Recently, in an attempt to finish a whole slew of books (read: 3 or 4) that I’ve bought or received throughout the years, I re-cracked open this one. It’s written by Ken Levine, who worked as a writer on “Cheers” and “M*A*S*H”, among other efforts, then put parts of that aside to chase the dream of being a major league baseball announcer. I bought it my sophomore (maybe freshman) year of college, as both a fan of “Cheers” and an aspiring announcer, but for some reason, never got more than about a third of the way through. I don’t know why. As I picked it up again, it’s a very amusing book, with shades of the type of humor Bill Simmons used to be good at before his head got too big for Tom Brady’s britches.

Even better, it covers the 1991 season, when baseball was still relatively simple, broadcasters were still shocked by $3 million salaries, and not only was “fantasy baseball” still called a “rotisserie league”, but scores, schedules, and league news was left as a message on the commissioner’s answering machine. I recently finished a book by Howard Cosell that focused on a similar time-frame, when it was much easier to care about sports, even if Cosell’s book did focus mostly on the corruption that was going down at the time.

Not sure what book might be next, but there are some re-reads I wouldn’t mind going through, and I guess there’s always the possibility of finding something new.