Hitting the Books with Gary Thorne: "The Old Man and the Sea"

In my 30 years of broadcasting Major League Baseball, there have been far too many plane rides, far too many delays and what could have been, far too many wasted hours.

Thank heavens, since the earliest years, I have loved to read.

Books are friends to me. Libraries are where those friends live. I engage both as often as possible in my travels.

Just for fun, with the help of some friends at MASN (the human kind) and the wonderful folks at the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, we begin with this post a blog about books and their homes.

This is not a critic's corner. I want to talk about the books I love and why I love them, and to hear the same from you. History, fictional historical novels and Civil War reads are among my favorites. So are the noir mysteries, old and new, with their hard-boiled, gumshoe detectives.

We will weave in the favorite reads of players, managers, coaches, other broadcasters and recommendations from the folks at Pratt Library.

So we'll begin with my all-time favorite: "The Old Man and the Sea" by Ernest Hemingway. Few books entice me to re-read them numerous times as this one does each time read. Let me tell you why ...

"It is not true that we have only one life to live; if we can read, we can live as many more lives and as many kinds of lives as we wish." - S.I. Hayakawa

Gary Thorne is the play-by-play voice of the Orioles on MASN, and the 2015 season is his ninth with the club and 30th covering Major League Baseball. His blog will appear regularly throughout the season. The Orioles and Sarasota County have partnered on the Big League Reader Program, which rewarded kids who read three books in February with tickets to a Grapefruit League game at Ed Smith Stadium in March. Click here for more information on the Orioles' wide range of community outreach efforts in Baltimore and beyond.

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