Jason - The Great American Novel by Philip Roth: Phillip Roth makes me think and makes me laugh. The Ruppert Mundys are like the first sabermetrician's dream with the thought that goes into an optimized lineup, though we know today that lineup changes don't make a big difference on wins through a season, don't we?
Mark - Ball Four by Jim Bouton: I read it in the 1980s, the time of my own rebellion. Okay, I wasn't really a rebel, and I don't think that Bouton's book was, either. The book was a bit outspoken, a bit crass, it opened my eyes to what was happening in baseball. Bowls of uppers to keep the players going? Rampant womanizing? Hangovers? It didn't mirror my life at all. Which is why I think I like it. A gritty, grimy story told in a likeable fashion. I'm assuming that several of the players mentioned didn't care for the book at all and I know that Commissioner Kuhn wasn't keen on it, but I liked it.
Jon - Dollar Sign on the Muscle by Kevin Kerrane: Probably the best book on scouting there is. Kerrane, a professor at the University of Delaware, took an indepth look at the Philadelphia Phillies front-office and scouting department during the early eighties. He was given an inordinate amount of exposure to the workings of a front office, something usually kept very hidden.
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Baseball Book Draft - Round 2
Jon - The Celebrant by Eric Rolfe Greenberg: Too soon for a fiction pick? I don't think so. Sticking with the Deadball Era New York Giants, this novel about a devout fan of Christy Mathewson's really captures the sense of Matty's popularity and the role of baseball and baseball players during that time. I loved it and it is another book that I should think about re-reading soon.
Mark - A Donald Honig Reader by Donald Honig: This is a bit of a cheat, because it is more than two books in one. A Donald Honig Reader is actually a collection of two of his books (Baseball When the Grass Was Real and Baseball Between the Lines) and excerpts from two others (The October Heroes and The Man in the Dugout). From memory I couldn't differentiate the collection of the two books so they merge somewhere in the middle.
This selection is very similar to Jason's first round pick of the Ritter book. Interviews with players. When Bob Feller passed away at the end of last year I pulled the Reader from the bookshelf and reread his entry.
Complex baseball from a simpler time.
Jason - The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn: I picked The Boys of Summer because, like The Glory of Their Times it is a book capturing former players through interviews. It's been a while since I've read it, but thinking of Billy Cox in a Pennsylvania bar, makes it feel like I read it yesterday.
Mark - A Donald Honig Reader by Donald Honig: This is a bit of a cheat, because it is more than two books in one. A Donald Honig Reader is actually a collection of two of his books (Baseball When the Grass Was Real and Baseball Between the Lines) and excerpts from two others (The October Heroes and The Man in the Dugout). From memory I couldn't differentiate the collection of the two books so they merge somewhere in the middle.
This selection is very similar to Jason's first round pick of the Ritter book. Interviews with players. When Bob Feller passed away at the end of last year I pulled the Reader from the bookshelf and reread his entry.
Complex baseball from a simpler time.
Jason - The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn: I picked The Boys of Summer because, like The Glory of Their Times it is a book capturing former players through interviews. It's been a while since I've read it, but thinking of Billy Cox in a Pennsylvania bar, makes it feel like I read it yesterday.
Friday, April 29, 2011
Baseball Book Draft - Round 1
Well, I was hoping that there were some people lurking who would want to turn this into more of a draft but it was just Jason, Mark and I. So three "teams" it is. We're going to do eight rounds, serpentine style. Jason has the first pick overall, followed by Mark and then me.
Who are we and why do our opinions on baseball books matter? Here you go, in our own words, Jason's in the third person because he's awesome like Rickey:
Jason - Jason as a reader, will read about anything. He still enjoys arguing with Jon about the validity of Audrey Niffengger's "Time Traveler's Wife," mostly to hear Jon's rants (my note: worst book ever). Last night he got to go to a PenUSA reading of "The Pale King" by David Foster Wallace and while in the audience, used his Kindle app to start reading "My Man Jeeves," by P.G. Wodehouse. His favorite team is the St. Louis Cardinals, though the first team he remembers loving was the Dodgers teams of Garvey, Lopes, Cey and Russell and later historically, "The Boys of Summer."
Mark (of Mark's Ephemera and Old Knoxville Baseball) - I rediscovered my hidden infatuation with all things baseball a few years ago. My earliest memories of the sport go back to the late 1960s when my father took my brother and I to Fenway Park to watch the Red Sox. Baseball cards came and went until the late 1980s when Orel Hershiser and the Dodgers caught my eye. Books have always been a good part of my life, so I try to incorporate a healthy balance of them into my reading schedule.
