Pete Peterson’s national public radio program, Reading Baseball, just celebrated its 400th episode! Mazel tov.
Pittsburgh pitcher Paul Skenes is included in Esquire’s “Mavericks of Sports 2025” feature.
Skenes is also featured in today’s New York Times Magazine piece, “How Analytics Marginalized Baseball’s Superstar Pitchers: Why has pro baseball made it so hard for today’s pitchers to achieve greatness?”
Clint Hurdle was recently hired by the Colorado Rockies as their new hitting coach. I’m guessing that will curtail his appearances to discuss his new book, Hurdle-isms: Wit and Wisdom from a Lifetime in Baseball. Interesting choice in the book jacket artwork. I guess more people will recognize a bat rather than a picture of the author.
I recently posted about the scourge of anti-DEI book banning as part of a more overreaching goal of purging history of anything that puts the U.S. in a poor light, including centuries of racist acts. In recognition of the annual day in his honor, Commonweal Magazine recently published “Out at Home? Trump’s book police may be coming for Jackie Robinson.”
Several new baseball documentaries are available for your amusement and education, including
- The Clubhouse: A Year with the Red Sox (Netflix)
- Israel Swings for the Gold (Prime video. Actually, this one was released in 2023, but it’s new to me, so…)
- The Night the Cubs Won (YouTube)
- Black to the Bigs, about the decline in African-American players (Cascade PBS)
I’ll be reviewing these in future entries.
is available on Amazon.com,
