Archive for category sports
Footnotes: Considering Bill Simmons
Is it wrong that I prefer to read the footnotes in Bill Simmons‘ books, rather than the entire book?
Looking at his new book, The Book of Basketball, I’m sad to see the detail of his footnotes have made it so they have to placed in the traditional bottom of the page slot (for most footnotes), instead of to the side, as done with his previous book, Now I Can Die in Peace.
Kathy Orton on Outside the Limelight
Outside the Limelight
Several weeks back, while listening to a podcast of Tony Kornheiser’s radio show on ESPN 980 , I heard Kornheiser talk to Washington Post sports reporter Kathy Orton discussing her new book, Outside the Limelight: Basketball in the Ivy League. Two topics like academics and sports intersecting caught my attention immediately. I was fortunate enough to get in contact with Orton and email interview her about the book. Before jumping into the interview, here’s the basic info on the book: “The Ivy League is a place where basketball is neither a pastime nor a profession. Instead, it inspires true passion among players, coaches, and fans who share in its every success and setback. Outside the Limelight is the first book to look inside Ivy League basketball at what makes it unique.”
Tim O’Shea: How different is the recruiting process for players in the Ivy League–do the coaches find themselves needing to focus more upon the academics of their students in terms of finding good recruits?
Kathy Orton: While it is a challenge for Ivy League coaches to find good students with equally good jump shots, I believe the more difficult hurdle for the coaches is finding players with those attributes who also can afford an Ivy League school. It can cost upward of $50,000 a year to attend one of these schools. Because of the costs associated with these schools – remember there is no athletic scholarships in the Ivy League – many middle class kids (and their parents) just can’t justify paying that much money to play basketball when they can go for free to another school. The economic aspects limit the recruiting pool far more than the academic standards.
O’Shea: Given that these Ivy League athletes feel the need to excel as much in the classroom as well much as on the court, what kind of stress level are they under during the season?
Orton: I didn’t fully appreciate the demands on an Ivy League basketball player until I started reporting the book. To begin with, Ivy League schools are extremely competitive, pressure-filled environments for all students. Throw in a Division I sport such as basketball, where you spend close to five hours a day in a gym practicing, watch game film and lifting weights, not to mention the travel to away games (on busses, not charter airplanes), and there’s not a lot of time left over for sleep. I find these kids amazing, and studies have shown because of how they have to excel at time management during college they tend to do better than their peers once they leave school.
Media Memories: 1980 Braves & WTBS/Channel 17
A Slice From My Childhood
So tonight I was at my mother’s house, looking for something that required me to dive into the folder of stuff my parents keep in a file for me (honor roll notices from grade school, summer reading program certificates from the 1970s…amazing stuff).
And then, in the file, I found a few of these. Tickets sent to me, due to my good grades (I’m fairly certain I was not a straight A student). As a kid, I did not appreciate the printed signature on the certificate (yep, that’s Ted Turner). The logo was WTBS on the eve of Turner Time (remember when TBS shows started at 5 minutes after the hour or half hour)–before the days of TBS Superstation.
Holding these tickets took me back to my childhood. Back in the days when the Braves were managed by Bobby Cox on his first round with the team (his second to last year as manager on this round)-but far from first place. It’s funny, as a kid I remembered them as always being a last place team, but as documented by Wikipedia, there were two teams (San Francisco Giants and San Diego Padres) worse off than the Braves.
[Apologies for the fuzzy quality of the image, O'Shea mansion does not have a readily available scanner, so I shot this with my wife's Blackberry...]
Peter Morris on His Catcher Book
A month or so ago I was reading about Peter Morris‘ knowledge of baseball at The Second Pass. I was curious to learn more from (and about) the baseball historian. So I contacted him to see if he was interested in an email interview. Fortunately, he was and we got a chance to discuss his clear love of the game’s rich past and in particular, his latest book (published in April by Ivan R. Dee), Catcher: How the Man Behind the Plate Became an American Folk Hero.
