Tag Archives: Baseball

Jun 30 2014
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Books, Photography, Sports

Baseball Fan-Tography

Amateur pix taken by fans shows baseball behind the scenes

Fantography_San Diego Baseball

Fantography: San Diego Baseball

By Andy Strasberg

Softcover, 128 pages, $24.99 (Arcadia Publishing)

 

The author, a lifelong baseball lover and 20-year Padres employee, presents this collection of amateur photos taken by fans (including plenty from his own collection) for a decade-by-decade snapshot of goings-on in and around the San Diego fields that were home to Hall of Famers Dave Winfield, Goose Gossage, Rickey Henderson, Ozzie Smith and Roberto Alomar. The only “fantography” rule: No photos of game action. So, instead, it’s page after page of one-of-a-kind, behind-the-scene, sideline and in-the-stands shots, showing the intense connection of fans to their hometown team, year after year, win or lose. For baseball fans of any stripe, everywhere, it’s a hit.

 

—Neil Pond, American Profile Magazine

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Apr 30 2014
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Books, History, Pop Culture, Sports

Bicentennial Ball

In 1976, America’s pastime mirrored the celebration—and craziness—of the nation’s mood

Stars and Strikes

Stars and Strikes

By Dan Epstein

Hardcover, 400 pages, $28.99 / Kindle edition$12.74 (Thomas Dunne Books)

 

The author, who previously chronicled ’70s baseball in Big Hair and Plastic Grass, focuses here on one particularly distinctive year during that decade, looking at America’s pastime through a prism of current events and popular culture as the nation celebrated its 2000 birthday and the 1976 season unfolded in a colorful, often zany setting—changing fashions and hairdos on and off the field, disco-pop music, TV shows and movies, and news headlines about Patty Heart’s kidnapping, Legionnaires Disease and an election campaign that would lead to end of the Watergate era and a new president from the South. As the author says, it’s a tale “rich with electrifying moments, oddball events and unforgettable characters—all set against the star-spangled backdrop of the Bicentennial.”

—Neil Pond, American Profile Magazine

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Feb 26 2014
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Books, Pop Culture

Here’s The Pitch…

Learn baseball’s colorful vocabulary of lingo, slang & expressions

How To Speak Baseball

How to Speak Baseball

By James Charlton and Sally Cook

Illustrations by Ross MacDonald

Hardcover, 128 pages, $14.95 / Kindle edition $7.99 (Chronicle Books)

Even if you don’t realize you’re talkin’ baseball, you probably do occasionally: “He threw me a curve ball.” “I really struck out.” “Time to step up to the plate.” Now, with this handy little compendium of baseball’s rich, colorful vocabulary of slang terms, phrases and expressions (complete with whimsical illustrations), you can be fully versed in the lexicon of America’s oldest team sport—and able to discern between a “banjo hitter,” a “spitter” and a “splitter,” tell if a pitcher is a “fireman,” a “cousin” or a “portsider” trying to “climb the ladder” or “paint the corners,” and, once a ball is hit, know with certainty whether to pronounce it a “dribbler,” a “looper,” a “frozen rope” or a “can of corn.”

—Neil Pond, American Profile Magazine

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