Ron Kaplan's Baseball Reviews on Bookreporter.com by ronk232

Baseball Reviews on Bookreporter.com By Ron Kaplan

www.ronkaplansbaseballbookshelf.com

Introduction Those who follow my blog on baseball books and pop culture know that I’m a regular contributor to Bookreporter.com. So I thought it would be fun to play with the technology and make an “anthology” of some of those pertaining titles from the site over the years (I have written on other topics as well, because, you know, well-rounded). Please note that the dates that might appear with the reviews are not always indcative of when the pieces actually ran. In this document, they follow a more-or-less alphabetical order. Nor are these the sum of the baseball pieces; unfortunately, some of the older articles were lost when Bookreporter revamped its website. I've also taken the liberty of including Stuart Schiffman's review of my own book, 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. Enjoy.

Ron Kaplan June 2014

Table of Contents 2009 New York Baseball Roundup ........................................................................................................................4 2011 Season-Ending Baseball Roundup ................................................................................................................8 2011 Spring Baseball Roundup ............................................................................................................................11 2012 Spring Baseball Roundup ............................................................................................................................13 A Pitcher’s Story .....................................................................................................................................................16 A Season Opener (2002) ......................................................................................................................................18 Author Interview: Thomas Oliphant (Praying for Gil Hodges, 2005) ................................................................22 Baseball Roundup (2002) .....................................................................................................................................27 Becoming Mr. October ...........................................................................................................................................30 Bullpen Diaries.......................................................................................................................................................32 Calico Joe................................................................................................................................................................33 Celebrating the Yankees Centennial (2003) ........................................................................................................35 Derek Jeter: From the Pages of The New York Times ...........................................................................................37 Double Play ............................................................................................................................................................38 Fantasyland: A Season on Baseball’s Lunatic Fringe .............................................................................................40 Fenway Park: The Centennial................................................................................................................................42 For Baseball Fans, Happy Days Are Here Again (2003) ....................................................................................43 Francona: The Red Sox Years ................................................................................................................................47 Home Run ..............................................................................................................................................................49 Joe DiMaggio: The Hero’s Life ...............................................................................................................................51 Lefty: An American Odyssey ..................................................................................................................................54 Memories of Baseball’s Greatest (2004) .............................................................................................................56 Mickey and Willie: Mantle and Mays, the Parallel Lives of Baseball’s Golden Age ..............................................60 One Last Strike .......................................................................................................................................................62 Pinstripe Empire ....................................................................................................................................................64 Red Sox Books, Part Deux (2005) .......................................................................................................................66 Remembering What the National Pastime Is All About (2005) ........................................................................69 Southern League .....................................................................................................................................................73 Stars and Strikes: Baseball and American in the Bicentennial Summer of ’76 ......................................................75 Ted Williams, My Father: A Memoir ....................................................................................................................77 The Emerald Diamond: How the Irish Transformed America’s Greatest Pastime ................................................79 The Greatest Game Ever Pitched ...........................................................................................................................81 The Head Game: Baseball Seen from the Pitcher’s Mound ...................................................................................83 The Kid: The Immortal Life of Ted Williams ........................................................................................................85 The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood .....................................................................87 The Only Game in Town: Baseball Stars of the 1930s and 1940s Talk About the Game They Loved ..................89 The Teammates ......................................................................................................................................................91 The World Series Centennial (2003) ..................................................................................................................93 The Yankee Years ...................................................................................................................................................97 The Yankees and Red Sox: A Rivalry for the Ages (2005) .................................................................................99 Ty and the Babe ...................................................................................................................................................104 Where Nobody Knows Your Name: Life in the Minor Leagues of Baseball .........................................................106 Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend ......................................................................................................................109 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die ..........................................................................................111

2009 New York Baseball Roundup

New York, New York: A Hell of a (Baseball) Town

Read Ron Kaplan's interview with Pulitzer Prize winner, Thomas Oliphant

As the Mets and Yankees prepare for another go-round of interleague play, fans might consider some of these titles that highlight a few key players for each --- in some cases both --- of the teams. You know, for those interminable pitching changes or commercial breaks. Ron Darling, Keith Hernandez and Darryl Strawberry were prominent members of the 1986 Mets team that ran roughshod over the National League and won a nail-biter of a World Series against the Boston Red Sox. They are still involved with the ball club, serving in broadcast capacities for the SNY cable station.

Darling and Hernandez share the broadcast booth with Gary Cohen. Each offers insight particular to his expertise --- Darling as a pitcher, Hernandez as a Gold Glove first baseman and formidable hitter. Their knowledge carries over in two books that delve into the gameâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s nuances.

Darling looks at baseball from the hill in THE COMPLETE GAME: Reflections on Baseball, Pitching, and Life on the Mound. Other authors have taken a similar approach, dissecting a solitary contest and offering Talmudic-like commentary. But Darling goes beyond: rather than one game --- which may or may not contain all the information

2008 SPRING BASEBALL ROUNDUP 2007 FALL BASEBALL ROUNDUP 2007 SPRING BASEBALL ROUNDUP 2006 FALL BASEBALL ROUNDUP 2006 SPRING BASEBALL ROUNDUP 2005 FALL BASEBALL ROUNDUP RED SOX BOOKS, PART DEUX THE YANKEES AND RED SOX: A Rivalry for the Ages REMEMBERING WHAT THE NATIONAL PASTIME IS ALL ABOUT FALL CLASSICS MEMORIES OF BASEBALL'S GREATEST THE WORLD SERIES CENTENNIAL CELEBRATING THE YANKEES CENTENNIAL FOR BASEBALL FANS, HAPPY DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN BASEBALL ROUNDUP A SEASON OPENER

he would like to impart --- he selects individual innings out of more than 2,300 during his 13-year career, recalling particular situations and strategies. Not every outing was a success; he purposely does not pick only his most heroic work, but a sampling that serves even better in explaining his craft. Darling tosses in some personal anecdotes along the way, but this is no tell-all about the bad-boy Mets of the mid-’80s. Like the image he presents on the telecasts, THE COMPLETE GAME is just the kind of thoughtful analysis that befits a Yale graduate.

Keith Hernandez has been down the book path before. He collaborated with Mike Bryan on a well-received deconstruction, PURE BASEBALL (1995), and IF AT FIRST: A Season with the Mets (1986). The former team captain gives his considered opinion once again in SHEA GOOD-BYE: The Untold Inside Story of the Historic 2008 Season. The “journal” format can be a bit redundant, as co-author Matthew Silverman prefaces each entry with a “precap,” followed by Hernandez’s commentary on the Mets’ second straight disappointing season, culminating with an anti-climactic farewell to their 45-year-old home on the same day they lost any chance at post-season play.

Not every game is included here, which can lead to gaps in circumstances. Like Darling, Hernandez doesn’t dish, but gives the benefit of his expertise to decoding the game. As can sometimes be the case, former ballplayers like Hernandez can come off as old geezers when they compare today’s brand of baseball with that of their own playing days. But he doesn’t do so in a mean-spirited way, which makes it more acceptable, less of a reproach than wishful thinking for smarter execution and better outcomes.

Darryl Strawberry was the poster boy for lost potential. Tall, thin, with a lightningquick bat, he was hailed as the next Ted Williams when he joined the Mets in 1983. His booming home runs excited fans like no one since Tom Seaver, and the “Straw Man” was expected to lead the team back to glory. But the money and temptations --drugs, alcohol and women --- led to his downfall, as he frankly discusses in STRAW: Finding My Way, written with John Strausbaugh.

Strawberry --- who finished his career with the Yankees in 1999 and is currently an in-studio analyst for SNY --- is unflinching in

admitting his shortcomings, including several turbulent marriages despite --- or perhaps because of --- having grown up with an abusive father. He uses his book as a purgative, a way to try to expel his demons and embrace life as a Christian. But, as he also admits, man is frail and weak, and he fell time and time again, despite numerous chances and good intentions. If, after all this time, he is truly repentant and on the straight and narrow, good for him. If not, it is merely another sad tale of a fallen idol. Another case of a player disappointing legions of fans has to be Roger Clemens, who was a sure-fire Hall of Famer until his star dropped precipitously with the revelation that he relied on performance enhancing drugs to prolong his amazing career. Two new books dispel the myth that Clemens achieved his prominence solely through arduous workout routines and strength of will.

Jeff Pearlman tales a look at the big picture in the biography THE ROCKET THAT FELL TO EARTH: Roger Clemens and the Rage for Baseball Immortality. He immediately quashes the notion that Clemens was a tough Texan. In fact, his roots were in Ohio. As a young athlete, Clemens was unremarkable. It was only when he got into high school, and later college, that he developed the skills for which he was famous: tenacity and a desire to excel that bordered on the maniacal.

Pearlman, a veteran writer for Sports Illustrated and its website, chips away at Clemens, wondering why “the Rocket” felt he had to go through such lengths to achieve that “immortality.” Like Barry Bonds, another Hall of Fame-bound superstar before the specter of drugs overshadowed his accomplishments, Clemens -- who pitched for the Yankees from 1999-2003 and again in 2007 to close out his 24-year career --- surely would have earned that Cooperstown plaque without any “assistance.”

The cover of AMERICAN ICON: The Fall of Roger Clemens and the Rise of Steroids in America’s Pastime shows Clemens in what has been described as full “‘roid rage” mode, throwing Mike Piazza’s broken bat at the Mets catcher during the 2000 World Series. (Clemens hit Piazza in the head in an interleague game earlier in the season; the fact that Piazza had a career batting average of .421 with four home runs might have had something to do with that.)

AMERICAN ICON was written by Teri Thompson, Nathaniel Vinton, Michael O'Keeffe and Christian Red of the New York Daily News. In this expose, they focus primarily on the relationship between Clemens and Brian McNamee, the trainer who purportedly introduced the pitcher to performanceenhancing drugs. Where most previously published material castigates McNamee as one of the vilest characters to be

associated with the game, AMERICAN ICON places the blame firmly on Clemens, and casts him as a bullying, dishonest, hypocritical blowhard.

Some authors fall back on the use of “unnamed sources” in making their accusations, but the Daily News quartet have done just about everything they could to provide evidence that contradicts Clemens’s claims. Such relentlessness can take on the appearance of piling it on, and for all that research there is a decided lack of citation; I guess that would have added a couple of hundred more pages, but it seems important when pillorying someone like this. When all the sad news about athletes with feet of clay has proven too much, pick up YOGI BERRA: Eternal Yankee by Allen Barra. The latest in a long line of books about the baseball lifer --- who served both the Yankees and Mets during his storied career -- was written to prove that, despite all the fun and goofiness, the Hall of Fame catcher was one of the best players in baseball’s history. A three-time MVP, 15-time all-star, and owner of 10 World Series rings during his tenure with the Yankees (1946-63), Berra’s talents belied his ungainly appearance. Short, squat and seemingly undisciplined at the plate, he nevertheless became a favorite during and after his playing days. Stories about his mangling of the English language have kept him a part of American culture long after he departed from the active scene. The fact that he has gone with the flow proves he’s no dummy, either.

Barra has been accused of unabashed unobjectivity in his adulation, but in light of recent developments in the last few years, it’s just what baseball fans need. His appendices include a detailed account comparing Berra with other great catchers as well as juxtaposing some of his “Yogi-isms” with quotes from some of the great thinkers.

“Never, never, never give up” - Winston Churchill

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2011 Season-Ending Baseball Roundup

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New York vs. Boston Baseball: A Literary Rivalry

written by Ron Kaplan (RonKaplansBaseballBookshelf.com) Since the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox saw their seasons end early this fall --- the Yankees having been eliminated in the first round of the playoffs by the Detroit Tigers, and the Red Sox, well, let’s just say having fallen off the face of the earth during September --- they can basically look forward to starting fresh in 2012. With the offseason looming, we take a look at five books that New York and Boston fans will want to consider adding to their reading lists while waiting for pitchers and catchers. These titles focus on the centennial of legendary Fenway Park, the bullpen of the Bronx Bombers during the 2010 season, the 50th anniversary of the New York Mets franchise, and the career of famed Brooklyn Dodger pitcher Ralph Branca.

Fenway Park: The Centennial: 100 Years of Red Sox Baseball by Saul Wisnia - Sports History

For the Red Sox, the new season will be a time of celebration as they mark the centennial of legendary Fenway Park, the oldest Major League facility currently in use. And while the site of the famous Green Monster has been the subject of several books over the past few years, two new titles mark the occasion in style.

FENWAY PARK: THE CENTENNIAL: 100 Years of Red Sox Baseball, by Saul Wisnia is more of a family album, full of pictures and recollections from generations of fans. The author, who has written for publications such as Sports Illustrated, Boston Magazine, The Boston Herald and The Boston Globe, has put together a succinct yet affectionate look at the cozy neighborhood and national treasure. The book does, however, concentrate on the team’s history, rather than the ballpark itself, as it recalls their successes when they still had the services of one George Herman Ruth before falling into a lull until Ted Williams and his cohorts came along. Then it was back to the roller coaster with its ups and downs until the Sox became a fixture of contention over the past decade or so. A DVD, narrated by Hall of Fame catcher Carlton Fisk, who has some firsthand experiences with the magic of Fenway, enhances the “multi-media” experience, although it’s pretty standard for the genre.

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Fenway 1912: The Birth of a Ballpark, a Championship Season, and Fenway's Remarkable First Year by Glenn Stout - Sports History

Glenn Stout, a long-time Red Sox rooter, with several books about the franchise under his belt, goes deeper into the nuts and bolts (almost literally) in FENWAY 1912: The Birth of a Ballpark, a Championship Season, and Fenway’s Remarkable First Year. You wouldn’t think such an investigation into the art and architecture would be of interest to the general reader, but Stout, who serves as series editor for the excellent annual Best American Sports Writing, mixes all the behind-the-scenes deals and decisions behind Fenway’s construction as one of the first “modern” steel-and-brick facilities, ushering in a new and majestic era in fan enjoyment. His style is at once scholarly and gossipy as he tells tales of intra-team strife among various “factions,” designated by education, religion and culture, which would seem to be the norm for all teams of the era (as depicted in the film version of Eight Men Out). That the Red Sox overcame all this distraction to cap their first season in Fenway with a thrilling walk-off World Championship was just the icing on the cake.

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Books On Screen Summer is here --- the sun is out, the weather is warmer, and schools are letting out. June is the perfect time to take a book to the park and relax in the warmth, but it’s also a great time to retreat into the cool dark of a theater and watch one of many summer blockbusters. Quite a few of those movies this month are books on screen. More »

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The Beekeeper's Ball by Susan Wiggs Benjamin Franklin's Bastard by Sally Cabot The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown Elizabeth Is Missing by Emma Healey

The Mets: A 50th Anniversary Celebration by Andy Martino and Anthony McCarron - Sports History

New York’s National League franchise celebrates a milestone with THE METS: A 50th Anniversary Celebration, by Andy Martino and Anthony McCarron. The authors, staff writers for the New York Daily News, have collaborated on a fun and attractive coffee table book that might have taken more advantage of its roots. While the blend of narrative and photos from the tabloid are certainly worthy of a publication of this stature on such an august occasion, one wonders if the experience could have been enhanced with carefully selected filler, “drop-boxes,” and statistics. Nevertheless, this will certainly make an excellent gift for the Mets fan on your holiday gift list.

Eyrie by Tim Winton The Fortune Hunter by Daisy Goodwin Hotel Florida by Amanda Vaill My Struggle: Book 1 by Karl Ove Knausgaard My Struggle: Book 2 by Karl Ove Knausgaard My Struggle: Book 3 by Karl Ove Knausgaard The Never Never Sisters by L. Alison Heller Sight Reading by Daphne Kalotay That Night by Chevy Stevens

Bullpen Diaries: Mariano Rivera, Bronx Dreams, Pinstripe Legends, and the Future of the New York Yankees by Charley Rosen - Sports

One of these days, in the not-too-distant future, the Yankees will have to contend with life sans their future Hall of Fame closer, Mariano Rivera, who set the all-time save record this year. Perhaps his replacement will come from the batch of relievers profiled in Charley Rosen’s Bullpen Diaries: Mariano Rivera, Bronx Dreams, Pinstripe Legends, and the Future of the New York Yankees.

The Tilted World by Tom Franklin and Beth Ann Fennelly

Young Adult Books Each month we spotlight a selection of Young Adult (YA) titles that we believe are great reads for adult readers. Explore our picks here!

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Rosen analyzed each game during the 2010 season from spring training through their American League Championship Series loss to the Texas Rangers, and graded the performances of each man out of the ‘pen. He fills in the down time with snippets of history and anecdotes, but with all those pitching changes, fans might grow nostalgic for the days when a starter was expected to go more than a mere five or six innings to be deemed as turning in a quality performance.

A Moment in Time: An American Story of Baseball, Heartbreak, and Grace Ralph Branca with David Ritz - Sports

One old-timer who might want to weigh in on the current state of pitching affairs is Ralph Branca, one of the Brooklyn Dodgers of whom Roger Kahn wrote so evocatively in his 1972 classic, THE BOYS OF SUMMER. For all of his accomplishments, Branca will forever be remembered as having thrown the ball that the New York Giants’ Bobby Thomson hit for “the shot ‘heard round the world” in 1951, which is perennially listed as one of the most dramatic moments in sports. Branca has always borne this burden with dignity as he recalls in his new memoir, A MOMENT IN TIME: An American Story of Baseball, Heartbreak, and Grace (co-written with David Ritz). In this slim volume, Branca tries to put across the fact that “a moment” should not serve to identify a lifetime. He had a lot of great experiences on and off the field (he won 21 games in 1947 and was a three-time All-Star) and was a prime example of the adage “what doesn’t kill you just makes you stronger,” as he faced --- and still faces --- questions from fans who blame him for another Dodger disappointment.

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2011 Spring Baseball Roundup

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The 2011 Major League Baseball season is in full swing. As of this writing, there is the usual set of surprises, with some teams and individual players exceeding preseason predictions, while others are not living up to expectations. One thing you can always count on: a variety of entertaining books to fill in those inevitable rain delays and interminable pitching changes. This year's list includes plenty of New York-centric titles to keep Yankees, Mets and even Brooklyn Dodger fans busy.

