Watermark Books, Joe! Love it. Our family lived on Pershing Ave. when we were in Wichita. Literally one street over and Watermark was an absolute favorite. So glad you will be at this amazing bookstore.
Hey Joe, thanks for another great column. I'm looking forward to the mini books. I just finished (today)"Why We Love Baseball". I bought it before it was published, but I Have A.D.D. and procrastination (among other things) gets in the way.
I loved the book, but I saw a typo you may have already heard about In the Greatest Moments chapter for each team. You wrote the Pirates moment was Willie Stargell's home run in the 1978 series. It was hit in the '79 Series. Yanks beat the Dodgers in '78.
Less frequent, more in-depth stories is my dream JoeBlogs. I can get daily articles on sports anywhere, I'm here for the what I can't no longer get elsewhere: great, detailed stories about sports. And Joe is the best at those.
Speaking of rabbit holes, I recall that Charles Dickens used to publish new novels in serialized form. By this I mean he would send subscribers several chapters at a time on a monthly basis. Each release would include illustrations and an advertising section which helped raise even more money. Subscribers would receive a title page with the last installment and would often then take the total installments to a book binder to be bound as a single volume. A novel might be broken into twenty separate mailings. Joe is proposing to honor that tradition, (whether he knows it or not).albeit in a shorter time period with fewer installments.
For young people today perhaps. For people my age (77) more like a book of the month membership. Yes, they sent complete books, but they were also set up to send you a selection of the month automatically if you didn't submit your own selection choice timely. I suppose the Dickens model was run for him by his publishers.
Love the mini book idea! Kind of like a novella? Or maybe you could do it like the old Serial story style. Stephen King did that when he wrote The Green Mile. Each copy was sold separately, and you had to wait a bit to get the next one. If you hated the first one you didn’t buy the next. In total, all of them together cost a bit more than a novel would have.
Love the mini-book idea, first because it will be written by Joe and second because I love dives into the history of the game. As for maybe missing out on more words for the four baseball awards, this might be.a year where they could be reasonably covered in a single blog. Let's face it, the MVP and Cy Young awards appear to lack drama. As for MOY and ROY awards, they are pretty much meh to readers who don't have a candidate in the race (and exactly what is the criteria for MOY anyway?). I would probably vote for the Royals manager in the AL if I could remember his name which demonstrates my meh level. Probably would pick Dave Roberts in the NL but it comes to mind that I would be voting based solely on what I saw in the playoffs and not anything done in the regular season.
Anything that Joe writes I will consider. However...I'm not a fan of subscriptions and that's mostly because of financial circumstances. I don't/can't commit to everything that I'd like to read and I also don't want to take out subscriptions only to then have to cancel them.
The joy of JoeBlogs for me is that whilst you rarely know what you're gonna get subject-wise, you can be assured of high quality, entertaining writing on a near-daily basis.
Guess what I'm saying is that if there are only two options - subscribe or miss out - I'd be compelled to take the second option. If there exists the option to buy each mini-book separately, I'm sure I'd make an occasional purchase.
I'm somewhat in the same boat. I control it by limiting my subscriptions. Joe Blogs is my only blog and Disney Plus is my only only streaming service (grandkids love it and it has more content (Marvel, Pixar, Star Wars, etc) than I can consume.
Gavvy Gravath - premier slugger with numbers that confused his time - low average high power
Ruth broke his records for HRs
Franklin Adams (Tinker to Evers etc author) once did an early version of OPs+ by comparing Gravath power numbers with his low average to league batting title winner showing how Gravath more productive
Watermark Books, Joe! Love it. Our family lived on Pershing Ave. when we were in Wichita. Literally one street over and Watermark was an absolute favorite. So glad you will be at this amazing bookstore.
I look forward to your first Joevella!
I have always thought Ortiz and Pat Smear resemble each other a little bit.
Very excited you're coming to Watermark. I will be there! Might bring my son, too. If you need someone to "discuss" the book with, I'm available.
I love this idea! Would definitely pay for it.
Hey Joe, thanks for another great column. I'm looking forward to the mini books. I just finished (today)"Why We Love Baseball". I bought it before it was published, but I Have A.D.D. and procrastination (among other things) gets in the way.
