Well, one way is to sign up for the annual Cooperstown Baseball Symposium, which is where I’ll be May 29-31.

Veteran sportswriter, author, and commentator Frank Deford is the keynote speaker for this 25th anniversary edition.

You can look at the whole program here. As you will see, it’s very eclectic (and that I serve as a moderator for one of the panels).

Come up for the whole weekend or just a day. If you’ve never been to Cooperstown, it’s quite a treat.

Talk about your odd couples.

A few weeks ago  on Kaplan’s Korner, I posted about a Jewish-themed episode of the old Bill Cosby Show. This one titled “Dennis and The Dodger,” doesn’t have a Jewish slant, aside from the appearance of Koufax himself. And this was in 1959, before Koufax began his streak of five amazing seasons (1962-66).

This link comes courtesy of the Jewish Sports Collector’s group on Yahoo. You have to sign up for Hulu, but the basic service is free.Enjoy. (It’s a trip! Get a load of the “roles” of men and women in the Eisenhower years. And women in baseball, too. So innocent. They don’t make ‘em like this anymore.)

Koufax also appeared, with several other Dodgers teammates, on an episode Mr. Ed.

In fact, the pitcher who has so often been said to be an introvert, has had more than an average superstar’s share of film and TV roles. According to Wikipedia,

Koufax appeared on television from 1959 through 1962. He was cast as Ben Cassidy in the 1959 episode “Too Smart to Live” of the syndicated western series, Shotgun Slade… In 1960, he played the role of “Johnny” in the episode Impasse of the ABC/Warner Brothers western series, Colt .45. He made minor appearances in two other ABC/WB productions, 77 Sunset Strip and Bourbon Street Beat…. He also appeared as himself on NBC’s detective series, Michael Shayne in the 1961 episode entitled “Strike Out.”

I’ll look into those other shows to see if I can find clips.

It’s been a busy couple of weeks. Spent a very nice evening at the Bergino Baseball Clubhouse on May 9, chatting about the new book. An intimate group attended. My wife accompanied me  there and commented on how knowledgeable they all seemed to be on the general topic and how impressive the conversation was. My daughter also showed up to take pictures, which I’ll be posting soon. I’m also noodling around with making a video of the proceedings using the iMovie component of the new computer. Hey, why not? It won’t be Spielberg or DeMille, but you can’t make an omelet without breaking few eggs (unless, of course, you just open a carton of egg substitute).

Here’s the link to the podcast Jay Goldberg produced for the evening. I learned that the whole event is generally too long for the technical limits of the podcast, so some of the Q&A is missing.

While in Manhattan, we paid a visit to the Strand Bookstore, a couple of blocks away from Bergino. While they didn’t have 501 — yet — I did pick a book comparing baseball and cricket; a biography of Lester “Red” Rodney, a journalist of the communist persuasion who politicked for Jackie Robinson to get a chance to try out for Major League baseball, and a paperback of two novellas by Paul Gallico, heretofore known to me only as a sports reporter/editor.

This week I had the pleasure of being interview by Bruce Berglund of NewBooksinSports.com. That should be up next week; I’ll post a link when available.

I’m scheduled to be at the Words bookstore in Maplewood, NJ, on Sunday, June 9 (just in time to pick up a book for Fathers Day, hint, hint). Then, on Wednesday, June 19, at 7 p.m., I’ll be speaking with NY Daily News sports columnist Filip Bondy at the main branch of the Montclair Public Library. This was a reschedule following a May event that was cancelled because Bondy was covering the Nets-Bulls playoff series.

What else, what else… Oh, yeah.

Received Forgotten Stars & Hometown Heroes, a lovely book produced by Gary Cieradkowski, the man behind the Infinite Baseball Card blog.

Tom Hoffarth included it in his follow-up to his “30 baseball books in 30 days” feature last month.

With so many good books coming out every year, I don’t normally reread, but I recently received an email from an author castigating me for not included his book in 501. Having never met the gentleman — and given today’s email/text etiquette (or lack thereof), I have no way of knowing if he was serious or kidding around. Regardless, it did get me to thinking on another book on the general topic of baseball during the civil war, so I picked up Thomas Dyja’s novel, Play for a Kingdom once more. As a book that was included in 501, I will be talking with Dyja at some point soon towards another podcast that will be posted on the book’s stand-alone website, along with other pertinent entries.