Tim O’Shea: Given how much you know about the history of baseball, what long dormant rules that used to exist do you think could be re-introduced in the modern era to help revitalize the game?
Peter Morris: What today’s baseball fans rarely realize is that baseball was originally a sport with fast-paced, non-stop action. Catchers snapped the ball back to the pitcher and if the batter stepped out of the box or even looked like he wasn’t paying attention, the pitcher would try to sneak a pitch past him. While every sport has timeouts, only baseball has unlimited timeouts and I think some limit should be put on them. There’s no good reason that a batter should be allowed to step out and take as long as he wants after every pitch. Then you could put and enforce similar restrictions on the pitcher, as well as limiting the number of pickoff throws per at bat.
Chris Epting on Movies, Baseball and Music
Posted by admin in Film, Literature, Music, comedy, episodic TV, pop culture, sports on February 4, 2009
Sometimes the best leads for an interview happen in the library. Such was the case when I ran across pop culture historian Chris Epting’s 2007 book, Led Zeppelin Crashed Here: The Rock and Roll Landmarks of North America. I was impressed with Epting’s research, after flipping through the book, which aims to take the reader “through America’s rich rock ‘n’ roll history with the musical landmarks detailed in this extensive collection. Nearly 600 locations, including birthplaces, concert locales, hotel rooms, and graves, are neatly compiled and paired with historical tidbits, trivia, photographs, and backstage lore—from the site where Elvis got his first guitar and Buddy Holly’s plane crashed to Sid and Nancy’s hotel room and the infamous ‘Riot House’ on the Sunset Strip.” I tracked Epting down at his website and he agreed to an email interview. We covered a great deal of ground and I had a substantial amount of fun along the way. Hopefully you’ll have fun reading this.
Tim O’Shea: Do you think your affinity for pop culture began where you grew up–in Westchester County, New York–an area where you note: “certain notable people became attracted to the area. Jackie Gleason, for one. Other actors. Writers. Thinkers. Even Peter Frampton (on the heels of the blockbuster album “Frampton Comes Alive”)”
Chris Epting: It definitely started at that point in my life, but I think it was more a process of the times than the geography. That said, our close proximity to New York City was valuable in terms of what were exposed to, but in general I think growing up in the thick of the 1970s is what really did it for me. It was an interesting time in that you had some great directors breaking out (Scorcese, Coppola, etc.) some cutting edge TV (All in the Family, MASH, etc), great radio (both am/fm), decent theater—a lot of culture was in flux, and the churn produced, I think, a wonderful storm of pop culture fury that still influences a lot of things today.
Atlanta Jewish Film Festival: Holy Land Hardball
Holy Land Hardball, a documentary directed by Erik Kesten and Brett Rapkin, is set to have its Atlanta premiere at the 2009 Atlanta Jewish Film Festival (AJFF) on January 22 and 23. The 84-minute, 2008 film “follows the dubious formation of the Israel Baseball League (IBL) by Larry Baras, a Boston bakery owner with no sports management experience. Stirred to action by a midlife crisis, Baras recruits a diverse collection of executives and ballplayers for the IBL, the first ever professional baseball circuit in the Middle East. The team’s challenging task is to draw Israelis to America’s pastime, a game they’ve gone 5,767 years without.”
It’s an interesting tale, which I was able to watch thank to an AJFF screener, both from a baseball and family sense. It’s got a comical tinge to the project, for example, as the baseball tryouts were being shown the Talking Heads’ song, Road to Nowhere, was played. Throughout the film, you feel like the effort to form theIBL is doomed, whether it was or not. But that aspect of the tale was secondary to me. For me, it’s a story about loss and the importance of family, and in particular father and son dynamics.
