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Got any sort of opinion about how the presentation of the Dodgers-Diamondbacks game Thursday exclusive to Facebook Watch?
Even as we went through the process of creating a Facebook account that we will now delete, we can report there was nothing as intrusive as buffering issues or pornbots.
We saw minimal damage to what otherwise would have been a SportsNet LA production here and Fox Sports Arizona locally. Rick Waltz’s pedestrian play-by-play work was best when turned over to Orel Hershiser or Eric Byrnes, but it was evident that Orel was the real true pro in the booth, and Alanna Rizzo did her typically fine work on the field getting to both dugouts on a “neutral” broadcast.
(Byrnes … Imagine him and Rex Hudler in a booth together. One would only need a potted plant — no pun intended — doing play-by-play to get that broadcast off track in a hurry. We didn’t realize Jeff Spicoli was going to be taking our time away from an otherwise midweek day game).
The Dodgers’ 5-2 win was augmented by some interesting viewer commentary along the way — some that we actually could read and capture before it sped by on the right side of the page and disappeared somewhere.

(By the way, to eliminate that feed, they kept telling us to “swipe right.” The assumption was we were on a smart phone. Those of us on a laptop had no clue why they kept saying that… and once we figured out how to get ride of the thing they called “noise,” we realized we missed the interaction).
It appears on Facebook MLB Live there were 188K total views (people who came in and out), with a high of about 38K at one point, and some 27K comments posted.
From what we could gather, here’s some stuff to consider about the broadcast team, the production and just getting used to this experience (creative typos belong to them):
Continue reading “Today’s Dodgers’ Facebook Watch party: Did it fulfill your wildest dreams and streams?” →

It’s bonus coverage for our weekly viewers and listeners of “The Drill” — a single-subject 10 minute discussion about the idea to bring a gondola linking Union Station to Dodger Stadium as a way to get fans to the park. Along with an exclusive Jim Thompson illustration.
We banged out a column about this after the news came out. Please read it here.
Here’s the reference to The Simpson’s episode with the “Escape Dodger Stadium” as a scary task:

Enjoy and let us know what you think….

News of the week, with or without censors.
First, how we would like show, and others, to open from now on, with this clip from Al Michaels:

For those who need more background on what we were talking about:
* The Corey Seager injury report: Tommy John surgery ain’t just for pitchers.
* The LAFC language issue addressed by the front office.
* The MLB Facebook Watch plans for Dodgers-D’backs this week include avoiding porn bots.
* A quick interview with Joe Torre on how to make the game attractive to today’s fans.

Part 2 and more to come soon …

As per past years, a wrap-up ranking of the 2018 version of the 30 baseball book reviews for April:

GRAND SLAM
= “The Shift: The Next Evolution in Baseball Thinking,” by Russell A. Carleton
= “Winning Ugly: A Visual History of the Most Bizarre Baseball Uniforms Ever Worn,” by Todd Radom
= “Baseball Greatness: Top Players and Teams According to Wins Above Average, 1901-2017,” by David Kaiser

NINTH-INNING BLAST
= “Brothers in Arms: Koufax, Kershaw and the Dodgers Extraordinary Pitching Tradition,” by Jon Weisman
=”Why Baseball Matters,” by Susan Jacoby
= “Slide! The Baseball Tragicomedy That Defined Me, My Family, and the City of Philadelphia – And How It All Could Have Been Avoided Had Someone Just Listened to My Lesbian Great Aunt (1964 Phillies),” by Carl Wolfson
= “Being Ted Williams: Growing Up with a Baseball Idol,” by Dick Enberg, with Tom Clavin
= “The Comic Book Story of Baseball: The Heroes, Hustlers, and History-Making Swings (and Misses) of America’s National Pastime,” by Alex Irvine, illustrated by Tomm Coker and C.P. Smith
= “Cuba Loves Baseball: A Photographic Journey,” by Ira Block
= “Fairly at Bat: My 50 years in baseball, from the batter’s box to the broadcast booth,” by Ron Fairly with Steve Springer
= “The Year of the Pitcher: Bob Gibson, Denny McLain and the End of Baseball’s Golden Age,” by Sridhar Pappu

STAND-UP TRIPLE
= “The Baseball Fanbook: Everything You Need to Know to Become a Hardball Know-It-All/Sports Illustrated for Kids,” by Gary Gramling
= “The Performance Cortex: Now Neuroscience Is Redefining Athletic Genius,” by Zach Schonbrun
= “Tinker to Evers to Chance: The Chicago Cubs and the Dawn of Modern America,” by David Rapp
=”Ninety Percent Mental: An All-Star Player Turned Mental Skills Coach Reveals the Hidden Game of Baseball,” by Bob Tewksbury with Scott Miller

GROUND-RULE DOUBLE
= “If God Invented Baseball” by E. Ethelbert Miller
= “Gehrig & the Babe: The Friendship and the Feud,” by Tony Castro
= “The Pitcher and the Dictator: Satchel Paige’s Unlikely Season in the Dominican Republic,” by Averell “Ace” Smith
= “Singles and Smiles: How Artie Wilson Broke Baseball’s Color Barrier,” by Gaylon H. White
= “A Season in the Sun: The Rise of Mickey Mantle,” by Randy Roberts and Johnny Smith
= “Miracle in Shreveport: A Memoir of Baseball, Fatherhood, and the Stadium that Launched a Dream,” by David and Jason Benham

