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Some Call It Progress: Ron Kaplan Reviews Two Books That Look at Baseball Under a New Microscope

One hundred years ago, newspapers were the only way to get information about your favorite baseball stars and teams. Then radio came along and gave fans a new way to enjoy the game. At first, team owners opposed the new medium, fearful that they would lose paying customers. They were shortsighted; the air waves allowed the national pastime to extend far beyond the limits of local travel.

Similar complaints were made when television became widely available. Why would people come out to the ballpark when they could watch for nothing from the comfort of their own homes? Again, shortsighted.

The point of this recap? Old doesn’t mean better, and new isn’t necessarily something to be afraid of.

Week of March 22, 2021

Paperback releases for the week of March 22nd include THE NIGHT WATCHMAN, a powerful novel based on the extraordinary life of National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich’s grandfather, who worked as a night watchman and carried the fight against Native dispossession from rural North Dakota all the way to Washington, D.C.; THE BOOK OF LONGINGS by Sue Monk Kidd, an inspiring account of one woman's bold struggle to realize the passion and potential inside her, while living in a time, place and culture devised to silence her; THE SECOND LIFE OF TIGER WOODS, in which Michael Bamberger --- who has covered Tiger Woods since the golfer was an amateur --- draws upon his deep network of sources inside locker rooms, caddie yards, clubhouses, fitness trailers and back offices to tell the true and inspiring story of the legend’s second act; and HERE'S THE CATCH, right fielder Ron Swoboda's account of the Mets' amazing 1969 season, the people he played with and against (sometimes at the same time), and what life was like as an Every Man ballplayer.