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“A Grand Slam For God:
A Journey From
Baseball Star to Catholic Priest”

The author:
Fr. Burke Masters

The publishing info:
Word on Fire; 138 pages; $29.95
Released Aug. 14, 2023

The links:
The publishers website; the authors website; at Bookshop.org; at Powells.com; at Vromans.com; at MajestyChristianStore.com; at BetterWorldBooks.com; at Alibris.com; at BarnesAndNoble.com; at Amazon.com

The review in 90 feet or less

A phrase that the late Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully loved to use frequently comes to mind in a time of angst and confusion: If you want to make God smile, tell him your plans.

“That quote has been so much a part of me, I don’t know when it began,” Scully told me in a 2019 conversation. “Maybe as a child I heard a priest say it and it just stuck. It makes good sense. You know, we try to write our own script and it’s a mistake. There’s a script already written for us.”

Fr. Burke Masters seems to have a Masters degree in his concept.

In 1990, he was Burke Masters, Mississippi State senior second baseman. Soon to be a grand hero.

In the NCAA’s South Regional playoffs, on the Bulldogs’ home field at Starksville, Miss., the SEC champions trailed in the third-round game to top-seeded Florida State, 8-7, in the top of the ninth inning.

Masters, already 5-for-5 in the game, came up and worked the count to 3-and-1. He could pray for a walk to force in the tying run. But that’s not really what a hitter does, does he?

He lined the next pitch to left, clearing the fence for a grand slam to put his team ahead.

Two days later, the teams met again in the regional final, and MSU prevailed. On to the College World Series at Omaha, Neb., as a No. 5 seed, the Bulldogs were eventually eliminated by No. 1-ranked Stanford).

Masters’ feat has been voted the “top sports moment” in Mississippi State baseball history — a program that goes back to the early 1900s and has produced the likes of Buck Showalter, Will Clark, Bobby Thigpen, Rafael Palmeiro, Jonathan Papelbon and Hunter Renfroe.

When Masters writes in his book abot that moment, he says it “sealed my decision to make baseball my career.” That was reasonable. He had set a school record playing in 251 career games from 1987 to ’90. He’d find his way through the minor leagues. Maybe even play for his favorite team, the St. Louis Cardinals.

Ten years before all this, his parents sent him to a Catholic middle school, a beleaguered eighth grader trying to figure things out. Five years after that moment, he was converting to Catholicism as a senior at a Providence Catholic High.

Master said a sister in his theology class gave him a bible and pointed him to the Gospel of Matthew. He went on a retreat. He had experiences during Mass he couldn’t explain. He had a girlfriend who accompanied him to church and led him discern a sudden desire to enter the priesthood.

He wondered: If God gave me the talents to play baseball, perhaps at a high level, why wouldn’t He allow me to get called to to the major leagues someday?

Continue reading “Day 7 of 2024 baseball book reviews: You’re being called up … wait, it’s a bigger deal than you think” →

“The Dodger Collection: Richard Kee Photographs”

The author: Richard Kee

The publishing info: Taylor Publishing; 188 pages; $39; released Sept. 27, 2023

The links: The publishers website; the authors website; at Amazon.com

The review in 90 feet or less

Above, check out Dodger Stadium from above.

The photo is included in rare and classic 1967 collection curated by artist Ed Ruscha called “Thirtyfour Parking Lots in Los Angeles.” Limited-edition copies of the self-published 10-by-8 inch book, part of a series of 16, sell in the thousands of dollars.

In this book, Ruscha uses aerial viewpoints over many places in L.A. to capture its dramatic display of abstract geometry and composition — including the football field and campus over Pierce College in Woodland Hills, the Gilmore Drive-In, a Sears & Roebuck store, churches, shopping centers and spots in Century City and Universal Studios.

The images were actually taken by Art Alanis, with the direction of Ruscha, hovering in a helicopter Ruscha hired for this shoot on an early Sunday morning. In 1999, Ruscha produced limited edition portfolio prints from the same negatives as from the 1967 book, but some were cropped differently, which displayed more of the original image. They are in a book that describes them as a way to “bespeak and punctuate a rapidly developing cityscape.” That ’67 book also came a year after Ruscha famously published “Every Building on the Sunset Strip.“

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has an exhibit called “Ed Ruscha / Now Then” starting April 7 and running through October 6. It also has an online digital display of 30 of Ruscha’s “Parking Lots” — here is the Dodger Stadium shot as it was printed on gelatin silver paper for display.

One of the most important artists still working today, Ruscha moved to L.A. from the Midwest in 1956 to attend Chouinard Art Institute, now known as Cal Arts. Ruscha’s “diverse oeuvre” (as one gallery puts it) includes painting, drawing, prints, photography, film and artists books. His work is known to be inquisitive and philosophical, mirroring pop culture, language, commercial advertising and contemporary life. A Warhol for today’s world.

Reflecting on the 2024 Dodger Stadium home opener — more than 50 years now since it opened, after updating, reshaping and still preserving its original 1960s art form — I’m thinking that if Ruscha’s work in this instance is focused from high above the ballpark, Richard Kee has a collection of work that captures the place from its primary foundation.

So much so, photographer Kee can even step back to admire and acknowledge just that aspect, as, in this book, his portfolio concludes with the shot below and Kee captions it: ” … and finally, the heart and soul of Los Angeles Dodgers baseball.”

That’s actually quite heavenly.

