Category: Uncategorized

The book: “Beep: Inside the Unseen World of Baseball for the Blind”
The author: David Wanczyk
How to find it: Swallow Press/Ohio University Press; 246 pages, $26.95, released March 5.
The links: At Amazon.com, at the publishers website.

A review in 90-feet or less: The way we see it, not enough people know about the basics of the National Beep Baseball Association —  what it does, how it empowers its athletes, and to what level the competition gets for these contests.
Books like this are important vehicles to get the message out (even if the cover type-font makes this appear to be more of a lighthearted look than a deeper dive).
This isn’t so much about generating empathy but more to emphasize its importance.
Wancyzk’s presentation blankets all that. Unfortunately, it does it by doing more than we were interested in.
Aside from the fact the type size of the book is painfully (and ironically) too small to enjoy for long periods of reading, we are taken on this journey by an author who lives in Ohio as a Red Sox fan and learned about this sport through being asked in 2012 to “write a clever magazine piece on something peculiar” (his words) involving the Beep World Series.
Along this journey, he decides that it’s a better read if he inserts himself more into the narrative.
How did these guys get there? Hunting accidents. Degenerative optics. Hereditary diseases. One horrific story involves a man from Ethiopia, kidnapped from his home as a child to become a beggar, and had chemicals pour into his eyes to blind him and make him more pitiful.
There are also some players who are considered “lookers” – not because they are attractive, but because other competitors feel they’re cheating because they have some more-than-slight sight advantages.
But what ties them together seems to be the author’s self-journey into what’s important about sports versus what we’ve been told is a big deal.
Continue reading “Day 12 of 30 baseball book reviews for 2018: What the ‘Beep’ …” →

The book: “The Immaculate Inning: Unassisted Triple Plays, 40/40 Seasons, and the Stories Behind Baseball’s Rarest Feats”
The author: Joe Cox
How to find it: Lyons Press, $27.95, 304 pages, released Feb. 1.
The links: At Amazon.com, at the publishers website.

A review in 90-feet or less: “Almost Perfect: The Heartbreaking Pursuit of Pitching’s Holy Grail,” is a book that Cox, a SABR member living in Kentucky, put out there in February, 2017.
With “Immaculate Inning,” Cox again is almost perfect in taking a stupendous subject idea and making it about as stupefying pedestrian and disappointingly average as possible.
If all it took was a Google search and Wikipedia rewrite, so many more books with hardbound covers could be expected to be covered up by a neat look cover.
Touching on 30 rare feats in the game, some of which were so rare we didn’t even know they mattered, Cox goes past unassisted triple plays in Chapter 1 before getting right into the heart of the title without as much as explaining who came up with the phrase and why.
For the record, it’s been done 89 times, eight times alone in the last season. Rare?
Uh … doesn’t really seem that way if you get down to it.
For the record: It’s an inning where a pitcher strikes out three batters on nine pitches, all strikes. Cox says that while a perfect game (27 batters up, 27 down) is often seen as baseball rarity, the immaculate inning is a “purer feat.”
“Not only does the pitcher set down three hitters, but he does it without wasting a single pitch,” Cox writes. “That is perfect.”
Hmmm. Setting down three hitters on three pitches is really the definition of not wasting any tosses, isn’t it? Continue reading “Day 11 of 30 baseball book reviews for 2018: How the conception of ‘Immaculate Inning’ just lacks some soul” →

We’ve already got our first reunion show after what happened in Episode 5 …
We start with Beto’s critique of the show he missed, and we move forward.

Here’s what we covered:

* From Jim Thompson’s illustration about the Ohtani showdown against Zlatan for L.A. Sports Star Hype.

