(Blogathon ’16) Three Mini-Book Reviews

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This post is part of the 2016 Baseball Continuum Blogathon For Charity, benefiting the Roswell Park Alliance Foundation. The Roswell Park Alliance Foundation is the charitable arm of Roswell Park Cancer Institute and funds raised will be “put to immediate use to increase the pace from research trials into improved clinical care, to ensure state-of-the-art facilities, and to help improve the quality of life for patients and their families.” Please donate through the Blogathon’s GoFundMe page.

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And now, short reviews of three baseball-related books I’ve read somewhat recently:

Spalding’s World Tour: The Epic Adventure that Took Baseball Around the Globe – And Made It America’s Game, by Mark Lamster: Fun book on the Spalding world tour of 1888-89, set alongside the backdrop of the emergence of America as a world power, Spalding’s entrepreneurial and publicity-seeking abilities, and early labor tensions in baseball. Informative and entertaining about an interesting topic that isn’t wide known, and also provides several examples of Cap Anson being such an asshole you want to find a time machine in order to go back and throttle him. Seriously, Cap Anson was just the worst.

Yes, It’s Hot in Here: Adventures in the Weird, Wooly World of Sports Mascots, by AJ Mass: Written by a former Mr. Met turned ESPN fantasy sports writer, this book is a funny look at the world of mascots, and includes disputes with the Famous Chicken, the Mets’ front office being clueless, and looks at the many different people who don the mascot costumes. Not exactly hard-hitting and deep, but it doesn’t need to be.

Nuclear Powered Baseball: Articles inspired by The Simpsons episode “Homer at the Bat”, edited by Emily Hawks and Bill Nowlin: This e-book from SABR reprints biographies and articles about the classic “Homer at the Bat” episode, as well as a faux-“bioproject” entry for Homer Simpson himself, a listing of baseball players referenced on the show, and Joe Posnanski’s article on “MoneyBART”, the episode of The Simpsons about sabermetrics. Available free to SABR members (but available for sale to non-members), I don’t know if I’d pay money for it, but it’s definitely a fun tribute to one of the greatest baseball episodes in TV history.

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At 1 PM: A short break to let you know what is available as giveaways if you donate to the Blogathon.

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This post has been part of the 2016 Baseball Continuum Blogathon For Charity, benefiting the Roswell Park Alliance Foundation. The Roswell Park Alliance Foundation is the charitable arm of Roswell Park Cancer Institute and funds raised will be “put to immediate use to increase the pace from research trials into improved clinical care, to ensure state-of-the-art facilities, and to help improve the quality of life for patients and their families.” Please donate through the Blogathon’s GoFundMe page.

(Blogathon ’16) 2017 WBC Team Dominican Republic projections Version 0.1

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This post is part of the 2016 Baseball Continuum Blogathon For Charity, benefiting the Roswell Park Alliance Foundation. The Roswell Park Alliance Foundation is the charitable arm of Roswell Park Cancer Institute and funds raised will be “put to immediate use to increase the pace from research trials into improved clinical care, to ensure state-of-the-art facilities, and to help improve the quality of life for patients and their families.” Please donate through the Blogathon’s GoFundMe page.

We are over a year from the 2017 World Baseball Classic, and the road will no doubt be filled with commitments, pull-outs, unusual nationality switches, injuries, trades, new contracts, personal decisions and god-knows-what-else still on the way. But, for now, let’s just imagine everybody is available: who’d be on Team Dominican in the 2017 World Baseball Classic?

Perhaps it would look something like this. Now, a reminder of the WBC roster rules:

  • Any player coming off a major injury or who has a history of injuries is unlikely to participate. This is especially true for the pitchers. (This “rule” is being ignored for version 0.1)
  • Players that will be on new teams are less likely to participate, but shouldn’t be completely ignored, with the exception of pitchers. (This “rule” is being ignored for version 0.1)
  • Teams are made up of 28 players, of which 13 of them must be pitchers and two of them catchers.
  • The pitch count rules make relievers extremely important.

