All Entries in the "Bill’s Analysis" Category
February Reflections on the Cleveland Indians
There just has to be a big bat out there somewhere. At least that’s what the Indians keep thinking. According to press conferences from various front office personnel over the past week, the team claims they have achieved all of the offseason goals they set for themselves except for one: finding a big bat to [...]
A Book Review: Jack and Larry by Barbara Gregorich
What do you get when you cross a successful Major Leaguer, one of the most historic teams in Major League baseball and an adorable dog? Author Barbara Gregorich answers this question in her new book Jack and Larry: Jack Graney and Larry, the Cleveland Baseball Dog. In this children’s book told in a prose style, [...]
DVD Review: Baseball’s Greatest Games-Collector’s Edition
Looking for the perfect item to get your baseball fix on TV in the offseason? Well, you can stop looking once you acquire Baseballs Greatest Games. Put out by MLB and A&E Studios in 2011, this 11 disc DVD set will occupy any baseball lover for hours (29 hours and 56 minutes to be [...]
Cleveland Indians 2011-2012 Off Season So Far…
At this point, the Indians off season can unfortunately be described by three words: Roberto Hernandez Heredia. Before mid-January, those three words didn’t mean anything to anyone in baseball circles perhaps except for the man who was calling himself Fausto Carmona. As it turns out, when Carmona tried to get his new visa to come [...]
The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood, A Book Review
A mention of Mickey Mantle seems to start more arguments about where his rightful place is on the all-time list of greatest baseball players. The Mick has a following unlike almost any player, which is evidenced by fans’ willingness not only to pay top dollar for his baseball memorabilia, but for aspects of his life [...]
The Big Show: Charles M Conlon’s Golden Age Baseball Photographs, A Book Review
While there are strong debates raging today as to what sport should not be considered America’s pastime with football, basketball and baseball all making their sound arguments, there was a time when this was not in doubt. During the first half of the 20th Century, there was really only one choice for the sport that [...]
A Moment in Time, A Book Review
It’s amazing how fast one’s life can change. In one split second on October 3,1951 aveteran pitcher with multiple All Star appearances went from being one of the most respected players in baseball to forever being known as a goat. When Brooklyn Dodger right hander Ralph Branca gave up the homerun to New York [...]
August’s Reflections on the Indians
The Indians were just involved in a series sweep with the division rival Detroit Tigers, but unfortunately they were the ones getting swept. At one point in the season, the Indians had a seven game lead in their division with fans planning their schedules for October, but now with just over a month left in [...]
Six Decades of Baseball: A Book Review
Author Bill Lewers has possibly lived a life many baseball fans would trade for. In his work, Six Decades of Baseball, Lewers chronicles his time surrounding the game of baseball across the nation. Lewers, a Red Sox fan who never lived near Boston, and actually grew up in New York City, presents a story of [...]
October 1964: A Book Review
Ironically the time period with the least amount of time spent on it in David Halberstam’s book October 1964 would be October 1964. Don’t let this come as a deterrent to reading Halberstam’s work, because even if you aren’t interested in baseball, but enjoy learning about how different people act in life, this is certainly [...]
Akron Aeros Mull Name Change
During the mid-1990s Akron was a buzz about the possibility of having a team playing downtown. The current AA Affiliate of the Cleveland Indians, the Canton-Akron Indians, played about a half hour away from Akron and was really associated with the city by name only, like the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, or whatever they [...]
The Fireball Kid: A Book Review
Novels about sports, specifically baseball, usually fall in one of two categories. Either they are written about a kid who is bullied at school and finds their way on the diamond, or a middle aged man who hasn’t played in decades, but all of the sudden has Major League talent. Fortunately this is not the [...]
Reflecting on Cleveland’s First Half
Well Tribe fans, have they made a believer out of you yet? As of this writing, the Indians are 43-37 and .5 games ahead of the Detroit Tigers for the lead in the American League Central. While it’s a far cry from the seven game lead they had just a month ago, the Indians are [...]
A Review of…Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN
If you are a baseball fan, chances are, you spend countless hours every year following the game you love in some capacity on ESPN. While most currently see ESPN as a sports entertainment giant who is almost too large, just as many probably forget the perilous times when ESPN was first getting [...]
Oh No Don’t Hit My Catcher: GM’s Changing Their Tune on Blocking the Plate
My, oh my, how times have changed. Twenty years ago if the baseball world could have heard the conversations over the past week about whether or not catchers should block the plate, many would have thought the baseball people just got soft. That being said, probably the worst reason not to change [...]