56: Joe DiMaggio and the Last Magic Number in Sports by Kostya Kennedy - Baseball, Sports

This year marks the 70th anniversary of Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak. It would be easy enough to rely on the old standard of writing a bit about each game as the Yankee Clipper makes his way into the history books. But in 56: Joe DiMaggio and the Last Magic Number in Sports Kostya Kennedy, a writer for Sports Illustrated, gives a real sense of the tension as “The Streak” begins modestly before building momentum until it was no longer just a source of interest for baseball fans, but for the whole country.

Joe DiMaggio: The Long Vigil by Jerome Charyn - Baseball, Biography, Sports

This year marks the 70th anniversary of one of the sports records considered to be unbreakable: Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak. Jerome Charyn's JOE DIMAGGIO: THE LONG VIGIL is an examination of what happens to an athlete when the cheering stops. It's a brief, exceedingly sad tale; for all of DiMaggio's accomplishments and adoration, Charyn depicts him as a man who was never comfortable in his own skin. At once wanting the accolades while at the same time wishing to be left alone, Garbolike, he became a hero to the Italian community and to America at large in a precarious time in history, when the nation needed respite from the larger issues of the impending World War just a few months away.

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The House that Ruth Built: A New Stadium, the First Yankees Championship, and the Redemption of 1923 by Robert Weintraub - Baseball, Biography, Sports

Readers may come to Robert Weintraub's THE HOUSE THAT RUTH BUILT: A New Stadium, the First Yankees Championship, and the Redemption of 1923 and ask, “Another book about Yankee Stadium?” In truth, one would have thought that ship had sailed either in 1998, when the legendary ballpark celebrated 75 years of service, or in 2008, when it closed its doors to make way for progress. How many times do we need to hear about Babe Ruth's boozing and womanizing or Lou Gehrig's initial awkwardness or the Yankees' juggernaut?

Derek Jeter: From the Pages of the New York Times

by New York Times and Tyler Kepner - Baseball, Biography, Sports Before this season began, there was speculation about Derek Jeter, the fixture at shortstop for the Yankees since the mid1990s. With his contract complete and at the advanced age of 37, fans and sports pundits opined about his future with the team specifically and the game in general. Perhaps that's why DEREK JETER: FROM THE PAGES OF THE NEW YORK TIMES came out this spring.

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The Beekeeper's Ball by Susan Wiggs Benjamin Franklin's Bastard by Sally Cabot The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown Elizabeth Is Missing by Emma Healey

New York Mets: The Complete Illustrated History by Matthew Silverman - Baseball, Biography, Sports

Like DiMaggio's streak, the New York Mets are observing an anniversary, too. Matthew Silverman, who's made a cottage industry of publishing about the team, has come up with a proper tribute with NEW YORK METS: THE COMPLETE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY, a must-have for any serious fan of the team.

Young Adult Books Each month we spotlight a selection of Young Adult (YA) titles that we believe are great reads for adult readers. Explore our picks here!

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New York, New York: New books on the Mets and Yankees reflect old school, new attitudes

Memoirs seem to be the genre of choice this year for the New York teams, both for players and writers. It’s somewhat unusual for an active player to write a book. Such things are often left to the relative safety and reflection of retirement. But no one ever said R. A. Dickey was your run-of-the-mill athlete. You only have to hear him on an NPR interview to get a sense of his intelligence and sensitivity. That’s why WHEREVER I WIND UP: My Quest for Truth, Authenticity and the Perfect Knuckleball, written with Wayne Coffey, is so stunning for its honesty. WHEREVER I WIND UP received the most pre-publication buzz of any baseball title so far this year (with the possible exception of John Grisham’s CALICO JOE). When word began to circulate that Dickey would reveal his story of having been sexually abused as a child by a female babysitter and a male cousin, I feared this would turn into a lurid selling point. Such a revelation would be a watershed moment; it was unheard of for an athlete to be that open about such an issue. And indeed Dickey has said this book served as a cathartic device, an opportunity to admit what to him had been a shameful and confusing part of his life --- and the first time he had ever spoken of it. It is not in the purview of this article to get into psychological considerations, but listening to those interviews, you get the sense that it has been a cleansing experience But the abuse is not the sole subject of the book. Dickey had other, more germane, issues that face an athlete, such as spending more than the usual number of years in the minors before finding a permanent spot in the Mets’ pitching rotation. The mental wear-and-tear of worrying the direction in which your career is going is daunting for any player, let alone one with a wife and four kids to consider. But Dickey’s faith --- a main point in the book --has helped him survive thus far and, hopefully, will see him through a long and successful career. In TURNING TWO: My Journey to the Top of the World and Back with the New York Mets, Bud Harrelson, a staple of the pennant-winning Mets of 1969 and 1973, offers a “throw-back” to the days when sports autobiographies/memoirs were above dishing the dirt. He may not have been a superstar along the lines of a Tom Seaver, or a slugger like Tommy Agee, or a high-average hitter like Cleon Jones, but Harrelson was perhaps the heart and soul of the team, a gutty little player who smoothly handled shortstop and was the glue of a solid defensive infield. The “highlight” of his career came in the 1973 playoffs when Pete Rose, the rock-solid Cincinnati Red, ran into him at second base trying to break up a double play. Shoves ensued, followed by punches --- Harrelson’s great line: “I hit him in the fist with my face.” --- and one of the most famous bench-clearing incidents in baseball.

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Harrelson was the only Met to be a member of their only World Championship teams: in 1969 as a player, and 1986 as a coach. He also served as manager, compiling a fairly impressive record before the team went into the tank and he was fired. But there is no bitterness in him. Indeed, he has produced the kind of book many memoirists describe as “something they would like their kids to be able to read,” that is, without scandal, with lots of cheer and upbeat, and few (if any) cussing. Harrelson is ably assisted in his project by Phil Pepe, the always-busy author and former sportswriter for the New York Daily News. Moving across town, we have a trio of books about the New York Yankees. Harvey Araton tells a touching story in DRIVING MR. YOGI: Yogi Berra, Ron Guidry, and Baseball's Greatest Gift. Reminiscent of David Halberstam’s 2002 THE TEAMMATES, DRIVING MR. YOGI is a bit more upbeat as it focuses on the relationship between Hall of Fame catcher Yogi Berra --- one of the last members of those awesome Yankee teams of the late 1940s through the early1960s --- and Ron Guidry, a star pitcher of a subsequent generation. Each spring training for the past several years (since Berra returned to the Yankee fold after a reconciliation with the late George Steinbrenner, which is covered in great detail by Araton, a sports columnist for The New York Times), Guidry has been meeting the iconic catcher at the Tampa airport, serving as his companion and driver during Spring Training. The affection between the two is genuine and mutual, almost like father and son. In between the contemporary story, we get a sense of what each man meant to his team, both coming from relatively humble origins --- Berra in Missouri, Guidry in Louisiana --- to find success in the big city The book does take on an emotional tone as Berra, who turns 87 this month, becomes a bit more dependent on Guidry for support. The reader wonders how many more trips to Tampa will be made. Still, DRIVING MR. YOGI is a sweet tale harkening back to a kinder, gentler society where elders are cherished for their wisdom and accomplishments. Jim Abbott tells an old-fashioned tale of hard work, dedication, and refusing to give up in IMPERFECT: An Improbable Life, co-written by Tim Brown. Born without a right hand, Abbott nevertheless gained success as an outstanding athlete. The book uses a familiar back-and-forth concept, alternating between his September 4, 1993 no-hitter against the Cleveland Indians and his recounting of how he arrived at that point. Abbott excelled at the University of Michigan; he was the first baseball player to win the Sullivan Award as the nation’s outstanding amateur athlete and was selected for the U.S. Olympic team in 1988. The year before he led the American team to its first win over Cuba at the Pan-Am games. His “inconvenience” (Abbott would probably not appreciate the term “handicap”) did not deter scouts from checking him out. He was drafted by the Toronto Blue Jays in 1985 but chose to attend school instead. Abbott signed with the then-California Angels in 1988, making the team out of spring training the following year without spending even a day in the minors. This could have been a sideshow attraction, but Abbot truly belonged in the Majors. He was 12-12 in his rookie year; three years later, he won 18 games and finished third for the American League Cy Young Award, emblematic of the league’s best pitcher. After missing the 1997 season, he won each of the five games in which he appeared for the Chicago White Sox. Abbot enjoyed a 10-year career, finishing with a record of 87-108 and a respectable 4.25 earned run average. Abbott now works mainly as a motivational speaker, which is no doubt a reason he wrote the book. Former Sports Illustrated executive editor Rob Fleder assembled his own literary All-Star team for DAMN YANKEES: Twenty-Four Major League Writers on the World's Most Loved (and Hated) Team.

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The roster includes such “players” as Roy Blount Jr., Dan Barry, Jane Leavy, Charley Pierce, Will Leitch, Colum McCann, Daniel Okrent, Frank DeFord, Bill James and Tom Verducci, among others. Not everyone is enamored of the Bronx Bombers, which is refreshing. Some take issue with the team for being too good, or too cocky, or too conservative (they were among the last teams to sign a black player). Blount and Pierce, being “outsiders” (the former was born in Indianapolis but grew up in Georgia, the latter is a staunch New Englander), can be expected to be a bit on the “negative” side, while Leavy, a Mantle fan since childhood, writes about her favorite player’s home run relationship with a Red Sox pitcher. McCann recalls how he indoctrinated his Irish father into the ways of the national pastime via the Yankees. And Nathaniel Rich sticks up for his favorite NY team, the Mets, as he discusses the almost symbiotic relationship between the rivals’ fans and whether the word Schadenfreude is really appropriate. Some contributors, merely by dint of being writers, have had problems with the team, as players who might be heroes to others have different feelings towards the media. Kudos to all the participants for sharing their personal feelings on the topic. --- Reviewed by Ron Kaplan (http://RonKaplansBaseballBookshelf.com)

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A Pitcher's Story

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A Pitcher's Story

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by Roger Angell

More to Read Loose Girl by Kerry Cohen - Memoir, Nonfiction

Review

Roger Angell Biography Bibliography

For some reason, baseball fans believe their favorite players

should be like the Pope. Not that they must be infallible, but that

their presence should last forever. So it is with some sadness that

we behold the day when a treasured athlete decides to hang it up.

Just recently, Cal Ripken Jr., the new "Iron Man," decided to

retire at the age of 40, at the end of the current season.

Testimonials have already started to pour in like eulogies. The

average career of a professional ballplayer lasts slightly longer

than a presidential term. For those who hang on for 15 or more

years, especially with one team, as did Ripken, there is a special

affection. The life span of an athlete should be described like dog years, for only in that context can we discuss a 38-year-old as finished, washed up, put out to pasture. David Cone has been thought of in that context. And Roger Angell is the type of writer who can chronicle the declining years of a star without being too maudlin or cynical. The author, sports editor for The New Yorker, is a gifted analyst of the national pastime (FIVE SEASONS, ONCE MORE AROUND THE PARK) as a game made up of "people," not merely "athletes."

A PITCHER'S STORY was envisioned as a much happier project. Angell wanted to look at the life of Cone, an unusually thoughtful man, an aging cowboy heading off into the sunset (which is not an inappropriate metaphor, considering the seemingly-perennial free agent was often looked on as something of a hired gun). Cone, at the time a New York Yankee, had attained pitching Nirvana, tossing a perfect game against the Montreal Expos in 1999. The next season the floor dropped out from under him. He won but four games while losing fourteen, unable to significantly help the Yankees as they headed for another World Championship. The whispers began: "He's had it; he's done."

Yossarian Slept Here: When Joseph Heller Was Dad, the Apthorp Was Home, and Life Was a Catch-22 by Erica Heller - Memoir, Nonfiction Learning to Breathe: My Yearlong Quest to Bring Calm to My Life by Priscilla Warner Memoir, Nonfiction

A Big Little Life: A Memoir of a Joyful Dog by Dean Koontz - Memoir, Nonfiction

Hope’s Boy: A Memoir by Andrew Bridge - Memoir, Nonfiction

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The old saw is that baseball is a game of inches. For pitchers, the measurements are even less forgiving. The strike zone is 17" wide (its height depends on the batter); for a pitcher to miss by molecules can mean the difference between a pop up caught by the shortstop and a ball that goes over the centerfield fence. For Cone, during this year, it was more of the latter. After thousands of pitches, the book ponders, how can such a trained athlete lose his way?

A PITCHER'S STORY follows the maturation of Cone from his little league days through all the ups and downs along the way to the big leagues, including surgery to remove a life-threatening aneurysm from his pitching arm. The author supplements these travails with interviews with those close to Cone, his inner circle. We read of a strict upbringing in a family where sports were important, of his development from little league standout to high school prospect to major league stardom. He has been one of the best of his generation, but Angell portrays him as a man, not just a bubble gum card. A PITCHER'S STORY is not your typical "kiss and tell" biography. Cone's story is depicted with sensitivity, never sensationalism.

At one point, when asked about the progress of the project, Cone responded wearily, "It isn't the book that was planned. That was going to be...technical things about what pitchers do and how they take care of themselves, and who owns the pitcher's arm. But it changed." Cone deserves a great deal of credit. It would have been easy to change his mind, to decide that he didn't want a public airing of his decline. But then this pitcher is not one of your stereotypical monosyllabic, scratching, spitting sports Neanderthals.

After a rough spring, Cone is trying to make a comeback with the Yankee's nemesis, the Boston Red Sox; the competitor in him obviously wants to keep going. You can't help wonder with him as he muses, "Thirty-eight is old for a pitcher. Maybe I should retire and become a young man again."

Reviewed by Ron Kaplan (ronk23@aol.com) on January 22, 2011

A SEASON OPENER After 9/11, one of the first signs that America was trying to get back to normal was the resumption of the major league baseball schedule. Somber ceremonies honoring the fallen and restating our faith in our country preceded games, and "God Bless America" replaced "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" at the seventh inning stretch.

Read Ron Kaplan's interview with Pulitzer Prize winner, Thomas Oliphant

National Geographic and the National Baseball Hall of Fame have combined in a timely effort to demonstrate the bond America has with baseball. The National Geographic has long been praised for combining thoughtful prose with exhilarating illustrations. This reputation, earned primarily for bringing exotic locations to the reader, is reaffirmed on the home front in BASEBALL AS AMERICA. The editors of this labor of love have collected a diverse group of writers to examine the national pastime as much more than just a game, but as a way of life. It has infiltrated our speech, our music, our reading, even our eating habits (in a long-ago commercial, Humphrey Bogart declared that "a hot dog at the ballpark was like a steak at The Ritz."). Chapters include themes such as "Our National Spirit," "Ideals and Injustices," "Sharing a Common Culture," and "Weaving Myths."

Jules Tygiel, one of the sport's most respected historians, introduces the various chapters, which are written by an eclectic group from many disciplines. Steven Reiss, a professor at Northern Illinois University, discusses "Baseball and Ethnicity"; best-selling novelist John Grisham reports on "Growing Up With Baseball"; and Molly O'Neill, a food columnist for The New York Times (and sister of the recently-retired Paul O'Neill) weighs in with "Fathers Eating

ROUNDUP 2007 FALL BASEBALL ROUNDUP 2007 SPRING BASEBALL ROUNDUP 2006 FALL BASEBALL ROUNDUP 2006 SPRING BASEBALL ROUNDUP 2005 FALL BASEBALL ROUNDUP RED SOX BOOKS, PART DEUX THE YANKEES AND RED SOX: A Rivalry for the Ages REMEMBERING WHAT THE NATIONAL PASTIME IS ALL ABOUT FALL CLASSICS MEMORIES OF BASEBALL'S GREATEST THE WORLD SERIES CENTENNIAL CELEBRATING THE YANKEES CENTENNIAL FOR BASEBALL FANS, HAPPY DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN BASEBALL ROUNDUP A SEASON OPENER

Hot Dogs with Sons." Even good old Charlie Brown, the eternal optimist, merits discussion.

Nor has National Geographic forgotten that it helps to establish an interest in the game at an early age. AMERICA AT BAT: Baseball Stuff and Stories is perfectly tailored for young readers. It packs a colorful punch in a scant 48 pages, dealing with the most important aspects of the game, liberally illustrated and just plain fun. Each chapter concludes with a quiz, to make sure the kids were paying attention.

BASEBALL AS AMERICA was produced in conjunction with a traveling tour of baseball icons and artifacts by the Hall of Fame. The four-year program kicked off in March at New York's Museum of Natural History and will make stops in Los Angeles, Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Petersburg, Washington, St. Louis, and Houston. Put aside the genteel discussions of the social relevance of the game and you realize that as long as there has been baseball, there have been arguments over which team or stadium was better. Mantle or Mays? DiMaggio or Williams?

While less glitzy than BASEBALL AS AMERICA, Dean Sullivan's LATE INNINGS is just as illuminating in justifying the significance of the game in our culture.

Using excerpts from newspapers, organized baseball internal memoranda, and congressional reports and hearings as a narrative, Sullivan adds his own commentary to review some of baseball's high and low points between 1945 and 1972.

Relatively few of the articles report on the game as played on the field, although the really important ones, such as Bobby Thomson's "shot heard round the world" (1951) and Harvey Haddix's 12inning near-perfect game (1959) are among the handful selected for inclusion.

The bulk of LATE INNINGS takes place off the diamond, with issues that are no less important in the game's evolution: the impact of television on the major and minor leagues; franchise relocation; expansion; the influx of African-Americans into the pro ranks and the consequent decline of the Negro Leagues; comings (the debut of Willie Mays) and goings (Mickey Mantle's last home run); antitrust hearings; and Curt Flood's wrangling with the baseball establishment to usher in the era of free agency.

Sullivan, editor of EARLY INNINGS and MIDDLE INNINGS, which cover 1825-1900 and 1900-1948 respectively, does a fine job of gathering representative pieces that show baseball as a work in progress, ever-growing, ever-changing.

Allen Barra, a sportswriter for The Wall Street Journal and Village Voice, examines some of these issues in CLEARING THE BASES. Known for his anti-conventional views, he opines on how the changing conditions (night baseball was introduced in 1935; Jackie Robinson opening the door for other black players) have impacted the game. Among other issues on his mind are why pitchers can't seem to throw complete games any more and what happened to the Mets' short-lived dynasty in the mid-1980s. He uses his own statistical methods to back up his theories (readers might be shocked at his pick for the greatest player ever). Regardless of

whether this book answers questions or causes more arguments, it will cause readers to think about their own cherished beliefs. But buyer beware: Barra slips in some chapters on "lesser sports" such as basketball and football, a fact that is omitted from the book cover.