Finally, my review of Larry Colton’s illuminating Southern League: A True Story of Baseball, Civil Rights, and the Deep South’s Most Compelling Pennant Race should be up tonight (or next Friday) on Bookreporter.com.

I have been begging for an update of the classic Dodger Dogs to Fenway Franks: The Ultimate Guide to America’s Top Baseball Parks, originally published in 1988 by Bob Wood.

If they ever get around to do that, they’ll have to update the info to include not only the new teams, as well as the new ballparks for older teams, but the vegetarian sensibilities. Fortunately, soyhappy.org gives that project a jump start with this menu of accommodating venues. note: While many food items are kosher, not all are, so as they say on TV, check your local listings.

Hat-tip top Jay Goldberg of the Bergino Baseball Clubhouse for putting this on Facebook.

Can’t believe it’s been five days since my last entry. Things have just gotten so crazy of late, between my book and those from others that keep arriving at my doorstep.

So let us begin:

Boston.com posted this review about Class A: Baseball in the Middle of Everywhere, Lucas Mann’s memoir about the minor leagues. Although the review clearly appreciates the book, one comment struck me as totally nonsensical (regardless of my long-held opinion of Harbach’s debut novel):

If Chad Harbach’s “The Art of Fielding” was the “Field of Dreams” of baseball books, replete with lyricism and Roger Angellesque poetry, then “Class A” could be considered literature’s answer to “Bull Durham” — raucous and scruffy, yet heartfelt and true.

Maybe I’m just dense today; maybe someone can explain this to me. Since Field of Dreams (the film version of the Kinsella story, Shoeless Joe is already a book about baseball, how can TAOF be … I can’t even get my head around how to phrase it. I hope my meaning comes through.

The Provo, Utah, Daily Herald posted this one about John Sexton’s Baseball as a Road to God: Seeing Beyond the Game. Upshot: “Sexton has written an unlikely but deeply nourishing book with lasting appeal to baseball fans who are persons of faith, and vice versa.”

This is a review? NewsOK posted about the coffee table book, Inside the Baseball Hall of Fame.

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune published this review of Edward Achorn’s The Summer of Beer and Whiskey: How Brewers, Barkeeps, Rowdies, Immigrants, and a Wild Pennant Fight Made Baseball America’s Game. Upshot: “s with that book, Achorn’s gift for storytelling shines in the climactic games of the season.” The Oregonian also did one on Achorn’s latest.

MySanAntonio posted this on my old softball teammate Tom Dunkel’s Color Blind: The Forgotten Team That Broke Baseball’s Color Line.

Since book clubs are basically group reviews of books, I’m including this entry from Baseball Nation’s Hot Corner Book Club on The Dickson Baseball Dictionary.

The Daily Beast offers this mini-review of 15 new baseball titles, (none of which is 501Baseball Books Fans Must Read etc. I know it appears ungracious, but at what point would it be appropriate to start bitching about the lack of attention 501 is getting? Have I seriously overestimated the literary appeal and utility of such a book? I don’t want to be that guy, but it is getting a bit frustrating. Just sayin’).

I had the opportunity to watch Big Leaguer yesterday. Anyone who reads this blog regularly knows I can get a little cynical at times, but I was pleasantly surprised by this modest endeavor about young athletes at a New York Giants try-out camp, led by Edward G. Robinson as a kind-but-firm former Major Leaguer. Sure it was a bit dated. The conceit of the sportswriter serving as narrator is a bit cliched, reminiscent of Terrance Mann’s “People will come” monologue in Field of Dreams, as was the son-of-an-immigrant-dad who doesn’t want to let on that he’s a ballplayer, even though he’s really, really good at it. The dialogue, too, was a bit 50s “golly-gee.” I don’t want to give too much more away. I highly recommend spending the time watching the whole thing on Youtube, as I wrote in the previous post.

Jim Baker at BaseballNation picks up on a few of these quirks, including the appearance of the wasp-waisted Vera-Ellen as the obligatory love interest (and that’s not my usual typo; her name is actually hyphenated), who looks like she’d be more at home in a grade C sci-fi movie as an emotionless alien princess.