Me - I read a lot. I like baseball. I own lots of books about baseball and no, I have not read them all. I have built a research library (with the occasional Dave Winfield book purchase) because that's what I like to do.
Without further ado, round one:
Jason - Glory of Their Times by Lawrence Ritter: (I didn't get much of a writeup from Jason on this one. Perhaps he'll add his thoughts in the comments).
Mark - A False Spring by Pat Jordan: Published in 1975 I did not discover this glimpse into his life until 30 plus years later. It is a look at his time in the minors. There is a wonderful passage in which he describes a meal that the players eat while in the south. Brilliant prose. I learned that baseball books are not all about the stars, the records, and history remembered.
Jon - John McGraw by Charles Alexander: I keep telling myself I need to re-read this one because everything else I have read of Alexander's (Tris Speaker, Rogers Hornsby and Our Game) has been a little lackluster. I found John McGraw to be well-researched and well-written and it really opened me up to the possibilities of not only good baseball books, but also good non-fiction (this was when I was coming out of the somewhat typical "I haven't read anything for fun in four years because I've been in college", years. It inspired me to be more of a baseball researcher and more of a reader.
Who are we and why do our opinions on baseball books matter? Here you go, in our own words, Jason's in the third person because he's awesome like Rickey:
Jason - Jason as a reader, will read about anything. He still enjoys arguing with Jon about the validity of Audrey Niffengger's "Time Traveler's Wife," mostly to hear Jon's rants (my note: worst book ever). Last night he got to go to a PenUSA reading of "The Pale King" by David Foster Wallace and while in the audience, used his Kindle app to start reading "My Man Jeeves," by P.G. Wodehouse. His favorite team is the St. Louis Cardinals, though the first team he remembers loving was the Dodgers teams of Garvey, Lopes, Cey and Russell and later historically, "The Boys of Summer."
Mark (of Mark's Ephemera and Old Knoxville Baseball) - I rediscovered my hidden infatuation with all things baseball a few years ago. My earliest memories of the sport go back to the late 1960s when my father took my brother and I to Fenway Park to watch the Red Sox. Baseball cards came and went until the late 1980s when Orel Hershiser and the Dodgers caught my eye. Books have always been a good part of my life, so I try to incorporate a healthy balance of them into my reading schedule.
Me - I read a lot. I like baseball. I own lots of books about baseball and no, I have not read them all. I have built a research library (with the occasional Dave Winfield book purchase) because that's what I like to do.
Without further ado, round one:
Jason - Glory of Their Times by Lawrence Ritter: (I didn't get much of a writeup from Jason on this one. Perhaps he'll add his thoughts in the comments).
Mark - A False Spring by Pat Jordan: Published in 1975 I did not discover this glimpse into his life until 30 plus years later. It is a look at his time in the minors. There is a wonderful passage in which he describes a meal that the players eat while in the south. Brilliant prose. I learned that baseball books are not all about the stars, the records, and history remembered.
Jon - John McGraw by Charles Alexander: I keep telling myself I need to re-read this one because everything else I have read of Alexander's (Tris Speaker, Rogers Hornsby and Our Game) has been a little lackluster. I found John McGraw to be well-researched and well-written and it really opened me up to the possibilities of not only good baseball books, but also good non-fiction (this was when I was coming out of the somewhat typical "I haven't read anything for fun in four years because I've been in college", years. It inspired me to be more of a baseball researcher and more of a reader.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Moonwalking with Einstein
When I first saw that Joshua Foer had written a book, my initial reaction was, "Why not ride the coattails of big brother?" I've loved Jonathan Safron Foer's two novels and thought his non-fiction work on vegetarianism was good, too.
But it turned out I was just ignorant of what Joshua Foer has accomplished as a journalist. He is a mighty fine writer, in his own way just as talented as Jonathan. He also seems somehow less serious yet more driven. Maybe I'm reading into things too much. Or basing things too much, in part, on Colbert Report interviews.
The interview with Colbert explains the book pretty well. Foer (from here on out, any mention of Foer by me is Joshua) is investigating memory competitors and finds that none of them are gifted in any unusual way. That is, their brains aren't any different from yours or mine. What is different is that they have trained themselves using techniques so that their memory is extremely well-developed.
Foer begins training with a memory expert from England and over the course of a year develops his skills enough that he becomes the U.S. Memory Champion. The book largely is about his journey with sidebars into the science of the brain and memory.
To me, there was a big question over whether or not the effort is worth it. The tricks used to improve memory take a lot of work and Foer finds that for all his ability to memorize lists of digits or decks of playing cards, none of his work helps him with things like remembering where he put his keys.
