any off-season reading material?

[Knucksie]

Currently poking through Smoltz's book. An Amazon Marketplace retailer had it for a ridiculous price, something like $5 shipped for new hard cover. Couldn't pass that up. It's maybe not as essential as the Glavine, Schuerholz and Mazzone books, but still worth it for a different approach. Not really an autobiography, per se. Just explains his outlook, his approach to both starting and closing, challenges while returing from injuries, faith, obsession with golf, etc. More than 1/2-way through. Gave his version of events for the ironed shirt story, reaction to the trade from Tigers, "homeboy upstairs" and contract negotiations. Recommended to any Braves fan. Better written and edited than Bill's book.

For history, this one escaped my attention until recently, when it turned up on a Recommendations search:

http://www.amazon.com/Bushville-Wins-Milwaukee-Screwballs-Sluggers/dp/1250006074/ref=pd_ys_ir_all_45

The rip-roaring story of baseball's most unlikely champions, featuring new interviews with Henry Aaron, Bob Uecker and other members of the Milwaukee Braves, Bushville Wins! takes you to a time and place baseball and the Heartland will never forget.

In the early 1950s, the New York Yankees were the biggest bullies on the block. They were invincible: they led the New York City baseball dynasty, which for eight consecutive years held an iron grip on the World Series championship.

Then the Boston Braves moved to Milwaukee in 1953, becoming surprise revolutionaries. Led by visionary owner Lou Perini, the Braves formed a powerful relationship with the Miller Brewing Company and foreshadowed the Dodgers and Giants moving west, sparking continental expansion and the ballpark boom.

But the rest of the country wasn't sold. Why would a major league team move to a minor league town? In big cities like New York, Milwaukee was thought to be a podunk train station stop-off where the fans were always drunk and wouldn't know a baseball from a beer. They called Milwaukee Bushville.

The Braves were no bushers! Eddie Mathews was a handsome home run hitter with a rugged edge. Warren Spahn was the craftiest pitcher in the business. Lew Burdette was a sharky spitball artist. Taken together, the Braves reveled in the High Life and made Milwaukee famous, while Wisconsin fans showed the rest of the country how to crack a cold one and throw a tailgate party. And in 1954, a solemn and skinny slugger came from Mobile to Milwaukee. Henry Aaron began his march to history.

With a cast of screwballs, sluggers and beer swiggers, the Braves proved the guys at the corner bar could do the impossible - topple Casey Stengel's New York baseball dynasty in a World Series for the ages.

Looks like some fascinating reading.