Florence Freedom player Taylor Oldham has a background you don’t normally find in professional baseball: He was home schooled. That means baseball was his Physical Education class. That also meant he wasn’t sure exactly how good he was. Until the first day of Little League tryouts.
Catch isn’t really about baseball. That’s a red herring. A red herring I happen to love, but a red herring none the less. The book is really about something much deeper. The game isn’t just a metaphor for life. It’s the conduit through which fathers teach their sons.
Not every baseball story is about playing. Most of my memories from the game came during the down times. My favorite story: The day the bird pooped on my mom’s head.
When I was just around nine or ten, I broke my arm before a big playoff game. And by “big” I mean either tee-ball or coach pitch. And by “playoff game” I mean last games of the season. My dad asked the doctor to place my cast below the elbow and above my wrist so I could keep playing.
Growing up, baseball was at the center of my life. My friends Jimmy, Greg, and I constructed so many different ways to play the game. By using the game on the back of the 1979 baseball cards, to Strat-o-matic, MicroLeague Baseball, and a variety of in-person games played in garages and basements.
Catch: An Oral History is a yearlong writing experiment in which I’m going ask people to tell me stories about how baseball has shaped the relationships that have with people in their lives. Here’s how it will work: I’ll interview people from across the country, transcribe what they say, do some light editing to make sure it’s coherent, and let them tell you their story.
On April 20, 1999, I watched the horror of Columbine unfold on my television. What came after was a powerful discussion about geeks, video games, and American culture. And it happened online.
Earlier this year, Felipe Pepe launched a crowdsourced-book project to tell the history of video games. Today, he released a first draft of the first 100-pages.
Thanks to our friends at Indy WordLab, Brad had the chance to read excerpts from The Summer of Run + So Far Appalachia for the first time in a public setting. Check out the videos and pictures.
Thanks to my friends at Indy WordLab, I’m giving the first public reading of So Far Appalachia. This is my last run-through before the event: The Introduction and Chapter 1.
A new documentary hits theaters and VOD on July 15. It’s the story of how console and computer games created a global community. It’s great fun, informative, and worth the time. Check out “Video Games: The Movie,” and follow the film (@videogamesmovie) and its creators (@mediajuicetwitt, @Jeremy_Snead) on Twitter.
Hello. My name is Felipe, and I’m currently working a book on Computer RPGs. After organizing the RPG Codex’s Top 70 list, I decided to expand that into a full blown book. The book will feature in-depth reviews of over 250 great cRPGs in chronological order, from Akalabeth to Might & Magic X, plus interesting […]