I'll wrap up with two things I particularly found interesting. One was a technique called the memory palace that is the primary device used by competitive memory experts. It was developed way back in ancient Greece. The idea is that you take a place with which you are very familiar, like your home or childhood home. Then, when you have a list of things to memorize, you picture each item in a strange circumstance in a spot of the home and then you tour your home in your memory. For example, say you have a grocery list. The first item is tomatoes. You picture a gorilla on your mailbox juggling tomatoes. The next item is ground meat. Maybe you picture a car made out of ground meat parked in your driveway. The example Foer gave that still sticks with me is cottage cheese. His example is picturing Claudia Schiffer soaking in a tub of cottage cheese. In my example here, Claudia and the vat are in the doorway of my home. Keep going through your home and your list is complete.
It seems counterintuitive at first that such a technique should work. Because now you are memorizing not only cottage cheese, but a hot tub, Claudia Schiffer and the door to your home. But the outrageous image coupled with something familiar works as a trigger point and helps you remember.
The other noteworthy thing to me is that Foer works with Dr. Anders Ericsson of Florida State. Dr. Ericsson is an expert on experts. He has been in the news recently as media attention has been given to Dan McLaughlin. McLaughlin has been putting a theory of Ericsson's, that it takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become an expert, to test. McLaughlin had never played golf and has been working to put in the hours to become a professional golfer. I find it pretty fascinating and have added McLaughlin's blog to my reader. Ericsson's theory also received a lot of attention in Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers.
I mentioned recently about deliberate practice and how I need to be more deliberate in my exercising. Although I have a goal (the marathon), it is a short-term goal and so I haven't been working at with a real plan in mind. I've been thinking a lot about what I want to achieve after the marathon and don't have an answer. You really need to have a goal in order to deliberately pursue it. So we'll see what comes in the future.
If you couldn't tell based on the length of this review, I really loved Foer's book. I definitely recommend it to everyone.
But it turned out I was just ignorant of what Joshua Foer has accomplished as a journalist. He is a mighty fine writer, in his own way just as talented as Jonathan. He also seems somehow less serious yet more driven. Maybe I'm reading into things too much. Or basing things too much, in part, on Colbert Report interviews.
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Joshua Foer | ||||
| ||||
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Jonathan Safran Foer | ||||
| ||||
The interview with Colbert explains the book pretty well. Foer (from here on out, any mention of Foer by me is Joshua) is investigating memory competitors and finds that none of them are gifted in any unusual way. That is, their brains aren't any different from yours or mine. What is different is that they have trained themselves using techniques so that their memory is extremely well-developed.
Foer begins training with a memory expert from England and over the course of a year develops his skills enough that he becomes the U.S. Memory Champion. The book largely is about his journey with sidebars into the science of the brain and memory.
To me, there was a big question over whether or not the effort is worth it. The tricks used to improve memory take a lot of work and Foer finds that for all his ability to memorize lists of digits or decks of playing cards, none of his work helps him with things like remembering where he put his keys.
I'll wrap up with two things I particularly found interesting. One was a technique called the memory palace that is the primary device used by competitive memory experts. It was developed way back in ancient Greece. The idea is that you take a place with which you are very familiar, like your home or childhood home. Then, when you have a list of things to memorize, you picture each item in a strange circumstance in a spot of the home and then you tour your home in your memory. For example, say you have a grocery list. The first item is tomatoes. You picture a gorilla on your mailbox juggling tomatoes. The next item is ground meat. Maybe you picture a car made out of ground meat parked in your driveway. The example Foer gave that still sticks with me is cottage cheese. His example is picturing Claudia Schiffer soaking in a tub of cottage cheese. In my example here, Claudia and the vat are in the doorway of my home. Keep going through your home and your list is complete.
It seems counterintuitive at first that such a technique should work. Because now you are memorizing not only cottage cheese, but a hot tub, Claudia Schiffer and the door to your home. But the outrageous image coupled with something familiar works as a trigger point and helps you remember.
The other noteworthy thing to me is that Foer works with Dr. Anders Ericsson of Florida State. Dr. Ericsson is an expert on experts. He has been in the news recently as media attention has been given to Dan McLaughlin. McLaughlin has been putting a theory of Ericsson's, that it takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become an expert, to test. McLaughlin had never played golf and has been working to put in the hours to become a professional golfer. I find it pretty fascinating and have added McLaughlin's blog to my reader. Ericsson's theory also received a lot of attention in Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers.
I mentioned recently about deliberate practice and how I need to be more deliberate in my exercising. Although I have a goal (the marathon), it is a short-term goal and so I haven't been working at with a real plan in mind. I've been thinking a lot about what I want to achieve after the marathon and don't have an answer. You really need to have a goal in order to deliberately pursue it. So we'll see what comes in the future.
