View source for David Block, October 2013

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|Digger=David Block,
|Digger Activity Date=2013/10/01
|Digger Activity=<p><strong>Article Lauds David Block, Our Own "Karate-Chopper" of Base Ball Lore</strong></p>
<p>A long, wry, and fairly reverent article on the amazing David Block can be found at</p>
<p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: medium;">http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9681627/baseball-archaeologist-david-block</span></span><span style="font-size: medium;">. </span></p>
<p>Bryan Curtis&rsquo; "In Search of Baseball&rsquo;s Holy Grail: How One Man is Rewriting the History of the Game &ndash; One Diary at a Time," was posted at the Grantland site on September 18, 2013.</p>
<p>Protoball&rsquo;s favorite nuggets from the Curtis article:</p>
<p>[] "In a just world, Block would be an archeological hero. What Bill James did for 20th -century baseball, Block is doing for 18th-century baseball."</p>
<p>[] "Said Tom Shieber . . . [David&rsquo;s book] &lsquo;Baseball Before We Knew It and its aftermath is to me probably the single most important baseball research of the last 50 years, if not more.&rsquo;"</p>
<p>[] "&rsquo;When David started his work and I started my work, this [topic of origins] was the dark side of the moon,&rsquo; said [John] Thorn."</p>
<p>[] "Block had confirmed that the Doubleday theory was bunk. But he had also discovered that the rounders theory was bunk. Everything we knew about baseball&rsquo;s parentage was wrong."</p>
<p>[] "Block is being painfully modest. Let me be immodest on his behalf. Block is a scholar on a lonely frontier. He is karate-chopping the wisdom of the ages. "</p>
<p>Protoball later asked the author about the response to the article. Bryan Curtis&rsquo; reply: "The Block article attracted a very large amount of attention--larger, in fact, than my typical articles about star players. Which was wonderful, because David's more interesting than most of them."</p>
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