Four Days in October (ESPN 30 for 30)

Available from Amazon.com

A lot of people just don't understand baseball. Coming from St. Louis, it's part of who we are.

People coming from other sports expect something from baseball. They keep watching for the action, waiting for something to happen. They get tired of waiting, waiting, waiting for something to happen.

In most other sports, where the action will happen is pre-defined. The snap in football, the tip-off in basketball, the serve in tennis. Something that starts the rolling action, the back-and forth, the beginning of the parries back and forth.

Sure, baseball has the pitch: the single quantum of action. But not every pitch leads to a hit. Not every hit leads to a base taken. Balls go foul. Hits become easy pop-flies. And, every once in awhile, a long series of pitches and quiet innings leads to one of the most amazing feats in all of sports: the perfect game.

But that's the beauty of baseball. In baseball, you can't watch for the action. You don't know when the action will happen, or where. In baseball, the action defines the moment: you wait, and wait, and wait, and wait, and wait, and, then...


Crack line drive to left field runner from second rounds third going home throw to home out!


Crack short hop to the short stop he steps up throws to second he gets the tag to first 6-4-3 double play!


Crack long hit to deep left field, fielder running back, going, going, gone!

But, more so than any specific play, baseball fans have an encyclopedic knowledge of the game. Records, stats, series, games. They are the walking history of the game, carrying the weight of wins, losses, and moments of glory, big and small. Passionate, patient, and uncommonly decent, baseball fans are the pinnacle of sports fans, and understand the pleasurable pace of the game.

No film captures that passion, that patience, that payoff, better than Four Days in October. Watch it.

Soonly

Kindle

The Mediocracy of Gadget Reviews

I find most product reviews pedantic and boring. Find any review on CNet or Engadget and you'll find some cursory highlights of tech specs, (who cares anymore?) mis-prioritized product features, ("It plays MKVs, OGGs, Theora, and occationally even makes phone calls!") and some kind of comparison between the competition, filled with insider jargon and nonsensical conclusions. ("This would make a great addition to any geek's library of worthless MP3 players since 2000.") Blogs are even worse, with a gross disregard for any professionalism and the English language.

Newspapers avoid many of these traps, but create their own. The Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg seems to focus on features relevant to business users, but reflects his readership's inability to appreciated intelligent design or anything unrelated to business. The New York Time's David Pogue has the opposite problem: his pretentious and over-written reviews skip right to some predetermined conclusion based on the label on the box--lest we forget his sophomoric iPhone video--and technical details he neglects to tell his readers. (Which, of course, are available in his Missing Manual series for only $20.)

Lost in all this is me and you: normal people. People who like technology, but aren't beholden to it. People who like the Internet, but don't spend eons leveling up their World of Warcraft characters. People who like to share and discuss, but find "flame wars" disgusingly boring. This review is for you.

A Short, Personal History of eBook Readers

I have to admit: I was down on eBook readers for a long time. I had seen the greyish eInk displays in person at my local Borders bookstore, but was always turned off by the expensive, expensive prices for both device and content. Sony was the only game in town for a longtime--another attempt to reproduce the success of the Walkman in digital form--but I had neither the patience nor money to invest in a technology which seemed like a small step up from LCD screens.

Then came the Amazon Kindle. The content portion of the problem had been solved, and rather ingeniously: rather than tethering the device to a computer, the Kindle promised content from anywhere in the nation, thanks to built-in cellular modem, at no extra charge. This combination of solid content with solid pricing slowly enabled eBooks to transition from a geeky backwater to mainstream adoption. Hardware prices were falling, too; but the device's aesthetics left much to be desired.

Amazon's second iteration was a device you could actually take home to mom, with better eInk tech and much-improved ergonomics. The introduction of the DX model made people take Amazon's position seriously: it finally looked like the future was here.

I, in my presumptively geeky ways, decided that I could get a better feature set with better pricing without the Amazon label. I purchased a no-name eBook reader from Aztek: the EZReader. The navigation was simple and workmanlike, and the text very, very good--much better than any computer screen or LCD display. It read anything you could think of, but the lack of any official ePub store or ability to purchase books directly from publishers lead me to obtain mystery-meat eBooks from torrents, the quality of which you could never know.

Soon--but within the return window--I began to regret my purchase. Reading on an eInk display becomes exponentially more problematic when OCR technology transforms words into interpretive theater--"look" becomes "lodx", for example--and the marginal design required for any book becomes completely ignored. Typography becomes increasingly important in a book composed entirely of text, and reading books with nonexistent kerning, ligatures, and incorrect line-heights reminded me of why I generally hated reading on any electronic device.

So when Amazon announced the new Kindle, I was stunned: Amazon was ready to take on the plethora of its competitors with a solid device now in its third generation at a price point that was unbeatable. $139 was a far cry from the $600+ eBook readers of only a few years ago, and review after review from many of my non-techy friends confirmed its greatness in its singular task: reading.