If you couldn't tell based on the length of this review, I really loved Foer's book. I definitely recommend it to everyone.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Dave Winfield, Baseball in Japan and Shopping for Books in York, PA
Something I've wanted to do since I moved here a few years ago has been to go to the York Paper Fair. This event is held twice a year and is supposed to be a large number of dealers in books and ephemera. Being held in central Pennsylvania, I've always hoped and expected that I would be able to find local baseball items there and if I happen across some baseball books, too, well, wouldn't that be a shame?
My schedule and memory have always prevented me from going. Either I forget when it is or when I remember, I already have something conflicting. This past weekend, though, I was finally able to make it. On top of it, the York Emporium, who I think puts on the show, was wrapping up a three day sale on that Saturday. Paper fair AND discount used books. Surely a day of awesomeness was in store.
Awesome disappointment was what was in store for me at the Paper Fair. What a bizarre show. The entryway was almost entirely used records. Phonograph records, not old business records or something like that. Vinyl, not paper. The one notable exception was a guy dealing in vintage men's magazines.
Those kinds of magazines seemed to be a predominate feature of the show. That and sci-fi paperbacks. Then you had oddball specializations. One guy had religious texts. Another dealt only in Civil War era books. There was someone who specialized in Fraktur. One that dealt in vintage homosexual literature. Baseball specialists? Zero. What baseball items I found were almost entirely booklets issued in newspapers or by gas stations which you could pick up on eBay for a few bucks if you had the inclination or spend triple that at this show.
No baseball cards, no programs, no books, no photos, no postcards that I could find. It was almost like they went out of the way not to appeal to me. Wanting to get something, I rooted around in this bin one dealer had that was filled primarily with old membership cards from random organizations. There were some oddball things here and there and as I was sifting, I saw a guy in catcher's gear. Pulled it out and saw the player had dark skin. Given the apparent age of the card, I thought it might be something from the Negro Leagues. Flipped it over and the text was in German. Here it is:
It was a few bucks so I grabbed it. Turns out it is part of a set that a German margarine manufacturer, Sanella, issued in the 1930's. This is one of just two baseball cards in the set. The other is Babe Ruth which goes for $75-100. My card goes for right around what I paid for it. Something different. I like it.
Then it was on to the York Emporium. I was overwhelmed when I was there last time but now I knew where everything was which made my visit a little shorter. Sticking with the Japanese theme, I found a book I had passed on last year. It was 60% off so I snatched it up this time around.
I'm normally a lot more particular on condition but it turns out this isn't an easy book to find in better condition and the price was fantastic. I picked up five other books, including three on Dave Winfield:
Anytime you can buy three books on a Hall of Famer for six bucks, I think you have to do it. Instant Winfield collection. They had the paperback revised edition of Dropping the Ball there and I was sorely tempted to get it just to get four Winfield books but I was being goofy enough as it was.
All in all, nothing really remarkable. Didn't spend much which is always a good thing, especially when getting nothing really remarkable. I won't do the York Paper Fair again but I will visit the York Emporium again. Check it out if you're ever in York.
And if you've read the Winfield books or any other baseball books, make sure you join us this weekend for the fantasy baseball book draft. It'll be fun.
My schedule and memory have always prevented me from going. Either I forget when it is or when I remember, I already have something conflicting. This past weekend, though, I was finally able to make it. On top of it, the York Emporium, who I think puts on the show, was wrapping up a three day sale on that Saturday. Paper fair AND discount used books. Surely a day of awesomeness was in store.
Awesome disappointment was what was in store for me at the Paper Fair. What a bizarre show. The entryway was almost entirely used records. Phonograph records, not old business records or something like that. Vinyl, not paper. The one notable exception was a guy dealing in vintage men's magazines.
Those kinds of magazines seemed to be a predominate feature of the show. That and sci-fi paperbacks. Then you had oddball specializations. One guy had religious texts. Another dealt only in Civil War era books. There was someone who specialized in Fraktur. One that dealt in vintage homosexual literature. Baseball specialists? Zero. What baseball items I found were almost entirely booklets issued in newspapers or by gas stations which you could pick up on eBay for a few bucks if you had the inclination or spend triple that at this show.
No baseball cards, no programs, no books, no photos, no postcards that I could find. It was almost like they went out of the way not to appeal to me. Wanting to get something, I rooted around in this bin one dealer had that was filled primarily with old membership cards from random organizations. There were some oddball things here and there and as I was sifting, I saw a guy in catcher's gear. Pulled it out and saw the player had dark skin. Given the apparent age of the card, I thought it might be something from the Negro Leagues. Flipped it over and the text was in German. Here it is:
It was a few bucks so I grabbed it. Turns out it is part of a set that a German margarine manufacturer, Sanella, issued in the 1930's. This is one of just two baseball cards in the set. The other is Babe Ruth which goes for $75-100. My card goes for right around what I paid for it. Something different. I like it.
