The Infield Dirt with T.S. O'Connell - Wednesday, July 28, 2010

   As I prepare to head out to Baltimore next week, I started reminding myself of a few things about that great, gritty city, most notably about the depressing realization that a great franchise has struggled mightily in recent years.

   A team that once had one of the great blue-collar, neighborhood stadiums (shown at left, with Frank Robinson socking the only ball that ever left the facility grounds) now boasts perhaps the granddaddy or even the prototype of the modern version of the MLB ballpark. I am all but certain I won’t get to an Orioles game this year – I arrive in Baltimore late Thursday night, since I have to shove SCD out the door before I go – and there’s no chance of getting there Friday because of the various auctions we have to cover. I suppose there's technically a chance for a Saturday night game with the White Sox, but I haven't heard any rumblings about it yet.

   That’s too bad, because Camden Yards is a great ballpark, even if it is a graying one, now approaching 20 years old. When I first saw the park during the All-Star Game festivities in 1993, I was simply blown away by its grandeur, and I must not have been alone, since the retro style it first embraced has been since been appropriated by more than a dozen newer stadiums.

   Ironically, Baltimore might have seemed like an odd choice to champion the notion of the upscale, trendy modern ballpark that caters to the corporate elite with perhaps a greater vigor than it might apply to the hoi polloi. Camden Yards’ predecessor, Baltimore Memorial Stadium, was an inelegant, grimy old throwback, situated smack dab in the middle of a working-class neighborhood.

   That said, it was also a wonderful place to watch a baseball game, especially back in the days when the fan demographic was a lot different than it has been for say, the last 20 years.

   The other thing I remember about going to games there was the parking situation. The surrounding neighborhoods would make kind of informal arrangements to provide space for cars in just about any jury-rigged fashion you can imagine, and the one I remember most vividly would give me nightmares if I thought about enduring it today.

   I can remember parking in a local lot where the cars were simply directed to align themselves snugly alongside and up against every other car. No aisles for going anywhere; if you were the middle car – or I guess even worse, the one planted all the way to the back – you simply waited until all other cars moved. There was no hastening the process in any fashion, no matter how much you hollered or stomped your feet.

   I was young and could tolerate such things at the time, but now I guess I’ll settle for the more conventional comforts of Camden Yards.

   But not this trip, I’ll betcha.

Wednesday, July 28, 2010 3:10:23 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

Comments [0]

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

An auction with Red Sox Nation roots ...
Posted by T.S.

   In addition to that nifty pile of 1960 Topps that I wrote up for the next Collect.com Auction, I also took note of a whole bunch of lots that ought to be particularly attractive to that vast and enthusiastic horde from Red Sox Nation.

   Actually, when most of the stuff I’m talking about was produced, say the 1950’s to 1970’s, there was no such thing as Red Sox Nation, just the principality of Boston and its environs. The Red Sox Nation appellation would come in 1986 when their beloved Sox would tangle with my own Metsies in a World Series that seemed to nicely encapsulate the wide range of emotions that big-time fandom can entail.

http://www.collect.com/auctions/

With the stuff in this auction, like great Sox team sets from Topps and Bowman in the early to mid-1950s, wonderful homemade plaques with vintage cards neatly installed or even a handsome pile of team-signed balls from a half century ago, this sale seems like a particularly enticing opportunity for modern citizens of this sovereign subculture.

   Throw in a number of cool signed pieces, like a Ted Williams signed Life magazine, a 1967 Red Sox Yearbook with 23 signatures, including you know who, or even original Ted Williams artwork by Darryl Vlasak, and it’s pretty clear this sale needs broad dissemination in Beantown.

   As a card guy, I certainly liked the idea of the 1950-52 Bowman and 1954-55 Topps Red Sox team sets, but as I mentioned earlier, a couple of card “plaques” also caught my attention, perhaps as much for their design and execution as the cards included.

   What compels the most is the obvious conclusion that these things were put together by an old-time Sox fan, and back in a time when people thought of things like carefully installing vintage cards (not gluing) into attractively designed patterns and then nicely matting and framing the whole enterprise. Know anybody doing that kind of thing with the latest Superdooperpooper Refroocter?

