You do your best as your parent. You try to keep your kids safe and smart… and then they grow up and pay you back by laughing at your laughable attempts at smoking a joint when all you were trying to do is get into their world. Oh, the kids and their weeds.
Fortunately, I had access to the wonderful Mskindness Ramirez, a cannabis advocate and educator, who’s made a name and reputation by talking about the subject and substance without “demonizing or glamorizing.”
I sat down with her, and my daughter Madison, and she showed us how to roll, safely light and efficiently smoke a joint. We also found out that she thinks Nickelback is just horrible, so you know she’s all right.
I, who am not rich — a fact made clear as I finished doing my taxes this weekend; my initial relief at getting to skip multiple steps soon tempered by the realization that all of those steps were related to the making or having or saving or investing of money — was invited to one of those things that rich people love to do: throw parties before, during and after sporting events for the purposes of community/fun/ongoing business relationships. Read more
Imagine what Jackie Robinson could have accomplished in his messaging with modern-day media platforms. “It would have been amazing,” Doug Glanville says. “He was a prolific letter writer to start with — but he really was viral before there was viral, even with just the traditional media outlets covering him.”The 48-year-old former MLB outfielder in his latest role at ESPN considers himself to be a media multitasker, thanks to his “crash course in every way one can express ideas.” He’s also thankful to be back as part of the network’s litany of Jackie Robinson Day remembrances on Monday — including L.A. receiving the national coverage of the Dodgers-Reds contest at Dodger Stadium that will include Rachel Robinson and two of her children. Read more
By Tom Hoffarth
First off, behold a shelf of baseball books above from the magnificent Austin Public Library, on Cesar Chavez Blvd., right along the Colorado River in Austin, Tex. We were there on business recently and did the tour of this famed book depository to see what it had stocked. Aside from the architectural beauty of it, there was a beauty of a baseball book collection on the sixth floor (learn your Dewey Decimal system, folks … or at least Google it).
Seriously, as cool as Austin is, the library is one of its best secrets.
So …
What’s old is often new in baseball’s annual rite of literary passage each spring. It’s never shy of more rewrites.
To get a clear read on why book publishers put on their straw hat and usher back Major League Baseball with dozens of new titles, note that all sorts of revisionist history, personality-driven essays or bios that exhume new previously untold info resonate best with those who’ve endured a long, cold winter. Same with anything that takes good-natured digs to keep America’s Pastime part of the pop culture conversation.
Our weekly L.A. Times sports media column starts off April 1 without trying to fool anyone: We’ve got some quick-hit reviews on more than a half-dozen new baseball books out this spring (and coming up).
During the entire month of April on FartherOffTheWall.com, we revive our annual baseball book review, one a day, and will update this post with the growing list.
Check out our entrance velocity: * April 1: “Great American Baseball Stories,” edited by Jeff Silverman; “The Great American Sports Page: A Century of Classic Columns from Ring Lardner to Sally Jenkins,” edited by John Schulian, and “No Place I Would Rather Be: Roger Angell and a Life in Baseball Writing,” by Joe Bonomo * April 2: “Game Faces: Early Baseball Cards from Library of Congress” by Peter Devereaux and “Baseball Card Vandals: Over 200 Decent Jokes on Worthless Cards!” by brothers Beau and Bryan Abbott of @bsblcardvandals * April 3: “Now Taking The Field: Baseball’s All Time Dream Teams for All 30 Franchises,” by Tom Stone. * April 4: “Shohei Ohtani: The Amazing Story of Baseball’s Two-Way Japanese Superstar, by Jay Paris * April 5: “Here’s the Pitch: The Amazing, True, New, and Improved Story of Baseball and Advertising,” by Roberta J. Newman * April 6: “Mrs. Morhard and The Boys: One Mother’s Vision … The First Boys’ Baseball League … A Nation Inspired,” by Ruth Hansford Morhard * April 7: “Scouting And Scoring: How We Know What We Know About Baseball,” by Christopher J. Phillips * April 8: “They Bled Blue: Fernandomania, Strike-Season Mayhem, and the Weirdest Championship Baseball Had Ever Seen: The 1981 