Baseball-Related Program Activities

I became a baseball fan the summer I turned eleven. My mother was taking classes towards a degree in social work at a college about an hour's drive from Carmi, and my brother and I would ride along with her a couple of nights a week to the campus. On the drive, we would tune in to the Cardinals, carried at that point on the clear-channel powerhouse of KMOX. The Cardinals were very good that summer, holding off a tough Mets team to win the division and then the pennant before a disappointing World Series performance. Jack Buck and Mike Shannon described it all, and made us fans.

Sometime in the next few years, as my baseball fandom turned into the sort of obsession that only preteen boys, it seems, are capable of, I discovered on an out-of-the-way bookshelf in our house a musty, digest-sized baseball magazine previewing the 1974 season. Opening it, I discovered on the first page a nearly inscrutable scrawl, one bearing no little resemblance to my own:

June 1974--Play Ball, Boy! Love, Col.

It was a gift, given at my birth and no doubt tucked away at the time and forgotten, from my great-grandfather, Grandpa Colonel, about whom I've written before. Living his whole life in rural Kansas, he spent a lifetime enjoying baseball--and the Cardinals--the same way I grew up enjoying them: on the radio, far from the ballpark. Jack Buck may be gone--as is Grandpa Colonel--but the radio is still my favorite way to experience the game if I can't be there, and sound of baseball on the radio is still, for me, the heart of summer.

I never was much of a ballplayer, but I find myself thinking of Grandpa Colonel's admonition every spring. Last Sunday, I spent the morning playing catch with my nephew at Montrose Beach, throwing until our arms ached. Tonight, Stacey and I open the house to friends--several of whom haven't visited since October--for chili, brats, cornbread, and beer, all in honor of the return of spring. One of these days, we'll have to get Jim here for the opener.

It's the Cardinals and Mets. The last time we saw these two teams, they played one of the most exciting, stressful, and rewarding games I've ever seen. Tonight, like every spring, it starts all over again.

Play ball.

Labels: baseball books, Cardinals, Jack Buck, KMOX, Mets, Mike Shannon

Every year, about this time of the pseudo-spring, I read a baseball book. I try to limit myself to one--aside, that is, from the annual Baseball Prospectus (and, now, for the first time, The Hardball Times Season Preview)--because I spend plenty of non-reading time thinking about baseball; my reading time should, I figure, be mostly baseball-free.

This year, after reading a great interview with the author at my favorite Cardinals blog, I chose Wall Street Journal sportswriter Sam Walker's Fantasyland: A Sportswriter's Obsessive Bid to Win the World's Most Ruthless Fantasy Baseball League (2006). I had skipped it when it was in hardcover because, despite years of being a statistically literate baseball fan, I'd always avoided fantasy baseball. But the same day that I read the interview--which made clear that the book would be of interest to any somewhat nerdy baseball fan, despite fantasy-avoidance--my friend Eric, ruthlessly drawing on all the power of a decade-long long-distance friendship, talked me into running a fantasy team in his league. So how could I not read Sam Walker's book?

It's good--Walker is very good at sketching out characters, building drama, and getting the reader deeply involved in the utterly inconsequential. The book deserves, and will, if I stay organized, receive, a full post (cross-posted, like this one, at my book blog). For now, though, I'll just reproduce the passage that made me get up and find the laptop. Walker has just finished--in his eyes fairly successfully--his first fantasy draft in the nation's premier fantasy league. Drunkish on Guinness from the post-draft party at a bar in Queens, he wanders back to his Greenwich Village apartment. And he experiences a moment that seems to encapsulate my love of baseball, cities, and, in particular, New York:

By the time my shoes meet the pavement in Manhattan, it's well past midnight. As I'm staggering home down Bethune Street, something on the sidewalk catches my eye. It's scuffed and cracked and frayed at the seams, and probably not even made of leather, but nonetheless it's a baseball. On a damp and chilly night at the end of March, I step into the middle of the cobblestone street and, after checking for cabs, wheelchairs, dogs, bicyclists, and beat cops, I fix the ball in my fingers with a two-seam grip and take the sign.

Then I set, kick, and deliver.

The ball bounces under the glow of streetlights, skitters on a manhole cover, and ricochets off the front tire of a Toyota. The real major league season doesn't start for a few days, but mine begins right now. One of the advantages of owning a Rotisseries team is the inalienable right to throw out your own first pitch.

Players are working out, in Florida and that other place, Anthony Reyes of the world champion St. Louis Cardinals reportedly has command of his two-seamer, and even Rick Ankiel has a chance at making the major-league roster--as a hitter. We're almost at the best time of year since October; you could do far worse than usher it in with Sam Walker.

