This is the time of year for sports book giving and getting. Below are the top choices from your favorite critic. THE PATS by Glenn Stout and Richard A. Johnson (Houghton Mifflin $35.00, 365 pages) gets my vote for the best sports book of 2018. Detailed, carefully crafted, filled with fun,
Search Results for: Harvey Frommer
Shoeless Joe Remains a Scapegoat
With the recent announcement of a new class of inductees to the Baseball Hall of Fame, the skeletons in the closet come front and center once again. Pete Rose and and "Shoeless Joe" are becoming baseball's odd couple - both ineligible for the Hall of Fame because of a lifetime ban,
The Rivalry Continues Red Sox Mockingly Sing Yankee Theme Song
Feeling it after winning another world championship, champagne-soaked Boston players let it all hang out as some sang along off-key the Yankee theme song “New York, New York” that blasted forth from a boombox. It was just the latest salvo in the great rivalry – Yankees versus Red Sox. The first game
Remembering Wee Willie Keeler
With all the hype and hoopla about today’s mainly over-rated baseball players, with all the fuss about launch angles and shifts, “bullpenning” and instant replay over and over again by the non-stop talkers in the TV booths and on the field of play, it is refreshing to flash back to
Red Sox Flashback: The First World Championship
With the Sox on the cusp of winning another World Series, with fans all over New England savoring the time, a look back to 1912 provides a marvelous historical treat. Business in Boston virtually shut down on September 23, 1912, as 100‚000 cheered the Red Sox returning from a western trip
Shoeless Joe and Ragtime Baseball
On July 16, 1889, Joseph Jefferson Wofford Jackson was born into a poor family in Greenville, South Carolina. He never learned to read or write. By the time he was six years old, he worked as a cleanup boy in the cotton mills. By age 13, he labored amidst the din
How Far the Game Has Come
With apologies to the great poet Robert Frost, the game was ours before we were the game’s. And the game goes on decade after decade and now into the 2018 baseball post-season it still continues as part of the fabric of American culture. Much, however, has changed in the national
YAZ, SOX, OCTOBER
Another October, another post-season, another rush by teams to win the World Series. So many have October baseball memories. LENNY MEGLIOLA: For Tom Yawkey, Yastrzemski was almost like an adopted son. And Yaz took advantage of that. He was, after all, the best player on the team. He had a director’s
The Not So Amazin’ Mets
The first run they ever scored came on a balk. They lost the first nine games they ever played. Rumor has it they picked the name of the best pitcher (Tom Seaver) in their history out of a hat on April Fools' Day. They were supposed to be the replacement for
The Greatest Baseball Team — Ever
There is always the debate among baseball aficionados, experts, fans - -what was the greatest baseball team of all time? In my book Five O’Clock Lighting, there is provided for all the definitive answer, the 1927 New York Yankees, hands down. You could look it up: http://frommerbooks.com/five-o-clock-lightning-NEW.html When Yankee owner Colonel Ruppert's