♦ Congratulations to Larry Gerlach, winner of this year’s Seymour Medal for Lion of the League: Bob Emslie and the Evolution of the Baseball Umpire. The Seymour medal is awarded by the Society for American Baseball Research for the best book of baseball history or biography published during the preceding calendar year. Gerlach is also the author of The Men in Blue: Conversations with Umpires (1980), which was named one of SABR’s top 50 baseball books of the past 50 years in 2021. The University of Nebraska Press, which publiched the book (as well as my 501), proudly made the announcement in its house organ. And rightly so: UNP’s baseball titles have produced 12 Seymours since 2006 and 13 overall.
♦ And mazel tov to Kevin Baker, winner of Spitball Magazine‘s 2024 CASEY Award for The New York Game. The other finalists included Charley Hustle by Keith O’Brien; Baseball, The Movie by Noah Gittell; and The Last of His Kind by Andy McCullough.
♦ Timothy Grover, author of Barnstorming Babe: A Slugger’s Bumpy Trek Across Small-Town America, was profiled in the Independent Advocate of Indianola, Iowa.
♦ I’ve been hoping the MLB Network and MLB.com would devote some resources to baseball books on a regular basis. Even if it meant having a half-hour program at 1:30 a.m. on a Monday morning, I would love to have something along the lines of my “Bookshelf Conversations” (hint, hint). Here’s a story from MLB.com on Mike Donlin: A Rough and Rowdy Life from New York Baseball Idol to Stage and Screen,” by Steve Steinberg and Lyle Spatz. Donlin seems like a fascinating character, worthy of a bio-pic. IMO.
♦ Pete Peterson, the creative force behind WSIU Radio’s “Reading Baseball Series,” recorded this one on MLB’s continuing efforts to tinker with the game and why the latest proposal was put on the shelf.
♦ Patrick Renna, known for his role as Ham from The Sandlot, wants to teach kids about life and baseball through his new book, A Little Slugger’s Guide to the Unwritten Rules of Baseball and Life. The book is due out later this month.
♦ From the Philadelphia Inquirer, “Former Phillies general manager Ed Wade became a novelist to fill the void after leaving baseball.” But don’t expect it to be about the game.
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