Labels: Anthony Reyes, baseball books, Fantasyland, Rick Ankiel, Sam Walker

Jury duty is good for getting some reading in. For the past two days while I was in the main Los Angeles criminal courts building, I read Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Blunders. These are blunders not by players, but by coaches, managers, general managers, and owners. It starts with the White Sox getting rid of first baseman Jack Fournier in 1917 in favor of future "Black Sox" ringleader Chick Gandil, and ends with Joe Torre not putting Mariano Riviera into Game 4 of the 2003 World Series.

Yes, the penultimate chapter is about a certain sequence of events that occurred just six days earlier, in Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS, and the Devil Rays get an entire chapter (the idea being that the franchise got off on the wrong foot when they immediately traded away Bobby Abreu after taking him with their first expansion draft pick).

Labels: baseball books, devil rays, red sox, white sox, yankees

This, the first ever cross-posting between my two blogs, is in honor of former major-league pitcher Johnny Sain, who died last week at the age of 89.

Sain was a member of the pennant-winnning 1948 Boston Braves, where his and teammate Warren Spahn's success relative to the rest of the pitching staff led to the well-known rhyme, "Spahn and Sain and pray for rain." (This past summer, some Cardinals fans altered the rhyme to read "Carp and Soup, the rest are poop.") Sain went 139-116 with a 3.49 E.R.A. for the Braves, Yankees, and Athletics in an eleven-year career.

This obituary appears on both my book and baseball blogs because Sain is one of the most memorable characters in Jim Bouton's wonderful Ball Four (1970). Much of the drama and fun of the book comes from the distrust with which Bouton is viewed by his teammates, coaches, and the baseball establishment. After all, the man reads books on the team flights--and on top of that, he's a knuckleballer. Throughout the book, Bouton clashes with his manager and pitching coaches. The biggest problem he encounters is resistance to the fact that, as a knuckleballer, he's sharper if he throws pretty much every day, while ordinary pitchers perform better on a schedule with days off. Most of the other players and coaches refuse to accept that Bouton knows what he's talking about; he's seen, variously as a malcontent and a moron.

Sain, on the other hand, takes a minimalist coaching approach. He looks at each player and sees what works for him. You pitch better if you throw every day? Throw every day. You pitch better if you make sure to do your running? Do your running. Quiet but effective, Sain isn't suspicious of difference, nor is he at all controlling; he's just looking to make his pitchers better. Therefore, he stands in such stark contrast to nearly everyone else in the book that he appears a genius both of baseball and of life in general.

I've been told it was raining in Boston the day of Sain's death. I guess that means Spahn started the next day for the Heavenlys, with Sain up the day after. After all, though I usually come down on the side of there being no heaven, if there were to be one, it would be inconceivable without baseball.

Labels: baseball books, jim bouton, johnny sain, warren spahn

First of all, here's a link to a baseball piece from Sunday's Los Angeles Times magazine: the writer and his son go to a Dodgers game with Arnold Hano, author of "A Day in the Bleachers." Among other things, he doesn't like the visual and audible cues to get the fans to make noise.

On Sunday, Jason and I went to the second-to-last game of the Golden Baseball League's short season, this one the Long Beach Armada versus the San Diego Surf Dawgs.

The Armada play at city-owned Blair Field, which has an analog clock on top of the scoreboard...



And there's a ship in the outfield -- unfortunately, it's just a cutout...



Even though the mascot should be a Spanish conquistador or maybe a pirate, the mascot is actually a bird named Arby I. Here he is "helping" with a between-innings water balloon toss for kids...



And here he is sitting two rows in front of us...



Meanwhile, Rik Currier was on the mound for the Armada, pitching what would be a complete game one-hit shutout...



In some places, they have metal rails for the "K" cards to fit into, but Long Beach is a Velcro kind of town...



The final line...



Yes, "Armada" does look a lot like "Ramada," especially at the lower left. A missed marketing opportunity!

Labels: baseball books, game report, jason kaifesh, long beach armada, los angeles times, san diego surf dawgs

I am certain that the Baseball-Related Program Activities crowd will enjoy the Flickr submissions of a user called baseballart (actually two people, one an artist and one a collector) -- in particular, the Baseball Books and Baseball Paintings sets.

Labels: art, baseball books

When the weather is bad in San Francisco, the capacity of San Francisco International Airport is effectively cut in half.

Fortunately, Terminal 3 has a branch of local San Francisco independent bookseller Books, Inc. (although it's called Compass Books at the airport, for what seems like no good reason), which makes it easier for one to purchase a book containing some light baseball-related reading to keep one from going insane during a 5-hour weather delay.

The book I purchased: The Baseball Uncyclopedia by Michael Kun and Howard Bloom. I'll just briefly say that it's two guys writing a bunch of short, humorous, opinionated pieces about baseball; if you follow that previous link, you can read a more in-depth description and a sample chapter that explains how knowing baseball players' uniform numbers can help kids cheat during math competitions. Also, there are lots and lots of footnotes.

