Here it is, ladies and gents, the very first step in what I am sure will become a card blogosphere-wide phenomenon. The rules again for those might have missed my last post: to play, all you need to do is leave a comment below. If you mention the contest on your blog or via twitter, leave a link below and you will get an extra entry. The cut-off will be Wednesday, June 28 at 10 pm central time. I'll do a randomizer list and the person in the first spot wins their choice of the three books below. I'll mail you the book and all you need to do in return is to set up the same type of give-away on your blog. You can vary the method of picking a winner or the number of books offered however you please, but you gotta offer up a sports or hobby-related book you adore. Then, the winner of that book will do the same and so on and so on and so on.
UPDATE: So, it occurred to me just after posting this, but it might be a de-facto requirement of any winner to have their own card blog. I imagine you could also do a book give-away on twitter, as well. Just so long as you have a means of doing your own give-away that is open to the card collecting community, that'll work.
Easy enough, eh?
THE BOOKS:
Mint Condition: How Baseball Cards Became an American Obsession, by Dave Jamieson.
A thorough and lively history of trading cards from the earliest tobacco issues to the modern-day obsession with grading, this is a book I got for Christmas and absolutely tore through. I think I finished it in less than two days. With Pete Williams' Card Sharks and O'Keefe & Thompson's The Card, it is one of the three indispensable books on the history of the hobby.
Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy, by Jane Leavy
One of the better baseball bios I've read in some time (the Ben Cramer book on DiMaggio and Leerhsen's Ty Cobb might be the two best), this book does a great job to get inside one of the game's most illusive characters.
The Pine Tar Game: The Kansas City Royals, the New York Yankees, and Baseball's Most Absurd and Entertaining Controversy, by Filip Bondy
And in-depth and very entertaining look at the famous George Brett pine tar game, tracing the many fascinating people involved in the incident and the sorta-now-forgotten rivalry of the Royals and Yankees. It's another quick read, but very worth while.
So there you have it. Go crazy, folks.
So I've had it in my head lately to try some kind of BIG FUN type game here at the Summer of '74. But, to be honest, I don't really have the card backstock (or the money for postage) to put on anything that would be worthwhile to the participant. I also the idea to do
something involving baseball books - as I have quite a backstock of
those. But again, shipping costs made me a bit wary. So I put some brain on coming up with a new kind of contest and - behold and lo - it came to me while walking back home from Goodwill, where I had just scored FIVE awesome binders.
So here's the idea - I will post a sports or hobby-related book tomorrow and give it away via some kind of to-be-determined contest. The only requirement of the winner will be to post a favorite sports/hobby book from their own shelves and give it away in a similar manner... the winner of that required to do the same thing. And on and on and on this will (hopefully) go, with bloggers getting to check out great books for nothing more than the cost of a media mail stamp. And hey, if you wanna throw in a few cards appropriate to the topic of the book or the nature of the winner, go right ahead, you crazy SOB! If you wanna hijack this idea and start your own give-away, go ahead and do that, too. The more balls in play, the better.
I've decided to call it the "FUN-AT-TIME BOOK CHAIN!" I immediately apologize for coming up with such a stupid name.
So, check back tomorrow when I'll post something that I really enjoyed and get the whole thing started!
