Archive for Readings

You, reader, are probably already aware that NotGraphs has entered what is often colloquially referred to as “the big time.”

As if we had to prove it any further, witness this: our very first advance proof, Neil Lanctot’s forthcoming Campy: The Two Lives of Roy Campanella.

The book goes on sale March 8th, and we’ll provide a review of some sort before that date.

In the meantime, some notes and first impressions:

• So long as the back of this book isn’t lying, Roy Campanella, who joined the Dodgers a year after Jackie Robinson, didn’t particularly get along with him (i.e. Robinson).

• Campenella’s playing career was cut short by an automobile accident, in early 1958, that left him a quadriplegic.

• There’s a chance — a chance — that this book willn’t be “full of jokes.”

• Campanella was MVP three times — 1951, 1953, and 1955 — tying him with Yogi Berra, Joe DiMaggio, Jimmie Foxx, Mickey Mantle, Stan Musial, Albert Pujols, Alex Rodriguez, Mike Schmidt for second on the all-time list.

• Embiggen this image (all players, 1948-1957):

If there’s one thing Carson Cistulli has his finger on — that is, besides the keys of the uber-sleek netbook on which he’s (read: I’m) currently typing these words — it’s the pulse of the people. And if there’s one thing the people want it’s definitely HELLA PICTURES OF BOOKS. Badly composed, poorly lit pictures of used baseball books, specifically.

In an attempt to capitalize on the public’s insatiable appetite for book-y photos, allow me to offer the following: some pictures I took at The Community Bookstore, located on Court Street in the Cobble Hill/Carroll Gardens neighborhood of Brooklyn.

The Community Bookstore, in the event that you don’t know, looks like this when you walk into it:

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The wife and I have accidentally — as part of an East Coast tour — we’ve accidentally found our way to the borough of Brooklyn, New York, United States.

Today, as part of same tour, we walked to the Strand Bookstore in Manhattan — a store which, in the event that you’re unaware, features “18 Miles of Books.”

Below are some of the notable baseball titles I found. (Note: The following images are, I’m led to believe, merely thumbnails. I’m led to believe, additionally, that you can click any thumbnail to view a larger image. Furthermore, for each title, I’ve provided a link to the relevant Google Books page.)

The Suitors of Spring by Pat Jordan*:

*This is mentioned in Kevin Kerrane’s Dollar Sign on the Muscle.

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Recently, in these pages, I made a case for a way of discussing books in a manner conducive to NotGraphs. You can read those exact words, if you want. Alternatively, you can just believe me when I say that the basic idea is to share lightly annotated passages and ideas from interesting baseball-related books.

The Text in Question
Dollar Sign on the Muscle: The World of Baseball Scouting by Kevin Kerrane

A General Statement About the Quality of This Book
It’s super high, the quality of the book. Reading it, I’m thinking to myself, “This is the best book I’ve ever read.” That I’ve only ever read three or so books, though, will definitely influence my opinion on this matter.

The Four Eras of Scouting
Kerrane provides what must be the first real historical analysis of scouting. He divides it into four main eras, as follows.

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Recently, in these pages, I made a case for a way of discussing books in a manner conducive to NotGraphs. You can read those exact words, if you want. Alternatively, you can just believe me when I say that the basic idea is to share lightly annotated passages and ideas from interesting baseball-related books.

The Text in Question
Dollar Sign on the Muscle: The World of Baseball Scouting by Kevin Kerrane

On This Book and Why I’m Reading It
Despite the fact that it might disappoint my mother, it’s a fact: if Rob Neyer told me to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge, I would effing go jump off that bridge, stat.

Why? Probably for like a thousand reasons. Like, because Neyer is the freshest of princes. Like, because while some people* cling desperately to their spot in the public consciousness, Neyer has repeatedly used his notoriety to celebrate and recognize the work of those less well-known. Like, because Neyer remembered my frigging birthday — something even my jerky college friends can’t be bothered to do.

So when, this past summer, Neyer mentioned that Dollar Sign on the Muscle is more or less the definitive book on scouting, it immediately became a priority for me.

