This short (128 pp), concise history of professional baseball in Portland, Oregon tells the story of how Portland almost but not quite became a Major League Baseball town.
A founding member of the Pacific Coast League in 1903, the Portland Beavers thrived in the era before the Dodgers and Giants moved west in 1958. Baseball happened once upon a time in Portland, and it happened on a grand scale.
When the game's demographics, politics and economics shifted Portland was left out in the cold.
Highlighted with over thirty photographs of some of the players, managers and owners who struggled against the odds to make Portland a viable big-league baseball city, it reveals how the intransigence of politicians and the skittishness of baseball economics conspired against the recurring big-time dreams of the community's devoted fans and entrepreneurs.
Portland never made it to the big leagues, but the story of how it almost got there is an entertaining and revealing portrait of the game as it evolved before television and the changing tides.
This book is priced at $12.99. Buy it here.
Buddy Dooley
RBP's Slavish Idolater
A Journey into Jazz/ Lee Santa
$18.99 plus shipping (click here or on sidebar image to purchase)
Published February 4, 2014, Lee Santa's book shares a selection of photographs of an array of famous jazz musicians shot between 1967-2013, in Europe, NYC, California and the Pacific Northwest. It documents Mr. Santa's early interest in jazz and photography and their convergence in 1967 Germany, where the photographer was stationed while in the U.S. Army. Lee purchased his first SLR 35 mm camera prior to photographing Dexter Gordon in Copenhagen, Denmark. From there, he followed his interest in photography through schooling in California and into the clubs of NYC, including the Village Gate, the Red Garter (later the Bottom Line) Slug's Saloon, Studio We, and elsewhere. A first-rate history as well as a collection of photos and jazz anecdotes, this book is a must read for jazz aficionados everywhere.
(Book cover: Sun Ra, the Bottom Line, NYC, 1976.)
Terry Simons
Publisher
Round Bend Press
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