{"id":10175,"date":"2011-02-20T14:27:21","date_gmt":"2011-02-20T14:27:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=10175"},"modified":"2011-02-20T14:29:56","modified_gmt":"2011-02-20T14:29:56","slug":"news-on-josh-chetwynds-next-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=10175","title":{"rendered":"News on Josh Chetwynd’s next book"},"content":{"rendered":"

Current followers of “MLB on 5 Live”, old fans of “Baseball on Five”, and other members of the British baseball community will all have come across Josh Chetwynd as a broadcaster, a coach, a player, or maybe all three. And those who like reading books may well have also come across him as an author. His first book (reviewed by Matt here<\/a>) was a work on British baseball history and his follow-up (reviewed by me here<\/a>) explored the broader topic of the sport’s history in Europe.<\/p>\n

A third book by Chetywnd is due out in May. In one way, it is much broader – in that it looks at a whole range of sports – and in another it is much more specific – in that it focuses on the stories behind the balls they use. It’s called The Secret History of Balls: The Stories Behind the Things We Love to Catch, Whack, Throw, Kick, Bounce and Bat<\/em>. Readers of his other books will know that Chetwynd has a knack for gathering fascinating anecdotes, and so I suspect this book will be another great read. I’ve pre-ordered<\/a> my copy.<\/p>\n

For those interested in knowing more, here’s the blurb off the Penguin.com website:<\/p>\n

You may fancy yourself a sports fan, but chances are you don’t know: <\/strong><\/p>\n

A fish eyeball was used as the center of some nineteenth-century baseballs<\/p>\n

The race to make better billiard balls led to the invention of plastics<\/p>\n

The Nerf ball was originally created to be part of a board game featuring cavemen<\/p>\n

Balls are the unsung heroes of sports. They are smacked, flung, dribbled, crushed, thrown, and kicked. They’re usually only the subject of scrutiny when something goes wrong: a tear, the application of an illegal foreign substance, or a dent from overuse. Nevertheless, if you’re watching nearly any major sporting event from around the world, you’re likely following the ball wondering where it will go next…<\/p>\n

The Secret History of Balls<\/em> mines the stories and lore of sports and recreation to offer insight into 60 balls-whether they’re hollow, solid, full of air, or stuffed with twine or made of leather, metal, rubber, plastic, or polyurethane-that give us joy on playing fields and in every arena from backyards to stadiums around the globe.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Current followers of “MLB on 5 Live”, old fans of “Baseball on Five”, and other members of the British baseball community will all have come across Josh Chetwynd as a broadcaster, a coach, a player, or maybe all three. And those who like reading books may well have also come across him as an author. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[163,377],"class_list":["post-10175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-british-baseball-2","tag-josh-chetwynd","tag-secret-history-of-balls"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10175"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10180,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10175\/revisions\/10180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}