If you’re in the Bay Area, check out Comcast SportsNet tonight after the Giants game. (It’s cable channel 40 in most Bay Area communities.) Michael and I will be on Chronicle Live along with, among others, Dan Plesac of the MLB network; old pal Ron Kroichick, the Chronicle’s golf writer; and CSN Bay Area’s NBA guy, Matt Steinmetz.
Things kick off at 9:30 p.m.
– Jason
The Baseball Codes is the official Book of the Day in the Bergen County Cooperative Library System today. Thanks, librarians!
Update: It’s a new day, so our book-of-the-day moment has passed. Don’t worry librarians, we love you none the less.
– Jason
There must be something about the unwritten rules that makes this book appeal to stations whose listeners love Terry Gross even more than WFAN listeners loved Mike and the Mad Dog. Perhaps it’s the sociological bent. Or maybe they just dig Nolan Ryan.
Either way, I was on WNPR in Connecticut this afternoon for a delightful chat with Patrick Skahill, a guy who had clearly read (and, no less important, appreciated) The Baseball Codes.
You can find it here. My segment begins at the 16:30 mark. (For my previous NPR appearance, in Albany, NY, go here.)
– Jason
Seems we’re now at No. 74 overall on Amazon. And rising.
Welcome to baseball season, indeed.
– Jason
So I was on the radio in Albany. Not Albany, CA, where I live, but Albany, NY, the more noteworthy of the municipalities, at least from a national perspective.
It was a conversation with Ian Pickus from WAMC, which was taped a couple weeks ago but only recently broadcast.
The fact that it wasn’t live actually proved quite beneficial, as a scheduling snafu had Ian calling just moments before I was supposed to drive my kids to school and daycare, respectively. Making them 15 minutes late wasn’t a problem; keeping them quietly occupied with something other than myself, however, was. The older one walked into my office in the middle of the conversation, and although I was able to quietly usher her out, my train of thought was destroyed. A couple minutes later, the younger one started screaming outside the door when he found that he couldn’t get it to open. (Door locks: underrated.)
Ian, ever tactful, offered me the chance to pause and take care of business, with the promise that the part with the two-year-old’s background bellows could be edited out.
(All in all, it was smoother than the time last August, when Scott Boras returned my call for a story I was writing. Unfortunately, it was long after business hours, and I was just getting the kids out of the tub. They ended up running through the house, naked, dripping and screaming, chasing me from room to room as I tried to escape for a moment of quiet concentration. It would have been impossible for Boras not to have heard them, but he continued on as if nothing was happening, determined to say his piece. Needless to say, my note-taking during that particular interview was something less than stellar.)
Had WAMC made the audio embeddable, I’d have done so. Instead, you’ll have to visit their site to hear it.
– Jason
On one hand, it seems to be getting redundant to post news of every good review that comes down the pike. On the other hand, they’re all genuinely flattering on a personal level, and I’m pretty sure the joy that comes with each new one won’t diminish over time.
At least it didn’t for the recent review by the Austin Amerian-Statesman’s Joe Gross, who put together a compendium of new baseball books, published today.
The two paragraphs Gross devotes to the Codes is, like many reviews, filled primarily with explanations and anecdotes. But let it serve as a lesson to others: two words (in this case, “massively enjoyable”) is all it takes to make it onto the next iteration of this Web site’s banner.
– Jason
Michael sends news from San Luis Obispo, where he stopped on the way home from spring training to sign some books at the local Borders. The staff there was apparently so tickled to have them that they put the copies in a special display, displacing — and this pleased my collaborator to no end — the recent release by Karl Rove.
Hey, it’s baseball season. Why not?
– Jason
When George Will called last month to tell me that The Baseball Codes is the “greatest book in the history of books,” and that he would be writing about it to coincide with opening day, he officially kicked off a period of terrific anticipation for everybody involved with the project.
I’m not yet aware of the full reach of Mr. Will’s syndicated column, but the first outlet to publish his promised essay is the Taunton Daily Gazette, of Taunton, MA. As promised, he delivers a faithful look at the unwritten rules, as seen through the eyes of the book.
It’s not, however, a review. In fact, save for the considerable subtext, there’s not an opinion to be found about The Baseball Codes. The column is a compendium of brief looks at stories from the book, interspersed with Will’s own interpretation of the Code (which, gratefully, is entirely consistent with our own).
(My favorite line: “In a society increasingly tolerant of exhibitionism, it is splendid when a hitter is knocked down because in his last at-bat he lingered at the plate to admire his home run.”)
I get no small amount of grief from my wife for perpetually spouting sports analogies in reference to non-sports situations, but in this regard, Will backs me up. “In baseball, as in life,” he writes, “the most important rules are unwritten.”
Update: The Washington Post, for which the original column was written , has now posted it, as well.
– Jason
The Providence Journal issued a review of The Baseball Codes today, noteworthy less for its praise of the book (of which there was plenty) than the fact that it was written by somebody who is clearly not a baseball fan.
She liked it anyway, writing that “this is a lively, fascinating book for anyone who loves baseball or would like to.” Which, for folks like us, who would be thrilled to sell our baseball book to an otherwise uninterested segment of the population, is remarkable.
It was written by Anne Grant, a woman whose brief brush with baseball consisted of watching her son play in youth games while she wondered what all the hubbub was about.
“Now, decades later,” she writes, “I discover there was more going on than I could see. Hidden dramas unfold from dugout to diamond.”
While our target demographic won’t be as surprised by many of our revelations as was Ms. Grant, even baseball lifers have given the book high praise. Reaching both ends of the spectrum wasn’t a stated goal at the outset of this project, but it’s certainly a nice result to have achieved.
(It must also be noted that while Ms. Grant referred to me as a “journalist,” her title for Michael was “ballpark rat”—a description derived by reading all of four words into his Amazon bio. Without first checking with Michael, I’m guessing this pleases us both.)
– Jason
That Newsday called The Baseball Codes “perhaps the most fun new book of the baseball season” is nice. That the reviewer in question is Allen Barra makes it all the more flattering.
Barra, author of several baseball books—including his recent biography of Yogi Berra—as well as various tomes about football, and biographies of Bear Bryant and Wyatt Earp, brings credibility with his opinion.
He writes, “After reading The Baseball Codes, you’ll feel you’re watching baseball with 3-D glasses—that is, you’ll see all kinds of patterns and hidden meanings you never thought to look for before.”
Another good review, gratefully received. Thank you, Mr. Barra.
– Jason
The Baseball Codes 