Sports Biblio Digest, 9.29.19: The Lazy, Hazy Days of an Indian Summer
News, Views and Reviews About Sports Books, History and Culture
Also In This Issue: Oscar Charleston; Tailgating in Buffalo; Black Sox Myths; Marty Brennaman; Bruce Bochy; Off The Sporting Green
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I’m not going to complain about the heat in this first week of autumn in North America, not after a relatively mild summer.
But we’ve had some record temperatures in the last few weeks as September fades into October, and as another baseball regular season is in the books.
It just doesn’t feel like the playoffs are here, but there will be wild card games before division series begin on Thursday. Once it feels a little like fall, this is definitely my favorite time of the year.
I’ve been relishing some recent reading by and about the famed Roger Angell of The New Yorker, the longtime baseball writer who turned 99 years old earlier this month, and will be exploring his work here soon.
Here are a few things I’ve been reading recently, including a few links about non-sports subjects I pull together on the odd fifth Sunday of the month.
Cheers! And Happy Reading!
A Few Good Reads (and Listens)
A new biography of Negro Leagues legend Oscar Charleston is being published in November by the University of Nebraska Press, and it got a solid review by Publishers Weekly, concluding that author Jeremy Beer makes a good case “for Charleston as the greatest baseball player who never played in the majors.” In 2017, Beer wrote about the Charleston myth for the SABR Research Journal; Here’s John Schulian’s acclaimed Sports Illustrated piece on Charleston, “A One-Way Ticket to Obscurity,” at The Stacks Reader;
At the Baseball Bookshelf, Ron Kaplan talks with Richard Goldstein, obituary writer for The New York Times, who’s written a few baseball books. His July obituary of Pumpsie Green, the first black player for the Boston Red Sox, is here;
On Saturday 99 years ago, the first newspaper reports were published of a possible fix of the 1919 World Series by eight players of the Chicago White Sox. This roundup, “Eight Myths Out,” is a solid fact-check before the deluge of centenary Black Sox pieces are rolled out soon, and contains oodles of related links;
This week official baseball historian John Thorn posted the final installment in his 21-part series, “A Pictorial Chronology of Baseball in the 19th Century,” focusing on developments during 1899-1900 that would lead to the formation of the Major Leagues as we know them today. The National League went from 12 to eight teams, Thorn notes, and Ban Johnson renamed the Western League as the American League, eyeing East Coast markets and a big leap up from the minors. As usual Thorn includes photos, publication covers and other visuals to illustrate how the game way portrayed back then;
There was little suspense at the Melbourne Cricket Ground last Saturday as the Richmond Tigers cruised in the Australian Football League Grand Final 114-25. The all-Aussie pre-game entertainment rated a serious review at The Herald;
From When Saturday Comes, the eccentricities of players’ boots as another English football season is underway;
After 72 seasons, the Chicago Cubs will appear today on WGN-TV for the last time. The station, with Ted Turner’s TBS, helped revolutionize baseball on the satellite in the 1980s, but it was an over-the-air pioneer from its first telecast in 1948;
Also on Sunday, Marty Brennaman will call his last Cincinnati Reds game, after 46 seasons. At The Athletic, Joe Posnanski, a former Cincinnati Post columnist who chronicled the Big Red Machine dynasty of the 1970s, offers some memorable stories about the Brennaman years, including owner Marge Schott’s absurd orders for him to remove an Elvis Presley bust he kept in the Reds' radio booth;
One last baseball swan song to note here, that of Bruce Bochy, outgoing manager of the San Francisco Giants, who’s likely bound for Cooperstown after guiding three World Series championship teams. As Ann Killion writes at the San Francisco Chronicle; Bochy enjoyed success over the Dodgers, his final opponent Sunday, like no other skipper;
Diehard Buffalo Bills fans have been an integral part of the forlorn AFL/NFL franchise’s history. The Bills Mafia, whose hardcore tailgaters include a fellow named Pinto Ron, take it to a different level;
Another 100th NFL anniversary look, this from USA Today on the greatest radio and television voices of all time, leading with the dulcet-toned narrator who helped make NFL Films famous. There are plenty of omissions here; see who you would have put on this list. A second or longer one should have been made.
Errata
In last week’s leader about Australian Rules Football writing in the 1980s I misidentified the club now known as the Sydney Swans. It was the South Melbourne Football Club, founded in 1874, that moved to New South Wales in 1982.
Off the Sporting Green
I can’t say I’ve been a big country music fan but I did eagerly watch the latest Ken Burns PBS documentary, “Country Music,” primarily for his storytelling prowess. Not surprisingly, music sales for some of the classic figures featured in the film have soared, and it’s hard to see Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, Merle Haggard, et al, in the same light. That’s because Burns did fine job showing how gospel, R & B, bluegrass, folk, Texas swing, California rockabilly and Southern rock have blended in to create a varied and rich genre that in many ways does defy categorization. Diehards like to say there are only two kinds of music: country and western. To my ears, it's what sounds real and everything else, and not much has ever sounded better than the Emmylou Harris concert I took in more than 30 years ago. Opening for her that night at the Wolftrap pavilion in northern Virginia: Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys;
Jan Morris, one of my favorite writers ever, especially during my wanderlust days as a young adult, is 92 and has lived many lives aside from her gender transition and remarrying the woman she first wed as a man after World War II. Given her adventurous spirit, that’s one of many remarkable things about a truly remarkable individual. Among Morris' many travel books, I especially liked “Fifty Years of Europe: An Album," her journeys across the postwar continent;
At Places Journal, devoted to architecture, landscape and urbanism, John Scanlan travels along Northwest England’s A66 highway, from the Lake District to West Cumbria, weaving history, landscape, history, geology and lush photographs and maps;
From The Columbia Journalism Review archives, a look back at the San Jose Mercury-News, once one of the most ambitious and energetic newspapers in America, especially when Silicon Valley came into its own as a global technology hub. But like its print brethren, the Merc couldn’t figure out how to bridge the gap to the digital age.
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The Sports Biblio Digest is an e-mail newsletter delivered on Sunday. You can subscribe here and search the archives.
This is Digest issue No. 180, published Sept. 29, 2019.
I’d love to hear what you think about the Digest, and Sports Biblio. Send feedback, suggestions, book recommendations, review copies, newsletter items and interview requests to Wendy Parker at sportsbiblio@gmail.com.