Here we go:

Catchers (3): Wellington Castillo, Francisco Pena, Pedro Severino

First Baseman (3): Albert Pujols, Carlos Santana, Edwin Encarnacion

One of them would presumably also DH, obviously.

Second Baseman (1): Robinson Cano

Third Baseman (2): Adrian Beltre, Maikel Franco

Oh, Adrian Beltre will be in his late 30s in 2017, you say? That is true, but I wouldn’t bet against him.

Shortstop (2): Erick Aybar, Jhonny Peralta

Designated Hitter/3B/Who-The-Heck-Knows (1): Miguel Sano

Outfielders (4): Jose Bautista, Nelson Cruz, Carlos Gomez, Starling Marte

Starting Pitchers (4): Johnny Cueto, Carlos Martinez, Danny Salazar, Francisco Liriano

Relief Pitchers (8): Jeurys Familia, Kelvin Herrera, Arodys Vizcaino, Pedro Strop, Santiago Casilla, Luis Garcia, Antonio Bastardo, Alexi Ogando

And so, that’s Version 0.1 of my TeamDR projections. Version 1.0, which will include actual consideration as to whether I think somebody will actually take part or not, will come out sometime in the future. But until then…. feel free to imagine how the team would do if it looked like this.

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At Noon: Mini-Book Reviews!

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This post has been part of the 2016 Baseball Continuum Blogathon For Charity, benefiting the Roswell Park Alliance Foundation. The Roswell Park Alliance Foundation is the charitable arm of Roswell Park Cancer Institute and funds raised will be “put to immediate use to increase the pace from research trials into improved clinical care, to ensure state-of-the-art facilities, and to help improve the quality of life for patients and their families.” Please donate through the Blogathon’s GoFundMe page.

 

(Blogathon ’16) 2017 WBC Team USA Projections Version 0.1

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This post is part of the 2016 Baseball Continuum Blogathon For Charity, benefiting the Roswell Park Alliance Foundation. The Roswell Park Alliance Foundation is the charitable arm of Roswell Park Cancer Institute and funds raised will be “put to immediate use to increase the pace from research trials into improved clinical care, to ensure state-of-the-art facilities, and to help improve the quality of life for patients and their families.” Please donate through the Blogathon’s GoFundMe page.

We are over a year from the 2017 World Baseball Classic, and the road will no doubt be filled with commitments, pull-outs, unusual nationality switches, injuries, trades, new contracts, personal decisions and god-knows-what-else still on the way. But, for now, let’s just imagine everybody is available: who’d be on Team USA in the 2017 World Baseball Classic?

Perhaps it would look something like this. Now, a reminder of the WBC roster rules:

  • Any player coming off a major injury or who has a history of injuries is unlikely to participate. This is especially true for the pitchers. (This “rule” is being ignored for version 0.1)
  • Players that will be on new teams are less likely to participate, but shouldn’t be completely ignored, with the exception of pitchers. (This “rule” is being ignored for version 0.1)
  • Teams are made up of 28 players, of which 13 of them must be pitchers and two of them catchers.
  • The pitch count rules make relievers extremely important.

Catchers (3): Buster Posey, Stephen Vogt, Derek Morris

First Baseman (2): Paul Goldschmidt, Anthony Rizzo

Second Basemen (1): Dee Gordon

Third Basemen (2): David Wright, Josh Donaldson

David Wright is basically the closest thing that Team USA has to a given and after his performances in 2009 and 2013 he’s probably in if he has any sort of good season in 2016. If we were going strictly by performance, it’d be Donaldson and Manny Machado (who might play for the Dominican), with Kris Bryant also being a very real possibility.

Shortstop (2): Troy Tulowitzki, Brandon Crawford

Utility (1): Ben Zobrist

The greatest utility player of his generation.

