Tag: baseball

No. 42: Tom Selleck

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This is the latest post for an ongoing media project — SoCal Sports History 101: The Prime Numbers from 00 to 99 that Uniformly, Uniquely and Unapologetically Reveal The Narrative of Our Region’s Athletic Heritage.  Pick a number and highlight an athlete — person, place or thing — most obviously connected to it by fame and fortune, someone who isn’t so obvious, and then take a deeper dive into the most interesting story tied to it. It’s a combination of star power, achievement, longevity, notoriety, and, above all, what makes that athlete so Southern California. Quirkiness and notoriety factor in. And it should open itself to more discussion and debate — which is what sports is best at doing.

The most obvious choices for No. 42:

= James Worthy, Los Angeles Lakers
= Ronnie Lott, USC football
= Ricky Bell, USC football
= Walt Hazzard, UCLA basketball
= Don MacLean, UCLA basketball

The not-so-obvious choices for No. 42:

= Connie Hawkins, Los Angeles Lakers
= Kevin Love, UCLA basketball
= Lucius Allen, UCLA basketball and Los Angeles Lakers
= CR Roberts, USC football

The most interesting story for No. 42:
Tom Selleck, USC basketball forward (1965-66 to 1966-67) via Grant High of Van Nuys and L.A. Valley College
Southern California map pinpoints:
Sherman Oaks, Van Nuys, Los Angeles (Sports Arena), Hollywood

The 42 preamble

UCLA unveiled a Jackie Robinson monument on campus on March 5, 2016.

In November of 2014, UCLA announced it would retire the No. 42 across all its men’s and women’s sports teams. It was following up what Major League Baseball did 17 years earlier, this time to honor one of its most noteworthy alums, Jack Robinson.

UCLA may have also been nudged by another local university for the concept of this kind of number retirement. In February of ’14, Cal State Northridge’s athletic department retired the No. 58 among all its sports programs to mark the year — 1958 — when the school opened.

Conveniently, the timing for UCLA’s declaration marked the 75th anniversary of Robinson’s arrival as a student-athlete on the campus.

After two years at Pasadena City College, Robinson, out of Muir Technical High, went to Westwood in February of 1939 on an athletic scholarship. He departed in the spring of 1941, a few units short of a degree and with no graduation. The story goes that Robinson needed to make some income to help his family in Pasadena. He would soon go into the military.

But Robinson sure did put a spotlight on the university. He was the first four-sport letterman in UCLA history – football (1939 and 1940), basketball (1940 and 1941), track and field (1940) and even a little baseball (1940).

In 2004, a Jackie Robinson statue was created to sit near Jackie Robinson Stadium just west of the UCLA campus (Getty Images)

Even more convenient was UCLA announcement’s was just after the success of the 2013 film, “42.”

The late actor Chadwick Bozeman played Robinson on his journey through Pasadena to UCLA, to the Dodgers’ Triple-A Montreal Royals, before it was decided he was equipped to join the Brooklyn Dodgers and wear that number 42.

The fact that Robinson never wore No. 42 at UCLA in any sport seems to be beside the point. UCLA’s accounting department acknowledges that as it finds places in almost every athletic platform to make sure a “42” is branded somewhere.

The “42” is painted at each 25 yard line at the Rose Bowl during a UCLA-Utah game in August of 2025. Why not at each 42-yard line?

“Jackie Robinson established a standard of excellence to which people the world over should aspire,” said athletic director Dan Guerrero, a former UCLA baseball player, during the announcement. “We want to ensure that his is a legacy to be upheld and carried forward by Bruins for generations to come. While he wore several numbers at UCLA, Jackie Robinson made the number 42 as iconic as the man himself. For that very reason, no Bruin will be issued the number 42 — in any sport — ever again.”

For UCLA basketball, he was No. 18. For UCLA football, he was famously No. 28. What he wore playing baseball, the Bruin statkeepers still aren’t sure.

The UCLA Bruins’ 1940 baseball team photo. Jack Robinson is top left.