   One of the plaques is a nifty 1956 Topps team set set off with a Sox yearbook from that year and a ticket for an April 1956 game with the Washington Senators; a second plaque pictures the 1967 Topps Red Sox Stickers test issue, most of which I had never seen before.

   Mix in some of the monsters, like the ultra-rare 1934 R304 Al Demaree Die-cuts of Lefty Grove and Rick Ferrell, and you can see there’s a whole lot of shakin’ goin’ on.

   OK, I’ll admit that last was a stretch.

Tuesday, July 27, 2010 3:29:07 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

Comments [0]

Monday, July 26, 2010

Before LeBron and Dwyane there was Sandy and Don ...
Posted by T.S.

   As things kind of settle down and shake out after the embarrassing LeBron James spectacle several weeks ago, it pretty quickly occurred to me that what we may be seeing is not simply the wretched excess that comes from our deification of a particular athlete as much as evidence of yet another real shift in the relationship between player and management.

   Already, the rumblings are being heard from other big hoop stars suggesting they might like to have some say about their future destinations.

   I still remember what the widespread reaction of fans was like 45 years ago when Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale had one of those pinkie-finger pacts between pals and decided the Dodgers should pony up $500,000 each for matching three-year deals, and then they held themselves out of spring training to emphasize the point.

   I remember being struck by the egalitarian nature of it then, though, of course, I wouldn’t have been able to articulate the view in quite that fashion. I just thought it was pretty cool of Koufax to throw his lot in with his buddy on a completely matching request, since as great as Drysdale was, he was no Koufax.

   At the time there was a real sense from fans – fed no doubt by crusty old sportswriters – that there was something a little outrageous and even presumptuous about what the pair was doing. Free agency was still 10 years away and most fans were reasonably comfortable with the status quo in baseball in terms of the yet-to-be defined as such labor/management questions.

   Fast forward nearly a half century and you can make a pretty good case that that pesky swinging pendulum has careened wildly in the other direction, leaving the future in question as we try to wrestle with the idea of top players deciding where they want to be employed and even what teammates they might like to be playing with.

   When we were kids we always fantasized about what it would be like if Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays and Henry Aaron could all play on the same team, which was part of the explanation of why the All-Star Game was such a revered event at the time.

   Of course, we also wondered who would end up moving from his preferred outfield position to accommodate the other. Even then, we had some sense that placing more than one superstar on the same team might pose difficulties not immediately apparent from simply adding up the statistics on the back of their trading cards.

   My oh my, it’s going to be an interesting season in the NBA this year.

Monday, July 26, 2010 3:21:43 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

Comments [1]

Friday, July 23, 2010

Nothing common about these pristine 1960 Topps ...
Posted by T.S.

    Keep it under your hat, but there are actually times when I get to write up an auction lot where it’s so much fun handling the lot that I would have happily provided the description gratis. That’s not the kind of admission you want to let get too widely disseminated, say, to upper management and the like, but I’m pretty sure they’re too busy counting beans to read my blog. Making a crack like that is a pretty effective way of testing my hypothesis.

   Anyway, such was the case with Lot No. 148 in the upcoming Collect.com Auction, as nice an array of Near-Mint to Mint 1960 Topps Baseball cards as I have seen in, oh, I don’t know, let’s say about 17 years, 11 months and five days. Not that anybody is keeping track.

   I’ll tell the story of the best pile of cards I ever let get away from me at a card show in a later blog, but suffice it to say that this lot reminded me of that pile in a big way.

The auction (www.collect.com/auctions) goes live on July 26. Once it does, check out this lot of super high-grade 1960 Topps cards that includes a handful of Hall of Famers and 21 glorious high numbers. Here’s how I described Lot No. 148 for the catalog (in part):

   I’ll bet you a shiny new quarter that you’ve never seen a nicer grouping of 222 different 1960 Topps Baseball cards than this. I know I haven’t. Near-Mint to Mint and centering so uniformly nice that I am all done talking about centering. Twenty-one high numbers absolutely as good as the 201 brethren who preceded them. Across the lot, with the greatest number of cards from the first and second series, we have brilliant white borders, blazing colors, trouble-free surfaces front and back, stunning white backs and elegant grays. In short, untouched, marvelous cards, each and every one of them suitable for third-party grading and entombing, if you like that sort of thing. I am simultaneously running out of breath and things to say, which sounds like serendipity, but I want to emphasize how cool this lot is.

