Honoring Black Friday.

It’s Black Friday, the rough midpoint of our annual bloated-weekend convergence of family, football, food coma convalescence, and waking to 32 emails selling things.

Or, hey, 33!

We’re now days from shipping the 2017 Bound Edition for those who have pre-ordered. Sales are off to a really good start, thanks to one of the most memorable Rangers seasons ever. And you can get in on that action right now.

If you place your order now, your books will ship in plenty of time for the holidays. The 2017 Bound Edition is available in both hard copy and in digital form, and I have copies of all past years’ editions available as well (in fact, I can ship any of those prior editions right away).

Among the candidates to consider heaping your Black Friday generosity and thoughtfulness on:

· All those friends of yours whose baseball insanity is on level with yours

· Your spouse (or your Top 10 Spouse Prospects)

· Your kid, if she or he needs something new to read for school

· Your boss and your co-workers

· Your parents and siblings

· Your coaches and teachers and accountants, and their parents (not their siblings, as that would be a little silly)

· Your other relatives and in-laws who love the Great Game

· Tom Herman (December address to be determined)

· Your clients – seriously, your clients (none of whom need another fruit basket)

· Your Secret Santa assignee

· Shohei Otani

· Hugh

· That person who always shames you by out-cooling you with the gift he or she gives you

· That person you want to shame into getting you something super-awesome and unique by beating them to the punch

· All those people on your annual (and perhaps semi-annual, if not more frequent) gift list who “have everything” or “don’t need anything”

· You

You can check off a whole lot of those to-buy-for boxes in just a minute or two.

Tip of the cap to the great Marty Yawnick, whose awesome design of the front and back covers is shown below:

One other quick Black Friday thing: If you plan to do any holiday shopping at Amazon.com, you can help us out a bit by clicking the Amazon.com button on the front page of www.newbergreport.com. By clicking that button, any purchases of any kind you make on that visit to Amazon will kick a small referral fee to the Newberg Report (at no cost to you), which we’ll use to maintain and improve our product. This won’t cost you a cent — all it will cost is the extra five seconds you take to get to Amazon.

But more importantly: Books!

Start whittling those gift lists down, and share some baseball.

Happy Thanksgiving and Holiday Season, you guys.