Interviews

Catching Up

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Bresnahan, catcher, New York (NL)

As it’s been a month or eight since I last updated the site, here’s a roundup of goings on and publications and conversations since I last opened the WordPress editor:

  • For the book recommendation site Shepherd I compiled a list of books that master the trick of placing baseball in a broader historical context
  • For the SABR baseball card research committee blog I wrote about why it can be tempting to not open a pack of baseball cards
  • Ron Kaplan’s Baseball Bookshelf is a great online repository of publications about the game; I spoke to Ron himself about The Only Way Is the Steady Way, The Utility of Boredom, kids, the Blue Jays, the rules of collecting ballcaps, and more
  • Despite being Yankees fans, the folks over at Start Spreading the News turn out to be nice people, and I spoke to them about Ichiro, how I’d “fix” baseball, etc.
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A Conversation Between Authors

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Thanks to the unifying power of the Pandemic Baseball Book Club, I had the chance to sit down (virtually) with Devin Gordon (author of the wonderful, sad, funny, and beautiful So Many Ways to Lose: The Amazin’ True Story of the New York Mets — The Best Worst Team in Sports) to talk about The Only Way Is the Steady Way. Devin did a deep, thorough read of the book and came ready with some great questions.

You can watch the conversation on video here (or by clicking the image above), or listen in podcast form at Anchor.fm (or anywhere you get podcasts).

Opening Day Book News Roundup

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We here in Ontario are about to go into another lockdown, and the air outside my window is adance with snow flurries, but it’s Opening Day, damn it, and so we rejoice and find gladness in the promise of a new season. Tomorrow, April 2, is the official publication date of The Only Way Is the Steady Way, so chosen because it’s also the twentieth anniversary of Ichiro’s MLB debut. It’s also the fifth anniversary of the publication of The Utility of Boredom. That one was a coincidence, but it’s still worth noting. Regarding the former, there have been some developments—articles, appearances, etc.—that I’ll endeavour to round up here:

  • I appeared on a recent episode of Justin McGuire’s Baseball By the Book podcast (listen to it here or anywhere you get your podcasts)

That’s it for now, but there’ll be a lot more stuff in the near future, including interviews and podcasts. Stay tuned.

Open Book: Toronto Writer-in-Residence

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I’m the writer-in-residence at Open Book: Toronto for the month of May. Stop by often for posts on music, procrastination, baseball, and, I guess, writing.

To get into the swing of things I did Open Book‘s take on the Proust Questionnaire, and in the process learned a little something about myself (namely that I really don’t have answers to most of the questions on a Proust Questionnaire).

Thanks to Grace O’Connell and everyone at OB:T for the invitation, and apologies for all the damage I’m about to do to your esteemed brand.

The Puritan’s Omnibus Interview

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The music of Led Zeppelin is a thrilling, seductive, and ultimately dishonest reflection of an unreasonable form of masculinity.

— Over at The Town Crier, I answered Tyler Willis’s question about aging, identity, nostalgia, and Led Zeppelin as part of an “Omnibus Interview” of Puritan contributors who’ve released books in 2015. Big thanks to Tyler and all the Puritan braintrust for being so good to me and all authors whose work they continue to nurture and promote.