Last summer I received a letter from a editor asking me if I’d consider blurbing an upcoming book by a young author. I’d never heard of Emma Span; didn’t know her work, her byline, her name, nothing. Plus, I was insanely busy with my own stuff—trying to raise two kids; research my own project; etc. Hence, I wrote the editoe back, politely declining.
Later that week, I was rushing out the door for a two-mile walk to the train station. With no newspaper in sight, I grabbed a copy of Span’s manuscript, which I had yet to throw out. As I walked, I started to read. And read. And read. And read. Could. Not. Put. The. Thing. Down. Just a funny, insightful, cool-as-all-hell look at baseball and the baseball media and baseball as a quirky passion.
This is my long-winded way of saying that Emma’s debut book, 90% of the Game is Half Mental, has just been released, and it’s stellar work.
And that’s not all. Received another book in the mail recently from Michael Duca, a San Fran-based writer and Facebook friend. His new work, The Baseball Codes, is simply riveting–a piece-by-piece look at all the little unofficial codes and rules in the Majors that makes life interesting—and inane. The stuff on brushbacks is especially fascinating. Bulldog effort.
Two books—both killer.