Speaking of the Mets, the title of Peter Golenbock's latest baseball tome alone is sure to cause a few arguments with Yankee fans. But the author of similar books on the Yankees, Red Sox, and Cubs has done his usual thorough job of collecting anecdotal history from the people closest to the scene in AMAZIN': The Miraculous History of New York's Most Beloved Baseball Team.

The Mets are a young club, relatively speaking, just now entering (along with many fans) into the mid-life crisis stage. Like all of us, they have had their ups and downs, laughs and tears, which are laid bare for us to see. One of the most interesting chapters is how the team was put together following the abandonment of the Dodgers and Giants, who left New York following the 1956 season. The machinations of finding a replacement are fascinating, both on a political level and within the confines of the baseball establishment, which believed that a National League franchise in the country's largest metropolitan area was unnecessary.

AMAZIN' tracks the teams progress (or lack thereof) through interviews with players and other team personnel throughout the Mets' 40 years. One complaint is the lack of variety in the choice of interviewees, especially in the most recent years. People have their own takes, their own agendas on things, and relying on a select few can put a spin on the truth. Still, Golenbock is the baseball version of Studs Terkel, letting his subjects do most of the talking, filling in background where needed. A book like this has been long in coming for Mets' fans.

Frank O'Rourke is not a household name. He's no W. P. Kinsella, no Mark Harris, no Ring Lardner. But during the 1940s and 1950s he wrote some of the most eloquent baseball short stories you're likely to find. Most of the pieces that appear in THE HEAVENLY WORLD SERIES were originally published in such magazines as The Saturday Evening Post and Esquire. They are at once triumphant and sad, often disguising actual players of the era as easily recognized avatars.

O'Rourke, who died in 1989, tells these tales with such subdued yet stirring passion, that you don't even mind that many of them are essentially the same, frequently dealing with a fading player's love for the game --- to the extent that he will do just about anything not to give it up. He knows the ride can't go on forever but still seeks that one more game, one more inning, one more at bat, one more pitch, whether at the major league level or for some two-bit sandlot team in a one-horse town. And when it truly is over, he wants to see the sanctity of the game passed down to a worthy standard-bearer.

Ironically, the short story of the book's title just might be the least compelling, a World Series in the great hereafter between the American and National Leagues' dearly departed, under the watchful eyes of Ty Cobb, John McGraw, Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, and the Supreme Being, the ultimate umpire. Interesting in concept, lacking in delivery. A much more enthralling

entry is a paean to a ballplayer who knows the odds are against him but perseveres to gain the respect of his opponents on the field and in the stands. Another is a reference to a crooked player trying to stick with the game, despite the contempt of his fellow ballists.

There is a tendency to deal in hyperbole when writing about baseball: the verdant fields, fathers playing catch with sons, the theory of infinity for a game without a time clock and whose boundaries extend forever, ever diverging from home plate. And while some of this sentimentality is exhibited here, there is plenty of tangible evidence that baseball is America. To offer just one bit of evidence: The President has traditionally thrown out the first pitch since the days of William Howard Taft. What other sport can make such a claim? Does the President ever kick off the first football? Make the first free throw? I rest my case.

More Baseball Roundups by Ron Kaplan: • 2005 FALL BASEBALL ROUNDUP • RED SOX BOOKS, PART DEUX • THE YANKEES AND RED SOX: A Rivalry for the Ages • REMEMBERING WHAT THE NATIONAL PASTIME IS ALL ABOUT • MEMORIES OF BASEBALL'S GREATEST • THE WORLD SERIES CENTENNIAL • CELEBRATING THE YANKEES CENTENNIAL • FOR BASEBALL FANS, HAPPY DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN • BASEBALL ROUNDUP • A SEASON OPENER Back to top.

Thomas Oliphant BIO

Interviews

October 21, 2005

2005 Fall Baseball Roundup

Thomas Oliphant has been a correspondent for The Boston Globe since 1968 and its Washington, D.C., columnist since 1989. He is a native of Brooklyn, a product of La Jolla High School in California, and a 1967 graduate of Harvard. Oliphant was one of three editors on special assignment who managed the Globe's coverage of Boston's traumatic school desegregation, reporting that was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1975. He has also won the writing award given by the American Society of Newspaper Editors. He has appeared on ABC's "'Nightline," "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer," "Face The Nation," "The Today Show," "Good Morning America," and "CBS This Morning." He has been named one of the country's Top Ten political writers and one of Washington's fifty most influential journalists by Washington Magazine. Mr. Oliphant lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, CBS correspondent Susan Spencer.

Books by Thomas Oliphant

PRAYING FOR GIL HODGES

INTERVIEW October 21, 2005

Bookreporter.com baseball specialist Ron Kaplan interviewed Pulitzer Prize winner Thomas Oliphant about PRAYING FOR GIL HODGES, his bittersweet memoir

about growing up as a fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers and the joy of celebrating their only World Championship in 1955. Oliphant, the Washington columnist for the Boston Globe, discusses what the team meant to the Flatbush faithful, what Jackie Robinson meant to America, and why intellectuals gravitate to the national pastime. Bookreporter.com: Why did you write PRAYING FOR GIL HODGES? Thomas Oliphant: I had this stone in my shoe all my life, and it came out talking with close friends. This memory didn't die and get buried, only to be resurrected. It has always been, I think, because it's a bittersweet story. There's a lot of disappointment --- personal and baseball --- in there, and a lot of joy. But it was sort of teetering on the edge when I saw that little sign on that bridge in Indiana.

The first thing I did was call Doris [Kearns Goodwin, author of WAIT TILL NEXT YEAR] just because I knew she would get such a kick out of it. That book is poetry. And it was like, for once in your life would you shut up and tell your story and get it out of your system? My friends who are psychologists and shrinks say it's a heck of a lot cheaper than five years of therapy.

It was a political year, 1998, and there was a hot House race in Southern Indiana near Bloomington, the university town. I was driving down a country highway, and as I narrate, the first thing I saw was a little sign that said "Princeton." A little bell went off and then about five or six miles later there it was --- the Gil Hodges Memorial Bridge. When I stopped the car, got out and sat on it, I let memories wash back over me. One of the things I appreciated in a way I hadn't throughout my life was that all of our really honest memories are bittersweet. I mean it's not worth it if it's just joy.

By the time I got back in the car, I was ready for a friend, a wife, and an agent to persuade me to get off my skinny butt and do this. BRC: A huge part of the book deals with you and your father. TO: Absolutely! I was part of a "Dodger family" --- we of course weren't the only ones, we're weren't unique, and maybe we weren't even totally typical. But this was at a time when America was still a largely blue-collar country. Everybody was just two or three missed paychecks away from catastrophe --- struggling, not quite succeeding.

Everything about the Dodgers immediately pre- and post-World War II was eminently understandable to ordinary American families, not just [in Brooklyn]. Part of the task, I thought, was to try to understand the resonance. This is unique. There was no 50year recognition last year for the Giants upsetting the Indians. There wasn't any 50-year recognition even two years ago for the

start of the Yankees' [World Series] winning streak that probably will never be equaled again.

To me, it's like a two or three stage rocket. First, Brooklyn: It has the largest Diaspora of any chunk of real estate in America, Ellis Island included. The experts who've done the demography figure that one in five --- some even argue one in four --- Americans either lived there or had a relative or ancestor who did. It's the most important gateway in the country. You say "Brooklyn" anywhere in the country and it has a resonance that The Bronx and Queens don't have.

Secondly is this idea of struggle and underdogs. It is an essential part of American mythology because it's so true. In the late forties and early fifties, when most of America rooted from afar because there were only sixteen teams in fourteen cities --- not one south of Washington or west of St. Louis --- the hard luck underdog, or the hard luck struggler, was the easiest thing with which to identify. The Yankees were almost like the Roman Empire --- the majestic winning machine that you were in awe of. The Dodgers came closer to being America's team based solely on that perception.

But then the clincher for me that I think people have forgotten is that race played a huge role. I noticed in studying the Black press in the early fifties that it was routine for the Dodger train to pull into a city on a road trip late in the evening. There would be a few hundred people on the train platform, almost all of them black men with their sons, just to get a glimpse of their heroes.

And that produced a whole chunk of America that at least in September identified with [the Dodgers] simply because of the enormity of what they had accomplished at a time when nothing else good in America was happening [for them]. One of the things I fixated on after the third out of Game Seven in 1955: it's two months, almost to the day, when Rosa Parks doesn't give up her seat on that bus. And yet in '55, if Newcombe was pitching, the Dodgers routinely put five African American ballplayers on the field. And there were still four teams at the time that hadn't yet integrated. BRC: Why did you name the book for Gil Hodges? TO: I was looking for a metaphysical story. [During one World Series, when Hodges was having a particularly rough showing, a Brooklyn priest told his congregation, "It's too hot for a sermon. Go home, keep the commandments, and pray for Gil Hodges."] [A]nd it had the additional advantage of being true, because my father was from rural Indiana [as was Hodges] and to me Hodges just seemed to embody the stoicism, the purpose with which the Dodgers confronted adversity. He wasn't a jovial man; he was more of a majestic figure and all the parents in Brooklyn wanted their kids to be like him. You don't complain, you don't shout, you don't quit. And it was really true. I guess what we didn't know is that he kept a lot of it bottled up. [Hodges died of a heart attack in 1972 at the age of 48.] BRC: Is Hodges your favorite player? TO: It doesn't work that way with the Dodgers. This is where the

politics of this discussion comes in. It is definitely a collective appeal. You do not have anything that approaches Willie Mays or Mickey Mantle. I mean, [Duke] Snider obviously does as a ballplayer, but I mean in terms of adulation. It's Dodgers first, ballplayers second. BRC: Was Jackie Robinson's importance to the team overstated or justified? TO: I wanted to check, dig more deeply than that, and go beyond 1947. After I talked to the African Americans who were involved at the time in helping to make this happen and then making it work, as well as the people with more national experience and some memory (Vernon Jordan is a very good example), I realized that most of us have forgotten the fact that nothing was happening after WWII ended. Nothing. You couldn't even get a vote on the Senate floor for legislation outlawing lynching. Branch Rickey singed Robinson three years before Truman's executive order [integrating the Army]. In the black community, the disappointment and anger of returning vets thinking "well, maybe now after what we've done..." was palpable. But what made Jackie Robinson so special was that he was involved in a team sport that just happened to be the national pastime, and this was the first segregation barrier to fall. The country understood this when Robinson came up in 1947, no question. It was a huge occurrence that helped pave the way for what would come immediately thereafter. BRC: What about minority ballplayers? Is there an appreciation for the pioneers like Jackie Robinson, Joe Black, Roy Campanella and Don Newcombe? TO: I think a lot of us have forgotten how the Dodgers also taught America, before it learned from any other venue, what immigration means. On a typical day in 1955, if Newcombe was pitching, you had Newcombe, Campanella, Jim Gillian, Jackie Robinson and Sandy Amoros on the same field. That's a majority. And this was ten years before the bill passed Congress outlawing segregation in public accommodations. That's a pretty big deal. And what I discovered, which I didn't fully appreciate as a boy, was how big this was in the African American community throughout the country. BRC: Do you think today's players appreciate what their athletic predecessors did? TO: We forget. This has long since become part of history, and history has a different resonance from something current. There won't be a 75th anniversary event. This is it. The important pieces of the historical memory have pretty much gotten their due. But understanding how vital the Dodgers were to post-World War II American history is very important because it was huge. It just wasn't noticed at the time. BRC: What is it about baseball that engages such scholarly affection inspiring so many writers who can be considered "intellectual," such as George F. Will, Jay Stephen Gould, Charles Krauthammer --- and yourself --- to write about the game?

TO: A lot of us like to do it just because it's a way of emptying our own notebook. Some of it is embarrassing and I think that's why you see writers take refuge in statistics. To me, every time you get to a number, you fail. I don't understand all of what's made it so important in American history, but I'm positive that memory and these insoluble arguments will go on forever. BRC: What's your favorite baseball anecdote? TO: One time Babe Herman was playing right field. There was one out and a man on third. And somebody hits a fly ball to him. He comes under it, catches it, puts the ball in his pocket, runs off the field, and the run scores. I don't think you can ask for a better mental picture of what fun [the Dodgers] were and how creatively terrible they could be.

However majestic 1955 was, I think it's the memories that made them so human and worth loving. Click here now to buy this book from Amazon.com.

BASEBALL ROUNDUP Baseball dodged a bullet when players and owners came to their senses and decided to sign the labor agreement that will calm fans' shaky nerves for the next few years. As the season winds down to the World Series, the media reminds us, through flowery prose, dramatic music and sepia-toned images, of the rich tradition of the National Pastime, despite all the recent problems.

Read Ron Kaplan's interview with Pulitzer Prize winner, Thomas Oliphant

Curt Smith is an extraordinary chronicler on myriad aspects of the game. He has written about ballparks (STORIED STADIUMS: Baseball's History Through Its Ballparks and OUR HOUSE: a Tribute to Fenway Park) and broadcasters (VOICES OF THE GAME). In his new book, WHAT BASEBALL MEANS TO ME, he takes on the sport as a whole, via this collection of anecdotes from a wide variety of devotees. He blends these misty-eyed tales with pictures meant to represent the everyman quality associated with the national pastime.

Smith has amassed the sentimental views of over a hundred famous and semi-famous people, from politicians, musicians, actors, athletes (and not just baseball players) and journalists. Among those giving their voice to WHAT BASEBALL MEANS TO ME are such notables as George Bush and George W. Bush, Dan Rather, Tim Russert, Marvin Hamlisch, Dave Barry and Billy Bob Thornton. Their memories might consist of a single Little League at bat, or something much deeper, such as how baseball brings people together socially.

Many of the contributors for Smith's collection doubtlessly can quote verbatim the timeless poem, CASEY AT THE BAT. Since its

debut over 100 years ago, dozens of versions have been published, either continuations of the legend of Casey ("Casey's Daughter," "Casey's Revenge"), or parodies following the same fashion and general meter.

One of the most renown artists of our generation, LeRoy Neiman, has lent his unique style to illustrate the words of Ernest Lawrence Thayer. Joe Torre, manager of the New York Yankees, offers his thoughts of the importance of this classic in the book's introduction.

Most illustrators put the brawny batter in turn of the 20th century attire, with high collars and pillbox style caps worn at the time. Neiman, however, takes a rather unconventional step, depicting the mighty Casey as a modern-day player, perhaps with a nod to younger readers. Some might consider such a view as heretical, preferring that comforting illusion of baseball played in a simpler, more rustic time. Nevertheless, no one can argue with Neiman when it comes to expressing the dynamic imagery of sports. ****

When it comes to penning a primer on how to play the game, could you find a better choice than the Yankee Clipper, Joe DiMaggio? BASEBALL FOR EVERYONE, written with Tom Meany, one the great New York sportswriters of the era, was originally released in by McGraw-Hill 1948, when the Yankees were in the middle of establishing their great dynasty. With the New York team celebrating its centennial, what better time to remind readers about the team's heydays?

One of the most graceful players ever to don Yankee pinstripes, DiMaggio followed in the footsteps of Ruth and Gehrig to lead the team. Taking advantage of his superstar status, he collaborated on this instructional primarily for the aspiring athletes (although the subtitle reads "A Treasury of Baseball Lore and Instruction for Fans and Players"). He offered detailed information on both offensive and defensive aspects, although when he lectures on how to play each position, one might wonder what a Hall of Fame centerfielder could offer in the way of pitching tips. The title page gives credit to an "advisory board" consisting of such experts in the field as New York Giants pitcher Carl Hubbell, St. Louis Cardinals infielder Frankie Frisch, and his own Yankee teammate, catcher Bill Dickey.

DiMaggio also delved into the mental part of the game such as working with coaches and dealing with slumps. There's also a chapter by the dean of sportscasters, Red Barber, on how to keep score.

And while the Yankees might have missed the Series this year, they are still the most celebrated team in sports, as evidenced by the large number of titles about the Bronx Bombers. One of the most comprehensive is YANKEES CENTURY, by the team of Glenn Stout and Richard A. Johnson.

Stout, series editor of The Best American Sports Writing since its inception, and Johnson, curator of the Sports Museum of New England, collaborated on Red Sox Century: 100 Years of Red Sox

Baseball as well as similarly handsome volumes on Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio and Jackie Robinson.

With all the new titles about the Yankees out this year --- Harvey Frommer's A Yankee Century: A Celebration of the First Hundred Years of Baseball's Greatest Team (Berkeley) and Pennants and Pinstripes: The New York Yankees, 1903-2002 (Viking Studio) by Ray Robinson and Christopher Jennison are examples of other coffee table books --- YANKEES CENTURY might just be the most comprehensive, combining text by Stout and other notable writers such as Ring Lardner, Ira Berkow and David Halberstam, with dozens of illustrations selected by Johnson.

Many Yankee fans are only familiar with the team in recent years, whose ranks included Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams, Paul O'Neill, Roger Clemens and David Wells. But students of the game will no doubt find the early history fascinating, before the team became perennial pennant contenders. ****

Fans of the baseball literary genre might ask "Do we really need another book by Yogi Berra?" the man who has made a cottage industry of befuddled speech.

But WHAT TIME IS IT? DO YOU MEAN NOW? is unlike previous collection of Berra's mangling of the English language. Written with Dave Kaplan, director of the Yogi Berra Museum in New Jersey, Yogi gets serious, about life, goals, dreams and other philosophical issues not normally associated with the former Yankee catcher. Despite the weighty issues (Yogi on death and dealing with the bad times?), he manages to infuse each item with his self-deprecating humor. This slim volume may not rank up there with the writings of the Dali Lama, but the man known to some as Lawrence Berra proves that he's not called "Yogi" for nothing.

