These months between the final game of the World Series and Opening Day can be long and cold if you don’t prepare properly. Last November, I taped the entire MLB All-Stars (sans All Star pitchers) vs Japan’s Samurai All-Stars in a six game exhibition series, which was played in Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagoya in front of packed stadiums of chanting Japanese fans. Japan won the series 5 games to 1, which is no surprise since the MLB pitching staff consisted of “household” names of Scott Barlow (KC), Collin McHugh (HOU) and Kirby Yates (SD) not Clayton Kershaw, Max Scherzer and Jacob DeGrom. Still the series had its moments like Juan Soto’s launching of a ball heading over the fences until it hit the roof of the Tokyo Dome and was caught for an out.
Hot Stove League roster talk cannot sustain an entire winter either, especially since the Manny Machado and Bryce Harper free agency stories quickly grew tiresome, “Harper visits Philadelphia, Machado visits Philadelphia. Washington reps have a nice lunch with Harper in Vegas. Machado tells White Sox to Drop Dead.” Their final destinations will be anti-climatic wherever they land. Hall of Fame talk is fun because it is debatable, but can I respect any organization like the Baseball Writers Association of America that doesn’t give Plácido Polanco more consideration than one vote? According to one pundit, Polanco deserves better.
Last winter, I read Robert Whiting’s You’ve Got to Have Wah, the 2009 book about the history of baseball in Japan and it included how American baseball players have fared playing for teams like the Nippon Ham Fighters (what a name!) and Seibu Lions. Perhaps I was preparing myself for the MLB All-Star/Samurai Classic and didn’t realize that I established a pattern that the best time to read baseball books is in the off season.
The Minneapolis Review of Baseball
This year I dug out a book I have been meaning to read for a longtime - Basepaths: The Best of the Minneapolis Review of Baseball Volume 1: 1981-1987 published in 1991. The MRB began as a mom and pop kind of baseball journal founded in 1980 by Steve Lehman, Ken LaZebnik and illustrator Andy Nelson who became the art director. I first heard about the magazine from an article in Sports Illustrated and followed the publication from a distance. In 1990, William C. Brown publishers bought the journal and re-imagined the publication into the now defunct Elysian Fields Quarterly, which I wrote a tongue-in-cheek column about baseball statistics, but EFQ struggled as well before finally ceasing publication in 2008.
The premise of MRB was like the original The Book Shopper book (this blog’s namesake) it was a place where fans, not insiders or “experts could express their passions:
“We quickly found ourselves publishing a community of eccentric correspondents and baseball lovers: construction workers, professional poets, cab drivers, college professors, a retired diplomat and anyone else who writes well and fervently about baseball.” – Introduction to Basepaths
As one might expect (like in any collection) there is some unevenness to such an endeavor, but there more timeless baseball gems than outdated rocks. Here are a few of my favorites:
- Wayne Farr's artistic re-creation of baseball relics by "baseball’s true inventor" Leonardo da Vinci.
- "In Memorium: The Winter of 1995, Remembering Burleigh Grimes, Bill Wambsganss, Roger Maris and Bill Veeck."
- An account of the unlikely baseball record where the smae player broke up a no-hitter twice in a 1955 game between the Minneapolis Millers and the Omaha Cardinals.
- An opinion piece on the lack of left-handed catchers.
- A transcript of Ken LaZebnik’s stage play on Calvin Griffith, the longtime owner of the Minnesota Twins. 
The connection between Buddhism and baseball in “The Baseball Player as Bodhisattva: An Inquiry into the National Pastime" by Matthew Goodman with art by Andy Nelson.
Interspersed within these longer pieces are shorter riffs on owner’s greed, the ridiculousness of trying to “speed up the game” and complaints about the designated hitter rule (all still relevant, no?). I especially enjoyed the poetry as well and I am not much of a poetry person. Perhaps why it worked for me is that I didn’t have to “figure out” what these poets were writing about. All things baseball. Here’s an excerpt from one of the offerings -- Red Shuttleworth’s, "A Poem to Tell You Why I Named My Son Luke Appling After the White Sox Hall of Fame Shortstop."
When I called Luke
to tell him the boy was born, named
for him, Luke said, “I’m thrilled.”
I told him sheepishly, I was still
teaching English at a junior college,
and he said I am glad somebody’s smart,”
taking the sting out of my
of not being part of the game.
There are four Shuttleworth poems in the collection, including a couple that transform you back the minor league life of the Durham Bulls circa 1980 when Shuttleworth was a bullpen coach. On a whim, I reached out to Red who is still writing and gives high marks to Ron Shelton’s film Bull Durham (What a relief). See the Extra Innings post script for more.
Another poem “Renewal” by Paul Weinman vividly captures that moment between winter and the first spring practice.
Each year we’d come back
and the field would still be there.
Sure, the baselines looked worn
Tired, grass turned grey. Brown.
The batter’s box, sullen.
Mound, slope-shouldered, old.
The baseball off-season is long can seem interminable but books like Basepaths with its “glory of their times” look and feel hones my appreciation of baseball history and lore. So much so that I am in no hurry for Opening Day.
Extra Innings
Appling with Shuttleworth (photo courtesy of Red Shuttleworth)
Long after baseball, Red Shuttleworth has had a extensive writing career. To learn more about his writing, visit redshuttleworth.com
Besides Basepaths, Nelson, Lehman and LaZebnik collaborated on another favorite baseball book of mine: A is for At Bat, A Baseball Primer (1990) a series of short verse. A great way to introduce baseball to your future slugger. 
