Brush Brush Here, Brush Brush There....

That squeezy sound you heard was me shoe-horning a moment into my busy work week to finally affix an award onto my electronic wall, courtesy of Lisa Gibson at Random Thoughts to String Together. (Thanks, Lisa!)

Like many of these awards, it comes with no financial prize, no guarantee of a bump in readership, and, despite my repeated requests, no suspension of the rules of space and time. Given the state of the economy, the need to show advertisers how you are growing your readership, and the coolness aspect of suspending time, you may wonder why any self-respecting writer would accept such accolades. Of course, we writers already know the answer to that: We have no self respect. If we did, we'd never share the painful pieces of our personality with readers who may end up on our doorstep and scream, "Finally, someone understands me!"

Just kidding, of course. (And no, I have no advertisers that I communicate with for this blog. Even I don't completely care about growing my readership via ads just yet.)

I'm posting this because I like what Lisa does on her blog and because I like helping other writers.

But wait, there's more!

The award also comes with a few tasks. I don't think I'll fall into a deep abyss should I fail to accomplish one or two of these tasks, but I'll list them for one and all anyway.

I'm required to:
1) Thank and link back to the person who gave you this award. (Check!)

2) Share 7 things about yourself.

3) Pass the award along to 15 bloggers who you have recently discovered and who you think are fantastic for whatever reason! (In no particular order...)

4) Contact the bloggers you've picked and let them know about the award.

So, let me try this. Hmmmmmm, seven things about. Well, I'm a Pisces and like long walks in the dark..... Nah, that's not helpful.

2.1) I trace my love of writing to falling in love with music and lyrics; I made up songs while walking to and from kindergarten
2.2) I have loved elephants since childhood.
2.3) I'm a registered Democrat, despite my love of elephants
2.4) I learned to read in the summer between pre-school and kindergarten, when I couldn't get my family to read The Elephant's Child by Rudyard Kipling often enough.
2.5) I've played baseball at least as long as I've made up songs and stories
2.6) I created a wiffleball team to compete with my brother, who loved turtles. My team: The New York Elephants.
2.7) If I'd realized my dream of becoming a major league baseball player, I still would have become a writer. I know this as certainly as I know that Heaven has baseball fields.

As for numbers 3 and 4, I'm going to have to get back to that. Lisa and I know several of the same bloggers, so that might seem like overkill. Then there's the chain-letter aspect of this request. Of course, Lisa didn't say anything about cute kittens or puppies dying or babies going without diaper rash ointment should I fail in my appointed quest, so I suspect I'll be ok. But then those faithful readers who stop by might not learn about other writers, as I'm learning from Lisa's list.

I'm pretty sure I can add three or four to the list and will do so soon. I promise.

Once again, thanks Lisa, and thanks to everyone else for reading this far.

Fantasyland by Sam Walker

I just finished reading Fantasyland by Sam Walker, and as a result I'm starting to plan for the upcoming fantasy baseball season. Any baseball fan will enjoy it, not because of the Rotisserie baseball action that it describes but because it is funny and uplifting and discloses the heroism present in ordinary people.

Walker is a writer for the Wall Street Journal and he had never played Rotisserie baseball before. But he was able to finagle his way into the Tout Wars expert league, which is widely regarded as one of the toughest leagues out there. For those who aren't aware, fantasy baseball has become a billion-dollar industry with numerous Web sites, books, and magazines targeting a largely male market.

Walker describes how he gets into the league and his objectives -- to win, obviously, but more importantly he thinks that his access to the actual players he drafts onto his team and acquires through trades as well as to the executives who run and amass the real teams will give him a distinct advantage over his opponents, who are armed primarily with statistics.

And Oh, the statistics! To his credit, Walker does not bog the book down with endless streams of numbers. Rather he describes the salient ones for the book's audience, backs things up with conversations with the actual players (many of whom disregard the predictions and dismiss them as missing the point), and shows how overwhelming and seductive the numbers can be for those who think they can use them to divine the future. There are moments where it reminded me of the movie Pi in that regard.

Walker hires a couple of guys to help him in this venture -- a statistician who works for NASA full time, and a guy who becomes completely immersed in the minutiae of baseball -- and even gets a beautiful model to videotape the draft as a way to try to distract his competition.

Then the book traces the rest of the 2004 season. Only toward the end would the non-baseball fan learn that the Red Sox won the World Series, their first in eighty-six years, because the standings that get listed are not the ones a casual fan would read in the sports pages but rather the standings of the Tout Warriors.

I expect baseball fans would laugh out loud throughout much of this book -- I know I did -- and the wives of fantasy baseball team managers would probably also appreciate this peek into the world of the maniacs they married.

However, Walker also does an admirable job of showing the real lives of baseball players. There's a wonderful chat on a New York Subway train with the parents of Pokey Reese, and I'll always hold Jacque Jones (pictured above) in high regard. He is a classy man. Read the book and you'll see why.

Book stores

I'm a baseball fan -- born and bred. I've seen a game at nearly every National League town and several American League cities, too. But I have another hobby/passion. Books. I've always written and read, but it's nice to spend some quality alone time in a book store, amid the scents of ink, leather, and paper.

The other day, the New York Times ran a travel story for literature buffs. I haven't been too even a small sampling of the stores outside of New York city. But I now have a new goal: to visit the most interesting independent book stores in each city I visit while away on business. Of course, if there's a baseball game in town, I might have to go to the stadium first, but I could handle this.

Still Reading

For the few (if any) readers who visit here, do not despair. I'm still reading as voraciously as usual. But I've been reading a lot of nonfiction lately, and have been uninspired (and time-constrained) to write creatively about it. I believe that will change very soon -- perhaps as early as this coming weekend. I'm reading Hitting Into the Wind by Bill Meissner. It's a baseball book, which helps me concentrate and relax. Last week, I finished Homer's Iliad, and before that I was steeped in a book about Krakotoa. While I've also read some short stories and novels, I've also been unable to catch up to my own personal writing. Stay tuned, dear reader. I will report back.