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Becoming Mr. October

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Becoming Mr. October

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by Reggie Jackson with Kevin Baker

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Reggie Jackson Biography Bibliography

Kevin Baker Biography Bibliography

I do not know Reggie Jackson, so I cannot know what’s in his heart or mind. In rationalizing the publication of his newest memoir --- the fifth title that bears his name as author --- he states, “This book has been written because I wanted to set the record straight regarding what the 1977-1978 seasons were like from my side. The miniseries “The Bronx Is Burning” thoroughly embarrassed me the way the story was told.” So with his intentions stated, he sets out to address pretty much every bad thing that happened to him or was attributed to him during his five years as a New York Yankee (much less is mentioned of the 16 seasons he spent with the Oakland Athletics, Baltimore Orioles and California Angels), including the infamous Sport Magazine interview in which he allegedly dismissed the beloved Thurman Munson’s leadership abilities. According to legend, when Jackson claimed he was misquoted by the writer, Munson’s response was “For 3,000 f***in’ words?” The generation of baseball fans who came along after Jackson retired might be perplexed. Here’s a 67-year-old Hall-of-Famer with more than 550 home runs who was among the game’s biggest names. Why is he still so angry? Racism seems to be a major topic, which can be a sensitive issue for those who did not “walk in his shoes” to address. Jackson made his professional debut some 20 years after Jackie Robinson broke the color line in 1947. He alleges that the New York Mets passed on him as their number one draft pick in 1966 because he had a Mexican girlfriend in an era when mixed-race couples were unfavorably perceived by some segments of society.

"One of the more interesting revelations (and one seldom discussed) is that Jackson was representative of the first big money free agents."

Jackson continues on this theme as he writes about his confrontation with manager Billy Martin in a game against the Boston Red Sox that was nationally televised: “…I knew enough not to fight Billy Martin. I knew at that time, 1977, here I was the highest-paid player in the game, black, and my thoughts were then --- and still are today --- that people were

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going to say ‘I told you they’ --- blacks --- ‘can’t handle the money. I told you that they don’t know what they’re doing when they’re on top. Look at how they act.’ Regardless, I was representing minorities at this time and on this stage.” Jackson seems to forget about some of his African-American contemporaries and predecessors, including (but certainly not limited to) Robinson, who was “on top” with the Brooklyn Dodgers for most of his career yet managed to carry himself with dignity; Willie Mays, who was one of the highest paid players of his era; and the fierce Bob Gibson, a multi-Cy Young-winning pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals. Jackson does not come across as an especially sympathetic character. To a degree, however, Jackson is sadly correct. There will always be a segment of society that is unthinking, racist, misogynist, or indulging in boorish behaviors. One of the more interesting revelations (and one seldom discussed) is that Jackson was representative of the first big money free agents. Nowadays, the three-million-dollar contract he signed with the Yankees for five years is less than the average annual payout today. Jackson notes how veterans on the downside of their careers resented the younger players for their future earning potential. He also believes that several of his teammates didn’t respect him or have his back, which he attributes to jealousy. BECOMING MR. OCTOBER is co-written with Kevin Baker, the author of several nonfiction titles and novels that have been wellreceived but not one of the “go-to” sports scribes, such as a Lonnie Wheeler, Phil Pepe, or Wayne Coffee. I wonder about the pairing of these two. The writing is more conversational than literary and awkward at times with too many exclamations for my taste. If everything is important, then nothing is important. The memoir has always struck me as a funny genre. You know how you and your friend or wife can have two totally different recollections of the same event, each believing his or her version is the absolute truth? That’s how Jackson comes across. You don’t know if you can wholly trust his recollection. He frequently employs phrases such as “as I remember” or “as I recall,” which gives him a certain out. Reviewed by Ron Kaplan on November 22, 2013

Becoming Mr. October by Reggie Jackson with Kevin Baker Publication Date: October 8, 2013 Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Sports Hardcover: 304 pages Publisher: Doubleday ISBN-10: 038553311X ISBN-13: 9780385533119

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Bullpen Diaries: Mariano Rivera, Bronx...

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Bullpen Diaries: Mariano Rivera, Bronx Dreams, Pinstripe Legends, and the Future of the New York Yankees

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by Charley Rosen

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One of these days, in the not-toodistant future, the Yankees will have to contend with life sans their future Hall of Fame closer, Mariano Rivera, who set the all-time save record this year. Perhaps his replacement will come from the batch of relievers profiled in Charley Rosen’s Bullpen Diaries: Mariano Rivera, Bronx Dreams, Pinstripe Legends, and the Future of the New York Yankees. Rosen analyzed each game during the 2010 season from spring training through their American League Championship Series loss to the Texas Rangers, and graded the performances of each man out of the ‘pen. He fills in the down time with snippets of history and anecdotes, but with all those pitching changes, fans might grow nostalgic for the days when a starter was expected to go more than a mere five or six innings to be deemed as turning in a quality performance. Reviewed by Ron Kaplan on October 28, 2011

with David Ritz - Baseball, History, Sports

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Bullpen Diaries: Mariano Rivera, Bronx Dreams, Pinstripe Legends, and the Future of the New York Yankees by Charley Rosen Publication Date: April 26, 2011 Genres: Baseball, Sports Hardcover: 384 pages Publisher: Harper ISBN-10: 0062005987 ISBN-13: 9780062005984

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Calico Joe

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Calico Joe

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by John Grisham

Courageous by Randy Alcorn - Christian, Fiction

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City of Tranquil Light by Bo Caldwell - Christian,

John Grisham is highly regarded for his legal thrillers. A TIME TO KILL, THE FIRM, THE PELICAN BRIEF and more than 20 others comprise the main part of his oeuvre. He is also a die-hard baseball fan, and CALICO JOE is his long-awaited novel reflecting his love for the national pastime.

"What gives the novel a leg-up is the attention to detail in (re)creating the game some 40 years ago... The author has certainly done his homework, seamlessly incorporating real events and players such as Willie Mays (another of young Paul’s heroes), Tom Seaver, Rick Monday, and Don Kessinger, a real friend of Grisham."

(This is not the first time Grisham has “done” baseball: he penned the screenplay for the 2004 film Mickey, which tells the story of a lawyer dad on the run and his son, a standout Little League player who has to make the trip with him. He’s also written about football in PLAYING FOR PIZZA and THE BLEACHERS.)

This relatively short tale about lost opportunities and unfulfilled potential considers, as do many baseball themes, the relationship between fathers and sons, hero worship, and the fickle fates of sports. It combines several fictional and historical events: a rookie who comes out of nowhere, as in The Natural and The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant (more familiar perhaps as the musical Damn Yankees); and the mortal danger that lingers under the surface of the game, as evidenced by the death of Ray Chapman -- the only major leaguer to die as the result of being hit by a pitch --- and other “beanball” incidents that resulted in career-ending injuries to Boston Red Sox slugger Tony Conigliaro and, most recently, Adam Greenberg, who was hit in the head in his first and only big league appearance (for the Cubs, of all teams); he’s still trying to mount a comeback. Instead of “Shoeless Joe from Hannibal, Mo.”, we have Calico Joe Castle, from Calico Rock, Arkansas, an earnest player for the 1973 Chicago Cubs who has the chance to be something truly special as

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he takes the sports world by storm during his first few games. With the young man performing at such an unbelievable pace, could this be the year the long-cursed team makes it to the World Series? Standing in his way, however, is Warren Tracey, a journeyman pitcher currently with the New York Mets, who falls into the role of villain a la Carl Mays, the hurler who threw that fatal pitch at Chapman. Castle is everything Tracey is not: young, talented, popular, and possessing a future. Their collision course serves as the focal point of the book, which jumps back and forth from 1973 to the present era, told from the point of view of Tracey’s nowadult son, Paul, who adored Calico Joe as a child while at the same time conflicted by his feelings for his abusive dad. These emotional scars carry well into adulthood and are barely ameliorated by the news that Warren is dying. This, Paul thinks, is Warren’s last chance to make amends for all the horrible things he’s done in his life --- cheating on Paul’s mother and physically abusing him as a lad, among other things --- but will Joe and those who protect his privacy be amenable? CALICO JOE is not especially suspenseful; the reader knows practically from the beginning that things will not end well for the rookie. (The blurb on the dust jacket teases “Then Warren threw a fastball that would change their lives forever.”) What gives the novel a leg-up is the attention to detail in (re)creating the game some 40 years ago --- the Mets beat the Cubs on the last day of the regular season to win the National League East title, which Grisham, in his book, attributes to the loss of Calico Joe’s services. The author has certainly done his homework, seamlessly incorporating real events and players such as Willie Mays (another of young Paul’s heroes), Tom Seaver, Rick Monday, and Don Kessinger, a real friend of Grisham. In his author’s note, Grisham acknowledges the “tricky business” of mixing the real with the imaginary and admits changing actual “schedules, rosters, rotations, records, batting orders,” no doubt with sticklers like me in mind.

Calico Joe by John Grisham Publication Date: March 26, 2013 Genres: Fiction Paperback: 240 pages Publisher: Bantam ISBN-10: 0345536649 ISBN-13: 9780345536648

CELEBRATING THE YANKEES CENTENNIAL Although the American League was founded in 1901, the Yankees "immigrated" to the Big Apple from Baltimore in 1903. Originally known as the Highlanders, the nickname was changed when local Irish-Americans complained that it sounded too "Scottish-centric."

Read Ron Kaplan's interview with Pulitzer Prize winner, Thomas Oliphant

Thus began the story of the most dominant team in professional sports. The all-time roster reads like a "who's who" of baseball legends: Ruth, Gehrig, Gomez, DiMaggio, Ford, Berra, Mantle, Munson, Jackson, Mattingly, Jeter, Williams and scores of others who have contributed to the team's 26 World Series Championships and 37 American League titles. Books about the Yankees are always in vogue, but three titles are especially noteworthy this year, as the team celebrates its centennial. NEW YORK YANKEES: ONE HUNDRED YEARS - The Official Retrospective is a handsome collaborative work by some of the most prestigious and prolific writers of the game, including Leonard Koppett, Robert Creamer, Peter Golenbock and Donald Honig. ONE HUNDRED YEARS chronicles the great players, managers and moments in the proud Yankee tradition. With Bill James --the guru of baseball statistics ---analyzing the numbers to help put things in perspective, this coffee table edition boasts the fans' "triple crown": dramatic illustrations, dynamic text and lots of statistics.

TOP OF THE HEAP is a line from Frank Sinatra's signature song, New York, New York, which is played at the end of each game at Yankee Stadium. It's a fitting title for this collection, which represents the team's glory throughout the decades. Fans will find nuggets from old-time writers like John Kiernan, Ring Lardner and Heywood Broun, Damon Runyon and Grantland Rice -- a line-up of heavy hitters in their own right.

The stories include game reports, columns and commentaries, broken down into rough time frames, including the early days ("The View from the Heights"); the Ruth-Gehrig Era ("Murderers' Row"); the Bronx Bombers of the 1930s-40s ("A Tale of Two Joes," in this case, DiMaggio and McCarthy, who managed the team to eight league and seven World Series titles); the Casey Stengel years ("The Dynasty"); the George Steinbrenner era ("The Bronx Zoo"); and finally, the latest era, the Joe Torre-led Yankee juggernaut ("New York, New York").

While the majority of Yankee moments have been happy ones, TOP OF THE HEAP includes some touching reminders that there's more to life than games in "Yankee Elegies," which recounts the passing of Gehrig, Ruth, Munson and Mantle. PRIDE OF OCTOBER Bill Madden, who has covered the Yankees for over 25 years, profiles eighteen former Yankees. While most of the players will be quite familiar to Yankee fans, it's the ones who had relatively smaller roles, the ones who --- for the most part --- did not receive the headlines, that are the most interesting.

PRIDE OF OCTOBER refers to the team's regular appearances in postseason play. In fact, this was such a given that Yankee management kept contracts low, claiming that the monies received for playing in the Series should be considered part of the players' salaries.

The subjects of Madden's collection, even the recently retired Paul O'Neill, represent a different type of athlete than one reads about today. Most came from the days before free agency lined everyone's pockets. They had a deeper appreciation for the game and the camaraderie seemed more endemic to an era with fewer teams, a smaller geographic spread, and rail --- rather than air --- travel. No matter what they do to jazz up sports, there's no substitute for that. This troika of titles gives Yankee fans and baseball history buffs something to savor as the Bombers boldly begin their second hundred years. --- Reviewed by Ron Kaplan (RonKaplanNJ@comcast.net)

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Derek Jeter: From the Pages of the New...

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Derek Jeter: From the Pages of the New York Times

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by New York Times and Tyler Kepner

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Before this season began, there was speculation about Derek Jeter, the fixture at shortstop for the Yankees since the mid-1990s. With his contract complete and at the advanced age of 37, fans and sports pundits opined about his future with the team specifically and the game in general. Perhaps that's why DEREK JETER: FROM THE PAGES OF THE NEW YORK TIMES came out this spring. This is the type of book --- oversized, full of great photos, story reprints, statistics, and anecdotes --- that's usually reserved for the end of a long and productive career, or Hall of Fame induction, or, at times, even death. So, as much as it is appreciated, the timing has to make you wonder. While the coffee table volume is certainly a worthy tribute, the composition is a bit disjunctive. It does not follow a standard chronological or even thematic formula; it almost seems slapdash in its editorial construct, although this probably will not lessen the enjoyment for any of Jeter's legion of fans.

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Reviewed by Ron Kaplan (http://RonKaplansBaseballBookshelf.com) on March 1, 2011

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Derek Jeter: From the Pages of the New York Times by New York Times and Tyler Kepner Publication Date: March 1, 2011 Genres: Baseball, Biography, Sports Hardcover: 224 pages Publisher: Abrams ISBN-10: 0810996561 ISBN-13: 9780810996564

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Double Play

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Double Play

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by Robert B. Parker

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Parker, known primarily for his Spenser novels, takes a stab (no pun intended) at the noir and historical fiction genres in DOUBLE PLAY.

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Dead by Morning by Beverly Barton - Fiction, Robert B. Parker's heroes epitomize the strong Romantic Suspense silent types. Like the cowboys of old, they are taciturn, unfailingly loyal and determined to pursue Bliss House by Laura Benedict - Fiction, Horror, Mystery the causes of right in the face of superior numbers or disadvantageous circumstances. Joseph Burke is the latest in this mold.

Robert B. Parker

Dancing in the Lowcountry by James Villas -

Burke, a wounded WWII veteran, has little to live for. His wife left him after his return to the States. His recovery is slow and painful, though he doesn't complain. This makes him the perfect guy for a series of dubious opportunities where a cheery or promising outcome isn't necessary. After a succession of jobs calling for a degree of physical prowess combined with a generous helping of discretion, Burke winds up as bodyguard for a very important person: Jackie Robinson, the African-American who broke baseball's color line with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947.

One of the codicils to which Robinson had to agree in his first two years in the big leagues was to turn the other cheek in the face of beanballs, threats, spikings by opponents and the cold shoulders of some of his own teammates. To retaliate, the Dodgers worried, would give ammunition to those who supported the notion that blacks weren't ready to play in the majors. While life on the field was no picnic, at least Robinson was able to channel his energies through baseball. His teammates grew to respect and protect him. It was during those long hours after the final out that Burke's special skills are needed.

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There aren't a lot of actual baseball aspects to the book, but Parker does a credible job of relating the omnipresent tension Robinson faced, painting a very sympathetic picture and making Burke's course clear. DOUBLE PLAY mixes many clichĂŠs from noir classics such as THE BIG SLEEP --- the spoiled rich girl who invariably falls for the hero; the bad-guy competition who shares a mutual, if begrudging, admiration with Burke; the wealthy and cowardly villain who has others do his dirty work, etc. Throw in the race card and you now have rival gangs competing for turf. Mixed in with the narrative are "pentimenti," which serve as back story/flashback, explaining how Burke came to his current situation. Parker also slips in "Bobby" chapters without any explanation at all. Are these his own memories as a young boy, serving as a rationale for writing this novel? Are they those of a fictional character? Either way, they might strike some as intrusive and unnecessary. Parker's latest is another example of his courage to try new things. In addition to the Spenser books, he created two other series: Sunny Randall, featuring a female detective, and Jesse Stone, a small town police chief. Further reaching outside his comfort zone, he wrote GUNMAN'S RHAPSODY, a western novel featuring Wyatt Earp, and took it upon himself to write "sequels" to some of Raymond Chandler's novels. While Parker's Spenser books are much more detail-oriented (for some reason, he has a mania for describing the most minute details of the characters' food preparation and clothing), DOUBLE PLAY is stark by comparison, mirroring the bleakness characteristic of this genre. --- Reviewed by Ron Kaplan

Double Play by Robert B. Parker Publication Date: May 24, 2004 Genres: Fiction Hardcover: 304 pages Publisher: Putnam Adult ISBN-10: 0399151885 ISBN-13: 9780399151880

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Fantasyland: A Season on Baseball's...

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Fantasyland: A Season on Baseball's Lunatic Fringe

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by Sam Walker

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Fantasy baseball was developed more than 20 years ago by a group of

bored guys in the publishing field who decided they could do a

better job of putting a winning team together than the jokers who

actually do this sort of thing for a living.

The first group of intrepid souls, led by Daniel Okrent, named the

invention "Rotisserie" baseball after the pub in which they used to

meet. Since then, the concept has grown outrageously, both in

variations on that first theme and number of participants.

What gives? Why would otherwise (relatively) sane people (mostly

middle-aged white males) waste their time on this stuff? That's

what Sam Walker, a writer for the Wall Street Journal, seeks

to discover in FANTASYLAND: A Season on Baseball's Lunatic

Fringe. I must say, as big a baseball fan as I am, I've never "gotten" fantasy baseball. The idea of agonizing over your real favorite players and/or ballclubs when tangible outcomes actually count for something is tough enough. To work up the same sweat for an ersatz team just strikes me as a bit silly. I'm just saying. Obviously there are plenty of folks who think otherwise: A quick look on Google reveals more than 38 million mentions for the search term "fantasy baseball."

These armchair general managers spend countless hours (and in some cases dollars) to choose their players in hopes of beating similar hobbyists in hundreds, if not thousands, of leagues around the world. Some play for money, some merely for bragging rights. The idea isn't just to put together an all-star team, but a more realistic ensemble, including second stringers.

Walker picked a particularly hardcore brand of fantasy baseball

called Tout Wars, meant for the best of the best. To that end, he

hired two assistants to help in his research and statistical

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analysis, bought numerous reference works, and traveled to spring training sites in both Florida and Arizona in an effort to get the inside dope from players, managers and front office personnel. He even hired a baseball astrologist to see how the stars aligned as he prepared to choose his roster of players.

"Rotisserie baseball may be the most ridiculous duplication of effort in the history of human beings, but that's hardly a concern," Walker writes, as he gets dragged deeper into the unholy circle.

He presents the 11 other team owners in his Tout War league with a combination of respect and head-shaking. What would compel these educated, otherwise accomplished gents to occupy themselves with such a time-consuming, often frustrating, and ultimately futile hobby?

