On the road

No rest for the wicked. The first week of promoting High Heat opened with a reading at the Barnes & Noble in Alexandria. The manager there is my friend Brighid Moret and it was a fun evening.
From there, it was on to the Virginia Festival of the Book, where I joined Roland Lazenby (author of a great bio about Jerry West) and Arlynda Lee Boyer (author wild read Buddha on the Backstretch).
The interview with Bob Edwards aired on Sirus/XM (37 minutes long!) and I have one with NPR's Scott Simon coming up.
Thanks to everyone for the support.

AP review is a home run

Called it "a fascinating book..." By noon today the review had been picked up by 15-plus outlets, including Huffington Post.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20100315/us-book-review-high-heat/

Book Cheer from LJ

In Library Journal's new Book Cheer column, Chris Vaccari of Sterling Publishing ranks High Heat as one of the top titles for this spring.
"Is a great fastball about a state of mind, arm mechanics, or both?" he writes "No chin music here! High Heat will make you think."

Koufax in camp

Hall of Famer Sandy Koufax will make an appearance at the Dodgers' spring training camp as an instructor this week.
Perhaps he can be as beneficial for the club's young arms (Clayton Kershaw?) as ex-catcher Norm Sherry once was for him.
A half-century ago, at a spring training game in Orlando, Sherry convinced Koufax to take something off his fastball. Koufax's stuff was so electric he didn't need to overthrow to get batters out. That's how Koufax went from being a journeyman to a Hall of Famer. Yes, the transformation was that sudden and remains one of success stories in High Heat.
"With any of these great pitchers, the questions become, 'Can they harness their stuff? Can they pull together what's been given to them sufficiently to become great?'" says Jeff Torborg, who caught Koufax's perfect game in 1965.
Sherry agrees that "throwing fast is a God-given talent. That's for sure. But it's not like it's a present with all the bows."