I did not realize when composing yesterday’s post that in addition to the pro ballplayers who appeared as themselves, you also had Hall of Famer Carl Hubbard as a baseball executive. He’s no Laurence Olivier (not even Carl Weathers), but he did a decent enough job. I found the character of Chuy Aguilar, a Cuban who was never without a little dictionary, interesting. Contrary to reality, his teammates/competition seemed to welcome hi with open arms. And you might recognize William Campbell, who played an “insecure braggart,” from a couple roles on the original Star Trek series. The baseball action was fair enough, although mostly done in long shots so you couldn’t see if the actual actors had any real athletic skill.

All that angst for a $150 a month contract. Heh.

That remains to be seen, but Baseball National posted this about one of the few baseball movies that I have missed: the 1953 vehicle Big Leaguer, starring Edward G. Robinson as a former, well, big leaguer.

Pro ballplayers Tony Ravish (!), Bob Trocolor, Harv Tomtor (in an uncredited role), and Al “Necessities” Campanis all appeared as themselves. Because, you know, they were such huge stars back then.

…

Yippee! Just found out the whole film is available via YouTube!

You’re welcome.

Apologies for the lapse in posting. New computers at the office and at home and necessitated some down time.

So where were we?

The very kind Tom Hoffarth concludes his 30/30 series with my 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die.

His previous week included:

==Day 29: The Summer of Beer and Whiskey: How Brewers, Barkeeps, Rowdies, Immigrants and a Wild Pennant Fight Made Baseball America’s Game, by Edward Achorn
== Day 28: Facing Ted Williams: Players From The Golden Age of Baseball Recall The Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived, edited by Dave Heller
== Day 27: To Stir A Moment: Life, Justice and Major League Baseball, by Jeremy Affeldt
== Day 26: The Baseball Trust: A History of Baseball’s Antitrust Exemption, by Stuart Banner
== Day 25: Portraits From the Park: Comiskey Park Photographs, 1973-1990, by Thomas W. Harney
== Day 24: Summers at Shea: Tom Seaver Loses His Overcoat and Other Mets Stories, by Ira Berkow
== Day 23: Miracle Men: Hershiser, Gibson and the Improbable 1988 Dodgers, by Josh Suchon

Here’s the whole 30/30 list.

Some people are nostalgic for the old days. Boomers might think the 1950s and 1960s were the best of times (despite social unrest, Jim Crow laws, fewer rights for women, worse health care, etc.). Their parents might think it was the simple more innocent time of the 30s and 40s. I know I long for a time when Topps was the only card company in town.

Evidently, some folks over there think it would be great idea to used the 1964 model for their 2013 Heritage set.

It’s a nice nod to the past, but Topps also seems to go out of their way to recreate the photographic style of the day judging by the cards in the pack I bought: fuzzy; head shots or posed shots; extreme close-ups. a real step back from the high-def action shots currently favored.

The backs are a hard-to-read orange/yellow design, but once nice feature is the quiz with its scratch-off answer. Of course, in an era when one wants the card to remain pristine for its collectors value, scratching the card would be counterintuitive.

There are a few podcasts I listen to on a regular basis, including NPR’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me and Pop Culture Happy Hour and Pardon the Interruption (when I can’t catch up on the DVR).

Recently I’ve added ESPN’s Baseball Tonight, hosted by Buster Olney, to that elite group.

To be frank, a lot of these podcasts are disappointing. Despite sources (such as ESPN and Sports Illustrated) that you would expect to be able to put some good production values into their product, some sounds like they were recorded in a tin can. BT has that feel at times, but the content makes up for it.

Olney, a former writer for The New York Times, does a good job as host, interviewing a staple of regulars from ESPN such as Jerry Crasnick, Tim Kurkjian, and Jason Stark, but it’s the guests that really make it stand out. The players he has on are hit or miss; how much can you listen to a pitcher describing his training regimen? But just take a look at some of the others who have appeared recently: MLB’s senior VP of scheduling Katy Feeney on baseball’s April weather problem; Mark Razum, the head groundskeeper for the Rockies, who may have the toughest job in baseball; agent Jamie Murphy about how negotiations go down and client stealing; and MLB Executive VP Peter Woodfork about the controversial call at the end of a recent Rays-Rangers game. Olney does a good job as host, with outside-the-box questions. This is definitely one of the best baseball-centric programs available. My only complaint is the editing. There’s is no segue from one segment to the next, which feels unnatural.

