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.  

Jamsil, Gochoek, and Munhak: Seoul's baseball stadiums

From top: Jamsil, Gocheok, Munhak

Having just returned from a long weekend in Seoul featuring three baseball games at three stadiums, I provide here a brief review of those venues.  A post outlining planning and travel considerations can be found here.

Three days, three stadiums, three games, six teams: a baseball weekend in Seoul

Thinking of visiting Korea for baseball?  Read on.

The goal was as many games as possible in as many stadiums as possible within a three-day weekend.

Film Review: Sugar. (2008). [film] Directed by A. Boden and R. Fleck.

Sugar. (2008). [film] Directed by A. Boden and R. Fleck. US: HBO Films.

Sugar can sometimes be found in lists of baseball movies, but it is more a story about personal discovery, of learning how to manage life, than it is about baseball.

Anyone wishing to explore the background to Sugar would do well to look into the work of anthropologist Alan Klein, who has published widely on the socio-political-economic aspects of Dominican baseball. With an island-wide network of academies in which young boys are housed and trained for eventual export to the United States, the DR has become a regular and consistent source of inexpensive labor for Major League Baseball.  But for every Sammy Sosa or David Ortiz who signs a multimillion dollar big league contract, thousands of aspirants never make it past the minor leagues.  A touching montage of these now grown men closes out the film, which includes Sugar, our protagonist, a young man whose story highlights the trajectory of many Dominicans brought to the United States to play baseball.

Film Review: Pelotero. (2011).

Pelotero (2011). [film] Directed by R. Finkel and T. Martin. USA: Makuhari Media.

The great thing about Pelotero is the immediacy.  The camera seems to be there for many of the most important scenes and gives the film a sense of presence, as if the viewer were there to witness these tangled and frustrating negotiations.  MLB was reportedly not happy with the film.  Then commissioner Bud Selig is said to have called the producers, which included then Boston Red Sox manager Bobby Valentine, to complain about unfair treatment.  Valentine is reported as replying to the effect that the camera simply documented what transpired and if as a result the MLB looks bad, that’s MLB’s fault.

The object of the camera’s focus is a pair of 16-year old Dominican baseball players, pelotero in Spanish, as they perform in tryouts for MLB scouts and prepare to negotiate contracts they hope will launch their families out of poverty.  Dominica has been an attractive source of labor for MLB for the past two decades because, as more than one person remarks in the documentary, it can take advantage of the country’s political and economic weakness to recruit cheap labor. The fly in the MLB’s ointment is the buscone, Dominican coaches who groom talent and act as player agents in contract negotiations, resulting often in million-dollar signing bonuses.

Book review: Mitchell, L. (2016). Will Big League Baseball Survive?: Globalization, the End of Television, Youth Sports, and the Future of Major League Baseball.

Mitchell, L. (2016). Will Big League Baseball Survive?: Globalization, the End of Television, Youth Sports, and the Future of Major League Baseball. 1st ed. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

If you ever wondered what political consultants get paid for, Will Big League Baseball Survive? might prove enlightening, not so much for what it says about baseball, but for how the author applies his research and analytical skills to sport.  Mitchell Lincoln is an American consultant and political analyst with a PhD from Columbia University.  He has been published widely in US mainstream media and has written three books on politics and democracy in the former Soviet Union and East Bloc countries.

His baseball book is something like a SWOT analysis, an acronym business students will recognize as a commonly used interpretive device: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats.  SWOT offers a business a snapshot of current operations in terms of what it already does well, where it is failing, how it might improve, and who or what it needs to worry about. Mitchell doesn’t structure his book in quite this way, but the concept (or something like it) is implicit in the discussion.

Film Review: Los Pequenos Gigantes. (1960).

Los Pequenos Gigantes. (1960). [film] Directed by H. Butler. Mexico: Classa Films Mundial.

Los Pequenos Gigantes (The Little Giants) tells the story of the 1957 Little League World Series champions, a team from Monterrey, Mexico, the first from outside the United States to take home that trophy.  Filmed in Mexico and the US two years after the events it depicts, the movie is unusual for featuring the children and coach as actors playing themselves.  While poor performances might be expected, in fact the only cringe-worthy turn comes from the team’s American-expat “manager,” who speaks in tin-eared English-accented Spanish. The boys do a fine job representing themselves, as does the coach, the drama’s central character, whose background and motivations unfold slowly and provide a drama within the larger drama.

The film is unusual in a couple of other ways.  The director and co-author of the screenplay, Hugo Butler, was an academy-award nominated screenwriter who served in the US military in World War II before falling victim to America's post-war Communist witch-hunt.  Blacklisted in Hollywood, he moved to Mexico and worked on a number of projects such as this, as well as teaming-up with another expatriate filmmaker, one of the world’s great auteurs, Luis Buñuel. In putting this film together, Butler was able to take liberal advantage of stock footage featuring his actors, such as clips from real games, a meeting at the White House with President Dwight Eisenhower, the homecoming airport reception and parade in Monterey, and a meeting with Mexican President Adolfo Ruiz Cortines.

