Tim Wendel

Publisher's Weekly named High Heat one of its Top 10 sports titles for this spring. Here's the blurb:
For the hard stuff, Tim Wendel's High Heat: The Secret History of the Fastball and the Improbable Search for the Fastest Pitcher of All Time might suffice. It's as much about hard science as putting mustard on  Read More 

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 

Great to see Pat Gillick reach the Baseball Hall of Fame. He was once roommates with Steve Dalkowski and was a great source for High Heat.
Also, Marvin Miller should have gotten in and great to see my friend Davey Concepcion in the running.

I've been on the road a ton, researching SIXTY-EIGHT, a new book about sports in the year 1968. While the nation was being pulled apart back then, the sports world (baseball's Tigers and Cardinals, the rise of the American Football League, the Mexico City Olympics) was certainly memorable to watch and may have helped hold  Read More 

I recently finished the Afterword for the tradepaper edition of High Heat, which will be out in February 2011. Here's what I wrote about the Rays' David Price, who led the Tampa Bay Rays to a playoff berth last night.
"Every time I saw Price pitch during the 2010 season, I was tempted to say that  Read More 

I've returned from four days in the Detroit area. Caught up with family, attended the Knight-Wallace Fellowship reunion in Ann Arbor and had a great interview with ex-Detroit Tiger Willie "the Wonder" Horton. Research for the new book, working title SIXTY-EIGHT, rolls on.

I've healed enough (ruptured appendix) to head to Portland, Oregon, this weekend. Reading at Powell's (Hawthorne branch) on Monday night at 7:30 p.m.

Working my way through a lot of great research material from Cooperstown. Trying to tease out the threads for this new book, SIXTY-EIGHT. In search of narrative.

We've come to an agreement with Da Capo Press for SIXTY-EIGHT: WHEN BASEBALL SAVED AMERICA. Besides detailing the Detroit Tigers, St. Louis Cardinals and the pitching achievements of that season, I'll take a look at football and the Mexico City Olympics, as well as the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy.
Our  Read More 

No rest for the wicked. The first week of promoting High Heat opened with a reading at the Barnes & Noble in Alexandria. The manager there is my friend Brighid Moret and it was a fun evening.
From there, it was on to the Virginia Festival of the Book, where I joined Roland Lazenby (author  Read More