Outfield (4): Bryce Harper, Mike Trout, Giancarlo Stanton, Kevin Kiermaier

Or maybe Adam Jones. Or maybe Lorenzo Cain. Or maybe A.J. Pollock. Or maybe Jason Heyward. Or maybe…. really, even ALL FOUR of the guys I have in this pie-in-the-sky version 0.1 were to pull out (doubtful, as I seem to remember Harper and/or Trout saying they wanted in for 2017 shortly after they said he wasn’t in for 2013), it’s likely that Team USA will have one of the best outfields in the event.

Starting Pitchers (4): Zack Greinke, Clayton Kershaw, Jake Arrieta, Max Scherzer

Like outfield, the sheer depth of American pitching means that it’s likely they will, on paper, have one of the best staffs in the WBC even if there are plenty of pull-outs. And, given that this is the WBC and the starting pitchers are the hardest players to have participate, there will be plenty of pull-outs. Madison Bumgarner, Dallas Keuchel, the various Mets, Sonny Gray, etc. are all possibilities.

Relief Pitchers (9): Wade Davis, Darren O’Day, Dellin Betances, Trevor Rosenthal, Tony Watson, Zach Britton, Carson Smith, Ken Giles, Will Harris

 

And so, that’s Version 0.1 of my Team USA projections. Version 1.0, which will include actual consideration as to whether I think somebody will actually take part or not (for example, I doubt Zack Greinke would play), will come out sometime in the future. But until then…. feel free to imagine how the team would do if it looked like this.

 

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At 11 AM: Dominican Republic WBC Projections 0.1

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This post has been part of the 2016 Baseball Continuum Blogathon For Charity, benefiting the Roswell Park Alliance Foundation. The Roswell Park Alliance Foundation is the charitable arm of Roswell Park Cancer Institute and funds raised will be “put to immediate use to increase the pace from research trials into improved clinical care, to ensure state-of-the-art facilities, and to help improve the quality of life for patients and their families.” Please donate through the Blogathon’s GoFundMe page.

(BLOGATHON ’16!) International Baseball Culture: Mitsuru Adachi’s “Touch”, Part 1, which ironically doesn’t have much baseball in it

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This post is part of the 2016 Baseball Continuum Blogathon For Charity, benefiting the Roswell Park Alliance Foundation. The Roswell Park Alliance Foundation is the charitable arm of Roswell Park Cancer Institute and funds raised will be “put to immediate use to increase the pace from research trials into improved clinical care, to ensure state-of-the-art facilities, and to help improve the quality of life for patients and their families.” Please donate through the Blogathon’s GoFundMe page.

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In International Baseball Culture, I look at baseball-related entertainment from outside the USA that isn’t bizarre, but is interesting, perhaps learning some new things along the way!

In 2005, the Japanese television station TV Asahi held a special on the 100 most popular anime (animation) in history, as voted on by Japanese viewers. While many of the most popular programs were fantasy, adventure or science fiction, such as the Gundam series of giant robot programs (at number two) or Dragon Ball (at number three), the top ten also had a baseball anime: Touch, which was seventh.

What is Touch? Well, to put it in simple terms, it’s a tale of two stories: the baseball one and the off-the-field one. It’s about three teenagers (twin boys and their girl-next-door neighbor) who navigate high-school, relationships and their pitfalls while trying to bring their school glory on the diamond as they try to reach Koshien, Japan’s national high school baseball tournament, which is like March Madness and a Friday night in Texas combined.

Needless to say, it struck a nerve with Japanese audiences, and the 2005 program’s polling was not that out of the ordinary: A follow-up list that included votes from after the TV Asahi special was aired also had Touch in the top ten, at number nine. Nor was this a recent phenomena, either: during it’s original run in the 1980s, it was, according to some sources, the most watched anime in the history of Japan. Ever.

