by Charles J. Adams III

Arcadia Publishing

Charles Adams’ introduction crumbles from wistful statements and nostalgic head-nodding into a paragraph of self-congratulatory baseball puns.

In this section, he no better embodies how important the history of Reading baseball is to himself.  I am sure there are plenty of people who care right along with him, or are at least interested.  Or do weekly Phillies-only book reviews that nobody reads and are sick of reading various sportswriters’ accounts of them same five or six years of Phillies history.

I’m also sure that all of those people live in Central Pennsylvania.

But being unaware of certain histories is what can make them so intriguing!  Who wants to read about the same old thing over and over again, and if you’re a baseball fan, why wouldn’t you be into the history of a place nicknamed “Baseballtown, USA”? (more…)

Before you even have the time to think something, the New York Times would like you to know that the Mets’ R.A. Dickey is a better writer than you.

“Dickey, 36, is far more literary than most pro athletes, and more than even most of the college-educated reporters who write about him.”

Ha, ha.  ”College”?  What in the hell is that?  Whatever it is, it’s automatically obsolete in the face of a knuckleballer with a pen.  So, if you’re thinking that R.A. Dickey is just another Major League Baseball player with a shadowy past that’s begging to be transformed into a novel, shut up.  He is so literary, after one eyeballing of his words, you will be quoting Faulkner in your sleep and reciting Ulysses whenever a waiter asks you what you want to drink. (more…)