"Baseball is a simple game. If you have good players and if you keep them in the right frame of mind then the manager is a success."- Sparky Anderson
If anyone could make me a real signature that would be awesome I am not great with photoshop.
Right now I have just started "A Well-Paid Slave: Curt Flood's Fight for Free Agency in Professional Sports" by Brad Snyder. Very interesting so far. Flood was not exactly the saint people make him out to be. There were allegations of domestic abuse and he wasn't really a portrait painter. What he would do is take pictures of his subjects, enlarge it and have some guy in California paint over it.
I'm also reading, "The Politics of Glory: How Baseball's Hall of Fame Really Works" by Bill James. A little dated but it gives great insight on how players are selected to the HOF and why. I read this before I go to sleep so I keep losing my place in the book since I fall asleep while reading it.
I also got this book for Christmas from someone in my family called, "The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid" by Bill Bryson. This is such a delightful book. I would recommend it to any kid who grew up in the Baby Boomer generation. The author recreates his life as a kid in the 1950s. It is especially significant to me since he grew up in Des Moines, Iowa. I grew up in the 60s and 70s in a small town about 60 miles southeast of Des Moines so I recognize a lot of the things he talks about. One reviewer praised it as, "an exercise in hyperbole." For example he spoke of a time he was hurt as a kid and his parents called a "Dr. Alzheimer" to make a house call but the good doctor wouldn't go until the golf tournament on TV was over with.
I read the Bill James book when it first came out, and I still run through his points in my mind every HoF vote.
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. Good read so far. Dawkins is good at communicating difficult scientific concepts into language the laymen can understand.
Grape works as a soda. Sort of as a gum. I wonder why it doesn't work as a pie. Grape pie? There's no grape pie. - Larry David
I just started The Yankee Years by Joe Torre and Tom Veducci. It is a very entertaining read so far. I also picked up The Last Hero, A Life of Henry Aaron by Howard Bryant to dig into over the weekend. I've heard great things about both books.
Kidnapped, by Robert Louis Stephenson
Next Reds manager, second shooter. --Confirmed on Redszone.
Im on the last few pages of a book called "To Hate Like This is to be Happy Forever", by Will Blythe. Its a documnetary on the rivalry between UNC and dook, but more on life in general with college basketball almost as a background reference point. Very entertaining, would reccomend even to non UNC fans.
UNC Tar Heels 2017 National Champions 6 time NCAA Champs!!!
57, 82, 93, 05, 09, 17
Go Heels!!!!!
Just read THE GAME FROM WHERE I STAND by Doug Glanville. I thought it was pretty good and a very easy read that keeps you interested. Nothing earth shattering came from it but you end up being invested because Glanville seems like a really nice and intelligent guy. He gives more detail on what a players day to day life is like in MLB. Not as many great anecdotes as say Kurkijans book but after all this is just one guys biography and not a collection of stories.
Its the time of year where I stock up on baseball books till season starts. Up next is THE BAD GUYS WON. Not a fan of Pearlman so we will see how this goes.
Just finished "Radical" by David Platt. I highly recommend it to fellow Christian believers. Very convicting, and and energizing, stuff.
Just finished The Big Short by Michael Lewis. First of all, Michael Lewis has written another fantastic story that you can't put down once you start. He's easily my favorite author right now and I can't wait for whatever his next book will be.
Secondly, all I can say is WOW! I'm speechless after learning of the events that led to the economic meltdown and can't believe it could have possibly happened in this day and age. It was all avoidable. And it happened in such a short period of time, that makes it all the more unbelievable (even though the culture that led to making it possible was about 20+ years in the making). And the disgusting part is that the small handful of people responsible for making it happen all walked away filthy rich with no real repercussions. Many of them are back working on Wall Street, some even in the mortgage business.
Grape works as a soda. Sort of as a gum. I wonder why it doesn't work as a pie. Grape pie? There's no grape pie. - Larry David
Finally finished a childhood dream, and finished the complete "Chronicles of Narnia" series. Inspired by reading "The Game of Throwns" in anticipation of the HBO series to air this April, I had the complete series as a kid, had read Lion, The Witch & The wardrobe a couple of times, and Prince Caspian a time or two, but never could get into the Dawn Treader.
Anyways, I decided to plow thru it for better or worse. Having not read it since about 10, but still holding "The Lion, The Witch & The Wardobe" as one of my favorite stories from childhood, I enjoyed most of it. I had definently forgotten how much of a children's book it is. Easy read, you could easily do a story a day if you had the time. "The Horse & His Boy" seemed to be forced in, I'm not really sure why it was in there, other than perhaps a way to introduce the antagonist in "the last battle", but then again "The Last Battle" seemed to have little point other than to get you to the end of the story. though I liked the way the series officially ended, the last book "The last battle" was perhaps the worst of the 7 stories. "The Magician's Nephew" was a fun read, however I read it in the chronological order presented in the latest full edition. I'm not sure it really belongs at the begining of the book, I think the "opening of Narnia" holds a little more mistique after having read the first book or two and getting a gradual feel for everything.
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