Stick to baseball, 4/22/17.

Smart Baseball comes out on Tuesday, so this is the last stick to baseball post before its official release. If you haven’t preordered yet, you can still do so here, or by, you know, walking into a bookstore and asking them to preorder it for you.

The media push for Smart Baseball has begun, with my hourlong chat with Joe Posnanski on his podcast, including talk about the book, boardgames, and how Mike Schur is dead wrong about pies. The Baltimore County Public Library interviewed me about the book and asked about time management. I also answered some questions in an interview for AM New York.

I currently have signings/appearances scheduled for Philadelphia (May 8th), Atlanta (May 16th), Minneapolis (May 18th), Toronto (June 26th), and Miami (July 8th). There are a few more in the works, including a likely signing at GenCon in Indianapolis, but if you don’t see your city on there, contact your local bookstore and ask them to contact HarperCollins. It’ll depend on my travel schedule, of course, but I do have time for a few more of these.

I wrote one draft blog post this week on Vandy’s Kyle Wright and Jeren Kendall, with notes on some Florida players as well. For Paste, I reviewed the epic boardgame The Colonists, which is actually a good game but punishingly intricate.

As always, you can get even more Klaw by signing up for my email newsletter.

And now, the links…

Comments

  1. Good to see The Little Tart on the list of great croissants. I am there every morning during the week- The Little Tart shares space with Octane Coffee in Grant Park and I use it as an office. The croissants are, indeed, excellent. When you are in town Keith you should check them out, also the galettes and Kouign-amanns.

    • Larry I. in L.A.

      Seriously, a well-crafted kouign-amann is a practically perfect pastry. I get mine at Milkfarm in Eagle Rock (CA), but I believe they’re made off-site.

  2. The Republicans may be extremely unpopular, but are the Democrats thought of much better? The GA-6 runoff may provide some clarity.

    Have you thought of doing a list of your known media hits this week?

    I was going to ask about this if you had a chat on Thursday, but I’ll ask it here. Did you read the 538 article on the “Goose Egg”, as a replacement for saves? What are your thoughts?

    https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/goose-egg-new-save-stat-relief-pitchers/

  3. Is it bad that with all of this week’s terrific links the one I opened first was the Croissant list?

  4. “But will it matter in 2018?”

    I’m guessing it won’t. Between the Democrats having more seats to defend in the Senate, to gerrymandering, to Democrats not exactly being thought of in such high esteem, to who knows what might happen in the next 18 months, I’m just not optimistic.

  5. Larry I. in L.A.

    Minor bungle in the jungle: Ian Abramson, not Anderson…

  6. I gotta admit, I cannot see how anyone with kids can remain friends with Joe Posnanski after his shameful handling of the Joe Paterno book. I mean, The Atlantic–not known for hyperbole–called it, “A Relentless, Failed Defense of Penn State’s Disgraced Coach.”

    • I haven’t read Paterno, and wouldn’t no matter the reviews because I have zero interest in college football anyway.

    • Yeah, but you don’t have to read it to know that Posnanski largely defended/apologized for Paterno’s failures. It wasn’t just the book, it was Posnanski’s public statements, like when he insisted that people not rush to judgment, but then called Paterno a “scapegoat” ONE DAY after the story broke:

      http://deadspin.com/5858278/joe-posnanski-becomes-an-unlikely-paterno-apologist

      I think we can safely say that Posnanski would never have written the book that he wrote, or made the statements he made, if it was HIS kids that were molested by Jerry Sandusky. So, how is it ok when it is someone else’s kids?

      I used to be a big fan of Posnanski’s work, but now I find him intolerable.

    • Posnanski had already been in Happy Valley for some time when the Sandusky allegations surfaced. He’d been preparing to write a Paterno bio that I’m guessing would have been a standard appreciation that Penn State fans and only Penn State fans would have read. But he was the boots on the ground at the critical juncture, and having read him for years it was clear he was not the man for that particular job, nor was he the writer for what the Paterno bio ended up needing to be. He’s a positive dude, pollyanna-ish even. Perfect for when you’re in the mood to appreciate sports, but just not built for outrage. I now read his baseball history writing, but nothing contemporary.

    • Sansho:

      Yep, I know the circumstances quite well. And you’re right, Posnanski was the wrong guy to write the book that needed to be written. But to me, if he could not find it in himself to write the correct book, he should have written no book at all. From where I sit, Posnanski essentially profited off of child molestation, and did so while trying (albeit unsuccessfully) to salvage the reputation of the man who helped facilitate said child molestation. I’ve made this same basic observation on several message boards, and in several face-to-face conversations, and I’ve yet to have anyone controvert it.

      You’re right also that he’s a positive, pollyanna type. In fact, he’s essentially the Steven Spielberg of baseball writers. And just like I don’t much care for Spielberg’s films, I can’t abide by Posnanski’s writing any more, even the historical stuff.

    • I would say he’s both profited and suffered. The book sold more copies than it otherwise would have, but he never got his Sports Illustrated gig back (the time off to write the Paterno book was termed a leave of absence at the time, but he never wrote for them again), and his reputation was certainly damaged.

  7. Here’s a counter argument (long read) to the Rachel Carson inadvertently killed millions
    https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/zika-virus-microcephaly-and-calls-to-bring-back-ddt/

  8. Hot Take: Even murderers and sexual offenders should retain the right to vote after serving their sentence.
    Hotter Take: Convicted criminals should never lose their right to vote, even when behind bars. This creates a complicated factor as to where to count their vote and all sorts of perverse incentives; that said, I don’t think anyone should be disqualified from participating in the democratic process.

    • I don’t agree with either of your takes, but I would say the issue of where to count their vote would have a strong precedent; it would be wherever the detention facility was located, similar to how college students vote where they are residing for college.

    • I’m not so sure that precedent is established. As someone who went to college out of state from where my permanent residence was, I voted by absentee ballot. I imagine it would depend on each state’s residency requirements. Also, jay_B, out of curiosity, why don’t you agree with Kazzy’s first take? I can get behind the idea of not allowing people serving a sentence to vote by the logic that comission of a crime costs you some rights, but I feel once you serve your time, you should have those rights reinstated. Does it have to do with the heinous nature of those crimes?

    • Jay-B may be right because I know there are currently issues with inmates being counted as “residents” for representation purposes. Some more sparsely populated areas can bolster their population numbers with a large prison population, which is often comprised of folks who vary demographically and/or politically from the locals (e.g., liberal urban Black prisoners being counted as residents of a conservative rural white area).

  9. Re: juicing

    Why not just make a fruit smoothie?

  10. Where is the Toronto signing going to occur? I did not see the event on the Harper Collins website.