Wait a minute -- two guys writing a bunch of short, humorous, opinionated pieces about baseball...hmm. And they use the term "baseball-related" several times in the book as well. I'd think about suing, but they're both lawyers.

This book just came out a few weeks ago. I'm seldom that up-to-date with my reading material, unlike Levi.

Labels: baseball books, san francisco

From Milo Hamilton's forthcoming autobiography Making Airwaves: 60 Years at Milo's Microphone, as quoted in today's L.A. Times, referring to the statue of Harry Caray outside Wrigley Field: "I see that statue every time the Astros visit Wrigley Field as our bus pulls up to the park. I say to myself, 'I gotta go get some peanuts and feed the pigeons so they'll fly over the statue all day long.'" Elsewhere in the book, Hamilton calls Caray a "miserable human being" and says that at their first meeting, Caray said to him, "Well, kid, if I were you, I'd leave town."

Say, isn't it about time for pitchers and catchers to report? I think it is!

Labels: baseball books, harry caray, milo hamilton

As with last year, I spoke too soon. Arriving today in the mail was a gift from Levi and Stacey: The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2006, and you can tell they're serious about the "annual" thing this time because they remembered to include a year in the title. I'm sure Levi likes it because of the profile of Cardinals general manager Walt Jocketty; everyone else can enjoy the two articles by Bill James, which include statements such as "The Royals walk less than Stephen Hawking."

Labels: baseball books, bill james

Unlike last year, now that the 2004 trip is further in the past, this year I only got one baseball-related book for Christmas. It's Grand Old Game: 365 Days of Baseball, a collection of 365 photographs from the Baseball Hall of Fame's collection, each taking up the entire right-hand page with the photo caption on the left-hand page, which explains why it's 744 pages long. When I opened the book, the first photo I turned to was of the stands at Ebbets Field in August 1944, packed with the boys who sold the most war bonds in Brooklyn, all waving to the camera. Also visible in the near foreground are a policeman leaning on a railing, a vendor standing nearby, and next to the vendor, a sign reading "In Case of Air Raid, Follow Arrow," the arrow on the sign pointing under the stands. It is a great photo.

Labels: baseball books

Through the efforts of a friendly librarian I know, I recently was able to check out a Bill James collection from 1989, This Time Let's Not Eat the Bones: Bill James without the Numbers. There's some good stuff in there about 80s baseball, much of it still of interest and still applicable today.

But some of it is just plain fun as a trip down memory lane with the irascible James as a guide. I'll share some of it over the next few weeks, until the book's due back at Bezazian Library.

So here's James on Lonnie "Skates" Smith, writing in 1986, when Smith had been a Royal for a few years:

I wouold try to tell you what a bad outfielder Lonnie is, expect that I confess that I would never have believed it myself if somebody had tried to tell me. I will say, though, that the real cost of Lonnie's defense is not nearly as great as the psychic impact of it. He makes you wail and gnash your teeth a lot, but he doesn't really cost you all that many runs.

One reason for that is that he recovers so quickly after her makes a mistake. You have to understand that Lonnie makes defensive mistakes every game, so he knows hot to handle it. Your average outfielder is inclined to panic when he falls down chasing a ball in the corner; he may just give up and set there a while, trying to figure it out. Lonnie has a pop-up slide perfected for the occasion.

Another outfielder might have no idea where the ball was when it bounded off his glove. Lonnie can calculate with the instinctive astrophysics of a veteran tennis player where a ball will land when it skips off the heel of his glove, what the angle of glide will be when he tips it off the webbing, what the spin will be when the ball skids off the thumb of the mitt.

Many players can kick a ball behind them without ever knowing it. Lonnie can judge by the pitch of the thud and the subtle pressure through his shoe in which direction and how far he has projected the sphere.

He knows exactly what to do when a ball spins out of his hand and flies crazily into a void on the field. He knows when it is appropriate for him to scamper after the ball and when he needs to back up the man who will have to recover it.

He has experience in these matters; when he retires he will be hired to come to spring training and coach defensive recovery and cost containment. This is his specialty, and he is good at it.

Labels: baseball books, bill james, lonnie smith

He so leadeth me beside the still waters, and He maketh me watch men in green pastures. He can skip the anointing my head with oil, so long as He keeps accompanying my walk through the valley of the shadow of spring training with such good reading material.

What have I done to deserve such riches? A book by my favorite non-Cardinal and a book about the Cardinals to be published the same month? And by the same author who wrote one of the two books that Adam Dunn admits to having read in his 24 years?

Labels: baseball books

Johnny Damon.

I'm in line already.

Original comments...

Jim: Hey, we went to two Red Sox games in 2004. Where's our book deal?

