Late Winter Potpourri Reading
Pieces from Ken Dryden and Peter Vecsey, and a glance at upcoming books
Sports Biblio Reader 2.21.21
The Imagination of Sports in Books, History, the Arts and Culture
Also In This Issue: 1880s-90s Baseball Newspaper Stories; Jackie Robinson’s Letters to a Columnist; Dale Earnhardt; The Commonwealth of Cricket; A History of Gymnastics; Catholic College Basketball; Bill Cowher; The Long Fall of Freddy Adu; Hockey’s Goalie Problem; Phoenix Coyotes Ugly; Original Sixes; Jack Nicklaus’ Life Lessons to His Children
While I prepare some baseball book examinations in the next few next weeks, this week I’m passing along a good range of pieces, including those related to the diamonds and beyond. Happy Reading!
A Few Good Reads
“The Padres Owe Fernando Tatís Jr. $340 Million. He Owes an Investment Fund Millions From His Payday,” by Jared Diamond, The Wall Street Journal;
“The ‘Get Me Out of Here’ Craze is Unhealthy for Sports,” by Jay Mariotti, Barrett Sports Media;
“MLB’s Minor League Power Play Is An Offense Against Baseball History,” by Eric Nusbaum, Defector;
“Baseball from the Newspaper Accounts, 1882–1891,” a 1961 self-published book by Preston D. Orem, with a new foreword by baseball historian John Thorn at his Our Game blog;
“The Story Behind Jackie Robinson’s Damning Kiss-Off to a White Sports Writer,” by Josh Levin, Slate;
“The 1905 Philadelphia Giants are mostly forgotten, but they were one of baseball’s great teams,” by Damichael Cole, Philadelphia Inquirer;
“Hiring Rush Limbaugh Was ESPN’s First Big Cultural Scandal,” by Alex Reimer, Forbes;
“Twenty Years Later, Dale Earnhardt's Death at Daytona Still Hurts,” by Justin Kirkland, Esquire;
“The Commonwealth of Cricket: a delightful sporting memoir,” by Soumya Bhattacharya, New Statesman;
“Hockey Has a Gigantic-Goalie Problem,” by Ken Dryden, The Atlantic;
“Dysfunction in the desert: Finger-pointing, fear and financial woes roil the Coyotes organization,” by Katie Strang, The Athletic;
“The Original Sixes,” about the Colored Hockey League of the Maritimes, which predates the NHL, by Erica Ayala, NHL.com;
“In new book, Jack Nicklaus’ eldest son shares life lessons learned from his father,” by James Colgan, golf.com;
“A decade after Freddy Adu joined the Union, he admits he didn’t work hard enough in MLS,” by Jonathan Tannenwald, Philadelphia Inquirer; the former American teen phenom was released this week by a third-division club in Sweden;
“How King Kazu is still playing at 54,” about the Japanese soccer player Kazuyoshi Miura, by Paul Williams, Optus Sport;
“Inside the Fight, at Stanford and Beyond, to Save Olympic Sports,” by Ross Dellinger, Sports Illustrated;
“Hoop Du Jour: Old Testament Pertinence & Impertinence,” by Peter Vecsey, Legends of Basketball.
Sports Book News
Coming March 16, by Twelve Books: “Miracles on the Hardwood: The Hope-and-a-Prayer Story of a Winning Tradition in Catholic College Basketball,” by John Gasaway;
Coming in April, via Invisible Publishing: “The Only Way is the Steady Way: Essays on Baseball, Ichiro, and How We Watch the Game,” by Andrew Forbes;
Coming in June, from Atria Books: “Heart and Steel,” by Bill Cowher with Michael Holley;
Also in June, from the University of Illinois Press: “Degrees of Difficulty: How Women's Gymnastics Rose to Prominence and Fell from Grace,” by Georgia Cervin, billed as the first major history of the sport.
The Sports Biblio Reader e-mail newsletter is delivered on Sunday. You can subscribe here and search recent archives. The full archives for Sports Biblio Digest can be found here. This is issue No. 235, published Feb. 21, 2021.
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