Nine back issues from September 2008:
Diamond quotes.
Sep 22, 2008 ... "The fans like to see home runs, and we have assembled a pitching staff for their enjoyment." CLARK GRIFFITH "Managing is getting paid for home runs someone else hits." CASEY STENGEL "Honestly, at one time I thought Babe Ruth was a cartoon ...
The Saints on Sunday: ballparks and Sabbatarianism in St. Paul.(ARTICLES)
Sep 22, 2008; ... In the industrializing United States of a century ago, play and recreation became commodities--even on Sunday. This development challenged a Christian America that held the entire Sabbath sacred. Mass-market toys, like popular Noah's ark sets whose content and message promoted scriptural ...
The optimist: baseball themes in Bert J. Griswold's Fort Wayne editorial cartoons.(ARTICLES)
Sep 22, 2008; ... In Bert J. Griswold's entire journalistic career he never admitted to being a baseball fan, but surely he was. As a daily cartoonist for two Fort Wayne, Indiana, newspapers, he routinely incorporated images of baseball into his work to help explain much broader and, in some respects, more ...
Rumors and facts: William Clarence Matthews's 1905 challenge to major league baseball's color barrier.(ARTICLES)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Rumors sometimes have a basis in fact, and sometimes rumors are pure fiction, made up, irresponsible, serving commercial, political, or personal ends. In 1905, one of baseball's most compelling rumors involved the imminent entry into the major leagues of William Clarence Matthews, ...
Baseball and dissent: the Vietnam experience.(ARTICLES)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the Sporting News, speaking for the baseball establishment, editorialized that the sport would do its part in the war effort, asserting that "in all the history of baseball there never was a conscientious objector or a slacker in the ranks." ...
Baseball's great hitting barrage of the 1990s (and beyond) reexamined.(ARTICLES)
Sep 22, 2008; ... In an article published in NINE in 2002, we examined what we called "Baseball's Great Hitting Barrage of the 1990s." (1) In addition to offering statistical support for the claim that there was an unusual amount of offensive productivity in the 1994 through 1999 seasons, we also considered ...
Baseball's limitless dramatic possibilities: keynote speech to the fourteenth annual nine spring training conference, March 17, 2007.(TRIPLE PLAY)(Speech)
Sep 22, 2008; ... It's not supposed to be good form for a speaker to tell an audience he's nervous, but I am. I shouldn't be. I'm not a professional speaker, but I've talked before, an average of maybe once a year or so, going back a few years. So I shouldn't be nervous. But I have never before spoken to an ...
Branch Rickey's equation fifty years later.(TRIPLE PLAY)
Sep 22, 2008; ... INTRODUCTION In a 1954 Life magazine article, Branch Rickey introduced an equation relating a baseball team's performance in a season to various measures of offense and defense. One of his findings was that on-base percentage dominates batting average in the measure of offense, ...
From the dugout to the classroom: why good baseball coaches have much to offer good professors.(TRIPLE PLAY)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Professors are many things. We are scholars who publish. We engage in service on our campuses and in our communities. But we are teachers first and foremost. We prepare young people to be successful in the classroom as well as in society. Despite what many see as an inherent tension on ...
Only peggy lee could sing of my Mets misery.(POETRY)(Poem)
Sep 22, 2008; ... <Pre> Choose your songbird, your favorite warbler, your hoarse Blue Jay, your Oriole, your Cardinal announcing a new love next February. I cannot find the right words or music. No diva, not even Ms. Franklin, could express this pain from the Upper Deck, where we sat and wept while ...
Goose feathers.(POETRY)(Poem)
Sep 22, 2008; ... <Pre> A Goose flutters awkwardly around the countryside dreaming it's a soaring eagle-- Goose, the retired relief pitcher, Quacks in the newspapers That his legend should be enshrined On a wall in the Hall of Fame Beside Ruth, Aaron, and Koufax. Hasn't he heard of Icarus? I ...
Baseball's Ferocious Gentleman.(Branch Rickey: Baseball's Ferocious Gentleman)(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Lee Lowenfish. Branch Rickey: Baseball's Ferocious Gentleman. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007. 683 pp. Cloth, $34.95. Branch Rickey was arguably one of the most important professional baseball figures during the twentieth century, and Lee Lowenfish's book on Rickey ...
The Curt Flood Story: The Man Behind the Myth.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Stuart L. Weiss. The Curt Flood Story: The Man Behind the Myth. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2007. 251 pp. Cloth, $29.95. It has been thirty-five years since the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its ruling in Flood v. Kuhn. Perhaps this anniversary explains the ...
Sal Maglie: Baseball's Demon Barber.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Judith Testa. Sal Maglie: Baseball's Demon Barber. Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2007. 486 pp. Cloth, $32.95. Salvatore Anthony Maglie, the subject of Judith Testa's fascinating new book, won 119 major league games, mostly for the New York Giants and Brooklyn ...