* For those who aren’t sure about what they remember from “Fernandomania” in 1981 in storyform and in video
* Highlights of Ohtani’s perfect game through 7 1/3 last Sunday with some of Victor Rojas’ dancing around calling it a perfect game effort.
*We’re at a point now where The Onion is even on the Ohtani story.
* Those who were critical of CBS’ coverage of the Masters in regards to Patrick Reed were pieces like this and like this.
* An example of our 30 days of baseball book reviews in the 30 days of April for 2018: This one for Day 10 on photos of Cuban baseball. Here’s the one about Bob Tewksbury on the inner thinking of the game.
* “The Sandlot” hits 25 years.
* More on the Long Beach Grand Prix this weekend.
* And as we give out the social media links — facebook.com/The Drill Sports, and the Twitter handles of @DuranSports @TomHoffarth @SteveLowery12 and @McKLVtheJon, we finish off with “The Carlton” dance from the original “Fresh Prince” with 16 million views from 11 years ago

The book: “Cuba Loves Baseball: A Photographic Journey”
The author: Words and photos by Ira Block, with additional words from forwards from Bob Costas and Sigfredo Barros
How to find it: Skyhorse Publishing, 144 pages, $27.99, released April 3
The links: At Amazon.com, at the publishers website.

A review in 90-feet or less: Picture a baseball life today on an island off Florida that we already know so much about its rich baseball history but perhaps so little else visually.
There’s a place in Matanzas called Estadio Palmar de Junco, which started hosting games in 1874. A photo of it is on page 20, and later on page 122.

How do kids on the street make a baseball? With a rock, paper and tape. And a piece of cardboard for home plate. Photos of that are on pages 80 and 98.
The men (and women) in their 60s, 70s and 80s who still play. Their soulful portraits span pages 110-117.
It’s apparent that many look content in the context of baseball in Cuba based on these extremely sensitive and often breathtaking shots provided by Block, who spent three years on this project in 2013 after he had already been there to shoot assignments in the late 1990s for National Geographic.
“The Cuban people live and breathe baseball,” Block writes in his author’s notes. “I wanted to document the game on all levels: from grassroots to the professional leagues, from players to fans, from cities to rural areas. … My assistant and I would drive into a town or village and ask ‘Where are they playing pelota?’ From that point, it was easy and the magic unfolded in front of me.”
There are many surprises we won’t spoil here, but if you’re wondering if there’s any references to the Dodgers’ Yasiel Puig, who made a goodwill visit to Havana a couple of years ago, the answer is yes.
The colors are rich, the framing is exquisite, and the words here don’t do it justice.
Experience it yourself framed in an oversized book that artistically allows the white space to allow your mind to wander. Continue reading “Day 10 of 30 baseball book reviews for 2018: Viva Cuba … and take a picture, it’ll stay in our mind’s eye much longer” →

The book: “Ninety Percent Mental: An All-Star Player Turned Mental Skills Coach Reveals the Hidden Game of Baseball”
The author: Bob Tewksbury, with Scott Miller
How to find it: Da Capo Press, 256 pages, $27, released March 20
The links: At Amazon.com, at the publishers website.

A review in 90-feet or less: In an April 3 piece for USA Today under the headline “Why Major League Baseball is ‘90% mental’ more than ever,” Bob Nightengale has a piece based on the ramifications that MLB teams now employ a total of 40 mental skills coach ontheir staffs. Only San Diego, Atlanta and Kansas City lack one.
Smart move?
Writes Nightengale about Tewksbury, who won 110 games in his 13-year career and then became a mental skills coach for the Boston Red Sox and San Francisco Giants:
“(He) is baseball’s lone mental skills coach with a master’s degree in psychology who also played in the big leagues. He was an All-Star who finished third in 1992 Cy Young Award balloting, and was released twice. He was a 17-game winner, and a two-time 13-game loser. 
“He grew up in an era when players were afraid to be seen talking to a sports psychologist, and now has written a book detailing his work: ‘Ninety Percent Mental: An All-Star Player Turned Mental Skills Coach Reveals the Hidden Game of Baseball.’
“With clubhouse camaraderie not as vibrant as it once was – and players likelier to retreat to the relative solitude of electronics –  human connection remains important.
“ ‘There’s so much down times and this game is so result-based,’  Tewksbury says, ‘and the combination of the two causes a lot of anxiety. Just to be able to have someone talk about it with can relieve some of that pressure.
“ ‘The demands of the player have become different. They’re at the clubhouse earlier, the games are longer, and when the game is over, they just shut down.’”
Can you get your head around that? Makes sense, doesn’t it. Isolation based on current lack of human interaction will equal a messed up situation in the brain when it comes to assessing success and failure. And baseball, as we’re taught, is all about failure with small bursts of successes.
Continue reading “Day 9 of 30 baseball book reviews for 2018: How to twerk the modern day snowflake baseball brain, by Tewks” →