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“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” →

“Save Baseball: A Prescription for the Major Leagues”

The author:
Larry Hausner

The publishing info:
McFarland; 208 pages; $35; released Feb. 9, 2024

The links:
The publishers website; at Bookshop.org; at Powells.com; at Vromans.com; at Target.com; at BarnesAndNoble.com; at Amazon.com

The review in 90 feet or less

Was it just a dream, half-awake watching the Dodgers and Padres lap it up in South Korea thousands of miles away from their home bases on official business.

Or has March Madness taken on a ultra-sharp visual experience with our new Apple Vision Pro?

We are still learning what’s going on today and looking at tomorrow in the same glimpse. And what Korean-style baseball is all about. Now what are we supposed to do with the rest of our day/night? Listen to day-long replays of the Dodgers’ radio play-by-play as a sleep activator?

First game, First win. @Dodgers beat @Padres 5-2. Nap time. Back at 3 am tomorrow for game 2. Thanks for listening!

— Tim Neverett (@TimNeverett) March 20, 2024

It kinda reminded me of when, during the early days of COVID-19 lockdown and ESPN desperate to fill air time and generate ad revenue, someone decided to throw on live Korean Baseball Organization games in 2020.

KBO-Oh no you didn’t. With 2020 hindsight, was that a good idea now?

We learned baeball isn’t just baseball. Quality of play matters. Player identification draws connection. Team logo recognition helps. We couldn’t even bet on those things, so why were we even engaged (more on that later)?

Continue reading “Day 2 of 2024 baseball book reviews: Can baseball sell, or save, its soul in Seoul?” →

“The Bill James Handbook 1990-2023: Walk-Off Edition”

The authors:
Bill James
& Sports Info Solutions

The publishing info:
ACTA Sports; 252 pages; $24.95; released Oct. 30, 2023

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

About 70% of the real nut cases in politics are on my side of the aisle.

— Bill James Online (@billjamesonline) January 3, 2024

Win shares. Runs created. Range factor. Similarity scores. Power/Speed.

And nut cases.

Go to war with all that if need be. Or accept it as collateral damage to your value system of HR, RBIs, W-L and ERA.

Bill James created Sabermetrics, and Sabermetrics changed Baseball. And Baseball Today is what it is because of, in a lot of ways, George William James, aka The Professor of Baseball. It can be a rough road to traverse, navigating a baseball world of new and improved weights and measures, if you don’t really look back at who tipped the scales into a modern-day mishmash of numerical mayhem.

James not only did that, but he provided context. And that’s why it has worked out, kicking and screaming. Don’t be a baby about it as you soak in your bathwater.

With this particular book project, a 34-year run ends. All good things do.

The way James changed the entire dynamics on how baseball is sized up, dissected and reconstructed is coming to a natural conclusion. And he’s now allowed to take his name out of the lineup.

The trick isn’t that the 75-year-old historian/writer/statman created the name “sabermetrics” after the Society of American Baseball Research. It was that, for someone who started pounding out essays while working as a night-shift security guard at the Stokley-Van Camp’s pork and beans cannery after leaving the U.S. Army ended up included in Time magazine’s 2006 edition of one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Continue reading “Day 1 of 2024 baseball book reviews: Bill James values his intentional walk” →