by Doug Glanville

Times Books

Was there a Doug Glanville-splosion a year or so back?  I feel like I remember Doug suddenly bursting onto the scene with a book and a bunch of TV appearances on CSN until he got his job with MLB Network or whoever.  Now he’s got a tie and a Twitter account and everything somebody needs to be successful in media.

But before all that, he was the spindly center fielder for the Philadelphia Phillies whose appearance in All-Star Baseball 2000 looked like a bony offseason scarecrow wielding a bat.  He glided through the post-Dykstra years, chasing down fly balls amidst a sea of increasingly pathetic teams we didn’t recognize because they didn’t have wild hair or swear on TV or go crazy, eventually.

Yet in the end, it gave Doug enough material to write this book, as well as the occasional “this-guy-right-here-this-is-the-guy” tweet.  Of course, he also played for other teams, but explain to me why that matters before the end of this sentence.

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by Randy Miller

Running Press

Sure, it would have been way more timely to run this back on the anniversary of Harry’s death.  Just like it would have made way more sense to review Chris Coste’s book when he was miraculously newsworthy again a few weeks back for being hired by CSN.  But we don’t do things that way here at TBOH; which is to say, “we don’t do things correctly.”  I didn’t think of it, okay?  So you’re just going to have to open your mind and read about a book that’s a little less pertinent than it was two weeks ago.

You know what?  Everybody’s sick of you anyway.  Your attitude’s getting pretty toxic.

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by Fran Zimniuch

Triumph Books

Okay, so, no.

You can’t write “The Best Pitching Staff Ever Assembled” on the front of a book about a rotation that only went live a week or so ago.  Everybody; writers, fans, commenters, the pitchers themselves, tip-toed around the whole thing.  As badly as we wanted to race to the streets and shout of our glory to the heavens, there was no defense against that nobody had pitched yet.  And even though they’ve all made a few starts by now, its still too early to say anything of that magnitude.

But Fran Zimniuch does.  On the front of the book.  With arrows pointing at it.  At the very top there.

Its the size of a coloring book and they couldn’t really decide if they wanted to include a “yellow caution tape” theme so they just kind of stuck it in there a few times without really thinking about it.   (more…)