Walker also depicts the desperation involved in seeking edges over the competition, rooting for your players, railing against the real-life decisions managers make that affect your roster. One observation: The line between fantasy and reality blurs from time to time. For example, who do you root for when one of your top batters faces one of your pitching aces? Or when two of your pitchers face off against each other?

You have to give him credit, though: he certainly dives into his subject, going through absurd lengths to find who would complement his team the best, planning drafting strategies, and even psyching out his opponents by methods that are, let's just say, less than professional.

Walker claims to have spent thousands of dollars to research and select his players. (His team finished eighth out of the 12 teams) One would imagine the other owners are similarly passionate, but what he fails to do is show the reader what makes these guys tick. Why do they go through such seemingly nutty lengths? Overall, FANTASYLAND is full of fun and self-deprecation. But if Walker isn't careful, one can easily see him as a character in another book, THE UNIVERSAL BASEBALL ASSOCIATION, INC., J. HENRY WAUGH, PROP., the popular Robert Coover novel in which the protagonist loses grips with reality as the fantasy takes a firmer and firmer grasp on his life.

Reviewed by Ron Kaplan on January 21, 2011

Fantasyland: A Season on Baseball's Lunatic Fringe by Sam Walker Publication Date: March 2, 2006 Genres: Nonfiction, Sports

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Fenway Park: The Centennial: 100 Years...

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Fenway Park: The Centennial: 100 Years of Red Sox Baseball

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by Saul Wisnia

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Fenway Park: The Centennial: 100 Years of Red Sox Baseball by Saul Wisnia Publication Date: September 13, 2011 Genres: Baseball, History, Sports Hardcover: 176 pages Publisher: St. Martin's Press ISBN-10: 0312642741 ISBN-13: 9780312642747

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FOR BASEBALL FANS, HAPPY DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN "It's the most wonderful time of the year." For baseball fans, it ain't about Christmas. For them, that line means they'll soon hear the sweetest of all words: "Play ball!"

Read Ron Kaplan's interview with Pulitzer Prize winner, Thomas Oliphant

Despite the problems of late --- the financial turmoil, the inflated salaries and egos of the players (not to mention the inflated cost of a dog and a beer) --- the plethora of titles regarding baseball would indicate the game is still healthy at the bookstore. Just because it's a clichĂŠ doesn't mean it's not appropriate: baseball is more than just a game. It includes numerous aspects of everyday life such as economics, world affairs, sociology, history, literature and art, all of which, not coincidentally, are among the topics of new releases. ****

One of the newest releases that has generated a good deal of controversy and discussion is PERFECT I'M NOT by David Wells, a pitcher for the New York Yankees. Maybe it's the New York factor, but everything seems to be a little larger than life here.

To give an example of the problems associated with this book, you need only consider that the original title was supposed to be PERFECT I AIN'T, which would have been much more in character with the author's colorful personality. PERFECT I'M NOT was undoubtedly the brainchild of some marketing maven, but in making the title more grammatically correct, the nature of the

book seems distorted. Either title ironically could be considered incorrect because Wells was perfect, if only for one day: on May 17, 1998, he tossed the rarest of baseball gems, a "perfect" game, in which no opposing batter reached base.

PERFECT I'M NOT was written with Chris Kreski, whose credits include celebrity bios on William Shatner (STAR TREK MEMORIES) and Barry Williams (GROWING UP BRADY) as well as writing stints for World Wrestling Entertainment and the Beavis and Butt-Head television show. Obviously we're not talking high literature here.

Wells is not a bad person by any means, just...well…a bit rambunctious. He would have fit in well as a teammate of his idol, Babe Ruth. Both could be considered party animals (although Wells, to his credit, refrains from discussing his romantic life).

The hefty hurler writes about his upbringing as the loving son of a single mother. His boyhood friends and role models, consisting mainly of bikers, didn't make up the type of family situation you might observe on 7th Heaven.

For most of the book Wells chronicles his struggles --- both physical and at the hands of management --- moving up the baseball "food chain" to reach the majors. So far he has pitched for the Toronto Blue Jays (two separate stints); Detroit Tigers; Cincinnati Reds; Baltimore Orioles; Chicago White Sox; and the Yankees (this is his second go-around with them), not to mention his numerous minor league assignments.

The main knock on Wells seems to be his embellishments; some would say fabrications. But he appears to be very honest about his own shortcomings, which may have had something to do with his frequent team changes: impatience, immaturity, poor eating and drinking habits are among those mentioned. Despite all of this, Wells is an accomplished pitcher, winning more than sixty percent of his decisions.

The recent controversy ensued because of his claims that steroid and other drug use was widespread in baseball, certainly not the first time such accusations have been leveled. He backed down somewhat from those statements when confronted by sports columnists, especially following the death of a Baltimore Orioles player, the cause of which has been attributed to the use of a diet supplement. Wells incurred the wrath of his teammates and fellow ballplayers as well, although some have forgiven him. "That's just Boomer being Boomer," said teammate Roger Clemens, the target of some disparaging comments in the book.

Is Wells a whistleblower, pointing out problems that obviously exist but which the powers-that-be are reluctant to deal with (for theses indiscretions, Major League Baseball fined Wells $100,000)? Or is he just a blowhard? It was somewhat curious that all this fallout came so close to the release of the book. No doubt the brouhaha will spur curiosity. Whether that turns into increased sales remains to be seen. ****

As can be evidenced by the amount of words written about it, baseball is a wonderful topic for reflection. It's always interesting to

listen to the ongoing intergenerational arguments over which players were better. While the Yankees may be adjudged the greatest sports franchise in history, one seldom reads about their place in the community. That affection seems reserved for one club in particular --- the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Michael Shapiro seeks to explain this bond and how it all went sour in THE LAST GOOD SEASON. He tries to balance the story on the field, as a team of aging stars --- Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, Roy Campanella and Gil Hodges, among others --- and the Brooklyn faithful see the writing on the wall, while team owner Walter O'Malley tries to wangle a new stadium in a more viable location from the city politicos and master planner Robert Moses. In a survey of the most hated men in history, taken after the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles, O'Malley ranked third behind Hitler and Stalin. But there was plenty of finger pointing to go around.

Post-war America saw an exodus to the new suburbia and a concomitant rise in automobile use that had the effect of drawing away the Dodgers' neighborhood fan base. As the white population moved out, they were replaced with an African-American and Hispanic demographic that O'Malley felt he could not count on to support the team. It may sound racist, but remember it was the Dodgers who gave African-Americans that first step into the major leagues. Recognizing the mindset of the front office, Shapiro believes the decision to move was purely economic.

Knowing how the saga ends doesn't make reading about it any easier. Amid the smiles of nostalgia is the bitterness of abandonment. Shapiro has done his homework well as he portrays the team, for the most part, in a glowing light and eschews the use of cheap sentimentality in telling this sad story.

Another sad occasion was the passing last year of Stephen Jay Gould, the natural scientist/baseball aficionado. Thankfully, we have TRIUMPH AND TRAGEDY IN MUDVILLE as a reminder that just because you're smart doesn't mean you have to "pooh-pooh" sports.

TRIUMPH AND TRAGEDY IN MUDVILLE is a collection of Gould's reminiscences, analysis and book reviews regarding the game. Growing up in Brooklyn as the stereotypical nerdy kid, complete with pocket protector, he developed a love for the Yankees, of Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle, only to go over to the dark side when he moved to New England as an adult. Gould writes about his "Heroes Large, Small and Fallen," such as DiMaggio, Ted Williams, announcer non-pareil Mel Allen and Dusty Rhodes, an alcoholic outfielder who enjoyed his moment in the sun in the 1954 World Series. His observations on "Nature, History and Statistics as Meaning," are a little more esoteric, displaying his scientific persona. Another section consists of a collection of his literary criticism, mostly from the New York Review of Books.

David Halberstam (who has his own book, TEAMMATES, due out this spring) pays a moving tribute to his friend in the book's introduction. The cover of TRIUMPH AND TRAGEDY IN MUDVILLE depicts Gould in caricature clad in Yankee pinstripes, pointing towards the heavens, no doubt at the majestic clout he had just rendered. Looking on in awe are DiMaggio, Williams and Babe Ruth. Careful observation will show the green of the grass blending

into the blue of the sky. The spiritual connotations following Gould's passing are hard to ignore. ****

Any hardcore fan would recognize the picture: a close-up of a face, half-obscured behind a black baseball glove, the cap pulled down low so that only a pair of glaring eyes are visible. This is the concentrated glare seen by batters as they step up to the plate again Randy Johnson, the fearsome fireballer for the Arizona Diamondbacks. It is just one of the many photographs taken by Walter Iooss, Jr. that appear in CLASSIC BASEBALL. This updated edition highlights the work of one of the game's most respected lensmen and a staple of Sports Illustrated covers for forty years.

Action shots mingle with portraits; all-time greats like Sandy Koufax and Willie Mays share the spotlight with today's stars like Pedro Martinez and Mike Piazza. The occasional sepia-tone snaps give CLASSIC BASEBALL the feel of an old family album. In fact, it's bittersweet to mark the passage of time as several favorites are shown in their prime and in their retirement. With text by another old hand, New York Times sports columnist Dave Anderson, Iooss' collection truly defines the apt title.

A different art form is the focus of THE PERFECT GAME, which explores the love of baseball as expressed by the minds and hands of folk artists. Based on an exhibition at the Museum of Folk Art in New York, the book captures creativity through quilts, sculpture, toys, and items that can best be described as knick-knacks. Elizabeth Warren, a former curator of the museum, is the perfect guide to walk the reader through the various colorful and quirky artifacts. ****

These books, along with other baseball releases this month, promise another interesting season of reading. Bring one along to the ballpark to keep yourself occupied in between innings or during those interminable pitching changes. Play ball!

More Baseball Roundups by Ron Kaplan: • • • • • • • •

2005 FALL BASEBALL ROUNDUP RED SOX BOOKS, PART DEUX FALL CLASSICS MEMORIES OF BASEBALL'S GREATEST THE WORLD SERIES CENTENNIAL CELEBRATING THE YANKEES CENTENNIAL BASEBALL ROUNDUP A SEASON OPENER Back to top.

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Francona: The Red Sox Years

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Francona: The Red Sox Years

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by Terry Francona and Dan Shaughnessy

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The old sports saying goes that managers are hired to be fired. Regardless of one’s success, there will always be a time when a lack of production, a scandal, or just plain bad luck will lead to the dismissal of a team’s leader, regardless of what a good guy he might be. Such is the case presented in FRANCONA: The Red Sox Years, written by Terry Francona and veteran Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy. Timing is everything. Francona --- the son of Major Leaguer Tito Francona and himself a 10-year veteran --- came along when the Boston Red Sox were poised to break their 86-year World Championship drought in 2004 and thus became an instant folk hero. But as another saying goes, the hardest thing to do in sports is to repeat. Over his eight years at the helm, the Red Sox averaged 93 wins and were a perennial participant in the postseason (winning the World Series again in 2007), but it certainly wasn’t without the usual drama that befalls any sports enterprise such as injuries, inter-personal conflicts, and/or interference from upper management.

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It’s this last aspect that frustrates Francona more than "The old sports saying anything else. As a manager, goes that managers you know as a matter of course are hired to be fired. that at some point you will Regardless of one’s have to juggle a lineup when a success, there will pitcher hurts his arm or a batter goes into a slump. always be a time when What’s more difficult to deal a lack of production, a with is the suggestions (always scandal, or just plain well-meaning) from those who bad luck will lead to are more concerned with the the dismissal of a business aspects of the game. team’s leader, One of the team’s owners also regardless of what a helms NESN, the New England good guy he might be. Sports Network, on which Red Such is the case Sox games are broadcast. When ratings started to slip, presented in one marketing wonk weighed in FRANCONA: The Red that the team had to win in a Sox Years..." more exciting fashion. The 50something Francona is young enough to be of the Moneyball generation, which employs

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Bibliography

statistics and situational projections, but he seems more aligned with the old-school, instinctual veterans. He makes his aggravation with those who would invade his purview quite evident. Francona cuts quite a sympathetic figure. He come across as a decent sort: reliable, honest, loyal, a true father-figure who once told the parents of a pitcher who had been diagnosed with cancer, “We will take care of your son.” He spends more writing about these relationships than strategy and on-field action, which many readers might find more enjoyable than recent analytic offerings from fellow managers such as Tony LaRussa, his St. Louis Cardinals counterpart in that 2004 World Series (ONE LAST STRIKE: Fifty Years in Baseball, Ten and a Half Games Back, and One Final Championship Season) and perennial rival Joe Torre (THE YANKEE YEARS). Francona’s ultimate downfall came when several members of the 2011 team seemed to just give up in what proved to be his final season with the Red Sox. Despite their 90-72 record, they finished in third place and out of postseason contention. Rumors of players drinking beer and chomping down chicken during games made Boston a laughingstock and embarrassed the owners, who laid the blame at the manager’s inability to maintain control. Francona, on the other hand, feels he was let down by a lot of people he had trusted, although he’s too much of a gentleman to point fingers. “The impending disaster…did not happen in a vacuum,” the authors write. “There were signs all along the way. The Sox missed the veteran coaches who commanded their attention. They had a lot of aging players in the final year of their contracts. They had players placing personal rewards above team success.” The eventual parting was acrimonious and left a bad taste on all fronts. Bobby Valentine was considered the right man to drop the hammer on the ball club, but under his stewardship, the Red Sox suffered their worst season over a 162-game schedule since 1960; by the end of the year, Valentine was gone. In the meantime, Francona was hired to lead the Cleveland Indians for 2013. The construction of a memoir means that it’s the writer’s discretion as to what to include or leave out. Francona touches on his legitimate use of prescription medication to alleviate a number of physical ailments (enough so that it caught the attention of his family and employers), but barely mentions the separation from his wife of 30 years (“Few people knew that Francona was no longer living at home.”). The major problem I have with the book is that it is written as a straight biography, that is, in the third person. Shaughnessy, an award-winning journalist with several books to his credit, could have easily done this on his own. Was it a marketing ploy, to use Francona’s name as lead writer, figuring it might garner more name recognition and increased sales than having Shaughnessy up front? It seems a tad disingenuous. Or is it just, to borrow a phrase used to describe a legendary Red Sox pain in the butt, Francona being Francona, a bit shy and uneasy to call attention to himself. The situation reminds me of former Red Sox pitcher Tim Wakefield, who published KNUCKLER: My Life with Baseball’s Most Confounding Pitch with Tony Massarotti, also a Globe sportswriter. Like FRANCONA, Wakefield’s memoir is written in the third person. Maybe it’s a Boston thing. Reviewed by Ron Kaplan on February 8, 2013

Francona: The Red Sox Years by Terry Francona and Dan Shaughnessy Publication Date: April 1, 2014 Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Sports Paperback: 384 pages Publisher: Mariner Books ISBN-10: 0544227875 ISBN-13: 9780544227873

HOME RUN

edited by George Plimpton

Harcourt Nonfiction

ISBN: 0156011549

The home run is the most dramatic way to send fans into fits of ecstasy or agony. With one swing of the bat, a hero is born, either for the moment or for posterity. Homer heaven can come on a single swing under spectacular circumstances, such as Bobby Thomson's "shot heard 'round the world" against the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1951; a season-long drive, like Mark McGwire's ascendancy to the single season home run crown; or a lifetime of achievement, such as joining the elite 500home run club. Since the dinger, the tater, the bomb, and all the other euphemisms for a home run are so exciting, it follows that some of the most compelling baseball writing concentrates on the fourbagger. George Plimpton has amassed such a collection from some of the most famous scribes --- and not just sports writers --- in the simply titled HOME RUN. Among the non-sports literati are Bernard Malamud, John Updike, Garrison Keillor, and Don DeLillo. The sportswriter team counts Red Smith, Roger Angell, and Grantland Rice among its roster. In that Babe Ruth set the standard for parking the pill on the other side of the fence, it is only right that His Majesty leads the way. Keillor, Rice, Paul Gallico, and Robert Creamer (giving us more

detail about the slugger's personal life and habits than we probably need to know) all herald various aspects of the Sultan of Swat. Malamud wrote the improbable story of Roy Hobbs, an out-ofnowhere sensation with a checkered past, in THE NATURAL. Taking a page from Ruthian lore, Hobbs must hit a homer in order to help a critically sick kid recover. Keilor fantasizes about the retired yet still awe-inspiring Ruth making a stopover in his small town. DeLillo, author of the acclaimed UNDERWORLD, mixes fact and fancy as he remembers the aforementioned Thomson blast in "Pafko at the Wall." Updike's nonfiction contribution is the oftreprinted "Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu," a storybook ending to Ted Williams's career. From the sportswriters, we get Red Smith's take on Thomson's heroism in "Miracle of Coogan's Bluff" and on the three consecutive World Series home runs off the bat of Reggie Jackson. Roger Angell, senior sports editor for The New Yorker, covers the tactile and mental experience of hitting one out of the park in "Homeric Tales." And just so you know it's not always of question of what you do but how you do it, Rick Reilly, a columnist for Sports Illustrated, offers a condensed history of running the bases in style. Other items in HOME RUN include Plimpton's description of the key figures in Hank Aaron's coronation as the all-time home run king; Robert Peterson on Josh Gibson, the "Babe Ruth of the Negro Leagues;" Sadaharu Oh's on life as the "Japanese Babe Ruth;" Rick Telander on the demons that plagued Roger Maris in 1961, as he approached Ruth's long-standing single-season of 60 home runs; Gregory Corso's poetic tribute to Ted Williams; and Daniel Paisner's story of the fan who caught Mark McGwire's 70th home run in 1998. HOME RUN delivers on its namesake: This is a marvelous array of compositions from different angles --- humorous, serious and delirious --- on how losing a ball can make so many so happy. --- Reviewed by Ron Kaplan (ronk23@aol.com) ÂŠ Copyright 1996-2014, Bookreporter.com. All rights reserved.

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Joe Dimaggio: The Hero's Life

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Joe Dimaggio: The Hero's Life

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by Richard Ben Cramer

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Regardless of what Richard Ben Cramer thinks, he has thrown another curve into the realm of hero-worship. Perhaps we have Jim Bouton, Yankee alumnus and author of the classic BALL FOUR, to thank for this; perhaps someone else would have come along to show us that the emperor Joe DiMaggio's clothes were less than pristine. But JOE DIMAGGIO: The Hero's Life, this long-anticipated biography of the Yankee Clipper, could not, would not have been written 30 years ago. And even now, in this "enlightened" era, many readers might find this book a cruel intrusion into that place set aside for their cherished beliefs.