This will be relatively short (and hopefully sweet?), since there’s not much I can add to the dozens of critiques previously offered on the new Jackie Robinson biopic.

Although I had read just about everything I could find on the film, I still believe I went in with an open mind. I am predisposed to like any baseball film (with a few notable exceptions, such as The Yankles, which has to rank among the worst movies ever made). Comments that kept coming up included the historical inaccuracy and liberties taken to make it a better story. Like it wasn’t already impressive enough? Did the producers feel the truth would be a bit boring? You can get away with a lot with the caveat “based on a true story.”

The first time I saw a photo of Harrison Ford as Branch Rickey, I thought, “He looks ridiculous.” That’s the problem with stills excised from the action; you have to be so careful because a second in either temporal direction can make an immense difference. But I put that aside when I saw Ford’s interpretation. I’m surprised not to have heard or seen  anything about possible supporting actor Oscar consideration.

Chadwick Boseman, although noble, struck me as a bit stuff, but then, wouldn’t the real Robinson have been guarded as well? In that regard, Boseman came off quite well, although I maintain the physical resemblance is not that close: the actor seemed more “buff” than the real Robinson, whose pictures make him seem a bit more stocky.

Of all the other actors, I found Chris Meloni (of the Law and Order franchise fame) as Leo Durocher most believable, down to the chewing out he gave the Dodgers during the spring training petition fiasco. Another pleasant surprise: John McGinley (Scrubs, etc.) as legendary Dodger broadcaster Red Barber, a  southerner who in real life considered quitting rather than call games that featured a black man on the field, although that’s not brought up in the movie (hey, there’s only so much time, and it was already over two hours). Barber’s signature home-spun language is still charming, but seems a bit forced these days for much more “sophisticated” audiences.

Also outstanding, if it’s acceptable to deem such a noxious character in that regard: Alan Tudyk as virulent racist Ben Chapman, manager of the Philadelphia Phillies, who came out of the dugout for Robinson’s at bats to heap abuse.

An aside: I frequently wonder about the “separation” of the actor and his role. For example: the HBO miniseries, Band of Brothers, included a powerful segment in which American forces discovered a concentration camp, unable to fathom what it was. The skeletal actors portraying inmates were heartbreakingly realistic, but you know there’s a time when the director yells “Cut!” What do they do on their break, still wearing the striped uniforms. Do they joke with the other cast and crew? Or do they remain in some reverential state, knowing who and what they are representing?

It’s the same thing with the actors who yell the N-word throughout 42. Do they feel at all sheepish about it or is it just a job for them? And what of the African-American actors and crew members? How do they feel as the ersatz recipients of such hatred?

Anyway, back to business:

Less believable were two child actors who played, respectively, a young Ed Charles and a white fan who accompanies his father to the game in Cincinnati where he “learns” to be a racist. You can tell his heart isn’t really in it, however, especially after the very protracted scene (hey, ump, can we move the game along?) in which Pee Wee Reese drapes his arm across Robinson’s shoulder in a gesture of solidarity. By the way, according to many sources, that never actually happened either, stories and statues depicting the event to the contrary. If it did happen, wouldn’t some newspaper photographer have snapped a picture, as the standard methods of the day would have them down on the field during the game?

Some of the one-line characters were stock villains or good guys, such as the white man who approaches Robinson and his wife, seemingly with menace on his mind, only to tell the ballplayer to hang in because there are a lot of people rooting for him, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding.

Yes, the music was this-is what-you-should-be-feeling over the top. I also found the CGI a bit distracting in, as if I was watching a giant video game. Robinson’s beaning by Pirates hurler Fritz Ostermueller (whose stark square features and penetrating eyes would make him a perfect movie Nazi) with no lingering effects was a bit hard to believe. And really, a home run in a later game off the same pitcher? Standing at the plate and staring (did anyone, white or black dare to do that in those days?) and running the bases in slow motion? It doesn’t get any more cliche.