LEG-IT-OUT SINGLE
= “Baseball Italian Style: Great Stories Told by Italian American Major Leaguers from Crosetti to Piazza,” by Lawrence Baldassaro
= “Hawk: I Did It My Way,” by Ken Harrelson
= “Tom Yawkey: Patriarch of the Boston Red Sox,” by Bill Nowlin
= “Beep: Inside the Unseen World of Baseball for the Blind,” by David Wanczyk

DRAG BUNT
= “Gator: My Life In Pinstripes,” by Ron Guidry with Andrew Beaton
= “Davey Johnson: My Wild Ride in Baseball and Beyond,” by Davey Johnson with Erik Sherman
= “From Spring Training to Screen Test: Baseball Players Turned Actors,” edited by Rob Edleman and Bill Nowlin

THE WHIFF
= “The Dodgers: 60 Years in Los Angeles,” by Michael Schiavone
= “The Immaculate Inning: Unassisted Triple Plays, 40/40 Seasons, and the Stories Behind Baseball’s Rarest Feats,” by Joe Cox

ALSO:
The list of books we wish we could have checked out but because of publishing delays, etc., they didn’t make the window for reading and reviewing, but we don’t want them to slip away quietly:

= “Astroball: The New Way to Win It All,” by Ben Reiter, due out in July. The Sports Illustrated writer who wrote the Sports Illustrated cover story in 2014 that predicted a 2017 World Series win for the Houston Astros now explains himself.

= “I’m Keith Hernandez,” by Keith Hernandez (Little Brown and Company). The one-time NL co-MVP and New York Mets broadcaster seems to have a strange Twitter thing going about his adventures with his cat. Interesting book promotion. Due out May 15 with pre-orders making it a top-selling baseball bio.

= “Once Upon a Team: The Epic Rise and Historic Fall of Baseball’s Wilmington Quicksteps,” by Jon Springer. Due out May 15.

= “Baseball and the Occupation of Japan: America’s Pastime as a Tool to Promote Social Values,” by Takeshi Tanikawa, due in early May.

= “A Franchise on the Rise: The First Twenty Twenty Years of the New York Yankees,” by Dom Amore, due in July.

= “The Presidents and the Pastime: The History of Baseball and the White House,” by Curt Smith, due in June.

= “Baseball Rowdies of the 19th Century: Brawlers, Drinkers, Pranksters and Cheats in the Early Days of the Major Leagues,” by Eddie Mitchell. It was released in March but quickly went out of print and on backorder by MacFarland.

= “The New York Yankees 1936–39: Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, and Baseball’s Greatest Dynasty,” by Stanley Cohen, released in April

= “September 1918: War, Plague, and the World Series,” by Skip Desjardin, due in August

= “The Baseball Fan’s Treasury of Quotations: Wisdom from the Legends of America’s Favorite Pastime (sic)” by Hatherleigh, released in April.
(As Ron Kaplan pointed out when he spotted this back in January, you’re “not off to a great start if you can misspell the title.” He also posted this list in late 2017.

= “Ballpark to Ballpark: Journey Through the Minor Leagues,” by John and Vicki Hoppin. From Black Rose Writing. The couple’s tour of minor league ballparks produced a first volume in March, with a second volume coming in October.

The book: “If God Invented Baseball”
The author: E. Ethelbert Miller
How to find it: City Point Press, 72 pages, $14.99, released Feb. 13
The links: At Amazon.com, at the publisher’s website.

A review in 90-feet or less: “Ethelbert Miller is one of the most significant and influential poets of our time,” according to Gwendolyn Brooks.
Let’s start there.
Before we found that, we had never heard of Miller, let along Brooks.
As for Miller: The 67-year-old African-American from the Bronx, yet a Washington Nationals fan as he works on the D.C. literary community. He drew attention when when he was laid off after 40 years of teaching at at Howard University, the sane place that gave him BA in African American Studies. He has a bio on the Academy of American Poets website. And he has an acclaimed memoir in 2009 called “The 5^th Inning” that is described as “one man’s examination of personal relationships, depression, love and loss. This is a story of the individual alone on the pitching mound or in the batters box. It’s a box score filled with remembrance. It’s a combination of baseball and the blues.”
(As for Brooks, who died in 2000, she won a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1950 for her book, “Annie Allen,” and in 1989 received the Robert Frost Medal for lifetime achievement by the Poetry Society of America.)
We don’t feel worthy to credibly critique this medium of pentamic word scaffolding — if that’s even a word, or we’re just calling ourselves out on taking iambic pentameter and just creating our own mini poem genre.
We surely tried it at some levels of high school and college-level classes, but when you’re doing paint-by-numbers haiku or having fun with rhymes, the works of Miller, Brooks … Frost … take this to a whole new road not taken.
But we are constantly open to the influence something profound, something that strikes the heart and soul unexpectedly, something that reaches the core of a wound-up baseball. We seek constant new entry point in a media-filled world of more than just peanut-vendor noise.
And if you dare put Satchel Paige on the cover, we’re already intrigued.
Start with the poem from Page 2 that reflects the book title:

Continue reading “Day 30 of 30 baseball book reviews for 2018: The final stanza” →