if you had to choose ..."Splendid (pencil) splinter Eno Sarris threw out a terrific read on Bryce Harper and Manny Machado at the athletic on Tuesday http://www.nationalsfanproshop.com/authentic-matt-adams-jersey , and there’s just no way not to give it some love here today. It involves the conundrum facing (theoretically) 30 teams, and possibly coming down to all but two — the Chicago White Sox and Philadelphia Phillies — who will have the better career from here, Machado or Harper?Here at SSS, we’ve had the debate in comments, very briefly. I’ve said that Bryce is more the Brooks Boyer choice, as a player with the oversized personality to own the city, while Manny will provide more value and flexibility on the field.Taking almost completely the “aging curve” angle, does Sarris agree that Manny is the better play?Before I crib (hopefully gently) from his piece, let me advise that you should be reading Eno as often as you can, whether or not you share his love for brewhouse esoterica and food plate pics. I’ll try to highlight some of the points of greatest divergence between the two.One element quick to flush careers down the toilet is plate discipline, or as Harris says it, “the ability to make contact on pitches outside the zone ages poorly.” To a somewhat slight extent, Harper stabs less often outside the strike zone and has better plate discipline overall. More significantly, though Machado’s contact is better, it comes more often on pitches outside of the strike zone. And yet, Machado’s has a really nice career strikeout rate (16.4%), better than Harper at 21.1%. Perhaps Harper has sold out more often for power?The word-that-didn’t-exist-two-decades-ago, “athleticism,” is the the next major point, and in this, Harper prevails readily. While it’s great that Machado has greater positional flexibility (and value), he’s, to put it bluntly, slow (per Sarris, the second-slowest shortstop in MLB last year). The metrics point to Harper as, simply, a better athlete, and one who will age better.Sarris notes that generally, the aging curve really picks up on defense at age 33, which might be something to toss out of the mix here because we’re talking about the tail end of a 10-year deal. However, props for Machado for playing shortstop in 2018 (theoretically making him able to man any position on the field, sans pitcher or catcher).Sarris sees both players as ~30 WAR guys to this point Trea Turner Jersey , with Harper getting about 10 more offensive wins than Machado (thus Machado sees more of his value balanced between offense and defense). Harper’s next position options are very limited. Left field? First base? A 30-year-old DH? Significant advantage for Machado here.Finally, Sarris lands at “coaching” as a category: Which player has untapped potential that a new staff might unlock? The advantage goes to Machado, as there’s more upside for him with defensive coaching, and a new hitting coach might be able to get him to chase less often out of the zone. Harper, on the other hand, appears to be more of a what-you-see-is-what-you-get player — if not a “finished” player, one with a shorter ceiling from here.I’ll have you click Sarris’ piece to see who he prefers, but the over breakdown is:Advantage, Harper: better plate discipline, better athleteAdvantage, Machado: (significantly) better defense, more untapped potentialFor the White Sox, Machado fits more of an organizational need, and offers a more steady baseline of production than Harper. But that may be putting a magnifying glass over immediate team needs, which is a bit silly when addressing a possible 10-year deal. (Sort of like when pundits are pushing the New York Yankees as a “perfect fit” for Machado because he can play shortstop for three months while Didi Gregorius rehabs from TJS.)The lame (though very true) answer is: Either one is fine! Or: Both!So, let’s choose and discuss. Presuming the exact same contract terms, who do you want on the White Sox in 2019 and beyond, eventually going into the Hall of Fame in a White Sox cap? There’s a good chance you’ve never heard of this book, or its author, Michael Bishop. With a long winter ahead of us, we recommend you remedy that"WhiteFanposts FanpostsFanshotsSections AnalysisGame RecapsGamethreadsMinorsOffbeatFull ArchiveExclusives South Side Sox Hall of FameCard of the MonthDeep DiveDigitsFlashbackFranchise FactsKnow Your EnemyMost Essential White SoxRace to the BottomSix Pack of StatsSouth Side SnapSouth Side StumperSSS Literary SupplementSuper Stats PackThe Game I’ll Never ForgetTwitterpatingUnder the RadarView From the Other SideWhite Sox on SB Nation HomeStoriesScheduleRosterStatsWhite Sox on Yahoo! HomeDepth ChartTransactionsMasthead MastheadMeet the Players!Links White Sox Web LinksSouth Side Sox standardsCommunity GuidelinesOdds Shop StubHub 鉁昐SS Literary SupplementSSS Literary Supplement: Brittle InningsNew,3commentsThere’s a good chance you’ve never heard of this book, or its author, Michael Bishop. With a long winter ahead of us, we recommend you remedy thatBykatiesphilOct 25, 2018,2:10pm CDTShareTweetShareShareSSS Literary Supplement: Brittle InningsThe author, in 2005.michaelbishop-writer.comDanny Boles is an old guy with a serious limp, and a voice that comes out of a little machine he holds to his throat to compensate for the tracheotomy that removed his cancerous vocal chords a few years back. Living for weeks at a time in a broken-down, old motor home, he’s a scout for the Atlanta Braves in the pre-Internet, pre-Sabermetrics days of the late 1980s. Danny Boles makes a (more-or-less) living looking for talent on sandlots and high school diamonds across the South. Danny Boles is good at his job. A lot of his recommendations have been signed http://www.nationalsfanproshop.com/authentic-matt-adams-jersey , and a lot of those have gone onto to play, at least a little while, in the bigs. But long before that, before now, it was 1943, and Danny Boles was a stuttering, 17-year-old kid playing high school ball in Tenkiller, Okla., freshly signed to play for the Highbridge (Ga.) Hellbenders of the Chattahoochee Valley League, way, way down at the bottom of the Philadelphia Phillies organization. He’d like to tell you about that year.