Jaffe: RIP Anthony Bourdain, passionate baseball fan
From SABR member Jay Jaffe at FanGraphs on June 8, 2018:
Like half my social-media feed, I woke up to the awful news of the suicide of Anthony Bourdain, whose work I have loved going all the way back to the 1999 New Yorker piece that became Kitchen Confidential, his first book. The chef-turned-writer-turned-television-journalist had a remarkable gift for illuminating any corner of the world he wandered via A Cook’s Tour, No Reservations, The Layover, and Parts Unknown, bringing a rare and genuine empathy, compassion and gusto along with him. His career-changing discovery of his writing voice was among the many that inspired me as I embarked upon my own change from graphic design to writing about baseball.
Bourdain’s globe-trotting sent me on journeys I’d have never otherwise taken, both figuratively and literally. Among the latter was Willie Mae’s Scotch House in New Orleans, for the best fried chicken I’ll ever eat and the Estancia Del Puerto parrilla in Montevideo, Uruguay, for an all-you-can-eat bucket of grilled meats and entrails. (Nobody, before or since, has been able to convince me to eat kidneys or tripe.) One of my all-time favorite celebrity sightings in 23 years of living in New York City was spotting him strutting — and I mean strutting — down Avenue B in the East Village, circa 2005-06, just south of Tompkins Square Park. The 6-foot-4 Bourdain cut an unmistakable figure, a bad-ass mofo wearing a sleeveless black tank top and jeans, cigarette dangling from his lip.
Bourdain was many things, among them a passionate baseball fan. While sorting through the numerous tributes and obituaries today, a few of his baseball-related clips came to my mind as worth sharing.
Read the full article here: https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/instagraphs/rip-anthony-bourdain-passionate-baseball-fan/
Originally published: June 8, 2018. Last Updated: June 8, 2018.