Out of the Park: Memoir of a Minor League Baseball All-Star.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Ed Mickelson. Out of the Park: Memoir of a Minor League Baseball All-Star. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2007. 230 pp. Paper, $29.95. As former ballplayers go, Ed Mickelson is not famous, except perhaps as the answer to a trivia question. His professional baseball career extended ...
Level Playing Fields: How the Groundskeeping Murphy Brothers Shaped Baseball.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Peter Morris. Level Playing Fields: How the Groundskeeping Murphy Brothers Shaped Baseball. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007. 184 pp. Cloth, $24.95. Peter Morris's latest book is truly groundbreaking. Level Playing Fields: How the Groundskeeping Murphy Brothers Shaped ...
Journeymen.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Michael Rychlik. Journeymen. Clifton, VA: Pocol Press, 2007. 214 pp. Paper, $17.95. Journeymen, a novel of historical fiction, is set in post--World War II Florida and centers on aspiring sportswriter Jersey Paige, who, by creating and defining his own life, attempts to escape ...
Scoring From Second: Writers on Baseball.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Philip F. Deaver, ed. Scoring From Second: Writers on Baseball. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007. 327 pp. Paper, $21.95. When reviewing anthologies the temptation is to say that they contain something for everyone. Such would be the case for Deaver's collection, ...
The Arrival of the American League: Ban Johnson and the 1901 Challenge to National League Monopoly.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Warren N. Wilbert. The Arrival of the American League: Ban Johnson and the 1901 Challenge to National League Monopoly. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2007. 240 pp. Paper, $29.95. In the heady entrepreneurial days of 1900, when the extremes of business competition and the vastness of ...
When Chicago Ruled Baseball.(When Chicago Ruled Baseball: The Cubs-White Sox World Series of 1906)(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Bernard A. Weisberger. When Chicago Ruled Baseball: The Cubs-White Sox World Series of 1906. New York: William Morrow, 2006. 213 pp. Cloth, $24.95. The 1906 World Series featured the Chicago Cubs, 116-36 in the regular season, and the Chicago White Sox, 93-58 in the regular ...
Connie Mack and the Early Years of Baseball.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Norman L. Macht. Connie Mack and the Early Years of Baseball. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007. 676 pp. Cloth, $39.95. During his heyday in Philadelphia, Connie Mack was known to the baseball world and beyond as the "Grand Old Man," and in this well-researched, ...
The Gashouse Gang: How Dizzy Dean, Leo Durocher, Branch Rickey, Pepper Martin, and Their Colorful, Come-from-Behind Ball Club Won the World Series--and America's Heart--During the Great Depression.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... John Heidenry. The Gashouse Gang: How Dizzy Dean, Leo Durocher, Branch Rickey, Pepper Martin, and Their Colorful, Come-from-Behind Ball Club Won the World Series--and America's Heart--During the Great Depression. New York: Public Affairs, 2007. 321 pp. Cloth, $24.95. The 1934 ...
The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O'Neil's America.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Joe Posnanski. The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O'Neil's America. New York: William Morrow, 2007. 276 pp. Cloth, $24.95. This book is not a history of Negro League baseball. It is not a history of John Jordan "Buck" O'Neil's playing career. The Soul of Baseball is ...
Playing in Isolation: A History of Baseball in Taiwan.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Junwei Yu. Playing in Isolation: A History of Baseball in Taiwan. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007. 249 pp. Cloth, $26.95. In the past, little attention outside of Asia has been paid to Taiwanese baseball. Beyond awareness of the island's dominance of the Little ...
Growing the Game: The Globalization of Major League Baseball.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Alan M. Klein. Growing the Game: The Globalization of Major League Baseball. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006. 288 pp. Cloth, $30.00 Global economic forces have brought tsunamic change to many American industries during the last couple of decades, and Major League ...
The Brooklyn Dodgers: The Ghosts of Flatbush.(Video recording review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... The Brooklyn Dodgers: The Ghosts of Flatbush. Produced by Ross Greenburg and Rick Bernstein. HBO Sports, 2007. Myths and nostalgia constitute a significant part of the appeal of baseball. Beyond the actual games, journalistic accounts, statistics, and analyses, historical ...
The Alomars: on baseball, parenting, and being Puerto Rican.(ORAL HISTORY)(Santos Alomar and his sons Sandy Jr. and Roberto)(Interview)
Sep 22, 2008; ... One of the traditional roles that fathers assume is that of advisor or role model for their sons, especially in terms of career choices. Savannah Williams and Wayne Patterson's essay, "In His Father's Spike Marks: Parental Influences on the Choice of Baseball as a Career," describes the ...
George Sheldon; marketing the aluminum bat.(ORAL HISTORY)(Interview)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Although a patent for a metal baseball bat was first issued in 1924, it was nearly fifty years before one was used in a baseball game. There wasn't much interest in developing a metal bat until the 1960s, when some companies began to look for an economical alternative due to the shrinking ...