DiMaggio's talents on the field are never an issue. His career statistics include a batting average of .325, 361 home runs (against 369 strikeouts) and 1,537 RBIs. Joltin' Joe was the bridge between the days of Lou Gehrig and Mickey Mantle. He led the Yankees to championship after championship, appearing on 10 pennant winners during his 13 years. His hitting streak of 56 games is one of the records least likely to be broken. During his reign as baseball's best, he exuded a pastiche of class and elegance. Life magazine, in what they must have considered forward thinking at the time, featured him in an article proclaiming that he didn't smell of garlic or talk with an accent --- a true American!

Why did DiMaggio inhabit such a place as a legend in American history? "His very blandness, his lack of words...allowed us to put upon him what we needed at any one moment. As war was looming, he was the poster boy for victory. Joe was the one guy we could always look to."

When his playing days were over he remained on our minds: The husband of Marilyn Monroe, perhaps the most glamorous movie star of all time; spokesman, in his golden years, for a coffee machine and a savings bank; voted the Greatest Living Ballplayer in 1969, during baseball's centennial celebration. No matter where he went, he was The Yankee Clipper, instantly recognizable,

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adored and honored. And when this country lost its way for a time during the late '60s, the question was asked "Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?" Where had our heroes disappeared to? Who could we look up to anymore?

Before television and sports-radio stations and million dollar contracts for .250 players were in vogue, before newspapers felt obligated to turn the sports pages into police blotters, athletes, for the most part, were role models. None more so than Joe. Everything about him was perfect, from his feats on the field to the clothes he wore to the women he squired. Much of his persona, especially in the early stages of his career, Cramer claims, came at the hands of the sportswriters who followed his every move.

In time, DiMaggio came to understand that regardless of how well he did, the team (and by extension the writers, who were quasi-employees of the club) called the shots. When he held out for more dough and returned to the team after spring training, rusty and battling injuries, the fans actually booed him, the writers were no longer complimentary. They "taught him a lesson, or confirmed a lesson he was already prepared to believe: They were fans, they were friends...as long as he was a winner. But that could be over in a day."

After Joe's second stunning season, Connie Mack, who managed the Philadelphia Athletics for half a century, suggested he could be the greatest ever. "At twenty-two, with a baseball lifetime ahead of him, Joe was money in the bank. So where was his?" Joe realized he would never get the money he felt he deserved. "If he was going to get the dough...he would have to take care of business himself, inside of baseball --- or outside. Outside, no one would have to know a thing."

Obsession is a most accurate description of DiMaggio, whether relating to baseball or his two ill-fated marriages or his feelings about money. Like Roy Hobbs, the protagonist in Bernard Malamud's THE NATURAL, DiMaggio desperately wanted to be known as the best who ever played the game. In the twilight of his career, Joe was asked why he still played so hard. His answer? "I always think, there might be someone out there in the stands who's never seen me play." While Cramer's depiction of DiMaggio on the field is the very essence of the term superstar, it is Joltin' Joe's life away from the stadium that makes us shake our heads. The author goes under the surface, perhaps even getting under the reader's skin, as he reports DiMaggio's dark side. The transformation of DiMaggio, from a shy, awkward teen to a womanizing, misanthropic, selfish hermit is painful to behold. Yet Cramer's ease with the telling makes it like an accident from which you can't avert your eyes.

Off the field, DiMaggio is portrayed as a poor husband, a lacking father, a faithless friend, ready to toss off an old pal for the slightest faux pas, regardless of "years of service;" there was little forgiveness in the man. Cramer's tales of visits to brothels make one wonder if this was de rigeur behavior for males of the day in general, and athletes in particular.

When it actually came to stepping up to the bat when his country needed him, to go off to war, DiMaggio was anything but a leader. For whatever reason --- fear of death or injury or fear of lost wages --- DiMaggio simply did not want to join up, as many of his contemporary stars did (Bob Feller and Hank Greenberg, just to name two). It would seem the only reason he finally did enlist (in 1943, after Joe's local draft board had closed off enlistments) was to placate his wife, with the hopes of boosting their failed marriage. "Dorothy (Arnold, his first wife) wanted him in the Army --- she'd made that clear enough; otherwise it would be divorce... Still, if he gave himself over to the Army, then nothing would be in his control. Who could tell how long this war would go on? Or what they'd do with him? He could get hurt, and that would be the end of baseball for him. He could lose everything."

His courtship, marriage, divorce, and reconciliation with Marilyn Monroe is another part of the DiMaggio legend. An old-fashioned man at heart, he didn't want his wife to work, especially not if it meant that she would be the object of millions of male fantasies. And Marilyn, goodness knows, had her own problems. They had "one big thing in common. In fact, they may have been the only two people in the country, at that moment, who could understand each other." They loved each other but couldn't live with each other. Their marriage lasted less than a year, but he was still a major part of her life, a source of strength and comfort. That her death came just before they were to be remarried just adds to the sadness of their saga.

There is a 27-year gap between Marilyn's death and the "Earthquake Series" between Oakland and San Francisco, where the tale resumes. "When Marilyn Monroe died," said Cramer, "he was already sealed away from us." Her death confirmed Joe's suspicions and revulsion with what the hero's life meant. This was the emotional peak of the book, and Cramer felt he didn't want to put the readers through a quarter century (and a few hundred more pages) of Joe's quiet life.

For all these less-than-sterling qualities, Cramer still claims this is a positive book. He doesn't understand why excerpts and reviews dwell on the "salacious" items. To hear him talk, all of these foibles could and should be forgiven because DiMaggio was the hero we all wanted him to be. For such men, concessions are made.

Cramer has done a marvelous, exhaustive job of research, spending five years on his tome. But whether this research is worthy of a man who won a Pulitzer in 1979 for international reporting and the author of the acclaimed WHAT IT TAKES: The Way to the White House or is more suited to the editors of supermarket tabloids is another question. In either case JOE DIMAGGIO: The Hero's Life has that proverbial "something for everyone."

Reviewed by Ron Kaplan on January 22, 2011

Joe Dimaggio: The Hero's Life by Richard Ben Cramer Publication Date: October 17, 2000 Genres: Biography, Nonfiction Hardcover: 546 pages Publisher: Simon & Schuster ISBN-10: 0684853914 ISBN-13: 9780684853918

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Lefty: An American Odyssey

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Lefty: An American Odyssey

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by Vernona Gomez and Lawrence Goldstone

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Vernon “Lefty” Gomez, one of the greatest pitchers in New York Yankees history, came on the scene at roughly the same time as Dizzy Dean; statistically speaking, he was even better. But the Arkansas-born Dean had an extra bit of folksy charm that made him the darling of the media. Gomez, although certainly a colorful character and one any ballplayer would love to have as a teammate, never seemed to get his due. His daughter, Vernona, and co-author Lawrence Goldstone seek to correct that oversight with this charming, lighthearted and overdue biography.

"Gomez, although certainly a colorful character and one any ballplayer would love to have as a teammate, never seemed to get his due. His daughter, Vernona, and coauthor Lawrence Goldstone seek to correct that oversight with this charming, lighthearted and overdue biography. "

Like many of his contemporaries who played in the first third of the 20th century, Gomez grew up in relative, if not abject, poverty and made good money plying his trade during the Depression. He wooed and won the love of June O’Dea, a chorus girl/actress, and they enjoyed the kind of lifestyle you might see in the slapstick movies of the era (including a more serious time when divorce was a fleeting possibility because of his alleged philandering).

Gomez --- who was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame by the Veterans Committee in 1972 --- was only 34 when he pitched in his final game (for the Washington Senators in 1943), which means Vernona was only three years old. She never got to see her famous father pitch. According to the authors, “To the reporters, Lefty was all good copy and buoyant optimism.” In that regard, there is as much --- if not more --- of Gomez’s relationship with teammates and celebrities than the usual onfield stories and statistics. Since you’re an ex-professional athlete more years than an active one, a good deal of the book deals with Gomez in retirement. He kept his hand in baseball for a few years as a coach, then worked as a representative/speaker for Wilson Sporting Goods. In one of the more intimate --- if very brief --- moments, the reader learns

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of his battle with alcoholism. Of course, no one is immune to the foibles of life, so the Gomez family had their share of health crises and other setbacks. Given that his daughter gets top billing as author, one would expect more in the way of personal anecdotes. But there is amazingly little by way of information about her relationship with her father and almost nothing written in the first person: no “my mom and dad…” or “we.” (One incident has a man, unaware of her identity, trying to impress Vernona by “introducing” her to Gomez at a formal function; she went along with the ruse, greeting Gomez with a “Hi, dad.”) Despite this somewhat important omission, LEFTY is a charming story about one of the long-forgotten stars of the game. Reviewed by Ron Kaplan on June 8, 2012

Lefty: An American Odyssey by Vernona Gomez and Lawrence Goldstone Publication Date: February 26, 2013 Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Sports Paperback: 432 pages Publisher: Ballantine Books ISBN-10: 034552649X ISBN-13: 9780345526496

MEMORIES OF BASEBALL'S GREATEST As the commercial says, "Chicks dig the long ball." So do guys, actually. In fact, baseball fans are generally in awe of brawny bashers who can hoist the horsehide out of the park. This year's assortment of baseball titles features a healthy dose of biographies about some of the greatest hitters of all time, as well as a photographic retrospective of what many sports historians consider the greatest era in baseball.

Read Ron Kaplan's interview with Pulitzer Prize winner, Thomas Oliphant

No account of baseball would be complete without paying respect to Babe Ruth. More than a half-century after his death, books still recall his greatness on the field and his influence on American culture. Jim Reisler takes a look at the nominative, if not the actual, beginning of Ruthian lore in BABE RUTH: Launching the Legend. Ruth had been a star in Boston for the first several years of his career, pitching and batting the Red Sox to three world championships. If he hadn't turned to playing the outfield full time to take advantage of his hitting prowess, who knows how many wins he would have earned on the mound?

But Boston did not hold the exciting promise of New York, and it wasn't until the Yankees acquired him in 1920 that the "legend" was truly launched. Before Ruth appeared on the scene, the Yankees were a lackluster team; with the Sultan of Swat in camp, they evolved into the most successful sports franchise of

all time.

Reisler focuses on that inaugural season. The facts and lore have been told before, but that doesn't detract from hearing them again, with slightly different nuance. He also concentrates on Ruth's impact on the diamond rather than on the salacious off-the-field antics, crediting Ruth with transforming the game from "small ball" --- hitting singles, bunting the runner over, etc. --- to one where a single swing of the bat could not only win the game, but give the fans a jolt. The man who eventually broke Ruth's alltime record of 714 home runs is the subject of another wonderful offering by Tom Stanton in HANK AARON AND THE HOME RUN THAT CHANGED AMERICA, marking the thirtieth anniversary of the feat.

For most of his career, Aaron, an outfielder for the Milwaukee (and later Atlanta) Braves, went about his work with comparatively little media attention. But that changed as he came within striking distance of Ruth's record (1973-74). Those years should have been a time of excitement and joyful anticipation. Instead, they were a horror.

Stanton, author of THE LAST SEASON, a bittersweet tale about the closing of Detroit's Tiger Stadium, mixes sport with social commentary as he describes the withering pressures and racism Aaron faced (perhaps exacerbated by playing in the deep south), including assorted death threats to himself and his family, hate mail and the inexplicable indifference of baseball's commissioner Bowie Kuhn.

The increasing media focus and demands on his time on top of the daily grind for an aging athlete were compounded by the small mindedness of those who believed that Aaron, as an African-American, had no "right" to such acclaim. Instead of enjoying the ride, it reached the point where Aaron told reporters, "I want to get this nightmare over with."

Did that 715th home run really change America? One would hope that America did not need much changing, but the shameful truth is that there were (and still are) aspects of life in need of improvement. But if something as trivial as a sporting feat can make it happen â&#x20AC;Ś hey, whatever it takes.

Mickey Mantle was another favorite son, the golden boy of the post War generation. Blessed with speed, power, good looks and playing in baseball's Mecca, he also served as the symbol of the flawed hero. What more could he have accomplished if he had been able to avoid injury and keep away from the booze? Maury Allen and Bill Liederman combine their talents to remind readers of Mantle's impact in the anecdotal volume, OUR MICKEY: Cherished Memories of an American Icon.

Allen, a top-flight New York sportswriter,

contributes stories mainly from Mantle's teammates and opponents, while Liederman, who helped established the popular New York restaurant that bears the legend's name, gives a sense of what "The Mick" meant to his fans, including such prominent personalities as Billy Crystal, Donald Trump, Henry Kissinger and George Plimpton. The fact that many of the stories have been told before in no way detracts from the enjoyment of hearing them again. The alert reader will note that there is no commentary from Larry King, that perennial friend to celebrities in OUR MICKEY. There are two possible reasons. The first is that King was an avowed Brooklyn Dodger fan, a constant post-season punching bag of Mantle and his Yankee teammates. The second might be that King was too busy working on a book of his own, explaining to his fans and co-generationalists, WHY I LOVE BASEBALL.

King is a master storyteller. He spins his yarns about his favorite players and teams and how growing up in New York in the 1930s colored his perception of the game, with its colorful characters and thrilling memories, perhaps embellished with the passing of time. His easy style and comforting manner accentuates his believability, even if you've heard these stories before.

Baby boomers from the Big Apple can't help but feel a bit smug. For them, the "golden age" of baseball is defined as the span beginning shortly after World War II and ending as the Dodgers and Giants, like prospectors of a century before, left the east coast for the "gold coast" of California. Vic Ziegel, a journalistic contemporary of Maury Allen, offers SUMMER IN THE CITY: New York Baseball, 1947-1957 as proof of this embarrassment of riches.

For those eleven years, a New York team appeared in every World Series except the 1948 face-off between the Boston Braves and the Cleveland Indians. In fact, the Yankees faced the Dodgers in six "subway series," winning five world titles, and the Giants in another in-house affair (1951, the year of Bobby Thomson's dramatic home run to win the pennant against the Dodgers). The other fall classic appearances pitted the Yankees against the Philadelphia Phillies (1950) and the Giants against the Indians (1954).

Ziegel adds his commentary to photographs from his employer,

the New York Daily News, to illustrate the excitement generated by these "boys of summer," including several shots of the fans' joys and frustrations. This is especially true of the poignant shots regarding the final games of the Dodgers and Giants in New York.

With Alex Rodriguez about to launch a new era in New York baseball, it's important --- not to mention just plain fun --- to look back on those special players and moments of the past as a reminder of how the game connects the generations, one unto the other.

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Mickey and Willie: Mantle and Mays, the...

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Mickey and Willie: Mantle and Mays, the Parallel Lives of Baseball's Golden Age

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by Allen Barra

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Allen Barra Biography Bibliography

Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris may have been “the M&M boys” for a summer or two in the early 1960s, but Mantle, aka the “Commerce Comet,” and the “Say Hey Kid” (Willie Mays) were partners in the boomer baseball iconography for more than a generation. Allen Barra does a marvelous job blending facts and sentiment in this dual biography that chronicles the ballplayers’ similar experiences on the playing field and totally dissimilar lives away from the diamond. Both Hall of Famers were born in impoverished circumstances during the Depression, and both had maternal issues (Mantle’s mother was aloof, May’s totally out of the picture). They were outstanding athletes since childhood, spurred by strong fathers. Neither was a serious student. Mays, however, had the extra burden of growing up as an African-American in Jim Crow Alabama. There have been a lot of myths about Mantle and Mays that "Barra sets his project Barra --- whose previous titles apart from the include YOGI BERRA: Eternal standard biography by Yankee and CLEARING THE supplementing facts BASES: The Greatest Baseball with personal Debates of the Last Half Century --- takes great pains to anecdotes about his refute. Contrary to the public encounters with both opinion of the time, neither ballplayers over the player had an especially easy years, and not always go of it. Mantle played in with the most constant pain, exacerbated by satisfying of results." alcoholism and an excessive lifestyle; Mays, a darling of Giants followers while the team called New York home, did not find the same adulation when the ball club relocated to San Francisco. How much better might his numbers have been in more hitter-friendly stadiums? Such speculation is a favorite topic of fans and writers: What if? What if Mays didn’t lose almost two prime years to the military

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during the Korean War? What if Mantle --- excused from military service due to osteomyelitis and yet scorned as a draft dodger in some circles --- had been healthier? Barra takes that all into account in two appendices that employ the latest statistical metrics in projecting what might have been. An athlete’s decline normally comes about much earlier than that of the average person, and we get to witness it in MICKEY AND WILLIE. Mantle recognized this early on. (Then again, as he always said, he never expected to live as long as he did, earlier mortality being a trait for the men of his family.) Mays, on the other hand, probably played longer than he should have, wanting to remain in the spotlight as well as pulling down a large paycheck. They were ill-equipped to deal with a post-playing career and bore financial scars through various failed business endeavors. Of particular interest to this reviewer was the manner in which Barra parses the numerous biographies and autobiographies of Mantle and Mays, as versions of events change with each new edition and contradict previous tellings. Despite their fame, their lives away from the clubhouse and teammates come across as quite sad, with home lives disrupted, relationships with family and children woefully unfulfilling, and countless regrets expressed. There is no pretense of journalistic objectivity here; the author is firmly in the camps of Mantle and Mays, with an emphasis on the latter. Perhaps that’s why, in writing of Mays’ final days with the Mets, he fails to mention details of his stumbling in the outfield during the 1973 World Series against the Oakland Athletics, or the image of him on his knees at home plate, seemingly begging the home plate umpire to change an out call against teammate Bud Harrelson. Who wants to remember a hero that way? Like Jane Leavy, who published THE LAST BOY: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood (2010), Barra sets his project apart from the standard biography by supplementing facts with personal anecdotes about his encounters with both ballplayers over the years, and not always with the most satisfying of results. Still, and for whatever reasons, fans forgive almost anything and are eternally hungry for more stories about Mantle and Mays as representative of youth and a more carefree era. Reviewed by Ron Kaplan on June 28, 2013

Mickey and Willie: Mantle and Mays, the Parallel Lives of Baseball's Golden Age by Allen Barra Publication Date: April 1, 2014 Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Sports Paperback: 496 pages Publisher: Three Rivers Press ISBN-10: 030771649X ISBN-13: 9780307716491

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One Last Strike: Fifty Years in...

