Book Review: Dueling with Kings
Daily fantasy certainly seems to be everywhere. Perhaps not as much as it was two years ago when every other commercial during any sporting event seemed to be for FanDuel or DraftKings—the two behemoths of the Daily Fantasy arena—but it’s still fairly hard to avoid. Journalist Daniel Barbarisi became intrigued by the influx in daily […]
Book Review: You Herd Me
If you have spent any time watching or listening to sports media over the past decade, you are more than likely familiar with Colin Cowherd. The former ESPN radio voice, and current host of The Herd on FS1 and Fox Sports Radio, Cowherd has been a dominant voice in sports media for many years. In […]
Book Review: Every Day I Fight
By the time of his passing, Stuart Scott may have been the most popular and recognizable face at ESPN. And that’s saying something considering the folks they had on staff at the time. Scott was seen by many as the one who made ESPN, SportsCenter and broadcasting in general “hip”, but he was much more […]
Book Review: A Hero All His Life
Mickey Mantle was, to many, a hero. He was the type of person men wanted to be and women dreamed they could be with. Obviously, those feelings were all contrived from what Mantle did on the baseball field, and some other interactions he would have in public. As most are now aware, Mantle’s private life […]
Book Review: Murder at Fenway Park
Murder and baseball? As long as it’s fiction, those are two of my favorite things in one (certainly never OK with actual murder), so this reviewer was expecting to be entertained when he picked up Murder at Fenway Park by Troy Soos. Hailed as “A Mickey Rawlings Baseball Mystery” on the front cover, the work […]
Book Review: I Don’t Care if We Never Get Back
Visit all 30 MLB stadiums. Sounds like a good life goal. In fact, many readers of this blog probably have that goal themselves, or at least know someone who does. Imagine doing that in 30 days. That’s right. Every MLB stadium in 30 days. 30 in 30. Sound reasonable? Well, two recent college grads attempted […]
Book Review: Dealing
Many other books by well-known Northeast Ohio journalist Terry Pluto have been reviewed on this site before and this one is no different in terms of its entertainment value. In Dealing: The Cleveland Indians’ New Ballgame (Inside the Front Office and the Process of Rebuilding a Contender), Pluto takes readers through the steps it took […]
Sports Book Reviews
By Harvey Frommer The seasons keep changing and the sports books keep coming. They are focused on all kinds of subjects, approaches, dealing with different sports. Herewith, for your reading, exciting tomes dealing with baseball, football, tennis. Hank Greenberg in 1938 by Ron Kaplan (Sports Publishing, $24.95, 235 pages) is an important book for its […]
Book Review: Mind Game
Sabermetrics almost seems old hat now. It doesn’t have the cache it did even just a decade ago when it seemed like it was still being shunned by some in the baseball community. While the new age statistics are now widely accepted and pretty much everyone has accepted that using them is the way to […]
Book Review: The Entitled by Frank Deford
Since baseball is so romantic, many have tried their hand at writing a novel on the subject. Perhaps Bernard Mulamud’s classic work The Natural, since turned into a movie, is the best known of baseball novels. However, after reading Frank Deford’s work The Entitled: A Tale of Modern Baseball, this reviewer has a new favorite. […]
Book Review: Instant Baseball
If you take pictures with your iPhone and post them to Instagram, you probably never considered that a book could be published of the pictures from your camera phone. Well, Brad Mangin has done just that. Mangin, a freelance photojournalist who has taken the cover photo for more than one dozen issues of Sports Illustrated, […]
Book Review: Long Shot by Mike Piazza
Mike Piazza was one of the most polarizing players of his generation. Just from the rare viewpoint that he had successful stints with two different teams makes him unique. During his career with the Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Mets, Piazza received many accolades and was constantly considered at least the second best catcher […]
Book Review: Stillpower
Why does everything worth anything have to be so unbelievably hard to achieve? Well, according to Garret Kramer in his new book, Stillpower: Excellence with Ease in Sports and Life , the goal one wants to achieve may only seem hard because that is how the person chooses to perceive it. Now, one could clearly […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
A Glove of Their Own: A Book Review
If you think that youth baseball today has gotten too competitive and structured with All Star Leagues and travel teams, allow me to bring you back to a simpler time. Have any of you ever played just for the fun of the game in a non-league setting? Do you remember playing pick-up games with less […]