I loved the book, but I saw a typo you may have already heard about In the Greatest Moments chapter for each team. You wrote the Pirates moment was Willie Stargell's home run in the 1978 series. It was hit in the '79 Series. Yanks beat the Dodgers in '78.
Less frequent, more in-depth stories is my dream JoeBlogs. I can get daily articles on sports anywhere, I'm here for the what I can't no longer get elsewhere: great, detailed stories about sports. And Joe is the best at those.
Speaking of rabbit holes, I recall that Charles Dickens used to publish new novels in serialized form. By this I mean he would send subscribers several chapters at a time on a monthly basis. Each release would include illustrations and an advertising section which helped raise even more money. Subscribers would receive a title page with the last installment and would often then take the total installments to a book binder to be bound as a single volume. A novel might be broken into twenty separate mailings. Joe is proposing to honor that tradition, (whether he knows it or not).albeit in a shorter time period with fewer installments.
So Dickens would have had a Patreon account?
For young people today perhaps. For people my age (77) more like a book of the month membership. Yes, they sent complete books, but they were also set up to send you a selection of the month automatically if you didn't submit your own selection choice timely. I suppose the Dickens model was run for him by his publishers.
Love the mini book idea! Kind of like a novella? Or maybe you could do it like the old Serial story style. Stephen King did that when he wrote The Green Mile. Each copy was sold separately, and you had to wait a bit to get the next one. If you hated the first one you didn’t buy the next. In total, all of them together cost a bit more than a novel would have.
Whatever it is, I’m in.
Love the mini-book idea, first because it will be written by Joe and second because I love dives into the history of the game. As for maybe missing out on more words for the four baseball awards, this might be.a year where they could be reasonably covered in a single blog. Let's face it, the MVP and Cy Young awards appear to lack drama. As for MOY and ROY awards, they are pretty much meh to readers who don't have a candidate in the race (and exactly what is the criteria for MOY anyway?). I would probably vote for the Royals manager in the AL if I could remember his name which demonstrates my meh level. Probably would pick Dave Roberts in the NL but it comes to mind that I would be voting based solely on what I saw in the playoffs and not anything done in the regular season.
KC manager is "Q" to his friends.
You mean the guy that makes all those great gadgets for James Bond? I'd definitely vote for him.
Ha! I haven't watched a James Bond movie since Sean Connery but I'll take your word for it. He's got my vote.
You have good taste sir. After Sean Connery left the franchise, the new films are better described as James Bond Lite.
Anything that Joe writes I will consider. However...I'm not a fan of subscriptions and that's mostly because of financial circumstances. I don't/can't commit to everything that I'd like to read and I also don't want to take out subscriptions only to then have to cancel them.
The joy of JoeBlogs for me is that whilst you rarely know what you're gonna get subject-wise, you can be assured of high quality, entertaining writing on a near-daily basis.
Guess what I'm saying is that if there are only two options - subscribe or miss out - I'd be compelled to take the second option. If there exists the option to buy each mini-book separately, I'm sure I'd make an occasional purchase.
I'm somewhat in the same boat. I control it by limiting my subscriptions. Joe Blogs is my only blog and Disney Plus is my only only streaming service (grandkids love it and it has more content (Marvel, Pixar, Star Wars, etc) than I can consume.
mini-books? love the idea, maybe you could call them 'nonfiction novelas?
I have an idea for the title: "Juan González won the 1998 AL MVP, even tho he ranked 22nd in FanGraphs WAR: a novella".
A discussion of what the word “valuable” means (or should mean or doesn’t mean) could encompass 500 pages just by itself. Can’t wait to read it.
Better hurry, Noam Chomsky is 95.
Gavvy Gravath - premier slugger with numbers that confused his time - low average high power
Ruth broke his records for HRs
Franklin Adams (Tinker to Evers etc author) once did an early version of OPs+ by comparing Gravath power numbers with his low average to league batting title winner showing how Gravath more productive
So Joe's going to post mini-books here?
And that's different from normal JoeBlogs how?
I'm guess it will be Here's the Title I came up with, Part I, followed by Part II the next day and so on and so on.