   I know I get a little carried away, but I wanted to convey something about a lot that because of its unusual configuration – you wonder how this group came together, this eclectic assortment of a couple HOFers, some nice specials and a bunch of cool minor stars – doesn’t neatly fit into typical categorization. Ultimately, it’s the condition of these cards that must carry the day, and my point here is that the condition is so spectacular that it should handle that challenge nicely.

   One more little dab from the catalog:

   My guess is that even for collectors who already have a Nr-Mt 1960 Topps set, this lot is worth a wager because these are likely upgrades over the status quo. And just think, I haven’t seen the status quo.

   And then I added something about letting the bidding begin, and the rest of you duck and cover. That’s secret boomer code: presumably anybody old enough to have opened a pack of 1960 Topps cards in 1960 would know what it means.

Friday, July 23, 2010 3:34:49 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

Comments [0]

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Dick Perez book is $200, not $300 ...
Posted by T.S.

   This is kind of a corrected copy to my original entry, which I swung and missed on by saying that this incredible Dick Perez book was $300, when the retail price is actually $200. If I have many more senior moments like this they are going to cart me away and I don't blame them. I only hope that when they put me in the home I end up with a nice, comfy couch with a decent view of the grounds. Geeez.

   I think it was about 12-13 years ago that I did a Brooks Robinson painting that was used in an actual Fleer Baseball card set, and I would have given anything if my father could have lived long enough to have seen that day. He had died a couple of years before that and just missed it, and so the thought comes back to me now and again. I am pretty sure it would have been enough to send him to Walmart to buy unopened boxes of the stuff in search of that insert card, and he wouldn’t have been shy about telling anybody who would listen why he was doing it.

   What prompted its resurfacing at this moment was the notion that Frank Steele, who died in June of 2000 before the famed Perez-Steele franchise folded up its tent in 2001, would have simply been ecstatic over Dick Perez’s new book, The Immortals: An Art Collection of Baseball’s Best. I certainly don’t speak for Perez, but I’ll just bet the same thought has occurred to him a time or two for sure.

   The loquacious Irishman – is that redundant? – was such a cheerleader for the Perez artistic talent in general and the Hall of Fame Art Postcards in particular that you have to think this would have been a glorious moment for him.

   Earlier, I mentioned that the Dick Perez’s incredible body of work – most notably through both the Perez-Steele franchise and the even more widely distributed Diamond Kings in the Donruss baseball card issues – profoundly impacted two distinct hobby elements.

   I speak, of course, of the inclusion of artwork with mainstream baseball card issues, which has accelerated to a furious pace in recent years, and the idea of creating an art series of cards where collectors pursuing signatures would become a specific genre in the collecting world all by itself. You had to be in the hobby in the 1980s to realize what the Perez-Steele HOF Series did in terms of bringing upscale collectors into the fold as they pursued signatures for this unique issue that paid homage to the great 19th-century Allen & Ginter sets.

For Perez, it’s the historical aspect of the game that is perhaps his greatest point of interest outside of the myriad artistic considerations. While the book is primarily an art book and his life’s work is clearly center stage, there’s also the prodigious thread of story telling by noted historian William C. Kashatus, who provides biographical sketches for each of the Hall of Fame players – plus lifetime statistics – as well as umpires, executives and pioneers, along with historical accounts that tell the story of baseball through more than a half dozen different eras. Toss in a preface from Hall of Famer Tom Seaver and there’s plenty to read, once you get past the hours and hours of simply taking in the artwork.

   And speaking of artwork, I wanted to point out that while Perez has quite understandably felt a compulsion to keep the style consistent through virtually all of the HOF Art Postcard Series, I have long admired his ability to try probably seven or eight other styles in the various satellite Perez-Steele enterprises like the Great Moments, Master Works and Celebration offerings, the vast array of work he’s done for his local favorite Philadelphia Phillies over the years, and, of course, the Diamond Kings. Then he upped the ante even more over the last couple of years, employing a couple of new styles for the near 400 new works produced just for the book.