The folly of purchasing a second-rate eBook reader still fresh in my mind, finally resolved myself to purchase the 3G version of Kindle. My geek bona fide required nothing less, and I had seriously considered the larger "DX" version, but the price was too much to pay. I waited.

Luckily for me, my device arrived on the day school was canceled--this Tuesday--and I've had a full two days consuming content on the device in every possible sitting place in my apartment. My reflections follow.

Skip Here for the Review

Kindle is wonderful. The screen, the user experience, the purchasing experience, and the typography is all meticulously designed: the end-result of a mature, iterative product line. The weight is feather-light, supporting hours of reading without any worry about the battery or technical details. Once set-up--a process taking less time than you've spent reading this paragraph--the device simply works, allowing you to focus on the content.

Unlike Apple products, which see their devices as appendages to the computer ecosystem, Amazon allows you to begin using the stand-alone Kindle immediately. If purchased on your Amazon.com account, the device is even pre-registered to your username, allowing the device to present you a letter written to your name and signed by Jeff Bezos. There's an included charger, micro-USB data cable, and a simple instruction card giving you enough instruction to begin using the device. The User Manual is already on the device, and is a wonderful introduction to the device's capabilities. If you showed this device to someone in the 1950s, they would never need to ask what a "computer" was.

The high-contrast screen is, by far, the easiest to read on the market. The only screen which comes close is that of the high-resolution iPhone 4, but that device's screen is much too small and far too stressful for continuous reading as comfortable as a book. The eInk display on Kindle is nearly as good as any book printed on cheap pulp, and sports a much better resolution than the iPad.

Speaking of Apple's table wonder: While the iPad is a multimedia Juggernaut, Kindle is entirely different: it's a mono-media machine. Kindle is made for one task, and one task only: reading. The buttons are positioned in the perfect place for advancing the page; the back made of a rubber composite which is both smooth and sticky. The front is a matte plastic which gives the buttons a texture to them with much more "feel" than the slick, cold glass of the iPad, which makes the tactile "click" of each button all the more satisfying.

An odd phenomenon I've noticed: several people who have played around with the device have tried to "tap" a book or "flick" to the next screen. This portends the future of media devices, for better or for worse.

The interface is workman-like and simple. The keyboard is sufficient for what little input you'll ever put into the device: the occasional note or search. The four-way navigator seems undersized for what a large role it plays in navigation, but it much better than the "joystick" nub previous models sported. The "next page" and "previous page" buttons are on both sides of the device, and are perfect for their purpose. The page animation--for lack of a better word--is a simple, quick flash, and a new page of fantastic text. Kindle is actually much faster than I had expected, as is its screen compared to previous eReaders. Not iPad fast, but it's not an iPad.

The device's independence and focus on reading is clear from the moment you turn on the device, as is the desire for Amazon to sell you ask many books as you wish. The Kindle bookstore is, at most, two clicks away from any screen, and the buying process couldn't be simpler: click "Buy It Now," and it appears on the device in a few seconds. The store also features an "instant return" feature: if you didn't mean to purchase the book, there's a link after purchasing which immediately returns the book. I wish Apple, Google, and Microsoft had this.

Subscription content is both simple and fool-proof: you unlock the device in the morning, and it's already there. Archived issues are moved to another collection on the device, and are kept for as long as you have storage. (You can download previous issues, although I have not tried this.) Instapaper also features a fantastic daily or weekly subscription feature, which updates via Wi-Fi on my home network. Everything is associated with your Amazon account, and you can see nearly all relevant device activity on Amazon.com

The selection of books available on the store isn't as big as I had hoped, and some notable authors and bestsellers are missing. However, it is more likely than not that you'll find a favorite author, and more recently published books are more likely to be Kindle-friendly. Nothing beats pre-ordering a book and receiving it the instant it is available, over-the-air, wherever you are.

It's the instant nature of Kindle's bookstore that really changes things: not only do you have full access to your full library of titles anywhere, but you have the choice to shop for a new book in the largest bookstore with instant delivery. There have been several instances where I would purchase books for an instant need--references, textbooks, new titles, classics--and started reading seconds after. Kindle's genius is in its simplicity: books everywhere, instantly.

In short, if you ever thought about getting a Kindle, do so. It's a relatively small investment for such a wonderful, little, portable, unique device. Reading is wonderful, while choosing which books you want to lug around is not. Kindle makes reading an all-day, everywhere activity, and its always-connected nature ensures that "The End" is always a new beginning.

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If you decide to purchase Kindle, consider doing so using the product links below. It costs you nothing and I get a nice kickback from Amazon.com, until Illinois decides to shut me down.

• Kindle DX Wireless Reading Device, Free 3G, 3G Works Globally, Graphite, 9.7" Display with New E Ink Pearl Technology
• Kindle 3G Wireless Reading Device, Free 3G + Wi-Fi, 3G Works Globally, Graphite, 6" Display with New E Ink Pearl Technology
• Kindle Wireless Reading Device, Wi-Fi, Graphite, 6" Display with New E Ink Pearl Technology