The series was, in itself, adapted from a manga (comic) of the same name, written and illustrated by Mitsuru Adachi, that saw it’s volumes sell over an estimated 100 million copies. Just to put that in perspective, in 2010 the population of Japan was around 128 million. Of course, that doesn’t mean over three out of four Japanese people owned at least one copy of a volume of Touch… but it does mean that those who did liked it very much, buying every volume.

From what I’ve read about the series, it’s not hard to see why it would have such broad appeal, as it apparently has something for everyone. It has baseball action (and also some detours into boxing and other sports) for the boys, romance for the girls, and drama and comedy for everyone. And apparently all of those things are done well enough where even people who normally can’t stand stuff like that seem to like it- I’ve come across several reviews that include lines like “I don’t even like baseball but I was enthralled by the game episodes” or “the romance plot is actually realistic and well-handled.”

And yet, despite the fact that Touch is one of the most successful anime and manga in the history of Japan, it has never seen official release in the United States, and it’s unlikely that it will anytime soon, either (the anime and manga import market is mainly focused on recent releases, and what old ones that do happen are usually Sci-Fi or Fantasy). However, there is apparently a unspoken agreement between the Japanese entertainment industry and it’s English-speaking fans that they won’t sue anybody who translates and distributes translated versions of the show/book, so long as they stop doing it if an actual agreement to distribute them in the USA is made, so I was able to find copies of both the anime and manga online.

But anyway: a baseball-centric story that is one of the most popular and well-regarded anime/manga in Japanese history, and it’s almost completely unknown to American audiences? What better way to start International Baseball Culture? (after the jump)

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(Blogathon ’16) WBC News for January 29, 2016

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This post is part of the 2016 Baseball Continuum Blogathon For Charity, benefiting the Roswell Park Alliance Foundation. The Roswell Park Alliance Foundation is the charitable arm of Roswell Park Cancer Institute and funds raised will be “put to immediate use to increase the pace from research trials into improved clinical care, to ensure state-of-the-art facilities, and to help improve the quality of life for patients and their families.” Please donate through the Blogathon’s GoFundMe page.

It’s time for a World Baseball Classic update! With the first qualifiers coming up, more news has started to come out. Let’s take a look at some of the news:

Sydney Qualifying Pool Rosters and Schedules released:

On Wednesday, the rosters and schedules for the Sydney qualifying pool came out. They can be found over here on Baseball America. I’ll have a more thorough preview as we get closer to the event, but it’s definitely a case where Australia should be considered the heavy favorite, full of players with experience in MLB or the Minors. After Australia, it’s a fight for the second spot to face them in a winner-take-all game to get to the main tournament. Clay Rapada is probably the most notable player outside of the Australians, as he will be playing for the Philippines, the country of his father’s birth, before retiring. Former All-Star Jason Bartlett, also of Filipino descent, was also expected to play, but I don’t see him on the roster.

News from other qualifying pools:

As I mentioned last time, the qualifiers, unlike the main tournament, are not events where MLB teams are required to allow 40-man roster players to take part if there’s an overlap with official team acitivites. This will most hurt a team like Mexico, where the Blue Jays are unlikely to allow their three Mexican players from taking part in the March qualifier in Mexicali.

Jon Morosi, one of the best people to follow for WBC news, had information on his Twitter feed on the German team, who will be managed by Garth Iorg (yes, that Garth Iorg). Depending on what difficulties Mexico has, they could be a threat in Mexicali, even with Max Kepler likely skipping as he tries to win a spot on the Twins, they will have Donald Lutz, one of the few Germans with MLB experience.

Bruce Chen, who retired last season, is apparently willing to pitch for Panama.

Other WBC News:

Ozzie Guillen is totally up for managing Team Venezuela in 2017.

 

And that’s it… for now.

Keep an eye out for more WBC news on the Baseball Continuum as it occurs.

