Greetings, fans, readers, friends, baseball devotees. The Nogo Book Tour winds down (at least for now) tomorrow at High Noon at Tallahassee’s Barnes & Noble as your author will be there, eager to chat a little baseball or Bob Dylan or whatever brought you to America’s Past time in the first place.
As you know, baseball has played a enormous role in our lives in the Nogowski family; we’ll be following the fortunes of the Florida State Seminoles in the NCAA Regionals and hoping the Boston Red Sox can somehow right what appears to be a sinking ship — again! If not, well, there’s always the Braves. Or Rays.
DIAMOND DUELS: For those who haven’t caught some of the stories and interviews that I’ve posted on Substack and have been on local radio with, “Diamond Duels” focuses mainly on those great pitcher-batter showdowns in the rich history of the game. I never knew that Hank Aaron only had one hit in his first 23 times at bat against Don Drysdale, then found a way to club 17 home runs off the guy. Or that Stan Musial came to bat against Warren Spahn 356 times over their long careers, or almost as many at bats as Stan would accumulate in an entire 154-game schedule! Or that Whitey Ford, the Yankee ace, would only step onto the mound at Boston’s Fenway Park 42 times over a long career, 73 times, almost double, against the Chicago White Sox. Weren’t the Red Sox the Yankees’ arch rival? Why was that? There’s lots more in “Diamond Duels.” If you haven’t checked it out, I hope you do.
LAST TIME OUT: I revised and updated this book in 2022 and included my son John’s first major league game with the St. Louis Cardinals as the concluding chapter. In the previous 43, I recount how some of the game’s greatest players wound up their MLB career. All your favorite players are in here, Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Ted Williams, Ty Cobb, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Derek Jeter and many more. Some of the stories are sad, some are triumphant, some are surprising, some are just plain funny, like Dizzy Dean, fat and sassy, coming out of the radio booth with a $1 contract to throw three shutouts innings for the St. Louis Browns.
BOB DYLAN: A DESCRIPTIVE, CRITICAL DISCOGRAPHY 1961-2022:
This is the third edition of a comprehensive book I’ve done on everything Bob Dylan has done — except his paintings and sculpted iron works. All of his records, his books, his films, speeches, bootlegs, an annotated bibliography, just about everything you could think of, regarding Bob Dylan and what he’s laid on us since 1961 including a long, detailed look at his first No. 1 single “Murder Most Foul” a 17-minute reverie of the Kennedy Assassination and its impact on American life.
Some writers are reluctant to do book signings; they grouse through them, barely interacting with their readers or in some cases, potential readers. If you’re a baseball fan, I’m confident that you’ll find “Diamond Duels” and “Last Time Out” fun reads, they go somewhere no other baseball book I’ve ever seen goes. And “Diamond Duels” in particular, was so much fun to write, it was, like one reader told me, “a surprise on every page.” You’ll know the players, just don’t know the specifics. Now, I do.
If you’ve been a reader of mine in my Tallahassee Democrat days or a regular on my Substack or if you just love baseball — or Bob Dylan — I hope you’ll stop by, say hello and chat for a bit. See you — I hope — tomorrow!
Nogo
There will be no beer drinking at the book signing, don’t worry.
Been holding a B&N gift card - I’ll be buying your baseball opus