   Producing as much original art on a single subject – even one that lends itself so exquisitely to artistic interpretation as baseball – as Perez has over more than 30 years demands an agility and willingness to experiment beyond your comfort zone that might be too intimidating for a lot of artists.

   It’s impossible that any viewer would embrace all of the different styles with equal fervor, but the totality of what they all accomplish in this massive, elegant volume is something to behold.

   My advice is that even if you haven’t got a coffee table worthy of – and sturdy enough for – such a masterpiece, the book is a must-have for serious Dick Perez fans and collectors.

www.dickperezimmortals.com

   I haven’t got a clue whether the Major League Baseball Opus is worthy of its $3,000 price tag or even if any book can be at that level, but I am pretty sure what Dick Perez has put together is a steal at $200. And I’ll betcha the two enhanced editions – one with an original pencil drawing of your favorite Hall of Famer added (limited to an edition of 150 at $600 per) and another with an original watercolor painting ($1,500 and limited to only 15 copies) – will be popular choices as well.

   If you’re like me and you wish the Perez-Steele franchise could somehow get a second life, paging through this marvelous book is a nice way to complement that laudable fantasy.

Wednesday, July 21, 2010 2:37:42 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

Comments [1]

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Dick Perez has created a stunning opus of his own ...
Posted by T.S.

   About a week after Major League Baseball announced it was raising the upscale bar in the coffee-table publishing realm with a 75-lb. behemoth that retails for all of $3,000, another name stepped up to the metaphorical plate to offer a spectacular opus of his own ... and at a price tag not nearly as daunting as MLB’s.

   Dick Perez, arguably the most widely recognized baseball artist in the land and also one of the most prolific, has self-published an extraordinary volume of a mere 560 pages that elegantly captures about 1,400 of his iconic baseball paintings, about 400 of which were completed expressly for this undertaking and have never been seen by the public.

   If I’m to keep up with modern literary parlance, I suppose I must point out that the book weighs 10 pounds. I was never familiar with the idea of discussing weighty tomes in a literal sense – of course it’s silly, but I like to be as trendy as the next guy.

www.dickperezimmortals.com

   Being trendy has never been the Dick Perez way, and this stunning, leather-bound 12-by-12-inch masterpiece The Immortals: An Art Collection of Baseball’s Best, continues the pioneering work that Perez, Frank and Peggy Steele undertook more than 30 years ago when the famed Perez-Steele Hall of Fame Art Postcard Series was launched. This book is a tribute to that daring venture from three decades ago that simultaneously did as much for two distinct hobby elements as perhaps any other event, but it’s also a good deal more than that.

   “When I got to see the book for the first time, to see it bound in the soft leather, it was quite a thrill,” Perez said in a phone interview last week. “I was floored myself, and it took me an hour just to page through it. The images turned out well.”

   Clearly, given to understatement is he. The images, a retrospective on a lifetime’s work but also a spectacular showing of hundreds of new pieces, include all the original works from the Hall of Fame Postcard Series, the Great Moments and other Perez-Steele offerings, plus all of the 400-plus Diamond Kings that he produced for Donruss between 1982 and 1996.

   As a note for HOF Postcard Series fans, the original artwork is published here, sans any type, in part because that presentation is precisely in keeping with the overall goal of creating an art book of genuine distinction, but also to avoid the ongoing problem Perez faces from the miscreants who would counterfeit his work into ersatz versions of the famed series that ran from 1980-2001.

   “I kept painting them over the years,” Perez noted, and he has had to deal with bogus creations of HOF Art Postcards that have been offered online for the Hall of Famers elected since the series was shut down. “I’d like to see the series restarted, but this book had to be beyond that,” he added.

   It was that shutdown in 2001 that started Perez thinking about his legacy, and perhaps planted the seed that has blossomed with this amazing book. He also notes that he had pondered even before that – perhaps 20 years or more ago – with his friend, the great author and baseball historian John Thorn, about doing a “Portraits of the Hall of Fame” book.

