Preface for SIXTY-EIGHT

I think this new book will open something like this:

What if we could distill all that we know, what we truly believe, down to a few memorable moments, snippets of motion, short stories set in a particular time or year? When we’re discussing the year 1968 – a period of great upheaval, clamor and divisiveness -- that may be only true approach.

Rsearch on Sixty-Eight

The two teams that met in the 1968 World Series -- the Detroit Tigers and St. Louis Cardinals -- were among the most racially diverse institutions in the land at the time. Willie "the Wonder" Horton was among them. The Tigers' outfielder grew up in the Detroit projects and tried to stop the riots in the Motor City in the summer of 1967.
I asked him recently how he was able to play at such a high level despite rioting and assassinations going throughout the country. He replied, "I didn't go away from home."
I said that was impossible. Ballclubs play have of their games on the road, sometimes spending weeks away from home.
Horton smiled and told me about how he went out of his way to make good friends in every American League city the Tigers visited. Good enough friends that he could have dinner with them, even bunk out on the couch in their homes.
"In that way, I was never away from home," he told me.
The year 1968 was a difficult time in our country's history. But how some of the top athletes of that time persevered can still be a lesson today.

Pitching's 'kinetic chain'

I discovered how troublesome this could be on my trip to Dr. James Andrews' bio-mechanics lab in researching High Heat. Stephen Strasburg, I feel your pain.

High Heat in PW10

Publisher's Weekly named High Heat one of its Top 10 sports titles for this spring. Here's the blurb from PW:
For the hard stuff, Tim Wendel's High Heat: The Secret History of the Fastball and the Improbable Search for the Fastest Pitcher of All Time might suffice. It's as much about hard science as putting mustard on the ball. David Maraniss calls it "brilliantly executed."
To the left is the new cover for the trade paperback edition, due out in March.

Publisher's Weekly item

Da Capo editor Jonathan Crowe acquired two sports books, one on baseball and the other on golf. Crowe took North American rights to Johns Hopkins professor Tim Wendel's Sixty-Eight: The Year of the Pitcher—When Baseball Saved America from Chris Park at Foundry Literary + Media. Wendel focuses on that eponymous season when, thanks to things like a bigger strike zone, pitchers began to dominate the game. The baseball season is then set against what Da Capo called "one of the most divisive and turbulent years in American history." Crowe also bought world rights to The Magnificent Masters.