Los Angeles Dodgers,” by Jason Turnbow (you’ll have to wait until June) * April 9: “108 Stitches: Loose Threads, Ripping Yarns, and the Darndest Characters from My Time in the Game,” by Ron Darling, with Daniel Paisner * April 10: “K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches,” by Tyler Kepner * April 11: “Pastime Lost: The Humble, Original and Now Completely Forgotten Game of English Baseball,” by David Block * April 12: “Strike Four: The Evolution of Baseball” by Richard Hershberger * April 13: “Unwritten: Bat Flips, the Fun Police and Baseball’s New Future,” by Danny Knobler * April 14: “Let’s Play Two: The Legend of Mr. Cub, the Life of Ernie Banks” by Ron Rapoport and “Let’s Play Two: The Life and Times of Ernie Banks” by Doug Wilson * April 15: “Reclaiming 42: Public Memory and the Reframing of Jackie Robinson’s Radical Legacy” by David Naze
A break in between all this to get in some TV exposure via Spectrum News 1’s “L.A. Times Today” show with Lisa McRee:
* April 16: “The Untold Story: Fidel Castro and Baseball” by Peter C. Bjarkman and “Last Seasons in Havana: The Castro Revolution and the End of Professional Baseball in Cuba” by Cesar Brioso * April 17: “The Game of Eating Smart: Nourishing Recipes for Peak Performance Inspired by MLB Superstars” by Julia Loria and Allen Campbell * April 18: “Edgar: An Autobiography” by Edgar Martinez, with Larry Stone * April 19: “Baseball Epic: Famous and Forgotten Lives of the Dead Ball Era” with words and pictures by Jason Novak * April 20: “They Played The Game: Memories from 47 Major Leaguers” by Norman L. Macht * April 21: “Ballpark: Baseball in the American City” by Paul Goldberger * April 22: “Inside the Empire: The True Power Behind the New York Yankees” by Bob Klapish and Paul Solotaroff (along with “Chumps to Champs: How the Worst Teams in Yankees History Led to the ‘90s Dynasty,” by Bill Pennington; “Almost Yankees: The Summer of ’81 and the Greatest Baseball Team You’ve Never Heard Of,” by J. David Herman; “Mantle: The Best There Ever Was,” by Tony Castro; “My Dad, Yogi: A Memoir of Family and Baseball by Dale Berra; and “Doc, Donnie, the Kid, and Billy Brawl: How the 1985 Mets and Yankees Fought for New York’s Baseball Soul” by Chris Donnelly * April 23: “Ten Innings at Wrigley: The Wildest Ballgame Ever, with Baseball on the Brink” by Kevin Cook * April 24: “The Legendary Harry Caray: Baseball’s Greatest Salesman” by Don Zmida * April 25: “They Said It Couldn’t Be Done: The ’69 Mets, New York City, and the Most Astounding Season in Baseball History” by Wayne Coffey; “After the Miracle: The Lasting Brotherhood of the ’69 Mets” by Art Shamsky with Erik Sherman; “Here’s the Catch: A Memoir of the Miracle Mets and More” by Ron Swoboda; “The Miracle of 1969: How the New York Mets Went from Lovable Losers to World Series Champions” by Coutinho Rich * April 26: “Full Count: The Education of a Pitcher” by David Cone with Jack Curry * April 27: “Left on Base in the Bush Leagues: Legends, Near Greats and Unknowns in the Minors” by Gaylon H. White * April 28: “For the Good of the Game: The Inside story of the Surprising and Dramatic Transformation of Major League Baseball” by Bud Selig with Phil Rogers and “Play Hungry: The Making of a Baseball Player” by Pete Rose * April 29: “When the Crowd Didn’t Roar: How Baseball’s Strangest Game Ever Gave a Broken City Hope” by Kevin Cowherd * April 30: “Infinite Baseball: Notes from a Philosopher at the Ballpark” by Alva Noe
By Tom Hoffarth
Park yourself in Candace Parker’s chair.
Six nights in a row from the Turner Sports studio in Atlanta, the Sparks’ star forward runs the wing for hours of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament coverage, launching on-the-fly commentary as required.
It’s a blur to keep up with whether a game is starting, ending or at halftime, or if it’s a hit for TBS, TNT or TruTV, not to mention paying attention to the CBS monitor. It’s about interacting with and reacting to studio cohorts Casey Stern, Seth Davis, Brendan Haywood and a rotation of current coaches.
By Tom Hoffarth
There was a good 20-year run when we presented the “Best and Worst of the L.A. Sports Media” rankings, at several Southern California media publications, during the 1990s and 2000s. It likely reached it shark-jump moment/let’s give it a breather decision at least five years ago. I could look it all up, but there’s no need to be specific.
Specifically, there has been enough changes – additions and subtractions, with teams and broadcasters and media outlets – to revive it.
