Amid "House Arrest", It's Come To This

Week 6 of life after sports. It's not a pretty sight!

Down to a four-page sports section (most days), the Wisconsin State Journal manages to fill two, and sometimes three, of those pages. Mostly features, analysis (thankfully the National Football League draft is still going) and a catch-all piece under the heading "The Wide World Of No Sports" which is pretty clever. It brings readers an on-this-date-in-sports-history piece, notes on a couple of high-profile events we're missing, a trivia question, birthdays and a nice book & movie review. Have gotten more than a few ideas from here.

As for television, both network and cable stations have taken to running "classic" games and the like. Although, the NFL draft is tonight and ABC, ESPN and the NFL Network are all carrying the first round. Gotta feed the sports-starved masses, right?

Me? I'm missing the library and my usual source of books and movies (and the golf course, but that's a story for another time!).  I have run out of new reads after finishing the reading list for the University of Wisconsin class "Baseball & Society Since World War II". This class, co-taught by former baseball commissioner (and Milwaukee Brewers owner) Bud Selig, was fascinating. Would be happy to pass along the required reading list to anyone interested.

One of these titles was Jim Bouton's Ball Four, the tell-all one-season diary that follows Bouton's 1969 season with the expansion Seattle Pilots. The Pilots, of course, ran into financial issues and were purchased by Selig and moved to Milwaukee for the 1970 season. Bouton's insightful, humorous title holds up pretty well. I had read this back in high school, and went to listen to Bouton speak while a freshman at UW-Oshkosh.

Now, I'm taking on George Plimpton's Paper Lion. A respected writer, Plimpton found a niche for doing pieces of "everyman-takes-on-pro-sports". In Paper Lion, Plimpton headed to pre-season camp with the Detroit Lions of the NFL in 1963. This later got film treatment with Alan Alda in the feature role.

Would never get this book done today -- not with social media. Plimpton could go to the Lions as an unknown quarterback prospect then and players wouldn't think twice. Today, there really are no unknowns.

On deck (unless the library starts doing curbside service) will be Instant Replay by Jerry Kramer, the 1967 season diary with the Green Bay Packers.