Author Douglas Alden this year is writing a "seasonlong diary" of Myles Thomas, an obscure Yankees pitcher who played on the famed 1927 team, and the stories tie in Thomas' "more famous teammates, other baseball figures of the day and personalities and events from parallel worlds," according to Neil Best of NEWSDAY. The ESPN series is dubbed "1927: The Diary of Myles Thomas," and Alden, the creator and exec producer, called it a "new genre of storytelling -- real-time historical fiction." Alden got permission for the "ambitious, ongoing project" from ESPN President John Skipper in fall of '14 and "began writing early in 2015; he still is writing, working on entries for the later parts of the ’27 season." The diary is "only part of a multi-faceted website and social media presence that will include about 3,000 Twitter posts, historical essays and letters by veteran baseball writer Steve Wulf as if they had been written by a Yankees beat writer of the era." Through it all, the "first rule has been historical accuracy -- or at least plausibility, with all entries vetted" by MLB's official historian John Thorn. Any fictionalized event "has to at least be factually plausible" (NEWSDAY, 5/12). SPORTSBUSINESS JOURNAL's Eric Fisher last month wrote on the project and noted while it does not include a TV component, ESPN is holding open the possibility of televised segments as the MLB season unfolds.