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One Last Strike: Fifty Years in Baseball, Ten and a Half Games Back, and One Final Championship Season

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Tony La Russa with Rick Hummel

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Rafa by Rafael Nadal and John Carlin - Memoir, Review About the Book Features

Tony La Russa Biography Bibliography

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Tony La Russa is a baseball lifer. He began his career in the minors; had an unproductive stint as a major leaguer, batting .199 over six seasons as a utility infielder; and made a name for himself as one of the best managers in the game. He won six pennants and three World Series over a 33-year span for the Oakland Athletics, Chicago White Sox and, most recently, St. Louis Cardinals. He ranks third in wins behind Hall of Fame managers Connie Mack and John McGraw, and trails only Mack in games at the helm with 5,097. There is no doubt that La Russa will earn his own plaque in Cooperstown when he becomes eligible.

"Aided by Rick Hummel, an awardwinning journalist who spent four decades with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, La Russa lets fans into the secret world of managing, with its acid-churning decisions, thought processes, and personnel (and personal) issues."

La Russa decided during the 2011 campaign that it would be his last as a field leader. As with many of his generation, the demands of the game, both in terms of production and handling the younger and more expensive players, started to take their toll on the enjoyment of the profession for the 67year-old. And even though he couldn’t have predicted it at the time, what better way to go out than on top? La Russa directed the Cardinals to a thrilling pennant race, as the subtitle indicates, and defeated the Texas Rangers for the World Championship.

Aided by Rick Hummel, an award-winning journalist who spent four decades with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, La Russa lets fans into the secret world of managing, with its acid-churning decisions, thought processes, and personnel (and personal) issues. They guide readers over the last few months of the season --- with mere passing references to La Russa’s years as a player and manager of the A’s and White Sox --- as the Cardinals clawed

Nonfiction, Sports

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their way back from a deep deficit and unexpectedly beat what was considered a superior team in the Series. Cards fans who have an intimate knowledge of the players will no doubt consider ONE LAST STRIKE an essential part of their baseball library, as will those who are interested in a manager’s mental manipulations, which have to take into consideration who’s hot and who’s not, both on your team and your opponent’s. Then there are the work-arounds when it comes to who’s injured physically or who’s having a tough time mentally (La Russa’s longtime coach and friend Dave Duncan was going through family health issues), which the authors use to show that these are human beings and not athletic robots. La Russa is all business. You won’t find any locker room gossip or even derogatory remarks about his charges, although you know there has to have been some disagreements along the way. Just about everyone in his eyes deserves the benefit of the doubt, leading to ho-hum descriptions that Player A really knows how to play the game of baseball or Player B is a true major leaguer. That might be a disappointment to those who really want the dirt (La Russa even glosses over the scourge of performance-enhancing drugs). Another potential problem is that La Russa is a craftsperson, and as such loves to talk about his work as if he was in the presence of other craftspeople. A long-used “baseballism” is that the worst players make the best managers because they spend so much time on the bench that they can become adept students of the game. Some of the narrative borders on jargon (an appendix includes photos of various paperwork that would give the codebreakers of World War II fits). Of course, this is completely comprehensible to La Russa’s peers and uber-fans, but a mystery and perhaps a bit off-putting to the casual reader. Reviewed by Ron Kaplan on October 5, 2012

One Last Strike: Fifty Years in Baseball, Ten and a Half Games Back, and One Final Championship Season Tony La Russa with Rick Hummel Publication Date: May 14, 2013 Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Sports Paperback: 432 pages Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks ISBN-10: 0062207547 ISBN-13: 9780062207548

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Pinstripe Empire: The New York Yankees...

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Pinstripe Empire: The New York Yankees from Before the Babe to After the Boss

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by Marty Appel

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I think it’s safe to say there have been more books written about the New York Yankees and their personnel than any other baseball team. While there have been hundreds of titles that consider specific aspects of the Bronx Bombers --- their success in the World Series, or their slew of Hall of Famers (Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, etc.), or their place in American culture and society --- it’s been generations since a “definitive” history about the team has been released. That long “losing streak” ends with the publication of Marty "[PINSTRIPE EMPIRE] Appel’s PINSTRIPE EMPIRE. is indeed a volume Appel, who served as the that deserves a special Yankees’ public relations place in baseball’s director in the mid-1970s and literary canon." currently runs his own boutique sports PR firm, is the perfect person to take on this responsibility. The author of numerous sports titles, including the well-received MUNSON: The Life and Death of a Yankee Captain, Appel goes beyond the usual facts and figures one would expect from this genre as he pays tribute to some of the lesser-known players and events that fill in the gaps of the more standard fascination seniors and aging boomers have with the marquee names such as the Ruths and Mantles, and the appreciation newer fans have for the Jeters and Riveras. Having been a devotee of the ballclub long before he began working for them (he got his start as a 19-year-old answering Mantle’s voluminous fan mail), Appel is just as comfortable with the episodes that occurred before his arrival on the scene as the ones he can speak of firsthand. Stories about the Yankees’ early and less successful years (i.e., before they acquired The Bambino) are intriguing, especially when considered in hindsight. For example, we know now that first baseman Hal Chase, a member of the team from 1905-14 (he also served as player/manager of the Highlanders, as they were then known, for a couple of seasons) was a notorious gambler and game-thrower, but back in the day, he was feted more for his slick play and intelligence.

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Building the Yankees brand, including designing the iconic navy blue pinstripes and constructing baseball’s ultimate cathedral, “the” Yankee Stadium (as it was called for years), also serves to explain the lore of the franchise. A less modest author might chat up his connection with the team much more than Appel does. On the other hand, he did have that insider’s view of the George Steinbrenner era, and it would be ridiculous to pretend otherwise and omit the more important events in which he was involved (the aftermath of Munson’s tragic death in 1979, or trying to deal with the ongoing conflicts between Steinbrenner and his parade of managers, including the tempestuous Billy Martin). Such insights are never offered with braggadocio; just the facts, ma’am, with a little self-deprecating humor tossed in. In a nice touch, Frank Graham Jr., son of the author who had published THE NEW YORK YANKEES: AN INFORMAL HISTORY in 1943 --- Appel’s predecessor in terms of the “authoritative” story --- contributed the introduction to PINSTRIPE EMPIRE, as if passing a literary torch. It is indeed a volume that deserves a special place in baseball’s literary canon. Reviewed by Ron Kaplan on June 29, 2012

Pinstripe Empire: The New York Yankees from Before the Babe to After the Boss by Marty Appel Publication Date: May 6, 2014 Genres: Baseball, Nonfiction, Sports Paperback: 656 pages Publisher: Bloomsbury USA ISBN-10: 1620406810 ISBN-13: 9781620406816

RED SOX BOOKS, PART DEUX

Read Ron Kaplan's interview with Pulitzer Prize winner, Thomas Oliphant

As I was saying...

What, you thought the previous review of Red Sox books was all-encompassing? As they prepare to face their archrivals once again, it seems like an appropriate time to look at some additional titles, striking while the iron is hot and taking advantage of the Red Sox first World Series title in almost ninety years. *****

You couldn't blame Leigh Grossman for taking the time to update THE RED SOX FAN HANDBOOK: Everything You Need to Know to be a Red Sox Fan or to Marry One. The author first released the HANDBOOK in 2001 but now gets to include all the happy details. The bulk of the book consists of 400 Sox players, whether for their outstanding play on the field or their colorful personalities. Grossman also includes useful information for further elucidation, such as Soxrelated websites and books. Especially helpful in this entertaining guide is the "Red Sox fan's guide to (safely) visiting Yankee Stadium." The only drawback to this volume is the total lack of illustrations. *****

As if to make up for that shortcoming, another updated reprint hit the bookstands recently: RED SOX: A RETROSPECTIVE OF BOSTON BASEBALL,

1901 TO TODAY. The trio of editors rejiggered this handsome mish-mash of photos and prose, covering mostly the highlights and ignoring the lows. As with others of its kind, the RETROSPECTIVE celebrates heroes who have preceded the current batch of "Idiots," such as Johnny Damon, Manny Ramirez, David Ortiz and company. On the one hand, books of this kind --- as impressive as they --- are very common; on the other, they are still very popular, even for the most casual fans. *****

Herb Crehan takes a very anecdotal approach in revisiting RED SOX HEROES OF YESTERYEAR. Beginning with Bobby Doerr in 1937 and ending with manager Joe Morgan in 1985, many of these players are not so much heroes (Pumpsie Green? Bruce Hurst?), relatively speaking. They were, it seems, available to speak with the author. He heads each of the forty profiles as "Interview with...", but the accompanying text, while including quotes from the players, seems more like straight biographical information. All in all, Crehan presents a pleasant homage to many Sox favorites. *****

Two new titles seek out fans for their take on what the first World Championship in 86 years means to them. For most of that period, a question that resounded louder with each passing season is "Why not us?" So why not use that as a launching point? Done.

Leigh Montville, author of the impressive biography TED WILLIAMS: THE BIOGRAPHY OF AN AMERICAN HERO, interviewed "fans, friends, friends of friends, old sportswriters, ballplayers, public figures and plain folk" for their cathartic stories in WHY NOT US?: The 86-Year Journey of the Boston Red Sox Fans From Unparalleled Suffering to the Promised Land of the 2004 World Series. Similarly, but much encompassing, is WIN IT FOR... What a World Championship Means to Generations of Red Sox Fans. The editors, listed as "The Sons of Sam Horn," are a collection of "diehard Boston fans with a bent on noise-free intelligent baseball conversation" who use a popular Red Sox website as their virtual watering hole and consists of pleas to their chosen ball club to "win it" for various fans, living and dead, in a "Gipper"-like fashion. While this novel approach is well-intentioned, it does wear after awhile and, like a family scrapbook, is interesting mostly for those who appear within its pages. *****

What about the children, you might ask? Don't worry, Gerard Purciello has them covered with THE YEAR THEY WON: A Tale of the Boston Red Sox, a fictional account of the team in 2024, after another lengthy drought without a title. Let's hope they won't have to wait that long in real time; who knows what effect it might have on the younger generation, to whom this book is marketed. *****

More Baseball Roundups by Ron Kaplan: • • • • • • • • •

2005 FALL BASEBALL ROUNDUP THE YANKEES AND RED SOX: A Rivalry for the Ages REMEMBERING WHAT THE NATIONAL PASTIME IS ALL ABOUT MEMORIES OF BASEBALL'S GREATEST THE WORLD SERIES CENTENNIAL CELEBRATING THE YANKEES CENTENNIAL FOR BASEBALL FANS, HAPPY DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN BASEBALL ROUNDUP A SEASON OPENER Back to top.

REMEMBERING WHAT THE NATIONAL PASTIME IS ALL ABOUT

Read Ron Kaplan's interview with Pulitzer Prize winner, Thomas Oliphant

With all the disillusionment caused by the recent steroid-fueled headlines, fans can still take comfort from a number of new titles that serve to remind us of what a great game baseball has been and continues to be. After all, except for the ugly strike in 1994-95, the national pastime has survived wars, a depression, and even the threat of talking pictures and television.

Nostalgia is always a big draw. Among the more "romantic" examples from this year's crop is GREATS OF THE GAME: The Players, Games, Teams, and Managers That Made Baseball History, by Ray Robinson and Christopher Jennision. One has to be careful when invoking the phrase "the greatest" in sports, especially in baseball. This is an open invitation for an argument as opinions fly back and forth.

As is often the case in these ornate coffee table books, the photos are the highlights; the ability of the editors/authors to find rare illustrations, rather than the same old portraits, can have an impact on the success of the volume. The text is almost secondary, although new angles can make a repetitive topic more interesting.

Robinson and Jennison, both veterans of baseball literature, have done a fine job in putting together a good combination. In

addition to the subjects of the title, they offer their considered takes on "The Immortals," "The Personalities," and the greatest regular season and World Series moments, as well as hallowed ballparks. Some selections are obvious: Carlton Fisk's midnight home run in the 1975 World Series or Johnny Vander Meer's two consecutive no-hitters. But, again, every fan has his or her own opinion. For a sense of déjà vu, BASEBALL...THE PERFECT GAME: An All-Star Anthology Celebrating the Game's Greatest Players, Teams and Moments, edited by Josh Leventhal, covers similar general topics with a different route to the same destination.

Taking advantage of a wide array of contributors such as Doris Kearns Goodwin, George Plimpton, Tallulah Bankhead, Roger Angell --- even the aforementioned Ray Robinson --- Leventhal has assembled a handsome edition, peppering the text with evocative illustrations.

Joseph Wallace, author of several memorable overviews (BASEBALL: 100 CLASSIC MOMENTS IN THE HISTORY OF THE GAME; THE BASEBALL ANTHOLOGY: 125 Years of Stories, Poems, Articles, Photographs, Drawings, Interviews, Cartoons, and Other Memorabilia; and WORLD SERIES: AN OPINIONATED CHRONICLE, among others), offers a different format that will try readers' patience --- in a good way. His latest contribution, GRAND OLD GAME: 365 Days of Baseball, takes the form of a perpetual calendar. The idea is to look at one entry per day, a temptation that might prove too strong for some to resist. Hundreds of "rare and unusual photographs" taken from the archives of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, make it a must-have for the baseball bibliophile. One of the more unusual offerings in recent years is THE TIMELINE HISTORY OF BASEBALL by Dan Jensen. This fold-out format consumes more than 10-linear feet when unfurled and contains an amazing amount of information. One strike against this edition is that the data, although colorcoded and divided into broad categories, is a bit difficult to follow.

On the flip side (literally), Jensen presents the critical elements of the game --- the equipment, uniforms, ballparks, all-star and World Series games. A nice feature is a map showing the locations of all present teams and their antecedents. He also devotes a scant 33-page booklet within the book to discuss the cultural and social aspects of the sport. TIMELINE may be short on text, but it's long on entertainment.

Everyone in the game --- managers, players and fans --- refer to an imaginary "book," a "bible" meant to explain the theory of action taken or contemplated, such as sending up a pinch-hitter, moving a defensive player to a spot on the field, or bringing in a specific relief pitcher.

Students of baseball's inner workings can turn to Bill Felber's thought-provoking treatise, THE BOOK ON THE BOOK: A Landmark Inquiry into Which Strategies in the Modern Game Actually Work, a series of essays analyzing the sport on the field and, perhaps more interesting, the game off the field, with its decision-making processes. How much is that player in the window worth? How do the owners and executives go about putting a winning team together? Felber rates the general managers, who are ostensibly responsible for the assembly process.

Readers should be warned that this is no hand-holding "how-to" book. If you pick this one up, you better have some clue about the game or you run the risk of scratching your head for hours. That said, those willing to undertake Felber's treatise will be rewarded. 3 NIGHTS IN AUGUST: Strategy, Heartbreak, & Joy - Inside the Mind of a Manager, dissects a tense three-game series between Tony LaRussa's St. Louis Cardinals and their arch-rival Chicago Cubs. Single-game analyses have been done before (A DAY IN THE BLEACHERS, NINE INNINGS), but this one looks at a progression of games and strategic moves that are more chess-like in nuance than one might imagine.

Buzz Bissinger, whose examination of the importance of high school football on a small Texas town in FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS won critical acclaim, again brings readers to middle America, putting them in LaRussa's head to understand the whys and wherefores of his profession. His choice of subject is quite understandable: LaRussa, who has won more games than any active manager, is one of a handful of managers also to hold a law degree. Of course, the manager is just the conductor. The athletes are the temperamental musicians, trying to work together to entertain their audience with a successful rendering of the sport. Speaking of the Cubs, they are the subject of two books of their own. Gene Wojciechowski, a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine, goes Bissinger 159 contests better in CUBS NATION: 162 Games. 162 Stories. 1 Addiction. Like the classic TV show "Naked City," the author looks for tales not just from the stars, but also from

back-up players, fans and stadium workers, among others, finding the odd and amusing in the most unlikely of places; details about the games themselves seem almost an afterthought. Conversely, FEW AND CHOSEN: Defining Cubs Greatness Across the Eras, is a more traditional team study. Ron Santo, one of the greatest third basemen not in the Hall of Fame, picks his top five Cubbies at each position, modestly omitting himself from consideration. The volume has the proverbial something for everybody, a perfect blend of prose, pictures and statistics. This volume is the third in a possible series from Triumph Books; previous editions highlight the New York Yankees and St. Louis Cardinals. An Avril Lavigne song asks, "Why do you have to go and make things so complicated?" Another famous quote, from Bull Durham, sums it up best: "This is a very simple game. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball. Sometimes

you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains."

The appeal of baseball books is that they offer simple or complex explanations. Take your pick.

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Southern League: A True Story of...

