Hard to believe that the Andrew Brackman project has come to an end. About two weeks ago I had the pleasure to have dinner with Andrew and his family. It was bitter-sweet because I knew it marked the end of the project. But it was good to see them and one has to be happy for him and his career. He signed on Wednesday for $4.5M.
I struggled with what to do with all the photos taken during the project and eventually decided to put them in a self-published book. Pitching Ace: A Portrait of Andrew Brackman and the 2007 Wolfpack Baseball Team is a culmination of about four months of photos and around 100 hours worth of work done to sort through, archive and select photos for the book plus the time spent assembling the book. Hard to believe it would take that much time, but I found the end result to be worth it.
The book is 120 pages, hard cover and measures 13×11 inches. Bruce Winkworth, NCSU’s baseball sports information director, was kind enough to lend his editorial assistance.
The book has already been printed in a first edition and was limited to four copies. They were distributed to Coach Elliott Avent, Bruce Winkworth, Andrew Brackman (I think his mom stole his copy) and me. The first edition had a black and white cover and will never be printed again. In it’s place is a second edition which is identical except a color cover. (Update 9/14/07: The spine is now red with white lettering.)
I’m making the book publicly available for sale to those who want a copy. Sorry for the high price but the book costs a lot of money for me to print; there are no economies of scale going on here. I make very little on the books and am not selling them to get rich. I would make more if someone bought a single 8×10 print than this entire book honestly. The book is sold directly through the printer, blurb.com. You can click here to order the book from their site. They will ship the book directly to you.
The book contains photos of the entire team and is supplemented by text brought over from my blog. It provides a great behind-the-scenes look at life of the team. I hope all those who enjoy Wolfpack baseball will treasure this book for years to come.
I have a link to some of my favorite black and white images from the project that you can find here.