Category: Uncategorized

The book: “The Baseball Fanbook: Everything You Need to Know to Become a Hardball Know-It-All/Sports Illustrated for Kids”
The author: Gary Gramling
How to find it: Sports Illustrated for Kids/Liberty Street/Time Inc., 192 pages, $19.99, released April 3
The links: At Amazon.com.

A review in 90 feet or less: The second part of a “what’s best for the kids” selection has to start with dubious journey Sports Illustrated seems to be on these days.
Its parent company is trying to sell off this asset at a time when the weekly publication cut back to biweekly distribution.
If this is the future of the iconic brand, why bother cultivating the younger demographic? Because, for now, it’s worth the effort. At least in the book department.
The Sports Illustrated Kids, producing a monthly print and digital magazine aimed at the 8-to-14 reader as well as a website, since its launch in 1989, has a supposed circulation of seven million for its magazine, recognized by Parent’s Choice and the Educational Press for its content.
So with that branding, it has produced excellent 101-type books for Little League-aged kids and beyond – in 2017, it had “Big Book of WHO in Baseball” (kindergarten and up).
In 2016, it had “My First Book of Baseball” (preschool to first grade) and “Baseball Then to WOW!” (grades one to three).
Back in 2013, it had a best-selling children’s baseball book with “Goodnight Baseball” (kindergarten to second grade).

Continue reading “Day 28 of 30 baseball book reviews for 2018: With more kid’s stuff like this, at least SI can focus on the future” →

The book: “The Comic Book Story of Baseball: The Heroes, Hustlers, and History-Making Swings (and Misses) of America’s National Pastime”
The author: Alex Irvine, with illustrations by Tomm Coker and C.P. Smith
How to find it: Ten Speed Press/Penguin Random House, 176 pages, $18.99. To be released May 8
The links: At Amazon.com, at the publisher’s website.

A review in 90-feet or less: Circle back to 2018 review No. 1: “Why Baseball Matters.” Author Susan Jacoby has a call to action in the afterward that includes:

“When you take a kid to a ballgame, give her an interesting baseball book afterward. There are so many wonderful books about baseball that it should be possible to find the right one for every child. Try both the sublime (for example, Lawrence Ritter’s ‘The Glory of their Times’) and the ridiculous (like ‘The Baseball Hall of Shame’  by Bruce Nash and Allen Zullo).”
And now, this one (and one more on Day 28 of our reviews).

Comic books were never our thing. We had plenty of friends into it. We laugh watching the crew on “Big Bang Theory” converging at the comic book store.
But there has to be a variety of entry points for a kid in the age range – or even an adult who spends his afternoons browsing through back issues of Spider-Man – to introduce the game’s history and why it matters on today’s media platforms. Continue reading “Day 27 of 30 baseball book reviews for 2018: This graphically illustrates another way to get kids to read more about baseball” →

The book: “Gator: My Life In Pinstripes”
The author: Ron Guidry, with Andrew Beaton
How to find it: Crown Archetype, 240 pages, $24, released March 20.
The links: At Amazon.com, at the publisher’s website.

A review in 90-feet or less: There are a few reasons in this media era that might compel a former ex-big leaguer to come out with a memoir.
We are flatly confused by the motives by the former Yankees pitcher who, not to steal his thunder, but we though was better known as “Louisiana Lightning.”
*Possibility A: Maybe he seeks Hall of Fame attention. Guidry’s stat line: 14 years, all with the Yankees from age 24 to age 37, covering 1975 through 1988. A record of 170-91, with a ridiculous 1978 season of 25-3, 1.74 ERA, nine shutouts and a club-record 248 strikeouts, including a team-mark 18 against the Angels on June 17. That got him a Cy Young, second in MVP, and he led all of pitchers in WAR at 9.6.
He also was 22-6 in ’85 and 21-9 in ’83 when he had 21 complete games. Four All-Star appearances, four Gold Gloves, two World Series titles, 5-2 in the postseason with a 3.02 ERA. Despite his reputation, he never led the league in strike outs, surprisingly. Continue reading “Day 26 of 30 baseball book reviews for 2018: Don’t want to be a hater, but … Later, Gator” →

We’ve tried to build a better ark, in the absence of Beto Duran (who is on assignment this week) and give you two shorter shows that would normally be jam-packed into one hour-long extravaganza (as was Episode 7).
Here, too, are the notes worth noting: Continue reading “The Drill E8 Parts 1&2: A couple of 30-minute clips from this week on LaVar Ball, the Dodgers’ SportsNet LA reality, the NFL draft coverage and … raccoons? Plus a special Joe Torre interview and an Al Michaels shoutout” →

The book: “Gehrig & the Babe: The Friendship and the Feud”
The author: Tony Castro
How to find it: Triumph Books, 304 pages, $25.95, released April 1
The links: At Amazon.com, and the publisher’s website.

The reviews in 90-feet or less: A year ago, a kid from Simi Valley gave us all some strange insight on the Ruth-Gehrig dynamic.
Our first book of the 2017 reviews – “The Boy Who Knew Too Much: An Astounding True Story of a Young Boy’s Past-Life Memories” — was focused on Christian Haupt, an 8-year-old whose mom has come to believe he was re-incarnated as Gehrig.
It started with him, before age 4, telling her about how he didn’t get along with The Bambino. She didn’t know what he was talking about until she did some research and found out that, yes, that’s been written about. But how did her son even know all that?
So now coming up on 70 years since Babe Ruth’s passing, one might wonder if he, too has pulled some “Field of Dreams” deal risen from underneath his plaque in Yankee Stadium center field and suddenly come to life.
He is, at least, in another round of hard- and soft-bound literature.

By the time October falls into place, Jane Leavy will be staking her reputation on another baseball bio epic called “The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created,” and part of the blurb for it calls it “the definitive biography” of the man who “drafted the blueprint for modern athletic stardom.”

Spinning off that concept, there’s “Babe Ruth and the Creation of the Celebrity Athlete,” by Thomas Barthel, due out now in June. The author here wants to separate “exaggerated facts from clear falsehoods” and trace “Ruth’s ascendance as the first great media-created superstar and celebrity product endorser.”

Around that same time, “The Age of Ruth and Landis: The Economics of Baseball during the Roaring Twenties,” by David George Surdam and Michael J. Haupert will also appear. It claims to cover a “tumultuous 1920s” guided by these two legends, as well as Rogers Hornsby, Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Tris Speaker and Eddie Collins, to where there was now “an exciting brand of livelier baseball, new stadiums, and overall stability.”

And then there’s “Breaking Babe Ruth: Baseball’s Campaign Against Its Biggest Star,” by Edmund F. Wehrle, for Sports and American Culture series, due out May 31. The author is said expose how Ruth was “an ambitious, independent operator, one not afraid to challenge baseball’s draconian labor system,” and this perspective will paint Ruth “more seriously and placing his life in fuller context (which is) is long overdue.”

That’s almost, but not quite, equal to the number of nicknames George Herman Ruth amassed in his 53 years on the planet.
To tie us down for now, we have this Castro book to digest, which can be just as fulfilling as a pile of hot dogs chased down with a vodka and tonic.
The L.A.-based former Herald Examiner columnist who already authored “Mickey Mantle: America’s Prodigal Son” and “DiMag & Mick: Sibling Rivals, Yankee Blood Brothers” decides that this Ruth-Gehrig relationship is worthy of a excavation.
Continue reading “Day 25 of 30 baseball book reviews for 2018: You’ve still come a long way, Babe, and apparently we can’t get enough of how great thou art” →