Butler avoids sentimentality and jingoism and in his presentation of themes of purpose, resolve, resilience, camaraderie, and national pride is deliberately understated. This stands in contrast to the excessively melodramatic English-language Disney remake (The Perfect Game, 2008), featuring a cast of children seemingly wise beyond their years.  For a more sensitive and genuine presentation of this story, seek out Los Pequenos Gigantes.

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Book Review: Gmelch, G. and Nathan, D. (2017). Baseball Beyond Our Borders: An International Pastime.

Gmelch, G. and Nathan, D. (2017). Baseball Beyond Our Borders: An International Pastime. 1st ed. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Baseball Beyond Our Borders is a revised version of Baseball Without Borders, a 2006 anthology of sixteen essays on the game as manifested in fourteen countries (listed below).  Writers were given the opportunity to develop their own interests and approaches and as a result the reader is treated to everything from encyclopedia-like historical overviews, to first-person research accounts, to political analysis of international baseball labor markets.  Most readers are sure to find something they like, as well as something they don’t.

The new book features updates on the previously published work, as well as eight new essays focusing on several countries where baseball is a niche sport, and unlikely, as the writer on New Zealand concludes, of “becoming anything more than a relatively minor sport with a passionate following.” Tasmania is included here, it seems, because one of the editors did some academic field work on the island unrelated to baseball.  While South Africa and Israel have made appearances in the quadrennial World Baseball Classic (WBC), and Israel has moved up in world rankings, the sport in those countries remains of marginal interest to most residents or citizens, and in Finland hardly exists at all.  Readers are instead treated to perhaps one of the more offbeat and interesting essays in this collection, an introduction to pesäpallo, an invented game based on baseball, but very different from it.

A new essay on the WBC brings the book to a sobering close. While many readers might imagine the WBC as a grand assembly of nations in celebration of the game, Robert Elias suggests (as does William W. Kelly in his chapter on Japan) that it functions instead as a global stage on which to promote Major League Baseball, as well as a venue for showcasing non-US talent that can afterwards be brought (more appropriately, bought) into the MLB fold.  Rather than internationalizing baseball, MLB is using WBC to internationalize its brand.

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Countries, states and territories covered (essays new to the 2017 version in bold): Brazil, Canada, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, Venezuela; China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan; Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania; Israel; South Africa; Finland, Great Britain, Holland, Italy; World Baseball Classic.

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Book review: Weber, B. (2009). As They See 'Em: A Fan's Travels in the Land of Umpires

Weber, B. (2009). As They See 'Em: A Fan's Travels in the Land of Umpires. New York: Scribner.

Recently retired, Bruce Weber was a New York Times reporter who thought it would be fun to write a story about schools that train umpires for professional baseball.  He was not a sports writer – his background is in theatre and the arts – but he had some personal interest in the game and a willingness to explore, so he spent a few days at Jim Evans Academy of Professional Umpiring observing, and thereafter published his first writing on baseball (“The Inner Ump”).  His curiosity piqued, he researched and wrote two more articles, one in which he travelled with a Double A umpiring crew as they worked small ball parks across the US midwest (“Minor League Umpires Wait for the Big Call”), and the other in which he visited big league stadiums to observe and interview Bruce Froemming, then the senior umpire in the major leagues (“Umpire Revels in the Calls, and in Getting Them Right”).

Book Review: Ring, J. (2015). A Game of Their Own: Voices of Contemporary Women in Baseball

Ring, J. (2015). A Game of Their Own: Voices of Contemporary Women in Baseball. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

A Game of Their Own is an oral history of the American female baseball experience as told by ten members of the 2008 Team USA. The interviews were conducted by Jennifer Ring, a professor of Political Science and the Director or Women’s Studies at the University of Nevada.  Ring knows her subject well.  Besides writing a history of American women in baseball, her own daughter was a member of Team USA and experienced many of the difficulties outlined in this book.

In summary, the problem is this.

While American females may play coed baseball as preteens, once they reach adolescence they are largely shut out of any opportunity to continue playing baseball.  They may be offered inducements to switch to softball, which they can continue playing into their young adult years and for which they may even be awarded university scholarships. They are not legally prohibited from playing on high school baseball teams or in independent leagues, but coaches and parents often conspire against them in favor of boys, who have well established paths to collegiate and professional careers. The U.S. Baseball Federation Inc. (USA Baseball) aids in organizing and sponsoring a female team for international tournaments, but American women are always at a disadvantage for having to cobble together ad hoc teams, many composed of present or past softball players. Their rivals at these events — the Japanese, Australians, Canadians, and Venezuelans —  field teams comprised of women who have played coed or all-female baseball since childhood in countries that have local, regional, and national baseball tournaments for females.  Basically, American women are not allowed to play the game they love because there is no institutional support for coed or female leagues within the United States. 