But having said all that, despite the picayune comments about accuracy, despite all the production flaws, the real proof is in the reaction of the audience. At the screening I attended it was pretty adamant in their response: laud applause when the credits rolled, facts be damned.

Ironically, I did forgot to post news about the passing of longtime sportswriter Isaacs when he passed away on April 2.

According to the obituary in The New York Times,

Isaacs was one of the Chipmunks, a group of young reporters, mainly in New York, who brought irreverence and daring to sports coverage beginning in the early 1960s.

Maybe that’s why Grantland reprinted this piece in which Isaacs “interviews” a young David after his ultimate fighting match with Goliath.

Books by Isaacs include Ten Moments That Shook the Sports World: One Sportswriter’s Eyewitness Accounts of the Most Incredible Sporting Events of the Past Fifty Years, published in 2008.

At Home Plate posted this review of Tom Dunkel’s Color Blind:  The Forgotten Team That Broke Baseball’s Color Line. Upshot: “This book is the story of those men and it’s a great story.  One worthy of being read over and over by fans who truly love the game and understand what we all lost during the years baseball was segregated.   It’s a story not just about baseball, but about hard times, about prohibition, gambling, juke joints and the double standards of the day.  More than that, it’s a very good read.”

In recognition of the release of 42, AHP also posted this on Jackie Robinson’s 1972 autobiography, I Never Had It Made. Upshiot: “It’s a very good read and certainly is thought provoking and written to inspire.”

The Baseball Historian site published this one on Larry Ruttman’s American Jews & America’s Game: Voices of a Growing Legacy in Baseball. Upshot: “[The author] can also be proud of his sheer compilation of material. First-person or oral histories are an integral part of preserving the past and encapsulating the emotion and detail that cannot be extracted later on from artifacts and second-person written material. The connection of Judaism and baseball may be a broad and somewhat confusing thesis, but readers should be left with little doubt about the relationship once they are done with this book.”

April Whitman, one of those lucky ducks who gets to spend the season in MLB’s Fan cave, offered this list of her top five baseball titles, which I guess could be considered mini-reviews.

Likewise newly-acquired Blue Jays pitcher R.A. Dickey wants to teach those Canadians about the best baseball titles, which he discusses in this Q&A with the Toronto Globe and Mail.

In fact, I’m going to get more liberal and open up what gets included into these roundups. To start with, here’s Rob Neyer’s Hot Corner Book Club entry on Dennis D’Agostino’s Keepers of the Game: When the Baseball Beat was the Best Job on the Paper. No upshot here, as the idea behind these book clubs is to generate discussion from site visitors. So here’s another entry on Ruttman’s book and one for Robert Weintraub’s The Victory Season.

I’m still waiting for a call from Only a Game for a segment on 501, but in the meantime, here’s host Bill Littlefield’s take on  Mr. Wrigley’s Ball Club: Chicago and the Cubs During the Jazz Age by Roberts Ehrgott (as well as an interview).

James Bailey looks at Doug Wilson’s The Bird: The Life and Legacy of Mark Fidrych. Upshot: “What a fun book, about a guy so refreshingly down to earth that you’d find his story hard to believe if this were a novel.”

And to wrap up, let’s catch up with Tom Hoffarth’s 30/30 feature:

• Day 17: Francona: The Red Sox Years, by Francona, with Dan Shaughnessy
• Day 18: American Jews & America’s Game: Voices of a Growing Legacy in Baseball, by Larry Ruttman
• Day 19: Hank Greenberg: The Hero of Heroes, by John Rosengren
• Day 20: Heart of a Tiger: Growing Up with my Grandfather, Ty Cobb, by Herschel Cobb
• Day 21: The Bird: The Life and Legacy of Mark Fidrych, by Doug Wilson
• Day 22: Instant Baseball: The Baseball Instagrams of Brad Mangin, by Brad Mangin,

Still to come (look at entry #30):

The critics seem to fall into two main camps: movie critics with no special knowledge about baseball, who based their comments solely on the production values and storytelling and those baseball nerds with lots of knowledge about the topic who were mostly interested in the attention to detail, some to a most picayune level.

Let’s start with the former. Give a bad review to the story of a great American hero is like booing Santa Clause. It can’t be done in good conscience. So you have a number of reviews who will find something — anything — nice to say. The clothing was very cool, for example. The actors were well-meaning and earnest in their performances, even if some were seen as a bit stiff or cartoonish.

