DoolittleBrothers

I’ve had to take a short sabbatical from blogging as I try to finish up some more pieces for Basketball Prospectus and also meet a Friday deadline to submit a short story to the Nelson Algren awards.

Algren was an interesting guy, a blue-collar type of author that sprang from the ugly sectors of Chicago and eventually cultivated a sort of tough-guy intellectual persona. His best known book, The Man with the Golden Arm, had nothing to do with baseball. No the hero of that tale was a hardcore junkie. Frank Sinatra played him in the 1950s movie version. It’s good stuff, as is Algren’s Walk on the Wild Side, Somebody in Boots and his paean to the city he loved, Chicago: City on the Make. Algren was friends with the Chicago literary elite, including Saul Bellow, and amazingly enough, had a long-running affair with Simon de Beauvoir.

Anyway, Algren is a writer I’ve always admired and I’ve always wanted to be recognized in that contest. The story I’m submitting is called “The Spider, the Hare and the Moon.” It’s about a very confused young lady living in the vicinity of the Lake of the Ozarks area of Missouri.

Before I get back to all of that, I want to offer a plug for 2008 The Hardball Times Preseason Annual. This is simply a must-have for any thinking baseball fan and I say that not just because I wrote the chapter on the Royals. Dave studeman, David Gassko and company have put together something that you just can’t get anywhere else. In particular, I am psyched about the team-by-team fielding projections. Order your copy today direct from the publishers. No reason to cut Amazon in on the excellence. Fair warning: This is likely the first of many plugs on this publication that you’ll see on DooBros.

Moving on, most Royals fans who stop by here probably already know that Rany Jazayerli’s new Royals blog is off and running. We know what we’ll get here: Cockeyed optimism and plenty of excellent commentary. Royals fans with active cyberlives are truly fortunate.

Finally, an old KC Star colleague, Kevin Kaduk, has just moved into a position with Yahoo as their chief baseball blogger. ‘Duk, as he is usually called, has a truly irreverant approach to writing about the game and is always a fun read. His efforts there should go over well.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 13th, 2008 at 12:21 pm and is filed under Blogroll, Books & Writing, Royals. 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.