[Bookslut]
I promise I’m not trying to evoke Chris Matthews. After all, his views on women are already common knowledge, while the fascinating history of women and baseball is not.
Jennifer Ring hopes to fix that with her new book Stolen Bases: Why American Girls Don’t Play Baseball. As I explain over at Bookslut, though, Ring’s book doesn’t live up to her topic’s promise.
It’s just some sorry attempt to get his 15 minutes. He’s just trying to jump on the bandwagon of the whole book era right now, and it’s just a sad attempt. I never even seen the guy in my life. I couldn’t point him out in a room.
Let’s gloss this little gem. Odd Man Out: A Year on the Mound with a Minor League Misfit (Jenks’s “it”) is a new book by Matt McCarthy (Jenks’s “he”), and, as the above reaction may suggest, it dishes some dirt on a slew of MLB stars. But the book also captures the broader culture of minor league baseball, which includes approximately nine fringe players for every future big leaguer.
Contra Bobby, I found McCarthy to be a decent (and decidedly tangible) guy, even though the intentions behind his book—he dedicates it to “My Teammates”?—feel a little weird. Read more in my feature-slash-interview with McCarthy in this week’s New Haven Advocate.
[Gelf]
Reporters make for some of the toughest interviews, precisely because they know what makes for a tough interview. They directly address questions, rarely ramble, talk in soundbites.
This might seem like a writer’s dream—they even remember to pause and let you catch up!—but the best material in an interview often comes when people ramble, non-sequiturize, or just fill dead air. When reporters worry about helping you out and giving you what you “need” for a story, they often render the conversation sterile and predictable.
This was not a problem with Ken Krayeske. Despite Deadspin’s snark, Krayeske has a pretty solid resume as a reporter, but it’s his recent question to UConn coach Jim Calhoun that’s getting him national attention. The ensuing dust-up has generated plenty of inane opinion, but little actual reporting. So, with Gelf’s blessing, I decided to talk with Krayeske about his question. The results may surprise you.
With approximately seven minutes to go before my beloved Xavier Musketeers take on Duke, I decide to click on ESPN.com (beta!).
Big mistake. They’re highlighting what promises to be a great Saturday of college hoops, with stories and pictures from UConn, Gonzaga, Purdue, and, of course, Duke. Missing from this list is Duke’s OPPONENT, even though XU is currently ranked seventh in the country, one spot behind the Blue Devils. In fact, the only “Xavier” mentioned on ESPN’s front page is Xavier Henry, the top player in the 2009 recruiting class.
At least I don’t have to worry about hearing Clark Kellogg call them “EGGSavier.” I hope.
UPDATE: Egads. Also, this year’s Duke squad might be their most annoying since J.J. Redick: The Early Years. Can we bring back The Landlord?
Recession and print-death be damned—this week’s Sports Illustrated is surprisingly good, with arresting essays on Baron Davis and Russian sports moguls. But that doesn’t mean it’s perfect.
Time was, Rick Reilly owned SI‘s back page, sending off his weekly “Life of Reilly” to an often snarky reception. We scrutinize Reilly for everything from his bottle-cap conspiracies to his tooth fetish, mostly because his go-to gambit—the obscure, heartwarming anecdote—has become too obvious to parody or mock, though not to be a little sad.
Reilly now works for ESPN, so his old magazine has (re)christened its back page “Point After.” And therein lies the hitch with this week’s issue. In “Gift Idea for the Meddling Parent,” Selena Roberts begins by describing a company that tests kids’ levels of ACTN3, a gene that may predict whether they’ll be better at explosive or endurance sports. Actually, Roberts begins with a meditation on Build-a-Bear, but I’m not here to fault her metaphors; instead, I’ll point out that her discussion merely summarizes a recent front-page New York Times story (which, to her credit, she does cite).
From there, Roberts turns to Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers
But Roberts offers less a book review than a book report, again settling for a mere summary of Gladwell’s conclusions. In fact, Roberts’s contribution to the column amounts to getting bland quotes from an academic and from the president of that testing company. Her juxtaposition of the Times story and the Gladwell book produces a lame joke—instead of testing your kids, screw in April!—but no serious points, even as the specialization of children’s sports remains a serious issue. (See Tom Farrey’s excellent Game On
While SI hired Roberts from the New York Times at around the same time they lost Reilly, she wasn’t a direct replacement. (In fact, like the Lakers, “Point After” goes at least 10 deep.) Still, it’s worth paralleling their columns. In replacing Reilly’s love of the obscure with Roberts’s love of the obvious, SI is erring in the opposite direction. Roberts’s column is basically a pastiche of points lifted straight from the Times and Gladwell, and, while I’m not exactly pining for the return of Reilly, I do think someone should call her on it, just as everyone and their dentist calls Reilly on his every move.
Craig Fehrman 