On the other hand (and I will offer my own review in the next post), there were a number of elements that were almost distracting (and that doesn’t include those aforementioned historical inaccuracies).  The music, which at times was so intent on telegraphing what was coming that the movie should have given product placement to Western Union (kids, ask your parents). The CGI of the ballparks reminded me of the overdone scenes in movies like 300, the colors too rich and saturated, to the point of distraction. Some of the dialogue, especially for the two kid actors — one black, one white — were equally ridiculous (the white kid asks his dad how many runs Pee Wee Reese will score in that day’s game between the Dodgers and Reds; the black kid, who reminds his over-protective mother that he’s 10 years old, explains the balk rule to her with language that is at once those of a child prodigy and insultingly condescending.

As for those baseball historians, they ignore the disclaimer at the beginning of the film which clearly states that it is based on a true story. That’s an important distinction. So when certain events transpire that did not actually happen, or did happen but with different agents of action (a quote attributed to player A when it was actually player B who said it), well, I think these nitpickers are just showing off.

What both the film critics and baseball  critics fail to realize is that the general audience does not care about these details. They are coming to see the (generally true) story of one of the — if not the — most influential people in the civil rights movement. So it comes as no surprise when the closing credits roll to the sound of applause.

Herewith is my last list of links to 42, running the gamut of the initial opinions to the detail-oriented discrepancies. Enjoy.

• An early piece from the Right off the Bat blog
• Tom Hoffarth (Farther off the Wall) with a Harrison Ford Q&A about playing Branch Rickey
• A “rerun” of Dana Jennings’ piece in The new York Times about the “legend” of Robinson vs. the retelling
• This link to Baseball Nation contains numerous stories they ran about the film, including a deconstruction of a “Rogue’s Gallery” in which Rob Neyer discusses characters as they’re portrayed in the movie versus their real-life “contributions” and “Digging into “42″ – Did they get their facts straight?“, as well as suggestions for  what the next big baseball film should be from the likes of John Thorn, Bob Costas, and Joe Posnanski, among others.
• Jonathan Eig, author of Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson’s First Season, offers his thoughts from his ChicagoSide blog.
• If you’re still interested, you can read the movie novelization.
• A review from the long-format sports website Sports on Earth.
• A segment from CBS’ Sunday Morning, which includes an interview with Ford.

• A piece from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel about Rachel Robinson’s take on the film. (She has been most gracious about the movie, but I wonder how any of a certain age would feel about their decades-younger doppelganger.)
• Reviews from Time Magazine,  Denver Westword and  Screenrant.
• Tom Hoffarth on how John C. McGinley chose to portray Dodgers’ broadcaster Red Barber and how Chadwick Boseman chose not to portray Robinson.
• Tom Hoffarth’s piece on Bob Costas’ MLB Network interview with Ford, Chadwick Boseman (who plays Robinson), and Don Newcombe. Hoffarth’s entry includes a video of Branch Rickey in an appearance on the old TV game show, What’s My Line. A retired JR put in an appearance on the show as well.

• From The Atlantic: “The Real Story of Baseball’s Integration That You Won’t See in 42” and “What Really Happened to Ben Chapman, the Racist Baseball Player in 42?“
• Columnist Joe Posananski’s take and author Allen Barra’s.
• And last, but not least, The Onion’s take.

Well, that went well. Got the first 501 book event under my belt at, appropriately, my hometown bookstore, Watchung Booksellers.

About 20 friends, neighbors, and supporters to listen to me drone on, reading a few passages from the book (I quickly learned what not to do in the future — less reading, more extemporaneousness), and having some great dialogue/questions from the assembled. It was also nice to have my wife, Faith, there with a couple of bandmates, providing music before and after the talk.

And in the “small world department,” turns out one of the booksellers is the wife of a “kid” who was in my bunk as a counsel0r at a camp… in Quebec…in 1976. They live a couple of towns over now. What are the odds?

Next up: A discussion of baseball literature with Filip Bondy, sports columnist for the New York Daily News at the Montclair Public Library, on Thursday, May 2, at 7 p.m.

