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1. Baseball-Birthdays.com Posted: August 31, 2009 at 11:39 AM (#3309534)Mickey Mantle, Doris Day, Cary Grant, and Roger Maris... Mantle looks like an utter goof, and both he and Maris are dressed in full uniform save for their (street) shoes.
Yeah, yeah, but man, he might be my favorite comic actor of all time.
Cary Grant would have been in his late fifties when the photo was taken. We should all look like that when we get to that age.
I would have taken looking like that at any point.
I certainly didn't mean to diss his acting -- even in lesser stuff, say Operation Petticoat, he was still very good.
In his movies, he looked like a fairly big man. I was just struck by how small he looked next to some big (but not gigantic) men.
Loose Balls is possibly the best sports book I've ever read, and I don't even care very much about basketball.
Yes, and I am with the herd in saying it is very good.
His NBA history book is not as fun, I think he went too primordial, too much about the early 1950's.
just the way one's memory works, I suppose, but I always picture Mantle like this...
"The Red Sox encountered little competition for free agent third baseman Bill Mueller. He did not hit for power and he did not hit for an especially high batting average, the two traditional yardsticks for offensive 'value.' ... What the Red Sox knew then that most others did not, however, was that Mueller was far better than the average player at getting on base. ... His career on-base percentage was .370. Mueller won the American League batting title in his first year with the team and helped the Red Sox to the world championship in his second year." (177)
This is what I mean by "incoherent." The theme is that the Sox management had gotten OBP wisdom, with Mueller as a prime example. The problem is that Mueller, while he would take a walk now and then, was hardly Eddie Yost. Competition for him was weak not because Mueller had unperceived OBP skills, but because he was turning 32 and seemed to be in decline.
If they Sox had been looking for a clever alternative to BA and power, they ended up getting a guy who won a batting title and hit 19 HR – with (in '03) the second-lowest walk rate of his career. This was a tremendously smart move: Mueller was great in '03, good in '04, and cheap in the bargain. But as an example, it doesn't support Verducci's thesis at all.
If you want a publisher you'll have to make half of it about your relationship with your dad.
Out of baseball at 35, which isn't particularly old these days. IIRC, he had some knee issues.
I read Fever Pitch circa 2002 or 2003 and thought that it would make a good template for a book about my Red Sox fandom. That idea got ruined.
Sounds interesting. I like books about trades that never happened, or how teams are built. Kinda wish more writers went back and told us about behind the scenes stuff from many years ago.
Pluto is a pretty good writer isn't he? I haven't been exposed to a lot of his stuff, but what I have read, I've liked.
I wonder if I could use them to write a book.
Just curious, how many Primates have written books, either published, or sitting in their closet? I'm working on one about the Royals, but it will likely take me a decade to write (maybe they'll be a .500 team by then!) Just curious on what you guys have written about, what the process was like, and how/if you published.
I did a couple of interviews, but mainly researched the bios by looking at newspaper and magazine articles. I think those are a more reliable source of what really happened.
That's not to take anything away from it, it's a briliant book.
One book written, still unpublished. But it's young adult fiction, and has nothing to do with baseball and little to do with sports. My problem, both in trying to find a publisher for it and in trying to get work when I was a freelance writer, is that I'm terrible at pitching myself. I can't sell worth a damn.
As for published work, I've had one essay and one short published in collections, and did some contract work for a former colleague's stat-based book on Dale Earnhardt. Morbidly speaking, we lucked out when he died right before it was set to go to press, and we were able to update the book with the accident and get it published ahead of all but the quickiest of genuine quickie books.
I was reading some accounts of Walter Johnson playing an exhibition game in Hartford. It might be worth an article for some local publication (assuming there are any by the time I finish writing the article), but there isn't enough there for a book.
I've got a whole notebook worth of material on the 1969 Twins that would make a great book (and one I would like to write). However, I am skeptical of me ever making any use of it. Thankfully, the Billy Martin entry in Chris Jaffe's book is heavily influenced by my research.
Basically, the year was a microcosm of Martin's entire career. He was hired. He immediately brought instant success. His strategy bordered on the maniacal. He fought with his players (literally a fistfight with Dave Boswell). And, of course, despite all his success, he got fired.