***It’s been said, by somebody I can’t remember right off, that baseball invites the best literature because it’s the only sport that has built-in time for contemplation. It may have been Bart Giamatti, or maybe W.P. Kinsella. They’ve both written beautifully about baseball. It may have been somebody else. It wasn’t Gregory Hillis, though he recently made a similar point in an essay I like quite a lot for the Commonweal. But whoever it was, they were likely on to something. At least in terms of baseball inviting, or inspiring, the best literature.I don’t read much fiction these days, but I was delighted to revisit Michael Bishop’s magnificent 1994 novel, Brittle Innings. Bishop is my favorite living fiction writer. He’s up there in years now, and writes — or at least publishes — very little these days, but from the early 1970s through the 1990s, he wrote an almost astonishingly brilliant run of novels and short stories. His most famous works (he’s never been a big seller, even in his heyday) has been shoved under the heading of Science Fiction or Fantasy, but while I mean no disrespect to either of those genres, his work has consistently transcended labels and categories. Longtime readers in those areas might well recognize or remember No Enemy but Time, Transfigurations, Ancient of Days, or Philip K. Dick is Dead, Alas. Unlike most SF, Bishop’s chosen science is anthropology. Rather than rockets and hardware, he’s always been more concerned with societies: How they work and how they engage with one another Joe Blanton Jersey , often tragically. Digging deeper, he’s always been concerned with what it means to be human. ***Brittle Innings is also about how societies engage with one another, and the humanity of those within them. Stuttering Danny Boles, riding the train from Oklahoma to Georgia in 1943 to begin his professional baseball career, comes up against a part of another sub-society: soldiers on leave. Boles suffers an unspeakable tragedy that renders him mute, making him both a further outcast, and an ideal observer of what transpires over the course of the season for the Highbridge Hellbenders, their motley roster of has-beens and never-will-bes, their morally conflicted owner-manager, and particularly his reluctant roommate, “Jumbo” Hank Clerval. Clerval, the team’s massive first baseman, is a misshapen hulk of a man, with Herculean power and surprisingly agile glove-work. He’s also an enigma: a gentle-speaking man with a 19th Century vernacular, a fearsome-looking pacifist and vegetarian, an open critic of the current, and any, warfare, and a man with seemingly no past, but many secrets.Steeping in the heat, dust, and humidity of Southern Georgia in the summertime, Brittle Innings is also a fantasy novel, of the non-twee-fairies-in-the-mist variety. It’s Magical Realism, Southern Gothic-style and Bishop, as is his want, pulls it off flawlessly. Flannery O’Connor meets Gabriel Garc铆a Marquez meets Ring Lardner gives you a very general idea, though previous readings of Bishop’s work will give you a better one. In any case, many, and perhaps most, readers will have no idea they’re reading a work of fantasy until halfway through, when that aspect is laid out clearly and directly. But mostly http://www.nationalsfanproshop.com/authentic-matt-adams-jersey , Bishop is here exploring the question of what it means to be human in the face of human cruelty. No fantasy is involved on that count.His setting, the South in the 1940s, against the backdrop of both WWII and a pennant race, is not capricious. They all play their part in shaping both Danny, our narrator and protagonist, and the others whose lives shape his as a young man learning how to become an adult. Fair warning: The narration and dialog reflect their place and time. Bishop knows his characters, and well beyond type and tropes, these are living, breathing people, with all of their dreams, hopes, frustrations and stupidities. He has the ability to encapsulate a real person in a snatch of dialog, an offhand gesture, a look from the corner of eye, a world in a smile, tragedy in the leap for a long fly. Anguish and remorse in a downcast eye.Bishop knows his baseball and its history, too. He knows how the game is played, its rhythms and quirks. He can write an inning, a game, a series. His ballplayers are not sophisticated men (Clerval, perhaps, excepted), but they come across as authentic, three dimensional characters, as do the non-ballplayers. Bishop is a gifted writer, stylish without being showy. He’s able to convey a range of emotions in a single line of dialog, capture a mosaic in a single image. He’s really very, very good.Brittle Innings is a great baseball novel, but like most great baseball novels, it’s also simply a great novel. We have a long, cold winter ahead of us. Brittle Innings can help keep you warm and alive and human while you wait for baseball to come again in the spring.