   This ended up being a good deal more than that, so much so that I’ll have to continue this entry on the morrow, including personal observations about the epic creation. Here's a hint if one is needed: I was floored by it.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010 4:10:31 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

Comments [0]

Monday, July 19, 2010

Hodges flexichrome was Bowman, not Topps
Posted by T.S.

   Two of the most respected vintage card experts in the country spotted a goof I made in the July 30 issue. Well, sort of a mini-goof, really, and it involved one of my all-time favorite players and a guy I continue to champion for his rightful place in the Hall of Fame.

   In that issue I ran a color image of a Gil Hodges flexichrome that I identified as being from Topps. Technically speaking, it was from Topps, since it came from the Topps archives, but that is because Topps must have got it when the company swallowed up rival Bowman in 1956.

   The Hodges flexichrome came from the catalog of the 1989 Guernsey’s auction of the Topps archival material, but as both Keith Olbermann and Bob Lemke pointed out, the image was actually used in Hodges’ 1955 Bowman card.

   Olbermann also explained that the photos were all taken at Connie Mack Stadium in 1954, an observation he made after looking at dozens of photos from the same shoot, some colorized and some not.

   A few days after getting those e-mails, I was researching something unrelated for an SCD story and came across some fascinating numbers from the 1982 Hall of Fame voting tabulations.

   Coincidentally – from my perspective – it was also the year that Henry Aaron and Frank Robinson went in as first-ballot no-brainers, but for this discussion I’m more interested in the 1982 also-rans.

   Eventual Hall of Famers Juan Marichal, Harmon Killebrew, Hoyt Wilhelm and Don Drysdale finished above Hodges’ and his 49.4 percent in that vote; the percentage represented 205 total votes from a BBWAA roster barely above 400 at the time.

   Luis Aparicio, Jim Bunning, Red Schoendienst, Nellie Fox, Richie Ashburn, Billy Williams and Orlando Cepeda all finished below Hodges, with vote totals ranging from 171 to as few as 42, in respective order.

   Hodges had been dead nearly 10 years at that point; makes you wonder what exactly his faux pas was over the ensuing years that sent his candidacy in the other direction while those he bested in 1982 resumed the trek to Cooperstown.

Monday, July 19, 2010 3:04:34 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

Comments [1]

Friday, July 16, 2010

A real treat for Brooks Robinson fans ...
Posted by T.S.

   I wrote up an auction lot the other day for our upcoming Collect.com Auction, and one of the ways I described it was to call it one of those neat, old-time lots that would have killed at the Saturday night auction at the old Willow Grove show, “especially if a couple of Brooks Robinson fans got into it.”

   I consider myself among that group, in part from admiring him at the top of his game in the 1970 World Series against the Reds, but more directly from several interviews I’ve done with him over the years, the earliest as far back as the mid-1980’s. If there’s a better ambassador for the game of baseball, I’ve yet to hear of him.

(Brooks Robinso original artwork by Arthur K. Miller; www.artofthegame.com)

The single lot of more than five dozen Brooks Robinson pieces is spectacular for a number of reasons, perhaps the two most important being the rare stuff offered, and – unlike so many group lots – the condition of virtually each and every card, decal, sticker and even hand-cut Bazooka cards is Near-Mint.
   What I noted in the auction description and my reason for blogging about it now is that any serious Brooks Robinson collector probably needs to give us a call and go over this on the phone. It’s that good.

   Obviously, we want our consignor to get as much money as possible for his bounty, but I also had a real sense that I would feel bad if any serious Brooksie fans missed out on at least knowing what’s in the lot.

http://www.collect.com/auctions/

   The auction goes live online on July 26. One of the pieces that startled me – by its value, not its intrinsic beauty – is the 1969 Transogram complete box (Ex-Mt) with statue, which I presume may have been the prehistoric inspiration from the Gumby-like Starting Lineup thingys that would come along 30 years later.

