Brad Balukjian, author of The Wax Pack: On the Open Road in Search of Baseball’s Afterlife discusses his cross-country journey to find players, great and obscure, of the 1980s and find out how they’re doing. Also bugs. Plus: Tales of ballplayers breaking curfew and a player really harmed by a Branch Rickey brainstorm.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Shufflin’ Phil and the Inevitability of the Broken Curfew*The Don Padgett Story*Brad Balukjian: Mutant insects and ballplayers*Lamarck is Vindicated? (Epigenetics)*The Now-Impossible Road Trip*The Cards You Didn’t Pull*“Life-WAR”*Even the Best Athletes Get Nervous*Ballplayers Have Damaged Families Too*The Personal vs. Heroic Approach*The Brad “Character”*Baseball, OCD, and the Instinctive Buddhism of the Old Timers*“Coffee Was My Companion”*A Visit with Don Carman*Clearing Up the Garry Templeton Incident*Dating an Entomologist*Goodbyes.
The Infinite Inning is not only about baseball but a state of mind. Steven Goldman, rotating cohosts Jesse Spector, Cliff Corcoran, and David Roth, and occasional guests discuss the game’s present, past, and future with forays outside the foul lines to the culture at large. Expect stats, anecdotes, digressions, explorations of writing and fandom, and more Casey Stengel quotations than you thought possible. Along the way, they’ll try to solve the puzzle that is the Infinite Inning: How do you find the joy in life when you can’t get anybody out?
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