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At 9 AM: International Baseball Culture

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This post has been part of the 2016 Baseball Continuum Blogathon For Charity, benefiting the Roswell Park Alliance Foundation. The Roswell Park Alliance Foundation is the charitable arm of Roswell Park Cancer Institute and funds raised will be “put to immediate use to increase the pace from research trials into improved clinical care, to ensure state-of-the-art facilities, and to help improve the quality of life for patients and their families.” Please donate through the Blogathon’s GoFundMe page.

(Blogathon ’16!) Related To Somebody Famous For Something Else: Tony Lupien, WWE Star John Cena’s Grandpa

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This post is part of the 2016 Baseball Continuum Blogathon For Charity, benefiting the Roswell Park Alliance Foundation. The Roswell Park Alliance Foundation is the charitable arm of Roswell Park Cancer Institute and funds raised will be “put to immediate use to increase the pace from research trials into improved clinical care, to ensure state-of-the-art facilities, and to help improve the quality of life for patients and their families.” Please donate through the Blogathon’s GoFundMe page.

I’m not much of a wrestling fan, but I know a great meme when I see one, and the meme related to WWE Superstar John Cena is a good one:

For those of you who don’t want to watch that, in essence, it is what happens when a completely unrelated scene is suddenly interrupted by the cry of “JOHN CENA!” or “HIS NAME IS JOHN CENA!” and his theme music begins to play. It’s very stupid, but also hilarious.

But, did you know that the “public face” of the WWE is the grandson of a baseball player? And not just any baseball player, but an honest-to-goodness MLB player: Tony Lupien of the 1940s Red Sox, Phillies and White Sox. In fact, the first-baseman even received MVP votes during the depleted years of WWII:

Screen Shot 2016-01-27 at 11.00.11 AMHere are his Minor League stats:

Screen Shot 2016-01-27 at 11.01.46 AMAfter his career, Lupien went on to be manager and coach, including bringing Dartmouth University to the 1970 College World Series. He was also involved- both during and after his career- with the labor movement, including help co-author The Imperfect Diamond, a history of baseball’s labor relations up through the 1970s.

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At 8 AM: The start of “International Morning”, several hours of international baseball content

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This post has been part of the 2016 Baseball Continuum Blogathon For Charity, benefiting the Roswell Park Alliance Foundation. The Roswell Park Alliance Foundation is the charitable arm of Roswell Park Cancer Institute and funds raised will be “put to immediate use to increase the pace from research trials into improved clinical care, to ensure state-of-the-art facilities, and to help improve the quality of life for patients and their families.” Please donate through the Blogathon’s GoFundMe page.

(Blogathon ’16!) On the Joe Maddon Head

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This post is part of the 2016 Baseball Continuum Blogathon For Charity, benefiting the Roswell Park Alliance Foundation. The Roswell Park Alliance Foundation is the charitable arm of Roswell Park Cancer Institute and funds raised will be “put to immediate use to increase the pace from research trials into improved clinical care, to ensure state-of-the-art facilities, and to help improve the quality of life for patients and their families.” Please donate through the Blogathon’s GoFundMe page.

In front of the TV in my bedroom, for reasons not fully known, there is a piggy-bank in the shape of Joe Maddon‘s head. It looks like this (apologies for the crappy smartphone picture):

CZ0U2kRUUAEASFa.jpg_largeI received it from a relative who found it at a Goodwill store or something like that, but where did it come from? How did it come to be?

I did some research, and found the truth: it was once a stadium giveaway in Tampa in 2011. It was given out on May 1 vs. the Angels (this game), and went to the first 10,000 kids under 14:

Screen Shot 2016-01-28 at 10.54.43 AMHowever, there were, according to Retrosheet, only 16,248 people in attendance that day. Were there 10,000 or so kids and only 6,000 or so adults? Did they just give them out to everybody? We may never know.

We also may never know how this, a bank in the shape of Joe Maddon’s head, got to upstate New York. I’d like to imagine it had crazy adventures, traveling the country with it’s fellow TV-situated souvenirs, a Buck O’Neil bobblehead and an even-more-inexplicable San Diego Padres-era Adrian Gonzalez statue.

