Sports Biblio Digest, 10.16.16: A History of Baseball Best-Sellers
News, Views and Reviews About Sports Books, History and Culture
Also In This Issue: A Sports Columnist's Alzheimer's Fight; An American Soccer Coach in England; The Sorrows of Aliquippa; Bob Dylan, Nobel Laureate
Welcome to the Sports Biblio Digest, an e-mail newsletter delivered each Sunday. You can subscribe here and search the archives.
This is Digest issue No. 58, published Oct. 15, 2016. The Digest is a companion to the Sports Biblio website, which is updated every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. To view this newsletter in a browser, please click here.
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A Few Good Reads and Such
• The National Pastime Museum: Baseball Books on the NYT Bestseller List—After no books about the pastime were included on the Gray Lady’s longlist in 2015 for the first time in a long time, Marty Appel dug through the 75 books that have made the list, and pointed out some notable omissions. The longest baseball book to stay on the list: George Will’s “Men at Work,” for nine months in 1990;
• The Philadelphia Inquirer: My Alzheimer’s fight: Never, ever quit—Retired sports columnist Bill Lyon’s first installment in a series of pieces on his battle with the disease. There are links to other articles as well;
• Victory Journal: the last best plane right ever—A video recreation of the New York Mets’ celebration after beating the Houston Astros in the 1986 National League Division Series;
• The New York Times: Uprooted to Brooklyn, and Nourished by Cricket—Sports columnist Michael Powell on how some Bangladeshi immigrants spend their leisure time;
• Joe Posnanski: Hiller and the Modern Closer—A look back at Joe Hiller’s remarkable 1973 season coming out of the bullpen for the Detroit Tigers;
• The Atlantic: Clayton Kershaw’s comparisons to Sandy Koufax figure to continue, but it’s always a good idea to revisit how astonishingly good Koufax was, a half-century after his retirement;
• MMQB: Inside the Huddle With the Guys Who ‘Grind and Find’—Peter King spends time with scouts for the Indianapolis Colts and their very unglamorous jobs;
• Sports Illustrated: Former U.S. soccer coach Bob Bradley’s American nationality is already an issue as he takes the reins at Swansea City;
• New York Daily News: Tim Tebow’s minor league stint with the Mets isn’t going well, and both the player and the club are taking a pounding for it;
• The Guardian: Anna Kessel on the retirement of Olympic track and field gold medalist Jennifer Ennis-Hill and the meteoric rise of women’s sports in Britain.
Sports Book News and Reviews
• The Wall Street Journal: The Reel Steelers—David Shribman reviews “Playing Through the Whistle,” S.L. Price’s new book on the dynastic high school football team in Aliquippa, Pa., and how the town has struggled economically and socially since the steel industry’s decline. The book was adapted from Price’s SI story that was included in the 2012 Best American Sports Writing collection.
Off the Sporting Green
• Los Angeles Times: Why Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize is the best thing that can happen to the book world—A lot of hyperbole this week on this subject, including this headline, but this is the best case I’ve read about pushing the cause of literature forward in the age of video and instant media. As Carolyn Kellogg writes: “. . . literature is all around us. Read it or listen to it or watch it.” Old-school literary types may scoff, but the times are definitely a-changing, especially for those who immersed their young imaginations in Dylan’s earnest prosody. “The Lyrics: 1961-2012” is set to publish in the U.S. on Nov. 8—Election Day;
• Buzzfeed: 19 Beautiful Bookstores You Need to Visit in America—A collection of indie oases that have been regenerated before, but a welcome departure from the usual listicle fare;
• Atlas Obscura: Inside the New York Public Library’s Last, Secret Apartments;
• Esquire: Welcome Back, SPY—Former editor Kurt Andersen on the revival of the 90’s satirical magazine that succeeded before the age of snark. Yes, indeed, it is badly needed now, if only to get through this dreadful election;
• Publishers’ Weekly: Is Social Media Toxic to Writing?—The more time I spend on the former, the more I think the answer is: Yes.
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