What sports books are you reading this summer?

I've never, ever been in that box . . . but though I have no problem with visitors in any press box so long as they behave themselves and don't act as if they own the joint, that place should be largely reserved for those on daily deadline.

And enforcing that would largely separate most of the sheep from the goats.

 

This is all true. My boy was lucky not to get a fist in the face last year when he bitched at me for switching a TV monitor to the Weather Channel at what, for him, was an inopportune time. I was in the middle of writing a turf stakes advance, and wanted a rain forecast. He was tracking will-pays, and I clicked the TV just as an update flashed. As I said ... lucky, he was.

Don't get me started on the press parking lot.

 

Attended Gelf's Varsity Letters event in early July. Read all three books presented:
"Driving Lessons" by Steve Friedman - about golf healing the relationship between a father and son (the author). Kostya Kennedy's book on DiMaggio's streak. And "The Rhythm Boys of Omaha Central", by Steve Marantz, about a high school basketball team in 1968 that was engulfed in racial and political turmoil.

Enjoyed all three. Prediction: "The Rhythm Boys" will make the big screen.

 

Paul Shirley is very entertaining. It's a shame he had to go and be a dick about Haiti because I think he'd be a perfect fit for Grantland. But I don't think ESPN's going to hire him again, even if they're willing to give a freelance spot to Mike Barnicle, whose transgressions were far worse, in my mind. I'd be interested to see if Barnicle writes for Grantland again, though, given the reaction from the media. If so, it's Simmons' ultimate "F-U," as he might say, to his critics.

 

On his merits, MB is hardly an exceptional writer. His sordid history is just icing on the cake.

 

Have finished Sound and Fury by the great D Kindred. Damn, why didn't I buy this book four years ago? In my mind Kindred is a towering figure in the craft of journalism

 

I read it about four years ago and found it to be fascinating and insightful. Interesting now to examine some of the key figures he followed. It worked out pretty well for Ware and Roddy White, huh? Not so good for Thomas Davis and Reggie Brown. You'll definitely have to go back and start at the beginning.

 

Reading the ESPN Book right now ... It's giving me a journalism boner.

 

In 2004, I saw Tim Wendel's "Castro's Curveball" in the bargain bin for $4 and figured I'd take a swing at it. It found itself about sixth in the queue on my filing cabinet, and even after I read books higher in line, I'd always buy something that prevented "Castro's Curveball" from getting any closer to being read. This summer, in the Dead Zone that is the end of the NBA season and the start of training camp, I finally reduced the stack. I finished Castro in a few days. Loved the mix of political history, scene-setting in Havana and the love story (between a man and a woman, and a man and baseball). I've read criticism that the dialogue is simplistic and unrealistic, and you can be sure that Castro would not have talked like that. But it's fiction. Not a classic, but pretty darned good. Anybody read it?