THE AMERICAN PASTIME

It's time to get up for the best sport in the world.

Yes, hope springs eternal in Major League Baseball, and in the 1948 book Batter Up hope even leads to history. Marty Shane is a very good college player who becomes a mediocre minor leaguer, but through hard work and conquering various obstacles he eventually becomes a major leaguer, and plays a key role in his team’s championship season. The story is the standard mythology of professional athletics anywhere in the world, written basically for teens, but in such a way that adults can enjoy it too. The cover art is by Robert Frankenberg, and inside and on the rear you get more illustrations from him.

Baseball is a polarizing sport, isn’t it? The on-the-field action can seem slow. But that’s an illusion—the actual changing nature of the strategies is constant, occurring from pitch to pitch, and often between pitches. Pitching, batting, running, and defensive strategies differ each second, with constant influence from both the players on the field and the manager in the dugout. That’s one reason the game is great—it’s chess-like, but on a level that anyone can understand. If they’re inclined, that is.

Many people, particularly younger people, aren’t especially inclined. Major League Baseball is poised to change the rules of the game in an attempt to draw more young viewers. Will they never learn? Chasing corporate advertising dollars, the league sacrificed young viewers thirty years ago when it moved toward mostly night games, making it much

more difficult for kids to attend games in person. The easiest way to ensure fresh generations of fans is to simply return to day games, including during the week, but instead they’re contemplating a radical reworking of the rules to entice “low attention span” viewers.

A daytime baseball game has to compete with no other sporting event—there’s literally nothing else occurring on a spring afternoon. These day games are how we got hooked—2:30 p.m. start time, sitting there with our fathers, first appreciating the fun environment, and then the action. During a spring night or on a weekend there are other sports choices, and those will remain more superficially interesting no matter what changes are made to baseball’s rules. What rule change, after all, can make baseball more exciting moment to moment than say basketball, whose season runs all the way through June? Night games also end late, usually around 10:30, which keeps kids out until 11:00 or 11:30—too late for some parents.

Living overseas, we can’t attend baseball games. Instead we play fantasy baseball, and we’re pretty excited for the start of the MLB season today, having won our league twice in the last three years. Unfortunately, our draft didn’t go as well as we’d have liked this time around. But hope springs eternal indeed. And baseball spans the best season of the year—glorious, endless summer, which is lovely whether your team wins or loses. You may be wondering if baseball is in any way pulp. We think so, and we explain our reasoning here. And speaking of fantasy baseball, see below…

Comet Books, Jackson Scholz, Robert Frankenberg, cover art, literature

ABOUT

EMAIL

LEGAL

SEARCH PULP INTERNATIONAL

PULP INTL.
HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

January 18

1967—Boston Strangler Convicted

Albert DeSalvo, the serial killer who became known as the Boston Strangler, is convicted of murder and other crimes and sentenced to life in prison. He serves initially in Bridgewater State Hospital, but he escapes and is recaptured. Afterward he is transferred to federal prison where six years later he is killed by an inmate or inmates unknown.

January 17

1950—The Great Brinks Robbery Occurs

In the U.S., eleven thieves steal more than $2 million from an armored car company’s offices in Boston, Massachusetts. The skillful execution of the crime, with only a bare minimum of clues left at the scene, results in the robbery being billed as “the crime of the century.” Despite this, all the members of the gang are later arrested.

January 17

1977—Gary Gilmore Is Executed

Convicted murderer Gary Gilmore is executed by a firing squad in Utah, ending a ten-year moratorium on Capital punishment in the United States. Gilmore’s story is later turned into a 1979 novel entitled The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer, and the book wins the Pulitzer Prize for literature.

January 16

1942—Carole Lombard Dies in Plane Crash

American actress Carole Lombard, who was the highest paid star in Hollywood during the late 1930s, dies in the crash of TWA Flight 3, on which she was flying from Las Vegas to Los Angeles after headlining a war bond rally in support of America’s military efforts. She was thirty-three years old.

January 15

1919—Luxemburg and Liebknecht Are Killed

Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, two of the most prominent socialists in Germany, are tortured and murdered by the Freikorps. Freikorps was a term applied to various paramilitary organizations that sprang up around Germany as soldiers returned in defeat from World War I. Members of these groups would later become prominent members of the SS.

DON GIOVANNI

Giovanni Benvenuti was one of Italy's most prolific paperback cover artists. His unique style is on display in multiple collections within our website.

WALKING AFTER MIDNIGHT