Or maybe somebody just went on a vacation to Tampa, brought it back up, and didn’t want it anymore.

I prefer the first possibility.

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At 7 AM: Related To Somebody Famous For Something Else

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This post has been part of the 2016 Baseball Continuum Blogathon For Charity, benefiting the Roswell Park Alliance Foundation. The Roswell Park Alliance Foundation is the charitable arm of Roswell Park Cancer Institute and funds raised will be “put to immediate use to increase the pace from research trials into improved clinical care, to ensure state-of-the-art facilities, and to help improve the quality of life for patients and their families.” Please donate through the Blogathon’s GoFundMe page.

 

(Blogathon ’16) Songs of October (Post-2015 update)

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This post is part of the 2016 Baseball Continuum Blogathon For Charity, benefiting the Roswell Park Alliance Foundation. The Roswell Park Alliance Foundation is the charitable arm of Roswell Park Cancer Institute and funds raised will be “put to immediate use to increase the pace from research trials into improved clinical care, to ensure state-of-the-art facilities, and to help improve the quality of life for patients and their families.” Please donate through the Blogathon’s GoFundMe page.

For the far-too-late update on what happened in 2015, go to the bottom of the post after the jump.

In 2013, there was a sensation that spread across the nation: Mups. Their spread was unstoppable, to the point where some like the “Cespedes Family BBQ” and Jesse Spector had begun to engage in a “#Mupwatch”. But some wondered: What was a Mup? Were they some sort of Muppet? Were they dangerous? And why were they being lit on fire?

Well, the answer lay in the commercials that had been playing in the lead-up to and during the post-season, featuring Fall Out Boy’s “My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark”. Here is an example of such a commercial. While officially they were saying “Light ’em up”, it sounded, especially during the echoing segments, like they were actually talking about things called “mups”.

And thus continued a long tradition of October songs that have graced our televisions and infected our ears, whether we liked them or not. And, usually, if we DID like them at the start of the postseason, we ended up being sick of them by the end just from hearing them so many times.

And, what’s more, these songs and how they have become memes aren’t from a universal source. Most of them, for example, have been part of TBS’ coverage, but others, including the Fall Out Boy song, have actually been of MLB’s doing. In 2013, for example, TBS was using a different song*, and MLB Network itself also had a different song for the commercials for it’s two games**. Rarely if ever have they been actually about baseball, usually selected more for their choruses or imagery.

*Using Google searches of the lyrics I was able to decipher, I’ve figured out it’s 30 Seconds to Mars’ “Do or Die”.

**Again using Google, I’ve found that the commercials use the chorus from Papa Roach’s “Still Swingin’“.

Still, with that out of the way, here’s a history (after the jump) of the Songs of October:

Continue reading →

(Blogathon ’16) A Random Musing on the Fairport Little League Money-Grabbing Promotion

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This post is part of the 2016 Baseball Continuum Blogathon For Charity, benefiting the Roswell Park Alliance Foundation. The Roswell Park Alliance Foundation is the charitable arm of Roswell Park Cancer Institute and funds raised will be “put to immediate use to increase the pace from research trials into improved clinical care, to ensure state-of-the-art facilities, and to help improve the quality of life for patients and their families.” Please donate through the Blogathon’s GoFundMe page.

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Tons of people play Little League Baseball or have played Little League Baseball when they were of the age where you can.

This is not a story about my actual time on the Little League field, where my greatest moment was the time I drew a walk with the bases loaded to force in the walk-off run. No, this is about something else: the Fairport Little League money-grabbing promotion, a crazy promotion in which a pre-teen ballplayer was put into a box full of money, a blower was turned on to send that money flying around, and the kid had to try and grab as much money as possible, which he (or she) would be able to keep.

