Category: Uncategorized

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” →

The book: “Being Ted Williams: Growing Up with a Baseball Idol”
The author: Dick Enberg, with Tom Clavin
How to find it: Sports Publishing, 176 pages, $24.95, due out May 15.
The links: At Amazon.com, at the publisher’s website.

A review in 90 feet or less: It goes back to the Vin Scully line, about making God smile by telling him your plans.
More than a year ago, Hall of Fame broadcaster Dick Enberg, about to retire from broadcasting San Diego Padres’ games, wanted to time it so he could come out with a book about his boyhood hero, Ted Williams, just before the 100^th anniversary of The Splendid Splinter’s birth, in August, 2018.
To have it also come out in June, it was also perfectly timed for a Father’s Day gift.
But time didn’t wait for Enberg to see it come through. He passed way last December, 2017 at age 82.
We planned as well to use this as the first book in the 2018 book review series. The release date was pushed back a bit. We have yet to see a review copy. When we do we will update this post. But we couldn’t let this series go without giving it a seat at the table, based only on Enberg was so joyous about this project as he told us about it, and we knew he would enthusiastically do all sorts of author appearances and interviews to support its eventual release.
For now, we’ll go by Enberg told us, and what he also wrote in a previous biography, about how as a kid growing up in Mount Clemens, Mich. (before moving to the San Fernando Valley), he would hit rocks over a telephone wire with a stick as he impersonated Williams’ swing.

In 1969, Enberg’s first year calling Angels’ games in Anaheim, Williams was in town as the manager of the Washington Senators.  Enberg had conveyed this story before: Continue reading “Day 29 of 30 baseball book reviews for 2018: Dick Enberg’s final tribute to Ted Williams hits home” →

Excuse me ….
I was trying to get the attention of someone working the frenzied Friday night floor at Barney’s Beanery atop the Redondo Beach Pier. All the different sports on the dozens of TV monitors throughout the place added to the derangement.
“Excuse me,” I asked a bit louder. “Can you put the Dodgers’ game on?”
On a night when L.A. had no Lakers, Clippers, Kings or Ducks playoffs games to otherwise take center stage, there happened to be a Dodgers-National game of national importance. The marquee matchup of Clayton Kershaw against Max Scherzer taking place at Dodger Stadium, was exclusive to SportsNet LA.
Kershaw was moments away from delivering the first pitch when a couple flicks of the remote eventually got the game onto two screens behind the bar, one more off to the left, and another behind me.
That’s it?
Less than a dozen pitches into the game, Kershaw was trailing 2-0. A cheer came from the bar area.
It was from a Nats fan, waving his menu in the air.
Excuse me, but what’s wrong with this picture?
There are many ways the SportsNet LA experience continues to baffle some, and be completely off the radar for others.
But could things be changing soon? Pay attention to the Department of Justice suit against AT&T trying to take over Time Inc., and the trickle-down effect it could have with SportsNet LA distribution.
More at our weekly media column posted on the Southern California News Group websites.