We had sought out UCLA’s sports information department for more info, but it can’t find any evidence he even wore a baseball number. The Dodgers and the Baseball Hall of Fame’s research department in Cooperstown, N.Y., didn’t produce anything. Neither did a dig through the Amateur Athletic Foundation nor the Pasadena City library archives. Employees at the Jackie Robinson Foundation finally were asked to quiz Rachel Robinson about it. She replied: I don’t know.

For now, it remains an iconic, and ironic, mystery. Which seems pretty twisted in itself.

There also seems to be no magical story behind why Robinson wore 42, other than it’s what the Dodgers gave him to wear.

In Triple-A, Robinson wore No. 10. During his days with the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro Leagues, various accounts have him wearing Nos. 5, 8 and 23.

Ken Griffey Jr. is probably most responsible for making No. 42 more ubiquitous. When then–MLB Commissioner Bud Selig retired No. 42 for all of baseball on April 15, 1997 — 50 years after Robinson’s MLB debut — Griffey, then with the Seattle Mariners, asked that his uniform number be flipped from 24 to 42 for that day. It was.

By 2004, the league started an annual Jackie Robinson Day. In 2007, Griffey, then with the Cincinnati Reds, asked Selig if he could wear 42 again for the special occasion. Selig got the OK from Rachel Robinson — and the offer was made to any MLB player who wanted to make that number change as well. Then it became a thing.

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, a UCLA graduate, addresses the team at the Dodger Stadium Jackie Robinson statue outside of center field.

We might come up with 42 reasons why Robinson didn’t become our prime focus for No. 42, but the primary reason is that No. 42 is far more acrimonious with Robinson’s Brooklyn Dodgers career. He didn’t come with the team when it moved to Los Angeles. Robinson retired in 1957 before the Dodgers could trade him to the rival Giants.

At PasadenaClsc.com, a Jack Robinson T-shirt.

A company named PASADENA CLSC (pronounced Classic), was started in 2019 by graphic designer Dennis Robinson, the grandson of Jack’s brother, Mack, to celebrate his great uncle’s legacy as well as celebrate the community’s history. By some accounts, Robinson would not have been comfortable with this “42” branding opportunity by MLB. Especially as it seems “42” has become a selling point when put on all sorts of hats, clothes, jackets, socks … It’s easily identifiable with a man, a cause and a statement of one’s social justice beliefs. The MLB duly notes that with its own product line.

We consider Robinson’s greatest impact in Southern California sports history when he wore No. 28 playing football.

In 2017, when the Dodgers unveiled a statue honoring Robinson outside of Dodger Stadium, Vin Scully, as the master of ceremonies, told several stories about his relationship with Robinson, going back to Scully’s first year broadcasting Dodgers games in Brooklyn in 1950. Scully punctuated that speech with this “Jackie Robinson Day” celebration on April 15:

“All across the country, in every major-league ballpark, every player will be wearing 42. And what does the 42 means? It doesn’t mean that (the players) are all equal. … but the one thing they share in carrying 42 is the fact that the man who wore it gave them the one thing that no one at the time could have ever done. He gave them equality. And he gave them opportunity. Those were the two things many of those people never had to hold in their hearts when they first began to play. So, yes, 42 is a great number, it means a lot for a great man, but it is a tremendous number when you think of a man who wore it with such dignity, with such pride, and with such great discipline.”

A book pin offered at IdealBookShelf.com

So there’s that …

Anyone else able to explain how the number 42 seems to be somehow attached as the “Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything”?

In Douglas Adams’ late ’70s/early ’80s comedy/science fiction book series, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” No. 42 is the simple answer that comes up after a super computer called “Deep Thought” spends 7 ½ billion years of calculation pondering that the aforementioned question. Or was it a real question. The creators did not actually know what the “Ultimate Question” was, rendering the answer 42 even more confusing.

Adams, when asked, said he simply picked that answer because it was an ordinary, small number.

How so? What does it all mean? Was he a Jack Robinson fan?

Sit with that awhile and see where the universe takes you.

No. 42: Tom Selleck

You never know when a low dose of a early-morning TV chat show might actually clarify some urban Hollywood legend and lead to some legitimate record-keeping.

