Sports Biblio Digest, Dec. 13, 2015
Welcome to the Sports Biblio Digest, an e-mail newsletter delivered each Sunday about sports books, history, culture and great reads. You can subscribe here and feel free to visit the archives.
This is Digest issue No. 21, published Dec. 13, 2015. The Digest is a companion to the Sports Biblio website, which is updated with new posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
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Notable Baseball Books Of 2015; Ballparks And Communities
This week on Sports Biblio I continued rolling out a series of posts on notable sports books, this one being the baseball variety.
Given the vast selection of baseball books that are published every year, limiting this list to 10 was really, really hard. In addition to standard releases on a moment-in-time (“The Pine Tar Game”) and a glimpse of a team’s past or current struggles (“The Best Team Money Can Buy”) there were some different, refreshing reads from the standard fare.
Lonnie Wheeler’s “Intangiball” is a welcome departure in a sabermetrics-flooded subject area (and I’m not anti-advanced stats at all); and Bengie Molina’s family memoir was exceptionally touching and graceful.
For the next two weeks I’ll continue breaking down notable sports books by sport and other subjects, so stay tuned for that. Here’s the overall list of 15 notable books I posted a couple weeks ago.
I also wrote two baseball-related posts this week about ballparks and community, and they read like the sentimental old sap I am apparently becoming:
Why I can’t get excited about the new stadium that’s being built near me in suburban Atlanta;
And the ill-fated charm of community ballparks in these hip and shiny times, even at places like Wrigley Field.
In real life, I’m not as Get Off My Lawn as I may seem. No, really!
PEN Releases 2016 Literary Sports Writing Longlist
The PEN American Center has put 10 books on its Literary Sports Writing longlist, and several of those selections have made the Sports Biblio notable lists. I’ve also reviewed two of them, Charles Leerhsen’s Ty Cobb biography and Brin-Jonathan Butler’s memoir of boxing in Cuba.
This is the seventh year PEN is teaming up with sponsor ESPN to present sportswriting awards, which also include a lifetime achievement category.
The 2016 judges are David Epstein (author of “The Sports Gene”), San Francisco Chronicle sports columnist Ann Killion and author and sports-and-politics blogger Dave Zirin.
Schulian’s First Novel Published
Longtime sports columnist, non-fiction author and television screenwriter John Schulian (co-creator of “Xena: The Warrior Princess”) is now a novelist.
“A Better Goodbye” was published last week, and it’s the noirish story of a washed-up boxer who gets caught up in the Hollywood sex trade.
I’m a big fan of Schulian’s writing (especially the baseball collection “Twilight of the Long-ball Gods”), and he’s a magnificent guide to other great sports writing as the editor of boxing and football anthologies.
In this interview with the CNC Books Blog, Schulian explains the difficulty of finding a publisher for the novel (it was finally accepted by Tyrus Books, an imprint founded in 2009 and now owned by F + W).
The book is reviewed at Review Fix and The Chicago Tribune, with a synopsis at the fine Arts Journal site.
Earlier this fall, Schulian discussed the state of football writing in an interview on WGN in Chicago, and lamented the fading influence of the newspaper sports pages.
Here are a couple of Schulian’s best-known stories, his profile of NFL hardman Chuck Bednarik; and the tragic tale of Negro Leagues legend Oscar Charleston.
Also from earlier this year, Schulian wrote this appreciation of the legendary sportswriter W.C. Heinz upon the publication of a new collection of the latter’s work.
Baseball Hall Of Fame News
For the second year in a row, the Baseball Hall of Fame’s pre-integration committee failed to vote anyone in for induction in 2016. At Sports Illustrated, Jay Jaffe writes why this process needs to be overhauled.
Two media awards given out by the Hall of Fame were announced this week. Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy is the winner of the J.G. Spink Award. The late Graham McNamee, a sports radio pioneer (and profiled in the excellent recent book “Crack of the Bat”) is the the Ford C. Frick broadcasting award recipient. Baseball blogger Ron Kaplan writes that this is an honor long overdue.
Baseball historian Graham Womack has asked his readers at The Sporting News to vote for the best 25 players who are not in the Hall of Fame.
Best Reads Of The Week
In honor of Kobe Bryant’s poetic retirement announcement, The Poetry Foundation blog rounded up some sports-related poems, setting them off of one another in a Sweet 16 format. This all reminds me of how I love baseball and I love poetry but I hate baseball poetry nyuk nyuk nyuk;
ESPN’s Bonnie Ford writes about a clinical trial funded by Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban that may show potential for the human growth hormone to treat sports-related knee injuries, especially the dreaded anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tears. Cuban calls current restrictions against HGH in athletics “dogma without proper grounding;”
At Time, Lorne Rubenstein talks to Tiger Woods about his private battles. Now 40, ailing and unlikely to mount a comeback, Woods says he can’t stand to watch golf: “My kids are more important to me than anything in the world;”
For The Daily Beast, sports economist Dave Maney writes about ESPN’s business challenges and thinks that the sports television bubble is about to burst. This is not a new prediction, and while the Worldwide Leader’s troubles are significant, I’ll believe this projection only if it comes to pass.
Sports Book News, Reviews, Podcasts, Etc.
Sports Illustrated has published a new coffee table history compendium, “Hockey’s Greatest,” that gets a thumbs-up review from the Lighthouse Hockey blog at SB Nation;
A new book about the history of sports in India is reviewed at Indian Express;
Advice to writers from Best American Sports Writing series editor Glenn Stout on the CNF podcast, which is devoted to longform narrative journalism: “You can control only one thing: your effort;”
The Awful Announcing sports media site has compiled its list of best sports podcasts for 2015.
Passings
Dolph Schayes, 87, one of the great early big men in the NBA, who revolutionized play at his position. His story was included by sportswriter Marc Tracy (now of The New York Times) in his compilation “Jewish Jocks: An Unorthodox Hall of Fame:”
“Calling Schayes the greatest Jewish basketball player ever is not like saying he’s the loudest piccolo in the band or the fastest manatee in the water.”
Off The Sporting Green
Yahoo! Sports columnist Dan Wetzel is mounting a campaign against Marriott, which is removing work desks at its top line of hotels to cater to millennials who may just want to sit around a small table and chat with friends or twiddle with smart phones:
"This was suddenly the social justice cause of my life. I was finally moved to protest, ready to join my fellow business travelers and storm J.W. Marriott’s mansion in Utah chanting ‘Save Our Desks.’ ”
More Best of 2015 non-sports book lists: NPR; The Atlantic; The Wall Street Journal; Printers Row. There's no reason that these outlets, which pack a big wallop with these expansive listings, can't find a way to include sports books. For shame.
From The Guardian: The world of an obsessive audiophile. A very expensive, if gratifying habit.
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