A Review of BB&T Ballpark Home of the Winston-Salem Dash
If one thing is for sure in Winston Salem, it’s that the people in that area love their baseball team. Attending a Saturday night game for the Winston Salem Dash, the Class A Affiliate of the Chicago White Sox, is akin to being present at a very popular regular season series in the Major Leagues. [...]
Tribe Fans Feeling Like It’s 1995
No one, including the most optimistic fans in Cleveland, thought with the season headed into June, the Indians would be in the discussion of the best teams in baseball. In fact, even employees of the team were saying before the season that they were realistically two years out of contending. To fans, this felt like [...]
Harper Changes Hagerstown on His Way to Washington
Superstars change everything, no matter where they go. This is true in business, personal life and, of course, sports and is on display, at least for the time being, in Hagerstown, MD. Hagerstown is the home of the Hagerstown Suns, the Class A Affiliate of the Washington Nationals and is home to [...]
L.P. Frans Stadium – Home of the Hickory Crawdads
Built in 1993, L.P. Frans Stadium is home to the Hickory Crawdads, the high A affiliate of the Texas Rangers. The stadium seats just over 5,000 people and overall probably has a bit more to offer than most stadiums that host a team on that level. One of the most unique facets of the [...]
The Way of Baseball – Finding Stillness at 95 MPH : A Book Review
Stillness is not something most people think of when they picture a fastball being thrown in their direction. However, in his new book, former MLB All Star Shawn Green attempts to explain to readers the how they can find meaning in all parts of life, whether they are flipping burgers or stepping in the batter’s [...]
Play By Play: A Book Review
Neal Conan’s voice is known by many across the country due to his coverage of political issues on National Public Radio’s show Talk of the Nation, not for baseball play calling. Despite his popularity and the security of employment gained through being with NPR, Conan had a chance to do what many baseball fans dream [...]
Baseball Miscellany: A Book Review
Serious baseball fans tend to think they know the answers to the serious baseball questions that non-serious baseball fans may not even understand, let alone be able to answer. What these serious fans may not realize when they are explaining what VORP means to their seemingly impressed co-worker, is that they don’t even know the [...]
Cardboard Gods: A Book Review
Usually I don’t write book reviews in the first person, but I will make an exception here because I feel it is the best way to illustrate the magnitude of this specific work. “Cardboard Gods: An American Tale” by Josh Wilker is on the surface, a story about a boy and his baseball card [...]
Pinstripe Defection: A Book Review
David vs. Goliath stories never get old and sometimes it feels like the public has heard all of the ones worth hearing. Author Clay McKinney teaches readers there’s at least one more relatively unknown story out there that pits the little guy versus the big guy in a big way. In “Pinstripe Defection: A Small [...]
Campy: The Two Lives of Roy Campanella; A Book Review
Even some who consider themselves serious fans of the game of baseball probably don’t know the true historical significance of the career and life of Roy Campanella. To many, Campanella is just a name of someone who is in the Hall of Fame, but he accomplished so much more on and off the [...]
Baseball in the Garden of Eden, A Book Review
If you are someone who still whole heartedly believes Abner Doubleday is the soul person responsible for creating America’s Pastime, author John Thorn has some major news for you. In his new work Baseball in the Garden of Eden: The Secret History of the Early Game, Thorn examines many “myths” of the game so many [...]
Book Review: Satch, Dizzy & Rapid Robert
Timothy Gay is known to those who read extensively about baseball as a good writer, but more importantly, someone who is willing to do the research required to undertake accurate storytelling of some of the most interesting, and important, times in baseball history. In “Satch, Dizzy & Rapid Robert: The wild Saga of Interracial Baseball [...]
B is for Baseball: Alphabet Cards; A Product Review
Artist Doug Keith has tried to make a solution for a problem many baseball fans across the country face in regards to raising their young ones. Often parents of America’s Pastime are left asking themselves, “How can I bring the game I love to my children at a young age in a [...]
Remembering Fenway Park, A Book Review
When Harvey Frommer set out to write the history of Fenway Park, he no doubt knew he had his work cut out for him. This is not a book where if the author just muddled through their research, they could get away with it as its focus is one of the most famous meccas of [...]
Book Review: Derek Jeter from the Pages of the New York Times
Derek Jeter may not be one of the ten best players in baseball any longer and many fans will argue how much he has been responsible for his own greatness, but one thing is for sure, when Jeter’s name comes up, people listen. That’s what essayist Tyler Kepner and the other writers of this book [...]
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