In May of 2024, Tom Selleck climbed up in the high-back chair as a guest on “Live with Kelly and Mark,” taking questions about how he went from a USC basketball player to a Hollywood actor based on his newly released memoir, “You Never Know.” The nattering ABC coffee klatch visit was also a place to get nostalgic for the end of his participation in the long-running CBS series “Blue Bloods.”

“You wanted to be — and I did not realize this — a professional athlete!?” co-host Kelly Rippa piped up as she boosted herself up in her seat.

Selleck shrugged.

“Well, it was kind of a fantasy,” he said sheepishly. “(At first) it was baseball, then I got a little burned out, and by the time I got to ‘SC, I thought it was basketball …”

“You got a scholarship, in fact!” Kelly interjected.

“No,” Selleck answered, almost apologetic. “I was a walk on. Basically my real job was riding the pine at USC … I earned a scholarship my last semester.”

Continue reading “No. 42: Tom Selleck” →

No. 37: Tom Seaver

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This is the latest post for an ongoing media project — SoCal Sports History 101: The Prime Numbers from 00 to 99 that Uniformly, Uniquely and Unapologetically Reveal The Narrative of Our Region’s Athletic Heritage.  Pick a number and highlight an athlete — person, place or thing — most obviously connected to it by fame and fortune, someone who isn’t so obvious, and then take a deeper dive into the most interesting story tied to it. It’s a combination of star power, achievement, longevity, notoriety, and, above all, what makes that athlete so Southern California. Quirkiness and notoriety factor in. And it should open itself to more discussion and debate — which is what sports is best at doing.

The most obvious choices for No. 37:

= Donnie Moore: California Angels
= Lester Hayes: Los Angeles Raiders
= Ron Artest/Metta World Peace: Los Angeles Lakers

The not-so-obvious choices for No. 37:

= Kermit Johnson, UCLA football
= Bobby Castillo: Los Angeles Dodgers
= Ron Washington: Los Angeles Angels manager
= Tom Seaver: USC baseball

The most interesting story for No. 37:
Tom Seaver: USC baseball pitcher (1965)
Southern California map pinpoints:
Los Angeles (USC), Manhattan Beach, Twentynine Palms

Tom Seaver was a stellar bridge player.

Bridge can be a tricky game. The trick is to gather the least the number of tricks bid by the partnership at the four-person table. The rules seem simple, but mastering the strategy and complexity of it all takes time and practice. Intelligence and patience are rewarded.

During his brief time as a USC student — a pre-denistry major, because he sensed he might need a fallback career — Seaver sometimes could be found with friends hanging out at the 901 Club on Jefferson Blvd., famous for its hamburgers and beer.

And bridge building, when he was there.

In the abridged version of how Seaver went from college baseball to a pro career, there should have been a simple bridge there for him to cross from USC to the Los Angeles Dodgers’ stellar starting rotation of the 1960s.

Instead, there was a toll to pay, and the Dodgers balked.

That’s where Seaver’s poker face came into play. A fantastic 2020 book by acclaimed author and former minor leaguer Pat Jordan revealed how deep a Seaver was. But when it came to his MLB future, Seaver wasn’t bluffing on contract demands. Eventually, both the Dodges and USC lost out.

As the Vietnam War started in 1962, Seaver wasn’t keen on being drafted out of Fresno High, where he just finished his senior baseball season with a 6-5 record but made the Fresno Bee All-City team. Still, he had no pro offers, nor any college interest.

So Seaver enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves in 1962 and ’63, with bootcamp at Twentynine Palms. He realized eventually the extra weight and strength he gained in that training allowed him to eventually throw a more effective fastball and slider.

His roadmap to the bigs started with one season at Fresno City College as a freshman, then earning a scholarship to play at USC, the perennial NCAA title team under coach Rod Dedeaux (see SoCal Sports History 101 bio for No. 1).

After Seaver posted an 11-2 mark at Fresno City, the Dodgers were interested. But not more than $2,000 interested. Maybe it was $3,000. That was their reportedly their offer in 1964, the last time MLB teams would have the freedom to sign whomever they wanted before the draft kicked in.

Seaver declined the Dodgers’ gesture and went panning for gold elsewhere.