Bonus! Some Zapruder video of a reading from the introduction:

(Haven’t done one of these in awhile. The following appears in the April 18 issue of the New Jersey Jewish News)

This year, at least seven Jewish athletes will ply their trade League rosters (two more are on the disabled list). It might be argued that a much larger contribution to the women who write about the national pastime.

501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die includes several such titles by sportswriters, historians, statisticians, and novelists. While these may not necessarily be the “best” books on the topics, they encapsulate the far reach baseball has on American — and Jewish-American — culture.

(Full disclosure: 501 Baseball Books, which was published April 1 by University of Nebraska Press, was written by me.)

Books about Jews and baseball

• More than 150 Jews have appeared in the Major Leagues since Lipman Pike stepped on a diamond as a professional in 1871. Howard Megdal examines each one (up to the point of publication in 2009) in The Baseball Talmud: The Definitive Position-by-Position Ranking of Baseball’s Chosen Players. The author gives dozens of overlooked players — who may have appeared in just a handful of games and never received the recognition of a Hank Greenberg or a Sandy Koufax — a nice nod.
• Speaking of Koufax, Jane Leavy wrote perhaps the definitive biography of the Hall of Fame pitcher in Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy. Leavy, a former writer for the Washington Post, also wrote a well-received biography, The Last Boy:Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood, thereby covering two in the “boomer”generation.
• Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Ira Berkow collaborated with Greenberg on the latter’s autobiography, Hank Greenberg: The Story of My Life, published in 1989, three years after the Hall of Famer’s death. The book served as the basis for Aviva Kempner’s documentary The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg.
• Rabbi Rebecca T. Alpert, an associate professor of religion and women’s studies at Temple University, looks at the frequently contentious relationship between Jewish businessmen and the negro leagues in Out of Left Field: Jews and Black Baseball.
• Aaron Pribble recounts his experiences in a well-meaning but ultimately doomed enterprise in his memoir, Pitching in the Promised Land: A Story of the First and Only Season in the Israel Baseball League.
• Nicholas Dawidoff wrote one of the great biographies of perhaps baseball’s most intriguing characters with his1994 biography, The Catcher was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg. The Ivy League-educated Berg was generally believed to be one of the most intelligent men to ever don baseball flannels and served in the OSS (the predecessor to the CIA) in formulating plans against Japan and Germany prior to and during World War II.
• Eric Rolfe Greenberg tells the tale of two first-generation Jewish-American brothers and their association with baseball in the award-winning novel The Celebrant. One sibling is a gambler; the other follows in the family business to design jewelry, particularly for his beloved New York Giants and their star pitcher, Christy Mathewson, the “Christian gentleman” for whom he has an abiding admiration.

Baseball books by Jews

If Jews are underrepresented on the field, there’s no shortage of them on the keyboard. Jewish writers whose work appears in 501 Baseball Books include several with New Jersey connections.

• Philip Roth — Newark’s favorite literary son — published one of the underrated works of baseball fiction with The Great American Novel, which tells the hilarious tale of a World War II-era team expunged, Stalin-like, from the history books because of a scandal.
• The late Maury Allen, who lived in Cedar Grove, wrote a classic old-school biography of the Yankee Clipper — before the trend turned toward salaciousness — in Where Have You Gone, Joe DiMaggio?
• Marilyn Cohen, an assistant professor of anthropology at Montclair State University, writes about discrimination of a different sort in No Girls in the Clubhouse: The Exclusion of Women from Baseball.
• Dan Schlossberg of Fair Lawn brings to light dozens of fun aspects about the game in his “scrapbook,” The New Baseball Catalog.

Other Jewish authors include the current and former official historians for Major League Baseball. The late Jerome Holtzman published two books — both in 501 — of interviews with and about some of the great sportswriters, No Cheering in the Press Box (1974) and Baseball: A History of Baseball Scribes (2005). John Thorn, Holtzman’s successor to the prestigious position, is something of a “polyglot.” His contributions run the gamut from statistical analyses (The Hidden Game of Baseball) to the origins of the game both for adults (Baseball in the Garden of Eden: The Secret History of the Early Game) and kids (First Pitch: How Baseball Began) to reference (Total Baseball) and ephemera (The Whole Baseball Catalog: The Ultimate Guide to the Baseball Marketplace).

