“Hey look, Ma! I wrote a column in a magazine!”

I know the season hasn’t started yet and it’s still probably cold wherever you live, but this is one of my favorite times of year for baseball. It’s not because spring training games have started, although that of course is nice, but no, I love it because all the annual baseball publications hit the shelves:  Baseball Prospectus, THT’s Season Preview, Baseball America’s Prospect Handbook and so on. A guy could go broke with all the good baseball books coming out now. But whatever you do, save $13.00 and get this one.

Maple Street Press put together an all-star cast of bloggers in their 2009 Cardinals Annual, which includes myself. OK, so that in itself isn’t a great reason to buy the book. Check out the full roster:

• Larry Borowsky
• Dan Moore
• Chuck Brownson
• Aaron Schafer (The whole VEB crew)
• Dustin Mattison (The Birdhouse, Whiteyball)
• Brian Gunn (every Cardinal blogger’s hero)
• Will Leitch (Deadspin)
• Dayn Perry (Baseball Prospectus, Foxsports.com)
• Josh Kalk (Pitch F/X guru, THT, from small ball to long ball)
• Jeff Sackmann (Minor League Splits, THT, Brew Crew Ball)
• Vince Gennaro (Author of the book Diamond Dollars)
• Alex Eisenberg (Baseball Intellect, THT)

I just got it in the mail, so I haven’t read it all, but it won’t be long before I will. So far I really enjoyed Josh Kalk’s look at how Duncan was able to coax a career year out of Kyle Lohse, Will Leitch’s entertaining look at Cardinal contracts, Brian Gunn’s look at the tragedy and triumph of Curt Flood, Larry’s interview with Mike Matheny and his look at the “unclutchiness” of Ankiel. Alex Eisenberg’s look at “natural mechanics” would also certainly be of interest to readers of FR, and Aaron, Dustin and I tackle some other prospect-y subjects.

There’s also a great look at some historical topics, stats, scouting reports and the book is loaded with great pictures.

The mag hits the stands Tuesday, or you can order it by mail here. Just to be clear, I don’t get anything extra from plugging the book. I just enjoy good writing, and what you’ll find in here is as good as it gets.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 28th, 2009 at 11:41 am and is filed under shameless self promotion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.