Other topics within the season to cover would be Killebrew's MVP season, Rod Carew's steals of home, and the total overhaul of the Twins style (went from station-to-station, crappy fundamentals to a really dynamic team always putting pressure on their opponents).
So, if Francis can get a book, you'd think Bauman could. I guess 72 HR doesn't seem unattainable anymore, but if you wanted to shamelessly play up the "simpler time and no steroids" angle in the marketing, I could see it...
Have you tried contacting McFarland? You can see by the link that they've published plenty of books on plenty of baseball subjects with even less obvious commercial appeal than Joe Bauman.
If I ever did anything on baseball, I suspect it would be about someone in the dead ball era, Maybe King Kelly or Mike Donlin.
* The mere fact that he set the record for most homers in a season, a record that lasted a really long time.
* He was an older guy, 33 at the time (IIRC), who ran a Texaco station when he wasn't playing baseball. Great character for a book, from what I can tell.
* The minor leagues in New Mexico in 1954 had to be just insane, as big as that state is. Just telling stories of life on the road, of endless bus rides and cheap motels, would be fascinating.
* It's really the tail end of the minor leagues as they once were, with TV sweeping across the nation and killing them off one by one. I don't know if TV had come to Roswell by 1954, but the Longhorn League lasted just one more year.
* Plus a UFO had crashed near Roswell just a few years earlier.
But let's save a few column inches for Darnell McDonald, who in his 12th professional season hit his first home run as a major leaguer. Darnell was a first-round draft pick (in 1997). Oddly, his brother Donzell was considered a hotter prospect despite being drafted in the 22nd round (in 1995).
Isn't this categorically false? Donzell wasn't held in anything close to the regard Darnell was (if my memory serves) - he was considered an org guy, while I think Darnell may have topped the O's BA top prospect list at one point.
***
Oh, I like the new handle, GGC.
So was the book never finished? What kind of an encyclopedia was it? Just wondering, because I was writing a kind of encyclopedia on the Royals - perhaps you'd like to combine work and complete it?
This was always a very literate crowd; never knew you were all authors-to-be.
I appreciate good literature but know my own limitations as it relates to being capable of spinning a good yarn that would be entertaining enough to keep a reader enthralled - ok, if not enthralled then at least semi-interested in turning to the nest page.
How about another version of "Glory of their times" with text from either the actual player or relatives/friends/acquaintenences to cover the Bauman and Southworth articles?
EDIT: I'm also aware that I have no attention span - that played a role too.
I'd buy a copy.
As for publishing, I helped compile several guides that purportedly helped college students find summer jobs in unusual places like the Alaskan fisheries and Canadian ski resorts, and I've been a fiction reviewer for a university journal for about ten years. And of course, I have a novel with an almost entirely intangible existence.
There's your angle. Bauman was actually an alien.
coupla things. first, mantle was a seriously brawny guy. i saw a pic of him on a training table with his shirt off, he was built. second, grant is all in black while the other guys are dressed in white, so he shrinks a little in comparison. if you compare height sitting, grant looks okay, and if you look at the hands, grant's don't look especially small. also, i do believe grant spent time as a circus or carnival performer in his younger years. he was quite athletic. to my eyes he doesn't look tiny, just slimmer maybe.
Wasn't that a Quantum Leap episode?
Supposedly the Dodgers got Thome and Garland, Rockies Jose Contreras.
As for Contreras, it must be a "keeping up with the Joneses" move, with Garland going to LA and Penny to SF. Hopefully Colorado didn't give up anything and won't be paying much of Contreras' salary, because his numbers after the All-Star break (1-6, 6.97) are horrifying. At least Garland is trending the right way (4.53 ERA, 1.5 WHIP before the break; 3.86 ERA, 1.303 WHIP after).
http://www.thebaseballcube.com/players/F/Justin-Fuller-1.shtml
This looks like a total salary dump. Guess the Rios pick up has a consequence after all.
Rockies will bring up Giambi. Glove-challenged, aging lefty sluggers on NL teams are the new market inefficiency.
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