Offseason Reading
When October is gone and all I have left to satisfy my baseball hunger is re watching mlb.tv and steroid headed men running around with a brown lopsided ball. I tend to skip both those and huddle up with a few good baseball books until the sun peeks out again and all the snow in Brooklyn is melted.
Here is a list of the books I read this offseason.
1. Baseball and The Media - George Castle
2. The Machine - Joe Posnanski
3. A False Spring - Pat Jordan
4. The Baseball Codes - Jason Turbow
5. Odd Man Out - Matt McCarthy (for the second time)
6. Behind The Mask - Dave Pallone
I want to start reviewing these books on this blog. Just to give you a sense weather to spend your time reading the book or to not bother. In general Baseball books are like baseball movies, they are either really good, or really boring and cliche.
Here is a list of last offseason’s books.
1. Willie Mays - James Hirsch
2. You Gotta Have Wa - Robert Whiting
3. Watching Baseball Smarter - Zach Hample
4. The Samurai Way of Baseball - Robert Whiting
5. Dock Ellis in the Country of Baseball - Donald Hall & Dock Ellis
6. The Echoing Green - Joshua Prager
7. The Bad Guys Won - Jeff Pearlman
8. Slugging It Out In Japan - Warren Cromartie
Books I got saved up in my house to read, that I might get to before the season starts.
1. Temporary Insanity - Jay Johnstone
2. How Life Imitates The World Series - Thomas Boswell (this one looks terrible)
3. Going The Other Way - Billy Bean
4. Pine Tarred and Feathered - Jim Kaplan
5. The Wrong Stuff - Bill Lee & Dick Lally
I have been reading a lot lately about the relationship between the media and baseball players and why it has changed, also about the suposed taboos surrounding being homosexual in baseball. It is interesting to me that baseball being the ground breakers when dealing with race relations have become quite the opposite when dealing with sexual preference, even going so far as to running certain gay people out of baseball altogether. Anyways interesting stuff, can’t wait to start reviewing them.
oh ya here are a few more that I have read and might review.
1. Ball Four - Jim Bouton
2. Moneyball - Michael Lewis (i’ll probably leave this one alone, that’s been done)
3. Historical Baseball Abstract - Bill James
4. Fantasyland - Sam Walker
