Film Review: The Kid from Cleveland. (1949). [film] Directed by Herbert Kline.

This is not a baseball movie.

It is instead a moralizing post-war film about juvenile delinquency among the white, urban working-class as told through the story of freckle-faced Johnny, who rebels against his step-father through acts of petty larceny but is saved by a kindly radio broadcaster who provides Johnny the opportunity to experience wholesome male relationships as the batboy of the 1948 World Series champion Cleveland Indians. In the end, Johnny’s delinquency is entirely down to the mother for holding on too dearly to the memory of Johnny’s deceased father (a martyr to the American Way of Life on an unnamed battlefield of the 1940s), which engenders Johnny’s feelings of jealousy and disdain for the interloping step-father. 

Book Review: Balukjian, Brad. The Wax Pack: On The Open Road In Search Of Baseball’S Afterlife. 2020.

Balukjian, Brad. The Wax Pack: On The Open Road In Search Of Baseball’S Afterlife. 1st ed., University Of Nebraska Press, 2020.

I probably should have read a sample chapter.

The concept is intriguing, a road-trip across the USA to interview former MLB players to inquire about their transition to life outside baseball.  (The conceit of the book title is that subject selection was based on players in a pack of 1986 baseball cards.)  Almost as much as the idea is engaging, though, its execution is disappointing.

Lindbergh, B. and Miller, S. (2017). The Only Rule Is It Has to Work: Our Wild Experiment Building a New Kind of Baseball Team

Lindbergh, B. and Miller, S. (2017). The Only Rule Is It Has to Work: Our Wild Experiment Building a New Kind of Baseball Team. 1st ed. New York: St. Martin's Griffin.

This is a gracious account of two nerdy statheads learning firsthand the difficulty of applying sabermeteric theory to real-life baseball.  Invited by a new owner to put their ideas where their mouths are, the 30-something writers for Baseball Prospectus join the Sonoma Stompers, a club in one of professional baseball’s lowest ranking leagues, and are given carte blanche to run whatever crazy experiments about which they have ever fantasized, including in this account the first deployment in professional baseball of a five-man infield. 

Unlike their fantasy baseball clubs, though, where they can move players around at will, the writers discover that in real life real people with real emotional lives often make implementing experiments difficult, if not sometimes impossible.  Bringing change to the clubhouse, to the dugout, and to the field is fraught with all the complications of making changes in the office. It’s not enough to have clever ideas about baseball.  To make effective change requires understanding how to manage human needs and desires, to be able to read and anticipate how the actors in the drama may react and finding ways to convince them that your cause is their cause.  (Another stathead author and professional psychologist (reviewed here), makes a guest appearance to offer advice on bonding.) As in any such projects, there are successes and failures.  The writers are brave enough not to gloss over their own mistakes nor to claim all the credit, which makes this a very refreshing read, a very real drama about learning and living graciously.  The writing is sharp and crisp, though I never could distinguish different authorial voices.  The writers take turns writing alternating chapters, but you’d never know it if they hadn’t said so.  Even so, this is one of the better baseball books I’ve read. Highly recommended. 

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Book review: Neyer, R. (2019). Power Ball: Anatomy of a Modern Baseball Game

Neyer, R. (2019). Power Ball: Anatomy of a Modern Baseball Game. 1st ed. New York: Harper.

Imagine listening to someone riff on whatever baseball-related topic comes to mind while watching a baseball game and you’ll have a good idea of what this book isn’t:  organized, thoughtful, insightful.  The conceit here is that the author will analyze a complete game from the 2017 season, with each chapter corresponding to one half-inning.  There is in fact little analysis about what’s happening on field.  The author instead finds a convenient hook on which to hang observations about a particular topic, such as the first plate appearance of Brian McCann, until 2017 the player who most consistently faced the shift.  This leads to a lengthy ramble about shifting that ends with no discernable conclusion, prediction, or recommendation.  Reading this book is a lot like listening to sports radio, including the smart-alecky tone, the inept efforts at humor, and the complete lack of referencing or building a reasoned argument.  Neyer claims, for example, that front office analysists are largely a dime-a-dozen, but offers no salary or budget figures, nor provides any data to suggest a lack of discernable differences in their output.  This is the first book I’ve read by Neyer.  Perhaps others are better.  I put this one down a third of the way through.  If the publisher and author can’t be bothered to spend time creating something organized and meaningful, I see no reason to spend time consuming it. 

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Book review: Carleton, R. (2018). The Shift: The Next Evolution in Baseball Thinking

Carleton, R. (2018). The Shift: The Next Evolution in Baseball Thinking. 1st ed. Chicago: Triumph Books LLC.

I’m neither a math geek nor a stathead and find extended discussions of statistics not especially engaging.  If you feel the same, then you might actually enjoy this book.

The author writes in an easy-to-follow conversational style and as an experienced educator (in psychology and statistics) knows how to break concepts into smaller pieces to aid comprehension. He is, in addition, a published baseball stathead, someone who has done authentic research, so he comes to the subject with some authority.  He’s not just Ed from Lakewood with an opinion about baseball.

Unfortunately, he appears to be one of those people who likes to discourse, and he spends quite an inordinate amount of space, perhaps as much as one third of the book, discussing his private life or relating overly long baseball anecdotes that are only loosely connected with his topics.  Some readers might like this as it provides a break from the discussions on statistics and probabilities.  I found it tedious and wasteful.

I don’t keep up with the latest in analytics research, but it seems most of the concepts Carleton discusses are nothing new.  I’ve heard broadcasters and read reporters discussing some of these ideas, and Carleton doesn’t present any as new findings. As such, his book provides a useful overview of research from the past two decades, but is not, as the title suggests, offering a revolutionary new approach to playing or managing baseball.

Book review: Block, I. (2018). Cuba Loves Baseball: A Photographic Journey.

Block, I. (2018). Cuba Loves Baseball: A Photographic Journey. 1st ed. New York: Skyhorse Publishing.

Ira Block began his career as a newspaper photographer in the 1970s and has since published widely, including in National Geographic and Sports Illustrated.  According to his notes, this book project began in 2013 as an attempt to document as many facets of Cuban baseball as possible before the opening of the country erased Castro-era culture. To some degree Block has succeeded.  Of the 104 images, there are scenes of children playing street ball, as well as adults in neighborhood and industrial leagues. We see curious ticket vendors and enthusiastic fans, street-side food stalls, baseball-themed graffiti and advertising, restaurants and bars decorated with baseball paraphernalia, and monuments to fans and players in stadiums and in cemeteries.  Perhaps the most touching images within this collection are portraits of men in their 60s and 70s who have continued to play baseball and pose as if they are still in their 20s.  What sets these portraits apart is not only the subject matter (they appear to be the only staged images in the book) but the quality of the images, made by someone with developed technical and interpersonal skills.  Unfortunately, the remainder of the photographs are not terribly striking (in either content or aesthetics) and would benefit greatly from contextualization.  Who are these people? Why are they here? How much of their lives and energy is given to their pursuit? What are their perceptions of the activities depicted here? The images are evidence of a surface-level ethnography, the kind any seasoned traveler could make without having to speak with the photographic subject.  There are a couple of introductory essays, but they are so general as to be largely uninformative.  Still, the book is worth a look and in the absence of any substantial text, the investment of time to review 100 images is not high.

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Exploring Korean baseball online

Previous posts on a recent baseball visit to Korea included planning and logistics in addition to reviews of stadiums.  Here I provide resources for your own online exploration of Korea baseball.

The Korean Baseball Organization website features schedules, standings, rosters, stats, and links to each of the league's ten team websites.