Hey Look! An Actual Book Review!

We've had quite a lovefest for author/historian and baseball journalist Alan Schwarz here on Batter's Box Interactive Magazine recently, publishing no less than six distinct threads related to his recent appearance at Toronto's Learning Annex.

These included, among others, three different iterations of the initial announcement, one collecting questions for what would become the first Batter's Box "group interview" chat (read the transcript) and a review of the actual Annex presentation, covered by our own Thomas and NFH, pen and camera in hand, respectively.

That seems like quite enough, wouldn't you think? Oh no, certainly not. In fact, quite recently another member of the Roster, who shall go nameless here, dropped me an e-mail, the essence of which read "Yo, nimrod." (I am paraphrasing here.) "All this, and don't you think it'd be smooth if we included an actual review of Schwarz's book?"

Oh yeah! So here we go ...

Yankee day on Da Box.....

Recently I was trolling through my local library looking for a good read when my eyes came across ”The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty,” by Buster Olney. I was not that familiar with Buster’s writing but I had seen some comments on Batters Box suggesting that Mr. Olney’s work left something to be desired. I looked over the book thinking: “will I or wont I?” But it was February and I was desperate for a baseball fix so I decided to borrow the book. I am pleased to report that The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty is an excellent read, and Mr. Olney’s reputation, at least in these writer’s eyes, is restored.

It's a safe bet that the most-linked-to site from Batter's Box is the sheer greatness of Sean Forman's Baseball-Reference.com. If you haven't ever seen the site, set aside seven or eight hours, then go spend a minute or two poking around (trust me; the seven or eight hours will disappear quickly).

I know my own pet project, Baseball's Hall of Names literally could not exist without the site we've come to know simply as "BBRef."

BBRef owner Forman recently sent an e-mail to his newsletter subscribers announcing updates to the site in time for Opening Day 2005.

We've all been there: after plunking down your hard-earned bucks on the latest and greatest team-boosting headwear, you slap the cap onto your head and look in the mirror and think, "Wow, I look like a geek in this."

“To hell with the hitters. To hell with all of them.”

Sal “The Barber” Maglie, so named because he would gladly shave you with a fastball buzzed under your chin, felt pretty strongly that hitters are the natural and mortal enemy of pitchers. And what pitcher would disagree? Really, aren't batters all just high-priced, over-hyped golden boys with barely enough intelligence to stand and admire the pitch they were lucky enough to barely hit over the wall? The Barber probably said what pitchers throughout history have thought at one time or another.

Reader Charles Simon has contributed to our flourishing collection of book reviews with his take on a baseball classic. Thanks Charles!

Rob Bradford's inside look at the 2003 Blue Jays and Red Sox provides an engaging read that entertains. It has great portraits of many of the Jays and Sox players, as well as the two central characters, J.P. Ricciardi and Theo Epstein. Don't look for a magnum opus... this is a lively baseball book, and it delivers on that promise.

Updated 03-15-05: Repaired all outdated links.

This article is a review of web sites offering Major League Baseball player statistics in the form of individual player cards. Fifteen distinct sites are compared on the basis of which stats are presented and what features they include (such as split stats, minor league stats, transaction information). Individual site summaries give a brief overview of what is notable and unique about each site.