Review: Gómez, C.G., 2007. A New Perspective on Mexican Baseball Origins (and others)

Baseball in California 1860s

Where did baseball come from?

Finding out requires quite a lot of careful work.  MLB’s official historian spent a lifetime on the subject and concludes the game as we know it is a tapestry woven from traditions and practices from across 19th century America.  There are obvious and documentable turning points, but no clear beginning.

The same is true of baseball in the USA’s southern neighbor. In the most recently published account of the game there, historian Jorge Iber concedes, “It is challenging to document baseball’s origins in Mexico.”

No one, it seems, thought it worthwhile to record the arrival of something so ephemeral.  After all, it’s just a stick-and-ball game, a rudimentary feature of many cultures and nothing likely to attract anyone’s attention – until years later, once the game has grown into a profit-generating business.

Want to pay to watch Japanese baseball? You can't!

NPB has to be one of the most short-sighted professional sports organizations in the world.  At the conclusion of another season, here's the letter I have sent.  Unfortunately, it's identical to last year's letter.

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Dear Sir or Madam,

I am an overseas fan of yakyuu who would like to have access to all NPB games, regular and post-season.  At present, I can purchase streaming/VOD rights to games only of the Pacific League.  This means I can watch only half of NPB teams, only half of interleague games, and nothing at all of the Central League Climax Series or the Japan Series.

If you have a look across the internet, you will find the following baseball leagues offer streaming/VOD packages:

• MLB (USA)
• MLB Minor (USA)
• LMP (Mexican Pacific League, winter)
• LMB (Mexican Baseball League, summer)
• CPBL (China Professional Baseball League, Taiwan)
• KBO (Korean Baseball Organization)
• ABL (Australian Baseball League)

Why does a leading country such as Japan still not offer such service to fans worldwide?  If even small leagues on three continents have managed to offer affordable, easy access to _all_ their games, why not the NPB?

For the moment, I rely on fans uploading content to file sharing sites to avail myself of Central League games and the Japan Series.  I would be happy to pay for a quality product, but at the moment there is _none_.  I hope by the 2018 season NPB will resolve what issues remain in order to better serve their customers.

Best regards,

Book review: Kalmon, J. (2007). Magic, Miracles, and Mexican Baseball: The Amazing 2005 Season of Los Leones de Yucatan.

Kalmon, J. (2007). Magic, Miracles, and Mexican Baseball: The Amazing 2005 Season of Los Leones de Yucatan. 1st ed. Merida, Mexico: Self-published.

Mexican baseball seems like a tremendously rich field of inquiry, both the sport and the wider culture in which it thrives. This is one of the few English texts on the subject, and I’m sad to say it leaves much to be desired.  It is quite obviously a vanity project, available to audiences outside the Yucatan only through the author, who twelve years after it was published is still fulfilling orders from Mexico or through her family in the USA. Contact details are provided below.

Kalmon is an American expat in Meridia, home to one of Mexico’s professional baseball teams, the Los Leones de Yucatan. She writes in colloquial North American English, a conversational style similar to a blog post. Like many blogs, the text is presented for the consumption of a small circle of intimates. She telegraphs her intention early:

Season's end at Pacific League TV

This is pretty much the same as last year's letter submitted when I cancelled my season viewing pass.  I hope I don't have to say the same again at the end of the 2018 season.

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I have been a subscriber to PA League TV for the 2016 and 2017 seasons and am writing to let you know how pleased I have been with your service. I hope to renew my subscription for the 2018 season. Please keep up the good work.

Here are a few changes I would like to suggest.

Allow controls at full screen. The present software removes all video controls when the full-screen option is engaged. This can be frustrating whenever there is need to pause, fast-forward, rewind, or adjust volume.

Add 10 second forward/reverse buttons. These would be a huge help in navigating through a game, most especially if we can use the forward and back buttons on the keyboard to navigate through the video.

Add condensed games. MLB VOD service offers games in four formats: Live Stream, VOD Full Game, VOD Condensed and VOD Highlight. The highlight film is similar to what you already offer at PA TV. The condensed film runs 10-15 minutes, depending on the level of action in any particular game. All of the relevant plays are shown, though not every pitch, nor every out. There is no commentary on the audio track. (Search [condensed game] at youtube for examples.)

Add a Facebook share button to video clips. At present, only a Twitter button is available. FB is by far a wider network, one which the Pacific League can use to promote its brand through attractive and interesting video clips.

Finally, bring us the Nippon Series! Those of us overseas have no access apart from illegal streams.

Thank you for your attention to this letter and thank you again for a wonderful service. My last wish is that the NPB offer a streaming service for both leagues.

Yours sincerely,