Dedeaux, who called Seaver the “phee-nom from San Joaquin,” agreed to give him one of his five USC baseball full scholarships — if Seaver first played in Alaska summer ball in ’64. Dedeaux worked out a deal for Seaver to pitch for the Alaska Goldpanners of the Alaska Baseball League, which showcased college talent. The 19-year-old experienced his first Midnight Sun Game in Anchorage — the 10:30 p.m. start on June 21 for the summer solstice that has become part of baseball lore.

In 19 games, starting five, Seaver was 6-2 with a save and 4.70 ERA to go with 70 strike outs in 58 2/3 innings. Later that summer, playing in an National Baseball Congress World Series in Wichita, Kansas, Seaver, now with the Wichita Glassmen, hit a grand slam in a game where he had been called in as a relief pitcher. Seaver would say that was one of his career highlights.

At USC, Dedeaux slotted Seaver as the Trojans’ No. 3 starter – also on the staff was junior Bob Selleck, the 6-foot-6 older brother of eventual USC basketball, baseball and volleyball player and actor Tom Selleck.

Continue reading “No. 37: Tom Seaver” →

No. 53: Don Drysdale

fartheroffthewall

This is the latest post for an ongoing media project — SoCal Sports History 101: The Prime Numbers from 00 to 99 that Uniformly, Uniquely and Unapologetically Reveal The Narrative of Our Region’s Athletic Heritage.  Pick a number and highlight an athlete — person, place or thing — most obviously connected to it by fame and fortune, someone who isn’t so obvious, and then take a deeper dive into the most interesting story tied to it. It’s a combination of star power, achievement, longevity, notoriety, and, above all, what makes that athlete so Southern California. Quirkiness and notoriety factor in. And it should open itself to more discussion and debate — which is what sports is best at doing.

The most obvious choices for No. 53:
= Don Drysdale, Los Angeles Dodgers
= Keith Erickson, UCLA basketball
= Rod Martin, Los Angeles Raiders

The not-so-obvious choices for No. 53:
= Jim Youngblood, Los Angeles Rams
= Lynn Shackleford, UCLA basketball

The most interesting story for No. 53:
Don Drysdale, Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher (1958 to 1969), California Angels broadcaster (1973 to 1981), Los Angeles Rams broadcaster (1973 to 1976), Los Angeles Dodgers broadcaster (1988 to 1993)

Southern California map pinpoints:
Van Nuys, Bakersfield, Hollywood, Los Angeles (Coliseum, Dodger Stadium), Anaheim

A mural at Dodger Stadium down the first base line for an exclusive section of field-level seats.

The dogma of Don Drysdale presents itself as an expanded truth-or-double-dog-dare discussion of the “Big D” legacy.

No question it covers Southern California culture, as well as pop culture, and the culture of a Hall of Fame athletic and broadcast career.

There are bigger-than-life discoveries about the 6-foot-6 right-handed sidewinder, a San Fernando Valley-grown kid who spent all 14 years of his big-league career with the Dodgers organization and circled back for his final six years on the planet broadcasting their games:

From the 1960 issue of Sport magazine, the self-authored story: “You’ve Got to Be Mean to Pitch”

Truth that’s been told: Don Drysdale led the league in putting the “mean” in what constituted a meaningful pitch.

Dare to discover: The dastardly stat was never kept, but if some SABR-cat researcher was compelled to go back and confirm, we’d suspect there was enough evidence to confirm he threw more brushback/purpose pitches during his 14-year career, all with the Dodgers, the last dozen in Los Angeles, than anyone else in his era.

He did hit 154 opponents, which breaks down into leading the majors for four seasons and the National League a fifth time. That can be interpreted from what Drysdale put out as his stated philosophy: You knock down/hit one of my guys, I knock down/hit two of yours.

The footnote to that: Why waste four pitches on an intentional walk with one pitch to the ribs will do? That line attributed to Drysdale may not take into the fact he did issue 123 IBB in his career.

Further research from Fangraphs on the essence of the “Two For One Special,” aka the “Drysdale Revenge Factor,’ shows of 18 times in his career where he hit two or more batters in a game. But deconstructing relative facts and figures from previous games and what else was happening is far more difficult to document. That mindset, however, leans into learning the art of intimidation by former veteran Brooklyn teammate Sal “The Barber” Maglie. Properly stated, it puts the idea in a batter’s mind that things could go south quick if you decided you owned the half of the 17-inch home plate that Drysdale decided was his for a particular at-bat.