Levi: I was on the verge of signing us to a book deal with a major New York trade house, but, as the fine print required us both to grow long hair and a beard, I balked.

Jason: You could have borrowed my hair & beard.

Jim: Just to point this out for anyone reading this who don't know us personally: as you can see from the photo at the top of the page, I already have a beard, and although I keep my hair cut short, I could easily grow it long. Levi is the one who couldn't look like Johnny Damon if he tried. Also, ladies, I'm currently unattached.

Labels: baseball books, johnny damon

As it turned out, I also received from my father as a Christmas gift "Faithful: Two Diehard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season." (It just showed up the other day because Amazon.com combined it and some other items into an order with "Wonderfalls," which wasn't released until February 1st.)

The book is kind of structured like a blog, with dated entries from both Stewart O'Nan and Stephen King, interspersed with excerpts from e-mail conversations between the two of them. I, of course, couldn't resist immediately flipping ahead to the entries for August 24 and August 26. For August 24, Stephen King writes about trying to pick up the game on the radio while driving around downtown Boston, and then getting back to his hotel and finding out they don't have NESN, the cable home of the Red Sox, and Stewart O'Nan writes about the actual game, mainly Doug Mirabelli's 3-run homer. For August 26, Stewart O'Nan writes about Bronson Arroyo: "Tonight he has his curve working and shuts down the Tigers for 7-1/3, giving up only an unearned run in a clutch 4-1 win." Stephen King's August 27 entry mentions the Dan Shaughnessy column from that morning's Boston Globe, although he claims that the headline was "Dark Days Appear to Be Long Gone," and I have scanned evidence that the headline was "Dark Days Have Hit the Road." Perhaps this means that some of Stephen King's other writing is less than accurate; I'm not sure if I believed all that about the girl with telekinetic powers wreaking havoc at her prom when I saw it. Or maybe they changed the headline for the later edition.

Anyway, starting back at the beginning of the book now, I'm only as far as spring training. Maura will perhaps appreciate what Stewart O'Nan says about the Red Sox's spring training home: "Fort Myers is an endless grid of strip malls and stoplights, and everyone drives like they're either having a heart attack or trying to find an emergency room for someone who is. We fly past Mattress World, Bath World, Rug World. It's Hicksville, Long Island, with palm trees and pelicans."

Original comments...

maura: but ... is there an ikea??

Labels: baseball books, Bronson Arroyo, doug mirabelli, red sox, Stephen King, stewart o'nan

Make it four: my friend Anna gave me The Big Book of Baseball Brainteasers. It's actually more of a book of baseball anecdotesthan brainteasers, but that's not a complaint.

Labels: baseball books

Somehow people got the idea that I might want some baseball-related books for Christmas. Levi gave me The Hardball Times Baseball Annual, which certainly contains more "adjusted win shares" data than any other baseball book I've owned. My mother gave me For the Love of Baseball: An A-to-Z Primer for Baseball Fans of All Ages, the only downside being that they used Babe Ruth to illustrate "B" instead of "R." And my father gave me a book consisting mainly of old photographs called Baseball in Tampa Bay, which has mercifully few pictures of the Devil Rays.

Original comments...

Levi: Jim--

I figured you probably wouldn't be all that into the charts and graphs part of the book (Although check out the one that shows the Cardinals leading the pack in both runs scored and fewest runs allowed!), but I thought you'd enjoy:

1) The piece on looking back at 2004 from 2054

2) The piece where the guy speculates how baseball would be different if Eric Young had only gotten four more hits in 1991.

3) The fact that these guys put together a web site, were successful with it, and decided to turn it into a self-published book.

thatbob: I personally think it's appropriate to illustrate "B" with The Babe, since it's not his real first name. But it might be inappropraite to illustrate "B" with Babes Adams, Twombly, Borton, Danzig, or Dotel, because they're not really important enough.

Labels: baseball books

Indians 5, Royals 1. Brand-new Hall of Famer Dennis Eckersley started his career in Cleveland, which I didn't realize until I looked him up just now.

Tomorrow: Speaking of brand-new Hall of Famers, it's Milwaukee, home to Paul Molitor for most of his career. This was pretty well-planned, eh?

Back here in the real world, on the lookout for airplane reading material for the trip, I came across "Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy" on the bargain shelves at Barnes & Noble for $3.98.

Labels: alternate history, baseball books, brpa, road trip

The Library of Congress has on its web site a selection of Spalding Base Ball Guides from 1889 to 1939.

The title quote is from the "Editorial Comment" article near the front of the 1939 guide, which ends with the statement "The new century begins with the promise of a rare battle in the younger league, and with just as good a one to establish supremacy in the older. May the best club win, and then the battle for the one grand championship which will settle all—for another year."

Labels: baseball books