Late-night learning

 

Since the start of the year I have been trying to focus on two of my "if it happens, it happens" resolutions. Those two things are to read more books and work on improving my sleep.

I work a night job. I often don't get done with work until midnight or 1, 2 in the morning. This is tough on sleep because, as you know, you need to unwind after a work shift -- or at least most people do. For day-shifters, that's easy, they unwind in the evening time, lots of hours before bed. But for me, my unwind time is confined to a couple hours late at night.

I've often spent it online, wandering the card blogs or watching videos or just reading stuff. But staring at backlit screens before bed isn't good for sleep. So to hit both resolutions at once, an hour before turning in, I shut off my devices and read a book. It's worked pretty well so far (when the cat isn't acting up) and my sleep improved almost instantly.

The first book I'm reading (I have a whole shelf filled with stuff just dying for years to be read) is what I received for Christmas, the New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract.

 

 

Bill James is a bit of a controversial figure these days (well, I guess he's always been controversial). Much like other baseball titans of my younger times -- James, Costas, Gammons -- they've become targets for derision, whether it's due to how their thoughts have aged, or how fame has affected them or just that they're getting old. But back in the early '80s, I couldn't wait to get my hands on Bill James' yearly baseball abstracts -- I still remember each year of the softcover editions -- the white cover, then the green, then the blue.

His different way of looking at stats and how to measure players and teams was fascinating to me. As someone who doesn't absorb numbers as well as I do words, a lot of his statistical formulas flew over my head -- they still do. But I enjoyed his writing and seeing overlooked players lauded. His irreverent approach (he just hammered on Sparky Anderson) appealed to me as a young teenager and I liked the combination of the informative and the amusing.

Those abstracts disappeared off my book shelves a long time ago and I didn't think of James for a long time, totally missing his first Historical Abstract and just plain not caring.

I'm on page 166 of this 934-page book. I haven't even gotten to the player evaluations, which is the brunt of the book. I'm enjoying the decade-by-decade reviews right now and am at the 1930s.

More than 45 years later reading James -- and now a veteran editor myself -- his writing feels odd to me. There is a lot of extra stuff in there that doesn't need to be in there and several joking sentences that either aren't funny or not explained well enough (I can see why he gets himself into trouble). But it doesn't affect the informative stories he tells in the book.

Anything before the 1950s in baseball is fairly new to me. I know mostly just the basics -- big stars, World Series champions, famous moments. But I couldn't tell you when pitchers started scuffing up balls or that baseball's word for "fans" developed through several other words first. I love seeing a decade explained through various stories, names, places and incidents. How did Babe Ruth get so famous? There was a reason underneath all the home runs. (Also it was interesting to read the number of players who were kicked out of the game for gambling -- makes me wonder in the current age if history will repeat itself).

 

Last night I was reading about minor league teams in the 1930s, specifically about the Salisbury (Md.) Indians Class D club of 1937, who was saddled with an 0-26 mark after starting the year 21-5 due to allegedly using an illegal  player. Salisbury, from dead last, went 59-11 the rest of the season and won the pennant.

 

This interested me so much that I wanted to add a card to my collection of one of the players on that team. Few of them ever played in the majors though. Most of the stars just got one game with the Washington Senators. But Mike Guerra, the catcher, played in one game, then returned to the minors, then came back to the majors as a backup catcher. Guerra was from Cuba and had quite a history in baseball.

 

 

I just bought his 1950 Bowman card.

 

There's another interesting minor league guy, Frank Shellenback, who James considers maybe the best minor league pitcher ever. Shellenback is all over the Zee Nuts sets as a Pacific Coast League star, but I doubt I'll chase that. I'm not into the look of Zee Nuts or most pre-1940s cards.  

I've said many times on this blog that I don't have a big interest in cards from before the 1950s because I just don't feel a connection to that time, even with all the great stories and characters. As you can see, reading a book late at night and learning, my interest is growing a little (I can hear folks like Nick and Jason chanting "one of us!").

But I doubt it will morph into more than a card here and a card there. I'm having way too much fun with '50s through '80s pursuits, plus some modern stuff, to dive fully into pre-war or anything like that.

 

So that's what I've been doing in the late-night hours of January in the year 2025. Fascinating stuff, huh? 

You'll get there, youngsters. It can't always be TikTok videos and hot rookies.