Dozens of other Jewish writers populate the pages of 501. Most prominent among them are:

• Eliot Asinof, who wrote the first and, in my opinion, still the best, treatise on the 1919 Black Sox gambling scandal in Eight Men Out. He also published Man on Spikes, an insightful novel about the physical and mental angst of a veteran minor league player.
• Leonard Schecter didn’t get top billing — that honor went to Jim Bouton — but without his editorial efforts, we wouldn’t have Bouton’s Ball Four, which opened the door for subsequent player-written mea culpas.
• Jonathan Eig wrote about the life and troubled times of two baseball legends in Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig and Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson’s First Season.
• Perhaps calling on their Jewish sensitivities, the late sportswriter and broadcaster Dick Schaap joined forces with cartoonist Mort Gerberg to look at the game’s lighter side in Joy in Mudville: The Big Book of Baseball Humor.
• And no list of suggested baseball reading would be complete without Bernard Malamud’s classic The Natural, the ultimate tale of a sports hero with feet of clay, which habitually takes high honors in the discussion of baseball fiction.

501 generally considers books published prior to 2012. But just as each year holds the promise of exciting times on the field, so does each offer new titles that will no doubt add to the wealth of literature about this great game.

Catching up on Tom Hoffarth’s “30/30″ feature:

• Day 12: The Victory Season: The End of World War II and the Birth of Baseball’s Golden Age, by Robert Weintraub
• Day 13: Smoky Joe Wood: The Biography of a Baseball Legend, by Gerald C. Wood
• Day 14: Keepers Of The Game: When The Baseball Beat was the Best Job on the Paper, by Dennis D’Agostino
• Day 15: Beyond Home Plate: Jackie Robinson on Life After Baseball, by Michael Long
• Day 16: How The Red Sox Explain New England, by Jon Chattman and Allie Tarantino

In addition, Hoffarth got props via a Q&A for his column by Ed Sherman, who hosts the Sherman Report on Sports Media. Hoffarth was kind enough to give me a shout out in the piece.

R.A. Dickey was the subject of a profile on last Sunday’s 60 Minutes. I’m curious about the timing; one would have thought it would have come last year, in connection with his book. As has been the case, Dickey is well-spoken.

Yesterday I was supposed to be interviewed by WFMB-Am, the ESPN affiliate sports talk radio station in Springfield , Ill. about my book. The call was scheduled at 5:05 p.m., my time. Given the horrific circumstances of the events at the Boston Marathon (haven’t looked at the tabloids yet; are any of them using the headline “Boston Massacre?”), and the continuing coverage it was receiving, I e-mailed the show’s host about 4:45 to cancel or reschedule as necessary.

The host of The Press Box program, Larry Tate, wrote

I think we are going forward with the show as scheduled; been on the air for these kind of events before and while it feels odd or maybe wrong….as long as the station GM keeps it on format and not go to network news we do that. I will say something brief at the start of the show because I can’t in good conscience just act like it’s another day.

What can I say — I’m in a diversion business — so we will bring you on if you are available.

In a subsequent note, Tate wrote

In the sports radio business we tend to err on the side of doing what we do up to some undefined line of news and/or tragedy. Was on the air one of the afternoons of a school shooting. Wanted to be anywhere but here….

And so life goes on, even in the midst of tragedy. Since there are so few details and not claims of responsibility, it is impossible to say what the “rationale” was behind this heinous act that as of this writing has killed three, including an eight-year-old, and wounded scores more.

It is not the purview of this blog to delve into politics. We can offer no suggestions on how to fight back against such events or even protect ourselves. How can you protect from spontaneous and random circumstances? Can the police check everyone with a backpack or look at every discarded soda can? It’s damned scary but all we can do is keep an open eye and … sorry, that’s all I’ve got.  Words and wishes are so inadequate at a time like this. Someone help me out.

“Boston Marathon Blasts Kill 2, Police Say,” NY Times headline

The explosions went off more than four hours after the start of the men’s race, which meant that there were still several thousand runners yet to finish the race.

Can you imagine if there had been a similar or additional event at Fenway Park, where the Red Sox were playing the Tampa Bay Rays, with more than 37,000 in attendance? The game finished about 2:10, an hour before the explosions.