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Thumbs-up from Kirkus Reviews

During one of the most tumultuous years in our history, a remarkable baseball season unfolded.

In 1968, most baseball players had to work a second job to make ends meet. There were no wild-card teams or division winners. That year the Detroit Tigers became only the third club in history to rally from a 3-1  Read More 
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'Summer' one of PW's Top 10 for this spring

Detroit, 1967

Spring 2012 Announcements: Sports: Olympians, Yogi & the Knuckler
By Michael Coffey
Jan 20, 2012

This June, the Summer Olympics from London will be hard to escape, and there are no fewer than five books in the pages that follow that deal with the history of Olympic competition in one way or the other.

All of the Olympics  Read More 

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Library Journal review

Library Journal
Wendel (fiction & nonfiction writing, Johns Hopkins Univ.; High Heat: The Secret History of the Fastball and the Improbable Search for the Fastest Pitcher of All Time) follows the tradition of homing in on a key year in both baseball and U.S. history. America was being torn apart in 1968, and baseball was  Read More 
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Talking Titles

Editing continues on the new book about the 1968 season, which will be out from Da Capo this spring.
Working titles include SUMMER OF '68: WHEN BASEBALL AND AMERICA CHANGED FOREVER.
or
SEASON ON FIRE: SPORTS, AMERICA AND THE SUMMER OF '68.
Let me know what you think.
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Manuscript Has Been Delivered

Relieved. Exhausted. Excited.
The pretty much sums up where my head is at after I turned in the manuscript for the new book, working title SIXTY-EIGHT: THE YEAR OF THE PITCHER AND WHEN SPORTS SAVED AMERICA. This will be out in Spring 2012 from Da Capo Books.
Of course, there is still much to do.  Read More 
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Walking in Memphis

Just returned from Memphis and some great interviews, including those in Dr. Martin Luther Kings's inner circle, for SIXTY-EIGHT: THE YEAR OF THE PITCHER AND WHEN SPORTS SAVED AMERICA. Along the way, I swung down to Mississippi and have now visited all 50 states.
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Preface for SIXTY-EIGHT

I always have a tough time with openings, but I've been playing with the first lines of the new one. Right now it's going something like this:
What if we could distill all that we know, what we truly believe, down to a few memorable moments, snippets of motion, short stories set in a  Read More 
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Research on SIXTY-EIGHT

The two teams that met in the 1968 World Series -- the Detroit Tigers and St. Louis Cardinals -- were among the most racially diverse institutions in the land at the time. Willie "the Wonder" Horton was among them. The Tigers' outfielder grew up in the Detroit projects and tried to stop the riots in  Read More 
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Detroit Tigers -- Tom Hayden

The unexpected twists can be half the fun of writing a book. At least they can keep you going. I've been deep into the working draft for SIXTY-EIGHT, the new one about when sports saved America. Several of the 1968 world champion Detroit Tigers mentioned playing against Tom Hayden, the student activist and major player  Read More 
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Publisher's Weekly news about Sixty-Eight

Da Capo editor Jonathan Crowe acquired two sports books, one on baseball and the other on golf. Crowe took North American rights to Johns Hopkins professor Tim Wendel's Sixty-Eight: The Year of the Pitcher—When Baseball Saved America from Chris Park at Foundry Literary + Media. Wendel focuses on that eponymous season when, thanks to  Read More 
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