature stand in his way of achieving his dream to become a major leaguer, as well as discussing his family dynamics that have helped overcome kidney failure in three of the five children and their father.
The publishers of Gange’s book claim that "Each volume…is filled with details of the athlete’s childhood, schools attended, favorite foods, and more." In this case, "he talks about the evolution of his goatee and the reason he likes to take the mound to ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ by Guns N’ Roses."
Author profile: Roger Angell
I’ve always admired the work of Roger Angell. Baseball fans look forward to his semi-annual contributions to the New Yorker. 
I came across these two interesting videos featuring legendary baseball writer Roger Angell’s appearance at a three-day seminar of Kelly Writers House at the University of Pennsylvania in early 2005. I know these work with the Real Media player, but I’m not sure about others.
Angell, 86, is the author of such books and essay collections as Game Time and Once More Around the Park. He published Let me Finish, his memoirs, last year.
The videos:
And some print interviews with/stories about Angell:
- A profile on Salon.com, 2000
- A 2003 interview on Powell’s.com
- Another 2003 interview on Identitytheory.com
- A 2006 interview in New York Magazine
- A 2006 profile on NPR’s All Things Considered
Bits and Pieces
A press release for Cecilia Tan’s new book on the Yankees, which caims to be 
"an informative and in-depth guide to the upcoming season and with 112 pages of thorough Yankees analysis-and full-color, high quality photography-it is unlike anything else available anywhere."
I’ll reserve judgment until I’ve seen it myself but honestly, after all this time, how much can there be that’s never been seen before, especially on the printed page?
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