“Batting against him is the same as making a date with the dentist,” Pittsburgh’s Dick Groat once said.

Added San Francisco’s Orlando Cepeda: “The trick against Drysdale is to hit him before he hits you.”

So, they knew the drill.

In a 1979 interview with the New York Times’ Dave Anderson, Drysdale said delivering the inside pitch was a “lost art” 10 years after his retirement.

“I just feel,” he was saying now, his right forefinger swirling the ice in his Scotch, “that when you’re pitching, part of the plate has to be yours. … The pitcher has to find out if the hitter is timid. And if the hitter is timid, he has to remind the hitter he’s timid.”

(Love that imagery).

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Day 21 of 2025 baseball book reviews: Who has the veto power on an overturned call in this game?

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“The House Divided:
The Story of the First
Congressional Baseball Game”

The author: J.B. Manheim
The details: Sunbury Press, $19.95, 182 pages, released April 22, 2025. Best available at the publisher’s website and the author’s website.

A review in 90 feet or less

Updated 6.12.25

No, no. Nannette Diaz Barragán has earned her roster spot for the Congressional Baseball Game, next up on June 11 at Nationals Park in the District of Columbia.

Since 2017 when the freshman House rep put on a Los Angeles Dodgers’ jersey, highlighted by a red No. 44 to represent her district, then ripped a pinch-hit, RBI-single in her first appearance before 25,000, Barragán continues to use baseball as a way of proving her worthiness.

This is no DEI seat filler. Her bio is pretty explicit in the ability to challenge and respond to situations.

Born in Harbor City as the youngest of 11, Nanette Diaz went to North Torrance High. While she played softball, she also petitioned the administration to be allowed to try out for the boys’ baseball team — and she made the JV squad.

With degrees in political science and public policy from UCLA and a doctorate in law from USC, she launched into a legal career. Involved in the Clinton White House in the Office of Public Liaison for African American outreach, Barragán eventually moved to Florida in 2012 to work on Barack Obama’s presidential re-election campaign and be part of the voter’s rights protection team.

By 2013, she circled back to the Hermosa Beach City Council, fighting against offshore oil drilling. Two years later, she was running for Congress after Janice Hahn vacated the seat.

After her debut in the Congressional Game in ’17, she was noted as one of three participants in the ’18 games — which marked the 25th anniversary of when Blanche Lambert Lincoln, Illena Ros-Lehtinen and Maria Cantwell were the first women played.

“A lot has changed in 25 years,” Barragán said, “but when it comes to this sort of thing, we need to acknowledge not much progress has been made.”

For the 2019 game, Barragán and good friend Linda Sanchez (CA-38) were the only two women players. Barragán invited the D.C. Girls Baseball Team as her special guest, taking pride int he fact her 44th District — Carson, Compton, Lynwood, North Long Beach, Rancho Dominguez, San Pedro, South Gate, Walnut Park, Watts, Willowbrook and Wilmington — includes the Compton Youth Baseball Academy, which hosts annual girls baseball tournaments.

With decisive victories in re-elections in ’18, ’20, ’22 and ’24, Barragán doesn’t hide her love of the Dodger blue, introduced to her by her father. She was at the Dodgers’ White House visits after their 2020 and ’24 World Series titles. Her official website has fashioned a branding for her that looks like the Dodgers’ logo.

With Sanchez as the captain of Team Democrat for the ’25 game, Barragán finds herself as the only woman on the roster. She is there with fellow Californian House members Pete Aguiliar (CA-33), Gil Cisneros (CA-31), Adam Gray (CA-13), Mike Levin (CA-49), Dave Min (CA-47), Kevin Mullin (CA-15), Raul Ruiz (CA-25), Eric Swalwell (CA-15), Derek Tran (CA-45), plus as U.S. senator Alex Padilla.

Four women are listed on the Republican roster — Lisa McClain (MI-09), Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA-01), Kat Cammack (FL-03) and Iowa senator Joni Ernst.

