Thursday, April 14, 2011

New Dodger Books - Roy Campanella & Branch Rickey


I'm taking my dad to the Dodger/Cardinal game Friday night, Jackie Robinson Night, and I stopped by my parents house to visit early today.  While I was there, my dad showed me the new book he bought his week.  The book is titled CAMPY: The Two Lives of Roy Campanella by Neil Lanctot.  It's published by Simon & Schuster and has been available on-line and in book stores since March 8, 2011.  Russ Stanton of the L.A. Times reviewed the book on April 3, 2011 and said:

"Few Dodger fans in Los Angeles ever had a chance to fully appreciate the
Hall of Fame catcher in action, but Neil Lanctot's rich new biography,
'Campy: The Two Lives of Roy Campanella,' should change that...

...Dodger fans still are waiting to see a catcher of Campanella's caliber.
For more than a decade, he hit for power like Mike Piazza, and called games,
threw out runners and guarded the plate like Mike Scioscia, both of whom he mentored" 

My dad promised to let me borrow it when he was done reading the book and I plan on taking him up on the offer.  He also showed me a book review for a new biography on Branch Rickey.  He said, he would probably read that book next.


Branch Rickey by Jimmy Breslin is published by Viking/Penguin Press and was reviewed on April 3, 2011 by David L. Ulin in the L.A. Times.  This is some of what he wrote:

"Here in a nutshell, we see both the charm and the drawback of 'Branch Rickey', a think book
padded in places with digressions but also elliptically evocative, meandering
and funny, and always marked by Breslin's point of view."

I hope to read both these books in the coming months.  I've only read to other Dodger based books and I have one on my shelf now, that I hope to get to soon.  I'm sure i'll post something about the two i've read soon.  For those of you that seek more old school Dodger knowledge, I suggest you pick up one of these books.

True to the Blue!


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