Then it was on to the York Emporium. I was overwhelmed when I was there last time but now I knew where everything was which made my visit a little shorter. Sticking with the Japanese theme, I found a book I had passed on last year. It was 60% off so I snatched it up this time around.
I'm normally a lot more particular on condition but it turns out this isn't an easy book to find in better condition and the price was fantastic. I picked up five other books, including three on Dave Winfield:
Anytime you can buy three books on a Hall of Famer for six bucks, I think you have to do it. Instant Winfield collection. They had the paperback revised edition of Dropping the Ball there and I was sorely tempted to get it just to get four Winfield books but I was being goofy enough as it was.
All in all, nothing really remarkable. Didn't spend much which is always a good thing, especially when getting nothing really remarkable. I won't do the York Paper Fair again but I will visit the York Emporium again. Check it out if you're ever in York.
And if you've read the Winfield books or any other baseball books, make sure you join us this weekend for the fantasy baseball book draft. It'll be fun.
Monday, April 25, 2011
Stealing an idea from Joe Posnanski - Fantasy Book Draft
Joe Posnanski and Mike Schur had a fantasy draft today on Joe Posnanski's podcast where they each took turns drafting their five favorite baseball books of all-time. I know I have baseball fans and readers and baseball readers on this site and thought it would be fun to expand the idea beyond just two people.
What I thought I'd do is this. If you want in, leave a comment saying so. At the end of the week, I'll create a "draft order" and then over the weekend those who are in will engage in a draft. Just check in and when it's your turn, leave your pick and a brief description why.
The difference between this and just asking you to list your five favorite picks for instance is that people drafting before you might take your book. You might think Moneyball is the third best baseball book but if someone takes it in the first round, you'll have to choose a different book. Hopefully we'll get a few people who want to do this and we'll put together a nice list of baseball books.
I hope you take part.
What I thought I'd do is this. If you want in, leave a comment saying so. At the end of the week, I'll create a "draft order" and then over the weekend those who are in will engage in a draft. Just check in and when it's your turn, leave your pick and a brief description why.
The difference between this and just asking you to list your five favorite picks for instance is that people drafting before you might take your book. You might think Moneyball is the third best baseball book but if someone takes it in the first round, you'll have to choose a different book. Hopefully we'll get a few people who want to do this and we'll put together a nice list of baseball books.
I hope you take part.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Moby Duck
I have to hand it to Donovan Hahn. If you're going to take the title of your book from the wandering, tangential, verbose, similarly named book of Herman Melville's, you ought to live up to it. He does. Not in the sense that Hahn's work is a classic. In the sense that it is sprawling, rambling, and filled with words that you wouldn't ever use yourself.
Moby Duck is about Hahn's search to understand more about a shipment of bathtub toy that were spilled by a cargo ship during a storm in the early 1990's. Years later, some of those toys began washing up in all sorts of places around the world and it piqued Hahn's interest. This book talks about every aspect of the incident that you could possibly think of.
You learn about cargo ships, ocean currents, the Arctic, toymaking in China, beachcombing, trash, boots, flotation devices, seasickness, being a father, and so much more. No stone is left unturned, no thought left unwritten. If I thought T.C. Boyle was bad about using big words, well, I think even he would need a dictionary to get through Moby Duck.
And it's not just big words. Hahn uses big sentences and I don't understand why. I tried to think why someone would do such a thing. Is it to show off? Who is your target audience when you write that way and why doesn't your editor do something about it? I don't know. It bugged me. No, you don't have to dumb down your book, but I think some people might give up or get frustrated when they're coming across a word every other page that they don't recognize.
For all my complaining, though, I did enjoy the book. It was different and it was thorough. The thoroughness slowed things down at times as Hahn went off to pursue some line of thought I couldn't care less about but, like Melville, he eventually came back to the crux of the story.
It's interesting enough that I would recommend it to folks. It'll probably take some time to read but in the end, I think you'll find it worthwhile.
Training Update: After a day off yesterday (details forthcoming), I headed off to bed early and got a solid nine hours sleep. Woke up feeling rested and energized and thought I would give a half-marathon a shot.
DID IT!!!!
One hour, thirty-two minutes and forty-seven seconds. I felt good and think I could have actually finished the marathon given enough time to do it today (and wanting to wait until the challenge in May).
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