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Day 20 of 2025 baseball book reviews: What’s good for the Mallards is good for goosing the game

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“Baseball Like It Oughta Be:
How a Shoe Salesman’s Madison Mallards
And His Renegade Staff Ignited a
Summer Collegiate Baseball Revolution”

The author: Tom Alesia
The details: August Publications, $18.95; 208 pages, released May 19, 2025; best available at the publishers website and the author’s website

A review in 90 feet or less

Updated 6.2.25

There oughta be a clear path for someone like Lauren Thiesen to write a piece for Defector.com under the headline: “The Savannah Bananas Make Baseball Boring” and not be weary of getting crapped on for it. Especially when she framed it as coming “the perspective of a baseball nut and ‘sports entertainment’ obsessive.”

Read it for yourself. Good points are made.

She followed it up with a Facebook post: “I was a tiny bit miffed by the handful of ‘this reads like an old man wrote it’ responses … You can disagree with my (nuanced!) thoughts, but idk why it would ever be inconceivable that a 30 yr old woman produced them.”

Especially from a target audience member for the traveling hardball show.

When we visited the Bananas’ second game of a two-day appearance at Angels Stadium in Anaheim this week — perhaps the only two sellouts at the place this 2025 calendar year, coming off a three-game series against the Yankees — we had Thiesen’s words in our head as a frame of reference, as well as local media coverage from the Day 1 game, but otherwise, we tried to be open-minded.

Our take on the whole idea of the Savannah Bannanas and the comparison to the Harlem Globetrotters:

It’s more more “High School Musical” meshed with Horsehide Cirque du Soleil, a wedding reception with a baseball theme wrapped around an activity that looks like a game played at the pace of a batting-practice pitcher grab-and-throw-and-grove. The between-innings experiences of corny planned contests, honoring veterans and first responders, and even a shout out to a non-profit Foster kids program doesn’t drag anything down but allows for catching one’s breath.

And it works.

A DJ-stage gathering to amp up the noise and energy before, then the “show” starts, then the after-party. Perhaps an exhausting pace for some, but it’s taking the elements of action of a “regular” baseball game and heightening it, expanding it, and amping it up. It takes advantage of incorporating local entertainment nods (Disneyland, for sure) and really knows how to read the room. It works in a baseball stadium best (because of the setup with scoreboards, wifi and capacity seating depth) but wedging it as well into a football stadium or other venue will add to its quirkiness.

It’s scripted schizophrenia, pumped up performance art, wonky scorekeeping and incredible talent on display surrounding the unplanned elements of game that has to be a communal stadium experience in person instead of judging it by a Tik Tok video clip or another high light reel. There are surprise guests. There’s a mascot, “Split,” that, at least in Anaheim, dared go up into the batters’ eye area beyond center field and do what every kid has wanted to do: Roll down the green hill.

Sensory overload, but not in a toxic way. Baseball remains the framework amidst all the improve and sketch comedy. The organizers do all they can to prevent the sale of $75 going for $1,000 or more on the open market, but that’s the world we live in — those taking advantage of a situation. Hopefully, you have karma lottery and get the best seats possible (another key to the experience) and bring in as many friends who otherwise might not enjoy a “real” baseball game to see this thing under the circus tent.

Back to how Thiesen ended her essay: “So what does someone want to see in a Savannah Bananas game? I guess they want to see the players dance. But they saw that already online. There’s no need to go to the stadium and catch it again with a worse view. Just give your minor-league boys a shot this summer. They’re probably doing something almost as weird.”

That’s where Tom Alesia starts making his case for the Madison Mallards.

The book is not just on what this college summer-league team has done, continue to do, and likely will do for years to come, but why it resonates in the community, and why it doesn’t need to try to out-gimmick anyone else by trying to be a national attraction, and how it can be content in how it has kept the game relevant in a non-MLB sphere.

It has a formula. It works.

Comparing Mallards to Bananas is more like Granny Smith apples to Cara Cara oranges. They’re each sweet and special in their own fruity way. (And that’s aside from the fact the forward to Alesia’s book is written by John Kovalic, the creator of the fantastic “Apples To Apples” card game.)

Continue reading “Day 20 of 2025 baseball book reviews: What’s good for the Mallards is good for goosing the game” →