Continue reading “Day 6 of 2024 baseball book reviews: Take my picture, Rich” →

“Remembering Torn-Down Ballparks, Over a Cold Beer:
A Beer Table Book Celebrating Lost Ballparks”

The author: Ken Finnigan

The publishing info: Sports Publishing LLC; 124 pages; $24.95; released March 5, 2024

The links: The publishers website; the authors website; at Bookshop.org; at Powells.com; at BarnesAndNoble.com; at Amazon.com

The review in 90 feet or less

Season 5, episode 22: “Seinfeld” closes the 1994 run with Kramer creating and marketing a coffee table book about celebrity coffee tables– which he insists can be used as an actual coffee table. Somehow, he’s smooding it up with “Regis and Kathie Lee” , which seems more far-fetched than the actual premise.

Considering how Kramer also thought up the idea of car periscopes, bathtub garbage disposals, butter aftershave, tie dispensers, a combo ketchup/mustard bottle, a rubber bladder for an oil tanker, a do-it-yourself pizza pie restaurant, beach cologne and the manssiere, perhaps this was pumping the breaks on his Einstein existence.

Except, there are some retailers today who sell a replica of the Kramer Coffee Table Concept. One Etsy creator fashioned an actual size table, in the shape of the cover, with pages. Just $98.

There will likely be no such tribute, or tributary revenue streams, for what Ken Finnigan created here in a 8.1 X 10.2 X 0.7 inch publication weighing in at a meager 1.6 pounds.

Continue reading “Day 5 of 2024 baseball book reviews: Crying in our beer” →

“The Keystone Corner: Thomas Edison Turns Two”

The author:
J.B. Manheim

The publishing info:
Sunbury Press; 241 pages; $22.95; released Jan. 10, 2024

The links:
The publishers website; the authors website; at Bookshop.org; at Powells.com; at BarnesAndNoble.com; at Amazon.com

The review in 90 feet or less

A lot of electricity was generated in October of 2002 at Edison International Field of Anaheim when the Anaheim Angels lit up the Halo for their first (and so far only) World Series title.

It also cause some to blow a fuse.

“It’s particularly sour to see Edison’s name in lights because consumers in Southern California are shelling out billions of dollars to bail it out,” said Doug Heller, a senior consumer advocate at the Santa Monica-based Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights told the Los Angeles Times in a story that ran in its finance section at the time. “It’s unsavory to see their name associated with the baseball glory of the Angels.”

Heller’s point was that while Edison International had been caught up in the stadium naming rights game — putting up as much as a reported $50 million in a 20-year deal so its brand would be plugged into all mentions of the place — there were new surcharge increases approved by the state Public Utilities Commission.

Who was really footing the bill for this folly, trying to normalize the new name having the media play around with it and refer to the Big A as “The Ed”?

The end was near for The Ed.

Anaheim Stadium went 20 years without a title sponsor before Edison came in for 1997. The team juiced up its profile in the World Series. Then it opted out early after the 2003 season when billboard mogul Arte Moreno took over franchise ownership from Disney. The place has been called Angel Stadium of Anaheim ever since.

Southern California Edison explained how, at the turn of the century, there was a intrinsic value having its name out there, with about 12 million customers in the area at the time. It helped to put a positive spin on its existence.

“It lends itself to what you look for in naming rights — the halo effect,” Charles Basham, a senior project manager at Edison, also told the Times.

We see what you did there … Angels … halos …

Imagine if Thomas Alva “Big ‘A’ In the Middle” Edison could have seen his name affixed to a Major League Baseball ballpark — especially as the game was embracing the Juiced Ball Era.

There might have been some satisfaction as well to see the Angels’ World Series opponents, the San Francisco’s Giants, go through their own ballpark naming rights issues. A series of communication companies like Pac Bell and AT&T kept being bought out and consolidated, so the name kept changing to everyone’s confusion.

And then there was once the energy giant Enron that failed as a naming rights partner in Houston. Poof …

Continue reading “Day 4 of 2024 baseball book reviews: A light-bulb moment in the Deadball mysteries” →

“The Catch: A Novel”

The author:
Jon Weisman

The publishing info:
Self-published; 378 pages; $13.99; released Nov. 1, 2023

The links:
At the author’s website; at the author’s Substack site; at the author’s IMdB.com site; at Bookshop.org; at Powells.com; at Vromans.com; at TheLastBookStoreLA; at Skylight Books; at PagesABookstore.com; at BarnesAndNoble.com; at Amazon.com

The review in 90 feet or less

Give Jon Weisman the benefit of the doubt. In the lengthy process it took him to purge his first novel from his artistic soul, baseball somehow had to be stitched, baked, sautéed and seared into the plot, the twists, the detours and the final out.

Just don’t go into this thinking it’s a “baseball” book. Which can be a McCovey-like stretch since the author has been the Dodgers’ vice president of communications since September of 2023, and the team’s former Director of Digital and Print Content (2013 to 2017) is the creator of the website DodgerThoughts.com and the author of the regularly updated “100 Things Dodgers Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die” (Triumph Books, 368 pages) as well as the 2018 fantastically researched “Brothers in Arms: Koufax, Kershaw and the Dodgers’ Extraordinary Pitching Tradition” (Triumph Books, 384 pages). And, from a silver screen perspective, he’s also one of the story lines in the 2009 documentary “Bluetopia: The L.A. Dodgers Movie.”

Weisman is wise enough not to just dodge baseball altogether here. One of his three main characters is a) the son of a hard-ass baseball coach who becomes the inspiration for his own best-selling book, b) a former University of Texas outfielder whose claim to fame is running down a long fly ball for the final out of a College World Series win against USC (we looked it up — that is complete fiction) and c) has an adorable mom who watches as many games as possible on TV and loved her time as a host for minor-league players in her North Carolina suburb.

But other than that …

Continue reading “Day 3 of 2024 baseball book reviews: Two guys and a girl, but no pizza place — or when Harry met Maya, Maya met Daniel and Daniel wished Harry could just get over his college playing days” →