I finished reading Jeff Passan’s book The Arm shortly after making my pitching debut in the London Mets Fall League, pitching exclusively what one teammate charitably described as ‘80s loop balls’ (referring, of course, to the decade of the 1980s
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“Since baseball time is measured only in outs, all you have to do is succeed utterly; keep hitting, keep the rally alive, and you have defeated time. You remain forever young. Sitting in the stands, we sense this, if only
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“But baseball was different. Schwartz thought of it as Homeric – not a scrum but a series of isolated contests. Batter versus pitcher, fielder versus ball. You couldn’t storm around, snorting and slapping people, the way Schwartz did while playing
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“The problem with history is that every story has multiple witnesses, but no witness ever has the entire truth.” – Kevin Guilfoile A Drive into the Gap was one of the first books about baseball that I ever read. My
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“The game stands up and out in the lowest-common-denominator American culture of distraction, disruption, and interruption. For me, this distinction makes baseball the most intellectually stimulating, emotionally satisfying, and downright glorious pastime ever devised.” – Susan Jacoby It’s not likely
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Paddy Johnston returns for his second column, “A Brit Learning Baseball Through Books”. Read his first here. “Point is, some nights in the big leagues, flowers work. Others, you need beer. Whether you’re Jon Lester, Roger Clemens, or me. But
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Making his Bat Flips and Nerds debut and starting a brand new regular column, it’s Dr. Paddy Johnston. Paddy can be found on twitter here — @Paddyjohnston — where he talks about comic books and baseball. I’ve just finished re-reading
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