There were many thoughts on strategy for this. Some kids thought you should try to trap it against the sides of the box and then pull it on. Others thought you should just grab wildly and hope for the best. A few suggested using a loose jersey as a net to catch the dollars and then try to grab from the “net” since you were only allowed to keep the money you had in your hands. Still others thought that it was stupid and that you should just keep the entrance fee and use it to buy a candy bar from the concession stand.

That last group, while probably wise beyond their years, were absolutely no fun.

And then there was the question of what you’d do with the money. Maybe you’d use it to buy candy at the concession stand (always a great choice), maybe you’d rent a video game (this was back when there were actual stores that rented video games), or maybe you’d just put it into your piggy bank.

When I walked in to the box, all those years ago, I wasn’t sure what my strategy was. I think it was a mixture of the various strategies. And I can’t remember what I used the money I got for. Heck, I can’t even remember how much money I grabbed, period.

And yet, despite the fact that I’ve forgotten the end result, I still can remember that big box that sent money flying around you…. a piece of childhood and Little League.

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At 5 AM: A “Songs of October” Update

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This post has been part of the 2016 Baseball Continuum Blogathon For Charity, benefiting the Roswell Park Alliance Foundation. The Roswell Park Alliance Foundation is the charitable arm of Roswell Park Cancer Institute and funds raised will be “put to immediate use to increase the pace from research trials into improved clinical care, to ensure state-of-the-art facilities, and to help improve the quality of life for patients and their families.” Please donate through the Blogathon’s GoFundMe page.

 

 

(’16 Blogathon) Moe Berg’s Secret Agent Files

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This post is part of the 2016 Baseball Continuum Blogathon For Charity, benefiting the Roswell Park Alliance Foundation. The Roswell Park Alliance Foundation is the charitable arm of Roswell Park Cancer Institute and funds raised will be “put to immediate use to increase the pace from research trials into improved clinical care, to ensure state-of-the-art facilities, and to help improve the quality of life for patients and their families.” Please donate through the Blogathon’s GoFundMe page.

 

Moe Berg was perhaps the most interesting person in the history of baseball, despite the fact he wasn’t that good of a ballplayer. A graduate of Princeton and Colombia Law, he spoke seven languages and read up to ten newspapers a day.

And, of course, he was a spy, operating during WWII (and arguably both before and after) for American intelligence. His most famous work came for the Office of Special Services, AKA the OSS, the predecessor of the CIA.

And, guess what? His OSS file is available online.

And it is… surprisingly boring. Now, by it’s very nature, a lot of covert operations stuff is never written down in the first place, or is destroyed, and even the neat stuff is put into fairly dry language. So much of Berg’s file is of expense reports, salary information, transfer papers, record-keeping, and other more-or-less boring paperwork. Funny, we never see the paper trail that James Bond or Ethan Hunt leave behind.

Still, there are some interesting things. For example, you can find Berg’s accommodation for the Presidential Medal of Freedom (page 6), the recommendation for why he should receive it (starting on page 21 of the document, a fascinating rundown of some of Berg’s WWII activities), a similar recommendation (starting on page 30) for another award a (Medal for Merit) that goes into some detail on his work involved with finding out about Axis nuclear weapons research, and also his rejection of the award (page 41) citing his belief that it was a “very modest contribution” to the war effort and an attempt by the government to make him reconsider (page 56). There are also communiques where Berg is referred to by his codename of “Remus”, as well as (on page 50) a copy of his oath of office.

So, check it out over at the Internet Archive. Now… I just need to read The Catcher Was A Spy so I can understand what some of it was referring to.

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At 4 AM: I remember a part of my childhood. Money is involved.

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This post has been part of the 2016 Baseball Continuum Blogathon For Charity, benefiting the Roswell Park Alliance Foundation. The Roswell Park Alliance Foundation is the charitable arm of Roswell Park Cancer Institute and funds raised will be “put to immediate use to increase the pace from research trials into improved clinical care, to ensure state-of-the-art facilities, and to help improve the quality of life for patients and their families.” Please donate through the Blogathon’s GoFundMe page.