*I can’t put up with those people because they’re bastard people.

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Recently, in these pages, I made a case for a way of discussing books in a manner conducive to NotGraphs. You can read those exact words, if you want. Alternatively, you can just believe me when I say that the basic idea is to share lightly annotated passages and ideas from interesting baseball-related books.

Text
Reggie Jackson: The Life and Thunderous Career of Baseball’s Mr. October by Dayn Perry

A Note on Very Bad Behavior
One impression that is impossible not to have while reading Mr. Perry’s book is how poorly behaved basically every single one of its protagonists is. A’s owner Charlie Finley? A miserly emotional terrorist. George Steinbrenner? Less miserly than Finley, but more — I don’t know — nakedly tyrannical (?). Billy Martin? Almost definitely a victim of untreated borderline personality disorder. Jackson himself? Less self-esteem, and a greater proclivity for drama, than every 15-year-old girl everywhere.

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Recently, in these pages, I made a case for a way of discussing books in a manner conducive to NotGraphs. You can read those exact words, if you want. Alternatively, you can just believe me when I say that the basic idea is to share lightly annotated passages and ideas from interesting baseball-related books.

Text
Reggie Jackson: The Life and Thunderous Career of Baseball’s Mr. October by Dayn Perry

A Note on the Notes
Today’s edition of Readings is both bullet- and trivia-heavy.

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Recently, in these pages, I made a case for a way of discussing books in a manner conducive to NotGraphs. You can read those exact words, if you want. Alternatively, you can just believe me when I say that the basic idea is to share lightly annotated passages and ideas from interesting baseball-related books.

Text
Reggie Jackson: The Life and Thunderous Career of Baseball’s Mr. October by Dayn Perry

On This Book and Its Familiar Author
It would undoubtedly represent a conflict of interest — and might, indeed, ring hollow — were I to submit a gushing review of my colleague Dayn Perry’s mostly new book about Reggie Jackson. On the other hand, it would also be an exercise in absurdity to expressly not mention how I’ve been reading and taking notes on that same book.

So, please, reader, accept these notes with the spirit in which they’re given — i.e. that of well-meaning impartiality.

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This past weekend, I made a case for a way of discussing books in a manner conducive to NotGraphs. You can read those exact words, if you want. Alternatively, you can just believe me when I say that the basic idea is to share lightly annotated passages and ideas from interesting baseball-related books.

Text
Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell

Notes
Readers of FanGraphs will very likely be acquainted with the statistical concept of the outlier — that is, the data point that resides unusually far from the cluster of other data points in a given set. In this book, Gladwell attempts to examine the conditions that surround people who become outliers in terms of success within their chosen fields.

In an early example, Gladwell looks at a Canadian junior hockey team. Seventeen of the team’s 25 players are born within the first four months of the year. Nor is this phenomenon isolated merely to the one hockey team; Gladwell provides a number of other cases in which team rosters are skewed bizarrely towards January, February, and March.

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Over the weekend, I made a case for a way of discussing books in a manner conducive to NotGraphs. You can read those exact words, if you want. Alternatively, you can just believe me when I say that the basic idea is to share lightly annotated passages and ideas from interesting baseball-related books.

Text
A Brief History of American Sports by Elliot J. Gorn and Warren Goldstein

Notes
Whether factually accurate or not, it’s nevertheless pleasant to believe that Dr. Hans Asperger — credited with identifying what we now call Asperger Syndrome — that he, in fact, exhibited symptoms of the very same Syndrome that he discovered. Again, ignoring what I’ll call the “actual details” of the matter, Dr. Asperger’s case gives us a nice figure or archetype with which to work — namely, that of a man whose life’s work is more or less the product of attempting to diagnose his own peculiar condition.

Nor, reader, do I believe I’m misbehaving when I suggest that we, all of us, are doctors in this way — not to the extent, probably, of Asperger himself, but at least in the sense that our fumbling attempts to understand our own unique conditions often define and inform the work that we eventually produce.

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