   Plus, there’s a 1969 Topps Super (21/4-by-31/4 inches) as nice as they come and a 1974 Topps Deckle Edge, with its edges or its deckles completely pristine and unmolested. Honestly, I’ve rarely seen a group lot like this dedicated to a single player where the stuff is in such sparkling condition. You’ve got to imagine that some Brooks fan went directly from the post office and into therapy from the trauma of parting with these treasures.

   Got your attention yet? Seven neatly cut Bazookas from 1963-66, a 1967 intact panel and the 1971 Bazooka Numbered and Unnumbered cards, plus the 1968 Playing Tips panel, a 1970 Kellogg’s proof, Salada Coins, decently cut Post Cereal cards, a 1971 Topps Super, 1960 Leaf, 1969 Topps Checklist with Robby, a 1973 Topps Candy Lid, eight different card company-issued autographed cards from Topps, Upper Deck and Donruss and one swatch card, and finally, just for good measure and apparently to see if we were paying attention, Curtis Montague Schilling’s 1989 Pro Cards Rochester Red Wings card.

   Don’t ask.

   Speaking of Schilling, I know it may seem like shameless shilling for our auction, but it’s really interesting for me to write up some of the vintage card lots particularly, and so I share with the dear readers on that topic from time to time.

And a final wee bit of shilling ...

Be sure to check out our other blogs and Videos:
7th Inning Stretch
http://blog.tuffstuff.com/7thinning/

Bustin' Wax
http://blog.tuffstuff.com/bustinwax/

For Pricing information, check out these sports price guides
http://www.tuffstuff.com/priceguides/

Check out our sports-related books
http://shop.collect.com/category/sports-cards

Friday, July 16, 2010 1:54:55 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

Comments [0]

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

This lame All Star Game cost me nothing at all ...
Posted by T.S.

   Was it just me, or was this the quietest All-Star Game that anybody old enough to have voted for Richard Nixon – on any of three occasions – can remember?

   I assume that part of my observation is from the fact that the game was played in Anaheim, where displays of either unbridled enthusiasm or raucous behavior are reserved for Disneyland or City Council zoning committee meetings when somebody pitches the idea of building a trailer park.

   (This All-Star Game-related entry provided me the opportunity to use this cool artwork by Johnny Pennisi, which he sent to me this a.m. – Ed.)

But more likely, it’s just the game itself, which has seemingly had its vibrancy sucked out of it by the corporate behemoth that gobbles up everything and turns even glittering gems like the All-Star Game into a kind of mushy, spiceless meatloaf that can’t even be salvaged by a half bottle of ketchup.

   But Commissioner Bud Lite bears some responsibility in this as well, which is sad, because just about everything I’ve ever read about him suggests he’s a genuine, full-throated, old-time baseball fan who truly makes decisions that he believes are in the best interest of the game. Golly, just imagine what it would be like if he were merely another buttoned-down Wall Street wannabe who was using the commissioner gig as a stepping stone to some real dough?

   Selig’s brainchild about having the All-Star Game decide who gets home-field advantage in the World Series is one of those things that sounds harmless enough at first glance but begins to wobble hideously under any kind of close examination.

   As the NFL is grudgingly conceding with its nutty four-game exhibition schedule, putting pretend importance on games that don’t count doesn’t work, largely because asking people who are in the best in the world do something kind of half-ass – meaning try to perform well but don’t get hurt – ends up serving up that aforementioned noxious meatloaf.

   Making matters worse for MLB, Selig’s notion about opening the World Series is even more grotesque, because you’re asking 35 guys to care about something that – for example, using the American League – is truly only an incentive for the seven or eight Yankees on the squad.

   But the real villain is money, that great and omnipresent evil that sullies virtually everything it ever touches. When a ballplayer might have been making, say, only seven or eight times what the average fan was making in a year, the idea of busting his butt a bit in an unofficial game probably wasn’t too much of a stretch; when a ballplayer is making 60 times as much as that fan sitting at the stands at the All-Star Game, not so much. Same goes for the more extreme cases – Sorry, A-Rod – where the ballplayer might be hauling down 400 times what the average schmuck in the stands claims on his income tax form.

