{"id":476,"date":"2006-03-11T11:16:00","date_gmt":"2006-03-11T11:16:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2006-03-11T11:16:00","modified_gmt":"2006-03-11T11:16:00","slug":"weekend-stuff-and-more-on-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.calvertgames.com\/cgblog\/2006\/03\/11\/weekend-stuff-and-more-on-books\/","title":{"rendered":"Weekend Stuff (and More on Books)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The weekend got off to a good start, which a date night; my parents let the kids sleep over.  This gave Tonya and me a chance to have drinks with some friends, and some much need time alone.  It is always fun to have a lazy Saturday morning \u2013 breakfast at the ATL Bread Company (their vanilla nut coffee is to die for) while reading over the newspaper, followed by a shopping trip to the book store, and then a nice walk around the park.  Needless to say, date night is highly recommended!<\/p>\n<p>It seems like it has been book review central around here for me lately, and I do not see much of an end in site.  I started perusing through the \u201cBaseball Prospectus 2006,\u201d and earlier this week, \u201cThe Book:  Playing The Percentages In Baseball\u201d (Tom M. Tango, Mitchel G. Lichtman, and Andrew E. Dolphin) arrived in the mail, and just this morning I picked up \u201cSteal Away: Devotions for Baseball Fans\u201d by Hugh Poland.<\/p>\n<p>I am not sure what to make of the prospectus book \u2013 I have never even glanced at a register or prospectus type book on baseball.  The section on the Braves was fairly interesting, especially the writer\u2019s take on C. Jones and Smoltz ultimately setting back the team by restructuring contracts (Jones), and insisting on moving back into the starting rotation (Smoltz).  The book also pretty much says Jones sucks as a fielder, but \u201cThe Fielding Bible\u201d shows him as middle of the road among other 3B.  It is always interesting to see different perspectives on the same players.<\/p>\n<p>I have only glanced at \u201cThe Book\u201d so nothing really to report at this point.  There is a chapter on base running and how much a runner actually distracts a batter (as opposed to the pitcher); should make for interesting reading.<\/p>\n<p>I have always read that baseball is a religious experience; \u201cSteal Away\u201d looks to be just that (on in a book).  I normally struggle to finish devotional books (just not my thing I guess), but I figure I have a pretty good chance at making my way through a devotional book that makes all sorts of references to baseball stories, facts, players, and other sorts of nuggets of information.  I have only read a few pages, but I think I can highly recommend this book to baseball fans that want some type of devotional book.<\/p>\n<p>What else?  Looks like the F1 season quietly got underway at Bahrain; I saw quietly only because I have not followed the off-season this year.  The US advanced to the next round of the World Baseball Classic thing; would have been embarrassing if we did not push forward.  March Madness is upon us \u2026<\/p>\n<p>All for now.  Happy weekend!<\/p>\n<div class=\"addtoany_share_save_container addtoany_content_bottom\"><div class=\"a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_ addtoany_list a2a_target\" id=\"wpa2a_1\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.addtoany.com\/share\" onclick=\"__gaTracker('send', 'event', 'outbound-article', 'https:\/\/www.addtoany.com\/share', '');\" class=\"a2a_dd addtoany_share_save\"><img src=\"http:\/\/www.calvertgames.com\/cgblog\/wp-content\/plugins\/add-to-any\/share_save_171_16.png\" width=\"171\" height=\"16\" alt=\"Share\"\/><\/a>\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\"><!--\nif(wpa2a)wpa2a.script_load();\n\/\/--><\/script>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The weekend got off to a good start, which a date night; my parents let the kids sleep over. This gave Tonya and me a chance to have drinks with some friends, and some much need time alone. It is always fun to have a lazy Saturday morning \u2013 breakfast at the ATL Bread Company &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.calvertgames.com\/cgblog\/2006\/03\/11\/weekend-stuff-and-more-on-books\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Weekend Stuff (and More on Books)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"addtoany_share_save_container addtoany_content_bottom\"><div class=\"a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_ addtoany_list a2a_target\" id=\"wpa2a_2\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.addtoany.com\/share\" onclick=\"__gaTracker('send', 'event', 'outbound-article', 'https:\/\/www.addtoany.com\/share', '');\" class=\"a2a_dd addtoany_share_save\"><img src=\"http:\/\/www.calvertgames.com\/cgblog\/wp-content\/plugins\/add-to-any\/share_save_171_16.png\" width=\"171\" height=\"16\" alt=\"Share\"\/><\/a><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.calvertgames.com\/cgblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.calvertgames.com\/cgblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.calvertgames.com\/cgblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.calvertgames.com\/cgblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.calvertgames.com\/cgblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.calvertgames.com\/cgblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.calvertgames.com\/cgblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.calvertgames.com\/cgblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.calvertgames.com\/cgblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}