Michael Kane on Game Boys
Posted by admin in pop culture, sports on December 27, 2008
When Michael Kane’s book, Game Boys: Professional Videogaming’s Rise from the Basement to the Big Time, entered my radar, I was lucky enough to get in contact with Kane and interview him via email. My thanks to Shannon Twomey of Viking for facilitating this interview. Here isa snippet of the publisher’s description of the book: “Game Boys is a pioneering narrative of the rivalries, quirks, and dramas of a subculture on the cusp of big things. At its most personal, it’s a classic sports tale of victory and defeat, punched up for the millennial generation. It’s also an engrossing business-meets-popculture narrative that reveals the entrepreneurial ingenuity involved in bringing gaming onto broadcast TV, in the vein of the X-Games or televised poker. Game Boys is an engrossing read for technophiles, gamers, parents, and anyone interested in the business of sports and trends in pop culture.” My thanks also to Kane for his time.
Tim O’Shea: In the end acknowledgments for the book, you note the “cooperation and trust of all the e-sports loonies who allowed me into their world”. What has been their reaction to the book, in general or with certain leading characters in particular?
Michael Kane: I’ve gotten very positive responses, especially from the people around e-sports who have been attempting to convey its appeal to a wider audience – like the managers, shoutcasters and e-sports enthusiasts at Gotfrag. I think they appreciated the challenge presented in balancing the two tasks of explaining e-sports to outsiders and making it an entertaining narrative. I’ve heard less from the gamers.
Jason Aaron on Ghost Rider, Wolverine, Scalped and More
Posted by admin in Uncategorized, comics, sequential art, sports on December 1, 2008
Jason Aaron is a creator I had the pleasure of interviewing back in my SBC days. Back then, Aaron was just starting to get some well-deserved attention for his work. What struck me about that interview was just how savvy he was (and continues to be). Ghost Rider and Wolverine are two characters that typically fail to spark my interest, but not when Aaron’s writing them. Aaron is busy at Marvel writing the ongoing Ghost Rider series, the Wolverine: Manifest Destiny miniseries. We also discuss his recent stint on Black Panther and the ongoing Vertigo series, Scalped. Last but not least, just in time to spread some holiday cheer this week sees the release of Punisher MAX X-Mas Special.
Tim O’Shea: As the positive reaction to Ghost Rider has grown, how much were you surprised at the number of reactions that ran along the lines of “I’ve never found the character of interest…until now”?
Jason Aaron: It’s nice to know I’ve helped bring new readers to the fold, but Ghost Rider was already a fun character long before I came along, all the way back to when he was first written by Gary Friedrich.
O’Shea: Given how busy you are with your various writing assignments, what drives you to take on the GR letters column? (Don’t get me wrong, it makes for fun reading…)
Aaron: GHOST RIDER was my first big ongoing assignment for Marvel, and I figured a lot of the people who’d be reading the book would have never heard of me, so I thought the letters column provided a great opportunity to introduce myself to them. And yeah, it’s a blast. GHOST RIDER gets a lot of mail. In particular, we get a lot of letters from people who don’t read any comics other than GHOST RIDER. I don’t know what it is about the character, but it has a very broad appeal. From church folks to cons, we get letters from them all.
Tom Jones on Working at the Ballpark
Tom Jones made my day when I recently discovered his book, Working at the Ballpark: The Fascinating Lives of Baseball People from Peanut Vendors and Broadcasters to Players and Managers. My late father instilled in me a love of baseball. So right about now, less than a month after the World Series has ended … I’m already missing baseball. I was even more pleased when Jones agreed to this email interview. Here’s the official background on the book and its author, prior to delving into the interview:
“Working at the Ballpark is an inside look at what people in major league baseball do for a living and how they feel about their jobs by taking readers into dugouts, clubhouses, bullpens, press boxes and executive offices where fans dream of going. In the rich oral history tradition of Studs Terkel, this is an entertaining collection of 50 candid, engaging interviews with players, managers, coaches, peanut vendors, ushers, groundskeepers, clubhouse guys, executives, broadcasters, mascots, and others who work at a major league ballpark: From John Guilfoy, who sells sausages behind the Green Monster at Fenway Park, to Chris Hanson, who plays ‘Bernie Brewer’ in Milwaukee, Johnny ‘from Connecticut,’ who is a street ticket hustler, to Glove Glove shortstop Omar Vizquel, who anchors the infield at AT&T Park.