Who do you believe the top play-by-play person is in Los Angeles? The worst game analyst? The most effective studio host/sideline reporter? Does anyone watch local TV sports updates any more to have an opinion? And, what often draws the most attention because it leads to immediate debate, what’s left to listen to on local sports talk radio, aside from some national shows that seem to make up half the programming wheels?
We’ve collected input from readers, insiders, and the voices themselves, and come up with this — a lists that continues to a work in progress. The lists were posted last week, one each day, but here is the album of the greatest hits, along with new artwork from Jim Thompson:
* The Sports Talk Radio Hosts: No. 1 – Petros Papadakis
* The Local TV Anchors/Reporters: No. 1 — Curt Sandoval
* The Team-Related Cable TV Anchors/Reporters:No. 1 — Patrick O’Neal
* The Play-by-Play Voices:No. 1 — Brian Sieman
* The Game Analysts:No. 1 — Jim Fox
Go ahead and post your comments … paying particular attention to those who bottomed out and the reasons why. Thanks to those who have made comments already. Read more
The Long Beach Post has an exclusive piece posted about the possibility of the Angels pulling out of Anaheim and relocating to the Long Beach downtown waterfront, possibly as soon as 2021.
“We are in the early stages of our due diligence and are exploring a variety of options for this property,” Mayor Robert Garcia confirmed in a statement Monday evening. “We have approached the Angels to express our interest and discuss the possibilities of this opportunity.”
The Angels declined to respond.
There are certainly a lot of reasons to believe an Angels move will never happen. Long Beach has often been used not only by teams but all manner of other entities—Disney, Tesla—in attempts to get better deals elsewhere.
But there is one big reason to believe this time will be different. The decision as to whether the team relocates will be made by one person: Arte Moreno. And what we know of the Angels owner—though not nearly as much as we know about owners who are more comfortable chasing the spotlight—suggests some good things for Long Beach. Read more at this LBPost.com link …
By Tom Hoffarth
Bryant Gumbel has banked enough professional equity and personal knowledge about the TV business to acknowledge that, even with the smallest trace of humor, he hesitates drawing any attention to the fact HBO’s “Real Sports” has already started its 25th season.
“The reality is HBO is considered a cutting-edge network,” said the “Real Sports” host and lead reporter as he drove to the premium channel’s New York studios Saturday morning to do voice-over work on a piece about two extreme athletes racing across Antarctica that will be part of Tuesday’s Episode No. 263.
“But there is a part of me that, I might want us to slip under the radar because someone might turn around and say, ‘Wait a minute, you’re not what we do now.’”
If HBO ever pulled the plug on this, there would be some investigative reporting done by someone to find out why. Let’s not even go there.
The weekly L.A. Times sports media piece has posted.
Here is a video clip of Tuesday’s episode Gumbel did with two extreme athletes who raced across Antarctica recently. Because they wanted to? Read more
Ann Meyers Drysdale wasn’t an accidental broadcaster when she pivoted from a ground-breaking Basketball Hall of Fame playing career in the 1970s and ’80s, looking for a meaningful way to stay involved in the sport.
Her dedication has brought more Hall of Fame recognition. The Southern California Sports Broadcasters organization, which has included three dozen men in its Hall of Fame since founder Tom Harmon was first recognized in 1992, will give Meyers Drysdale another historic embrace with her inclusion in its Jan. 28 ceremony at Lakeside Country Club in Toluca Lake.
“Honestly, I never imagined something like this, and it’s important to me to be grateful for so many who have opened doors for me, many without me even knowing about it,” Meyers Drysdale said during a break in a four-game trip she took with NBA’s Phoenix Suns as a Fox Sports Arizona analyst.
By Tom Hoffarth
We had the pleasure of reminiscing with Tony Petitti and Rob McGlarry about the first 10 years of the MLB Network’s existence — it launched on Jan. 1, 2009, with a record 50 million homes that could access it. The result is a post this week at The Hollywood Reporter.
There was no crying in their baseball remembrances. Only a lot of laughs and memories of the many highs that came from becoming the fourth of the four major sports leagues to put up their own 24/7 cable channel. Read more
We were there on business recently and did the tour of this famed book depository to see what it had stocked. Aside from the architectural beauty of it, there was a beauty of a baseball book collection on the sixth floor (learn your Dewey Decimal system, folks … or at least Google it).
* April 1:
* April 2:
* April 7: 
* April 10:
* April 12: 
* April 17:
* April 19: 
* April 23: 
* April 24:
* April 29: 
The Drill 