Agent Palmer

I enjoy baseball, and I enjoy spy and espionage books, films and series. It would seem, then, that The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg was bound to not only interest me, but intrigue and entertain me as well. I would argue that sociologists and psychologists would also enjoy this book, as the curious case of Moe Berg is more than what it seems.

Despite the research completed here by author Nicholas Dawidoff and other books written about him, the constant in this book is what we don’t know.

I previously went the full nine innings reviewing Bull Durham. It should be not surprise that I’d go another nine innings with The Church of Baseball written by Bull Durham writer and director Ron Shelton about the origin of, writing of, production, release, and reaction to Bull Durham.

So let’s do it, on to the first pitch… Play Ball!

Thomas Oliphant’s Praying for Gil Hodges: A Memoir of the 1955 World Series and One Family’s Love of the Brooklyn Dodgers is a loving snapshot of 1950s Brooklyn. It transports you to not only the 1955 World Series between the New York Yankees and Brooklyn Dodgers, but also to 1955 New York, covering Brooklyn of course, but a few surrounding boroughs as well.

Baseball fans will enjoy this book for putting us front and center with one of the more epic game sevens in World Series history.

Our Team: Insights from the Publicly Owned Scraton/Wilkes-Barre Red Barons, is a brilliant case study. It reads both informationally and educationally like a complex short story focused on government, improvement, and a central question; “Should local government own the home team to protect the public’s facility investment?”

Now, before I go on, context is necessary, for both the book and for my relationship to the area. The book was published in 1999.

I’ve never met Tom Adelman, but I feel as though we just had a wonderful conversation. Black and Blue: The Golden Arm, the Robinson Boys, and the 1966 World Series That Stunned America was the conversation we shared.

This book is fantastic, and that’s coming from an Orioles fan who has also enjoyed Dodger baseball for the past decade plus. Through telecasts I’ve absorbed the history of both clubs, but this book does something else.