Working at the Ballpark provides fascinating and gritty details about the working lives of men and women who are passionate about baseball. These are their personal, poignant stories. In their own words.
Tom retired in 2005 after 30 years with the State of California where he worked as a legislative director in the administrations of the last five California governors. He lives in Sacramento.”
With the recent passing of Studs Terkel, it really struck a chord with me to see Jones reference Turkel. It’s nice to know there’s at least one writer out there trying to carry on Terkel’s passion for oral history.
Tim O’Shea: How long had you been thinking about writing the book?
Tom Jones: I began thinking about writing an oral history book in 2004, the year before I retired from State government. Initially, I intended to compile an updated version of Studs Terkel’s Working, to be called Working: Revisited. I corresponded for a while with a guy who taught oral history and also was a close friend of Terkel. But one evening I was browsing books at a Borders and came upon Gig—a book exactly written as I wanted to do. That ended my first book project.
Two years later while running along the American River bike trail in Sacramento while training for the 2006 Boston marathon, I thought about putting something I enjoy—baseball—into the same kind of oral history format as Terkel’s work (the marathon was four weeks away). After returning home from running, I quickly showered, and then checked the schedule for the Boston Red Sox and the Houston Astros (my flight made a stop in Houston). Both teams were playing at home during my travels.
I made a list of every baseball occupation I could think off, and sent letters describing the book proposal to the owners of the Red Sox and the Astros, and to the Boston Globe (looking for a sports columnist). The Red Sox didn’t respond to my first request (months later they did; Red Sox employees—including Johnny Pesky–are included in the book). Dan Shaughnessy of the Globe invited me to his house for an interview, and the evening of the marathon I received an e-mail invitation from the Astros to interview their people enroute back to Sacramento.
Goodbye Skip Carey
My father died in 1985, when he was in his early 60s and I was 17. There is not a week that goes by that I do not miss him on some level. So when I just read that Skip Carey died in his sleep today, I missed my father greatly. Let me explain.
My father was not a touchy feely/positive affirmation kind of guy. I distinctly recall trying to hug my father once when he was in the hospital. My father, even in a weakened state, effectively blocked my hug with an extended hand and the perfectly executed forced handshake. My father was a curmudgeon who showed a father’s love through three square meals, a damn fine roof over my head and the best Catholic education money could buy.
The one way my father and I bonded was through baseball. No, he never took me to a baseball game–that was just not his style. He religiously watched the Braves on TV and listened to the radio. Atlanta’s Channel 17 in the 1970s (long before TBS) was always on in the evening or the radio tuned to WSB in the car. I grew up listening to Braves announcer Skip Carey. The man was even more of a curmudgeon than my father.
So whenever I heard Carey call a game after 1985, it gave me fond memories of my father. This past Wednesday, I was driving up to Tennessee and happened to hear the game on the radio (that’s the great thing about the South–the Braves Radio Network has affiliate stations in several states). Skip and old friend Pete Van Wieren were calling the game. It was like the 1970s all over again (complete with the Braves losing even). Even though it seemed like Carey was hitting the cough button to mute his coughs, I thought I could still hear it sneaking through Van Wieren’s mike. Maybe I imagined the whole thing, but I remember thinking: “Wow, Skip sounds weak.” It reminded me of my father’s voice in his final year.
And yet, Skip’s wit was still intact in that game. I’m glad I got to hear him one last time. Thanks for keeping part of my father alive for me for 23 more years, Skip. I’ll miss you.