The Book Of Joe Welcomes Scott Bradley

Welcome to the Dog Days of summer.

Where did the term originate? Does it have anything to do with sweltering canines, tongues out, looking for a lake in which to jump? 

Apparently not. 

Instead, it has to do with the Dog star: 

They were historically the period following the heliacal rising of the star system Sirius (known colloquially as the "Dog Star"), which Hellenistic astrology connected with heat, drought, sudden thunderstorms, lethargy, fever, mad dogs and bad luck. They are now taken to be the hottest, most uncomfortable part of summer in the Northern Hemisphere.

At least that's what it says on Wikipedia.

The Dog Days is the term often used to describe Major League Baseball in August. The trading deadline has passed, and the races for postseason spots are about a month away from really heating up.

This month is about putting yourself in position to be a part of that postseason as day after day there is another game to be played in the heat and humidity. 

Back when TigerBlog was a college student, he spent two summers as a vendor at Veterans Stadium. The August grind wore him and his fellow vendors down. He can only imagine what it does to the players. 

Scott Bradley, Princeton's baseball coach, knows all about that after his long Major League career. In fact, Bradley knows pretty much everything about the sport on every level, from his playing days, the playing careers of two of his own kids and the decades he's spent at Princeton.

If you want to hear someone who is really knowledgeable about baseball and is able to communicate that knowledge flawlessly, then Bradley is your man. TigerBlog listened to him recently on a podcast with Joe Maddon, who managed the 2015 Chicago Cubs to the World Series championship.

In fact, in doing so Maddon became the first person to manage the Cubs to the title since Frank Chance did so as a player/manager in 1908. Chance was the first baseman of the Tinker-to-Ever-to-Chance fame; the 1908 Cubs also featured pitcher Mordecai (Three Fingers) Brown, who 1) won 239 career games, 2) had a career ERA of 2.06 that ranks sixth all-time and 3) really did have three fingers on his pitching hand.

As for the five pitchers ahead of Brown, they were all from the 1800s or first 20 years of the 1900s. One of them, Jack Pfeister, was a teammate of Brown's on the 1908 Cubs.

As for Maddon, he is a Lafayette College grad who never reached the Majors as a player, but he was a catcher in the Minors. Bradley was a catcher as well.

The two of them were joined by Tom Verducci for what was a really, really good episode of "The Book of Joe." You can listen HERE.

Among the other subjects, Bradley talks about how youth baseball has changed since he played, about his own playing days, about how he got into coaching, about his family background, about what it means to coach at Princeton.

There are funny moments, including when he talks about catching Randy Johnson's no-hitter and what he was thinking the second it ended and what Tom Seaver told him when he caught him.

It's also impossible to miss the pride that Bradley has when he talks about the three former players of his who are now Major League General Managers: Chris Young with Texas, Mike Chernoff with Cleveland and Mike Hazen with Arizona. 

A year ago, their three teams were a combined 234-252, for a .481 winning percentage, and that includes a 92-70 record for Cleveland. This year, those three are a combined 170-150, a .531 winning percentage. Texas and Arizona are having huge turnaround seasons, and Young just picked up Max Scherzer from the Mets for the Dog Days and beyond.

Bradley was a relative late-comer to social media, and yet his Twitter feed is among the best there is out there. He now has more than 23,000 followers in just two years, which is a sign of how good he is.

To that you can add podcasting. He definitely needs his own.

Until then, there is the Book of Joe. It's well worth your time.