   So free agency is probably the real culprit here, and it’s a pretty good bet that the ballplayers are fairly comfortable with a trade-off that involves watering down a beloved exhibition game in favor of lifetime financial security.

   Ironically, in my case at least, the change in the intensity of the game has actually ended up imperiling my personal financial security. From 1973-85, I won a then-impressive $50 a year from a friend who owned a tavern in Plattsburgh, N.Y., as my National Leaguers won every game between 1972 and 1982, then dropped one in 1983 and then added two more in 1984-85. For some reason, presumably just the separation of my being in Delaware instead of New York, we stopped betting starting in 1986.

   Who knew the American League would then win 19 of the next 25 games? Not me. I liked things better when my Nationals won 24 of the first 28 All-Star Games I can remember.

   Ah, the good old days!

Wednesday, July 14, 2010 2:53:57 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

Comments [1]

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

MLB publishes 75-pound Opus ...
Posted by T.S.

   I’m not sure what to make of it when folks start talking about books and describing them in terms of poundage. There was a story by Richard Sandomir in the Sunday New York Times about the release today of The Official Major League Baseball Opus, and the fact that the book weighs in at a winsome 75 pounds was heavily trumpeted.

   That is like really heavy, man. Of course, it is not all poundage when it comes to trying to convey to the reader why they might want to pony up $3,000 for a book that’s going to cost more in shipping charges than what you would pay for most, uh, books.

   Ironically, MLB is likely to get nearly as much publicity and buzz from what’s left out of the book than what’s included in it. Like Alex Rodriguez and the Black Sox Scandal are in, but – according to The Times, since I obviously haven’t seen the book yet – no profiles of Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, or even mention of the steroid era itself. In a book that manages to employ more than 100,000 words to provide a chronological history of Major League Baseball, it takes a good deal of imagination to figure out how authors could chronicle the 20-year period of, say, 1985-2005 while obliterating or minimizing the impact of seven American League Cy Young Awards and an identical number of National League MVP Awards.

   All the more confusing when you consider that the steroid taint is far from officially concluded for the two of them, while the aforementioned A-Rod has fessed up to his own use of the great boogeyman steroids.

   I got a kick out of the quotes from the MLB official about the Bonds/Clemens footprint or lack of same in the book. He insisted that there was no big conversation about it, and added that their omission “might have been subliminal. Baseball is very conservative and I didn’t think I’d be missing anything if they weren’t profiled.” He added that there wasn’t a conscious decision to leave Clemens and Bonds out.

   For once, I'm speechless, so I'll merely continued with the report. It’s a 20-inch square, leather-bound behemoth that comes packaged in a silk-covered clamshell case, and it will be limited to 1,000 copies at those dimensions.

   When I first heard of it, I just assumed that the top-end version would have autographs as part of the justification for such a lofty price tag – like the NFL’s even weightier tome (85 lbs.) that boasted autographs of the Super Bowl MVP’s – but the MLB version stakes its claim to fame on the glitzy packaging, the 110,000 words and the 1,000 pictures.

   The word-count boast doesn’t exactly knock me out, since its hard to believe they’ve one-upped any number of great volumes of baseball history like the David Quentin Voight three-volume American Baseball, The Ultimate Baseball Book, or the three scholarly works by Dr. Harold Seymour and his wife, Dorothy Seymour Mills, or any number of other master works.

   The Times story notes there are new essays by the likes of Roger Kahn, Robert Creamer and Steve Wulf, which is cool, but I suspect the greater cachet will come from the enhanced presentation of the photography of Ozzie Sweet, Walter Ioss Jr. and Charles Martin Conlon. From Sandomir’s description in the article, seeing classic images from that trio and others is reason enough to make me hope I get a chance to at least see the 75-lb. version.

   It’s not that I can’t somehow come up with $3,000, but rather I haven’t got a coffee table that will handle that kind of weight. I might be tempted by the abridged 26-pounder aimed at the hoi polloi for a mere $295, but I’d sure like to see those photographs in the varsity edition. Abridging some of the 110,000 words I can probably stand, especially if they leave the new essays intact.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010 5:37:52 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

Comments [2]

Google Sponsored Links

Free Updates

Navigation

Search

Archives

More Links