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Southern League: A True Story of Baseball, Civil Rights, and the Deep South's Most Compelling Pennant Race

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by Larry Colton

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Larry Colton Biography Bibliography

The release of the feature film 42 has stimulated a renewed interest in the early years of African American ballplayers as they struggled for acceptance in organized baseball. While not all of them commanded the same attention as Jackie Robinson did, that does not make their stories any less interesting. In SOUTHERN LEAGUE, Larry Colton, a former Major Leaguer who appeared in one game for the Philadelphia Phillies in 1968 (although you won’t find that in his author’s bio), weaves an intricate story of the 1964 Birmingham Barons, a minor league affiliate of the then-Kansas City Athletics and the first professional integrated team in the Deep South. If there was one city that represented the evils of Jim Crow, it was Birmingham, Alabama. Governor George Wallace and Bull Connor, the city’s commissioner of public safety, sought to maintain total control over African Americans, contrary to public opinion and federal law. So it seems almost corny that the institution that helped break that social construct was the national pastime. Charles O. Finley, the largerthan-life owner of the parent "SOUTHERN LEAGUE club As, populated the deserves to be Birmingham roster with players considered one of the of color, including power-hitting eye-opening books of outfielder Tommy Reynolds; its type and will serve teenage pitching ace Johnny Lee Odom, better known as as a teaching tool for “Blue Moon”; and future all-star those who believe that shortstop Bert Campaneris, a sports --- and life --- in refugee from Cuba, as well as America was always other black and Latin American as it is today." players who did not progress beyond the minor league level. But it is not just the stories of fear and loathing heaped on these virtual sacrificial lambs (Reynolds, in particular, was the target of police harassment and jeers from the “fans”), it is also the acceptance by their white

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Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed the World by David Maraniss - History, Nonfiction, Sports A Nice Little Place on the North Side: Wrigley Field at One Hundred by George Will Baseball, History, Nonfiction, Sports

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associates, mainly the Southern-born manager Haywood Sullivan and teammates Paul Lindblad and Weldon “Hoss” Bowlin, a scrappy infielder and cancer survivor. Each chapter rotates between one of these Barons (including Barons owner Albert Belcher) over the course of the season as the team comes together, despite initial uncertainty. For some of these young men, who came from the east and west coasts, the regional mores were shocking, but they did not see themselves as social and political activists; they were just there to play ball and hopefully advance to the next level. This was true even for the black players, who did not want to “rock the boat”; they would let their athletic skills do their talking. In fact, SOUTHERN LEAGUE is just as much about the struggles of the white athletes in general as the black players’ experiences. Just as meaningful to the Barons, if not more so, was the interference from Finley, who promoted the best amongst them to the A's, who were mired in last place, rather than allow them to stay in Birmingham where they had an excellent chance to win the league championship. The constant use of subtitles in each chapter is at once dramatic and distracting. Employing such a device on occasion is fine, but if the author seeks to make everything important, then nothing is important. Colton frequently seems to put his characters on the verge of social consciousness, but aside from a couple of the white players inviting their black colleagues over for dinner or clucking over having to live and take meals separately while on the road, there’s little indication of what they thought of the inequities of their situation. Despite some of these minor flaws, SOUTHERN LEAGUE deserves to be considered one of the eye-opening books of its type and will serve as a teaching tool for those who believe that sports --- and life --- in America was always as it is today. Reviewed by Ron Kaplan on May 31, 2013

Southern League: A True Story of Baseball, Civil Rights, and the Deep South's Most Compelling Pennant Race by Larry Colton Publication Date: May 14, 2013 Genres: Fiction, History, Nonfiction, Sports Hardcover: 336 pages Publisher: Grand Central Publishing ISBN-10: 1455511889 ISBN-13: 9781455511884

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Stars and Strikes: Baseball and America...

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Stars and Strikes: Baseball and America in the Bicentennial Summer of ‘76

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by Dan Epstein

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Before Epstein gets to that fall classic, however, he offers what the late Mets broadcaster Bob Murphy would have called a “happy recap” of the watershed season that corresponded with America’s 200th anniversary celebration.

Dan Epstein Biography Bibliography

The Rivalry Heard 'Round the World: The Dodgers-Giants Feud from Coast to Coast by Joe Konte - Baseball, History, Nonfiction, Sports

Judging by his hairstyle, Dan Epstein would definitely not have been a member of the New York Yankees or Cincinnati Reds, the two teams that met, albeit briefly, in the 1976 World Series (the Reds took all four games, much to the consternation of owner George Steinbrenner). They represented the conservative side of baseball at a crossroads between the generations.

"Baseball baby boomers will appreciate the nostalgia Epstein dishes out with some small helpings of contemporary pop culture; each chapter bears the title of a popular song. Never too serious and always fun, STARS AND STRIKES is what baseball --- and all sports --- should be about."

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The year featured the decline of old school ownership philosophy and the progress of free agency, still in its “breaking in” period; the return of maverick owner Bill Veeck and the debut of “Captain Outrageous,” Ted Turner; new stars making names for themselves; ever-present racial issues even in the post-Civil Rights era; and, of course, pillbox caps and “softball shorts” (thank you for those, Mr. Veeck). Epstein covers all this and more in his follow-up to BIG HAIR AND PLASTIC GRASS: A Funky Ride Through Baseball and America in the Swinging ’70s.

Basic information about the games on the field can certainly be found elsewhere; that’s not why you’ll read STARS AND STRIKES. You’ll read it for his analysis, commentaries, and the behind-thescenes stories, such as the contentious ending for the American League batting title between Kansas City Royals teammates George Brett and Hal McRae with its possible racial overtones.

A Nice Little Place on the North Side: Wrigley Field at One Hundred by George Will Baseball, History, Nonfiction, Sports

Rickwood Field: A Century in America's Oldest Ballpark by Allen Barra - History, Nonfiction, Sports

Fenway Park: The Centennial: 100 Years of Red Sox Baseball by Saul Wisnia - Baseball, History, Sports

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Then there was the insinuation/interference of commissioner Bowie Kuhn, particularly with deals Oakland Athletics owner Charles O. Finley wanted to make as well as Kuhn’s ill-conceived decision to change the second game of the World Series --- a Sunday affair --- into a night game. Pundits have been arguing for decades that such late contests are anathema for building a younger fan base and partly responsible for the loss of baseball’s stature as “America’s Game.” Epstein was only 10 years old in 1976, so one wonders how much of this is coming from his sense of a personal “golden age.” Is that why he writes about the pre-Photoshop preposterousness of poor brush-art when it came to trying to make baseball cards as up-todate as possible? Or when he recounts the misguided attempt to turn the baseball classic BALL FOUR into a TV series, which lasted just four episodes despite having the author, Jim Bouton, basically playing himself? Even the highest salaries of the day --- Don Gullett signed a $2 million deal for six years; that’s not even the average contract for a single season these days --- seem youthfully innocent. Baseball baby boomers will appreciate the nostalgia Epstein dishes out with some small helpings of contemporary pop culture; each chapter bears the title of a popular song. Never too serious and always fun, STARS AND STRIKES is what baseball --- and all sports --- should be about. Reviewed by Ron Kaplan on May 2, 2014

Stars and Strikes: Baseball and America in the Bicentennial Summer of ‘76 by Dan Epstein Publication Date: April 29, 2014 Genres: Baseball, History, Nonfiction, Sports Hardcover: 400 pages Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books ISBN-10: 1250034388 ISBN-13: 9781250034380

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Ted Williams, My Father: A Memoir

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Ted Williams, My Father: A Memoir

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by Claudia Williams

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Claudia Williams Biography Bibliography

A caveat: I have always taken books about celebrities written by family members or friends under the heading “memoir” with a certain degree of suspicion. What is the author’s motivation? Invariably it’s to “set the record straight,” either by informing readers that the subject was a much better person than previously portrayed…or much worse. (Cynics might say it’s to hop on the fame-by-association train.) Ted Williams was a Hall of Fame outfielder for the Boston Red Sox and war hero, serving in both World War II and Korea. That part of his life had passed by the time he married model Dolores Wettach, who gave birth first to John-Henry and, later, to Claudia. In many ways, Claudia Williams’s story is common for "Ironically, the book any child wanting the love and closes with the line, 'It approval of a parent. Williams is sad what people will divorced Wettach when Claudia say to boost their was three. She portrays her importance and pad mother --- who never remarried --- in almost saintly their ego.' Some terms: self-reliant, brave, readers might think smart, and still harboring the same about feelings for her ex. Time spent Claudia Williams." with her father was difficult, as it might be for anyone who has to split time between households, especially when the breakup happens when one is as young as she was. But throughout the book, she writes about wishing to impress her famous pop. She felt at a disadvantage because of her sex; men’s men like Ted Williams want sons to whom they can hand down their legacy. No matter what she did -- including efforts to become a champion runner and, later, triathlete --- she sensed her father’s interest was only halfhearted. There is also the “competition” with half-siblings, in this case, Bobby-Jo, Williams’s daughter from his marriage to Doris Soule, described mostly in uncomplimentary terms as an alcoholic and drug user who was constantly trying to wheedle money. Claudia claims Bobby-Jo always saw the relationship she had with Ted to

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be a threat as a reason they did not get along. Most memoirs like this have a “shoe-dropper,” an event or a reaction to rumors of tawdry behavior designed to stop readers in their tracks. In the case of TED WILLIAMS, MY FATHER, it’s a response to suggestions of incest, which I had never encountered in the scores of books and articles I’ve read about the ballplayer. Claudia denies any impropriety, but if no one had ever asked the question, what is the point of introducing it into the conversation? Williams suffered an ignominious end. Illness made this once larger-than-life figure dependent on others for his daily care. Depending on the source, he was under the thumb of a manipulative John-Henry, who pushed his ailing father to sign items of memorabilia for sale. Claudia compares her brother favorably to Morris Engleberg, the attorney/companion for Joe DiMaggio in the later stages of the Yankee Clipper’s life. Does she forget that Engleberg was also accused of nudging DiMaggio’s memorabilia activities? And, of course, there’s the whole ghoulish Alcor debacle, by which Williams --- perhaps against his wishes (again, depending on the source) --- underwent a cryonic procedure in which his head was cut off and stored, ostensibly for future reanimation. Claudia seeks to rationalize and/or justify the decision. John-Henry died of leukemia in 2004; Bobby-Jo passed away of liver disease in 2010. So there’s no one left to counter any of her assertions; we have only her word for the communications between the parties involved. The author winds up her memoir writing about becoming “passionate about…protecting a family’s right to privacy.” Protecting, or controlling? She seems to leave out some things she might find embarrassing. By almost every account, Ted Williams was at least a little chagrined by his maternal Hispanic heritage; Ben Bradlee Jr. devotes major space to this in his 2013 biography, THE KID: The Immortal Life of Ted Williams. Yet Claudia omits that particular detail when discussing her grandmother, noting only that she was of French descent. Ironically, the book closes with the line, “It is sad what people will say to boost their importance and pad their ego.” Some readers might think the same about Claudia Williams. Reviewed by Ron Kaplan on June 13, 2014

Ted Williams, My Father: A Memoir by Claudia Williams Publication Date: May 13, 2014 Genres: Baseball, Memoir, Nonfiction, Sports Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: Ecco ISBN-10: 0062259563 ISBN-13: 9780062259561

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The Emerald Diamond: How the Irish...

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The Emerald Diamond: How the Irish Transformed America's Greatest Pastime

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by Charley Rosen

More to Read Southern League: A True Story of Baseball, Civil Rights, and the Deep South's Most Compelling Pennant Race by Larry Colton Fiction, History, Nonfiction, Sports

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Just in time for St. Patrick’s Day, Charley Rosen offers a tip of the tam o’ shanter to the many men who helped shape the national pastime into the game we enjoy today in this fastpaced history.

Arnie, Seve, and a Fleck of Golf History: Heroes, Underdogs, Courses, and Championships by Bill Fields - History, Nonfiction,

Rosen --- whose previous baseball book (following more than a dozen fiction and nonfiction titles about basketball) was 2011’s BULLPEN DIARIES: Mariano Rivera, Bronx Dreams, Pinstripe Legends, and the Future of the New York Yankees--- goes back to the game’s roots to report how so many sons of Erin influenced the style, rules and governance of baseball. Some late 18th-century practitioners, such as Michael “King” Kelly, were lauded in song and story for their exploits on the field. Others, like John Montgomery Ward, were instrumental in seeking rights for players in an era when owners held all the cards and managed their “property” with an iron hand. Additional high-profile figures include the five Delahanty brothers, one of whom met an ignominious end when he plunged to his death from a bridge after being put off a train for drunken behavior.

Stars and Strikes: Baseball and America in the Bicentennial Summer of ‘76 by Dan Epstein

"Just in time for St. Patrick’s Day, Charley Rosen offers a tip of the tam o’ shanter to the many men who helped shape the national pastime into the game we enjoy today in this fastpaced history."

From these humble beginnings came future Hall of Fame managers Connie Mack (born Cornelius Alexander McGillicuddy) and John “Mugsy” McGraw. Between them they managed the Philadelphia Athletics and New York Giants, respectively, for a combined 81 years.

The main influence of the Irish took place over the first halfcentury of baseball as a professional enterprise. They brought with them a love of the physical and a certain rowdy attitude that was not appreciated by those who wanted to maintain baseball as an activity for middle and upper-class gentlemen. Rosen reports on a time in this nation when advertisements for jobs and housing came with the caveat “No

Sports

The Victory Season: The End of World War II and the Birth of Baseball's Golden Age by Robert Weintraub - History, Nonfiction, Sports

- Baseball, History, Nonfiction, Sports

The Rivalry Heard 'Round the World: The Dodgers-Giants Feud from Coast to Coast by Joe Konte - Baseball, History, Nonfiction, Sports

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Irish Need Apply”; anti-Irish sentiment was high in the mid1800s, as thousands came over the Atlantic in the wake of the Potato Famine. The book is divided into four eras: “Humble Beginnings” (roughly 1869, when the first professional club took the field), “The Emerald Age” (1882-1899), “A New Century” (1900-1949), and “Postwar to Present.” Rosen highlights a player or an event of innovation in each chapter, which generally covers a year or two, and rounds out with dozens of interesting and educational factoids, such as league leaders and record holders. He includes brief interviews with a handful of current players, most of whom have at least some sense of their proud heritage. Not all contributions were made on the field as Rosen reports. Two prime pieces of baseball Americana --- the game’s “anthem” “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” and the classic poem “Casey at the Bat” --- feature Irish fans and players as the main characters. He concludes THE EMERALD DIAMOND with a nod to Foley’s Pub and Restaurant in Manhattan, the “official” Irish-American Baseball Hall of Fame, a fun establishment that should be on every fan’s list of baseball attractions to visit. Reviewed by Ron Kaplan on March 15, 2012

The Emerald Diamond: How the Irish Transformed America's Greatest Pastime by Charley Rosen Publication Date: February 28, 2012 Genres: History, Nonfiction, Sports Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: Harper ISBN-10: 0062089889 ISBN-13: 9780062089885

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The Greatest Game Ever Pitched: Juan...

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The Greatest Game Ever Pitched: Juan Marichal, Warren Spahn, and the Pitching Duel of the Century

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These days, a manager is thrilled if he can get a "quality start" out of a pitcher: six innings with no more than three earned runs. Gone are the days of 25 complete games in a season by a single hurler; you're lucky if you can get 25 games from the entire staff. So it's almost unfathomable for modern fans to conceive of a game with not one, but two premiere pitchers going mano-a-mano for 16 thrilling innings.

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"Kaplan, a veteran baseball author, depicts the tension and fatigue --- both physical and mental --as the game edges along..."

Those were the days, writes Jim Kaplan in THE GREATEST GAME EVER PITCHED, as he dissects the 1963 contest that featured two future Hall of Famers on the mound: 43-year-old Warren Spahn of the Milwaukee Braves and the San Francisco Giants' Juan Marichal, some 18 years his junior.

Kaplan, a veteran baseball author, depicts the tension and fatigue --- both physical and mental --- as the game edges along, with any mistake on the mound likely to end the festivities. Unfortunately for Spahn, it was he who succumbed, yielding a home run to Willie Mays in the final frame for the 1-0 loss. As an example of just how powerful these two teams were, 14 of the 18 players in the starting lineup were All-Stars at some point in their careers. And in addition to Spahn, Marichal and Mays, four more would end up in Cooperstown --- Hank Aaron and Eddie Mathews for the Braves, and Willie McCovey and Orlando Cepeda for the host Giants. So this is no weak-hitting expansion franchise misfits here. The author delves deeply into the back stories for Spahn and Marichal. Each had to deal with financial difficulties growing up, the older man during the Great Depression, the younger in the Dominican Republic. Spahn, who was in the 19th year of a 21year career, had served in World War II with distinction, receiving

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a purple heart for wounds suffered in Germany. He lost three prime years to the War, returning to baseball at the age of 25. Although Marichal did not serve in the military, he had battles of his own to deal with, primarily the double-edge sword of racism faced by Hispanic players. On top of being treated as poorly in many venues as their African-American counterparts, Marichal and teammates such as Felipe Alou, Jose Pagan and Cepeda had the additional yoke of language and cultural issues that were exacerbated even by their own manager, who demanded they speak only English in the Giants' clubhouse. As illuminating as the dual biographies are, however, they detract from the purported purpose of the book: to pay tribute to the endurance and accomplishments in that single amazing game that will probably never be duplicated. (In fact, if all the pages containing actual game information were tallied, they would probably account for less than a third of the total content.) This is not to say that Spahn's and Marichal's stories don't deserve to be told, but it's too much when you're promoting the "pitching duel of the century" angle. Footnote for the sake of accuracy: I'm not sure exactly what criteria Kaplan used in decided that the Spahn-Marichal game, as obviously impressive as it was, qualified as the "duel of the century," but it bears noting that on May 1, 1920, Leon Cadore of the Brooklyn Robins (later known as the Dodgers) and Joe Oeschger of the Boston Braves went the distance for their teams in a 1-1 tie that was called after 26 innings. Reviewed by Ron Kaplan (RonKaplansBaseballBookshelf.com) on July 22, 2011

The Greatest Game Ever Pitched: Juan Marichal, Warren Spahn, and the Pitching Duel of the Century by Jim Kaplan Publication Date: February 1, 2011 Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: Triumph Books ISBN-10: 1600783414 ISBN-13: 9781600783418

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The Head Game: Baseball Seen From the...

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The Head Game: Baseball Seen From the Pitcher's Mound

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by Roger Kahn

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Roger Kahn has spent a lifetime writing elegantly on the national

pastime. THE BOYS OF SUMMER, originally released in 1972 and once

again available on bookshelves, is required reading for Baby Boomer

baseball fans (and their parents), as it recalls the storied

Dodgers of Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, Gil Hodges, Roy

Campanella, Carl Erskine, and company in the post-World War II

years. Kahn's newest offering is THE HEAD GAME, a look at baseball from the perspectives of some of the greatest pitchers of all time. It's part biography, part primer, part instructional. There's the necessary history lesson, explaining how different eras in the game forced changes in the philosophy of pitching, including the make-up of the ball (and the reasoning behind these changes), and less of the analysis of what pitch to throw in a given situation than some modern day fans might like. The author writes primarily about athletes he saw during his years as a sportswriter for New York newspapers, such as Warren Spahn and Johnny Sain, the outstanding Milwaukee Braves pitchers for whom the phrase "Spahn and Sain then pray for rain" was coined; Don Drysdale, the menacing Dodger righty who was never concerned about getting his opponents' uniforms dirty by knocking them down with close pitches; and Sandy Koufax, arguably the greatest southpaw in spikes. The author also pays tribute to some of the early pitching pioneers from the 19th century, those roughhewn men whose behavior forced innkeepers throughout the country to post signs declaring "Ballplayers not welcome." Kahn gives nods of recognition to Cy Young and Christy Mathewson, two of the early 20th century pitching greats, and notes how much the art has changed over the past century.

Nonfiction, Sports

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Other baseball titles by Kahn include GOOD ENOUGH TO DREAM, his story of owning a minor league team; JOE AND MARILYN: A Memory of Love, about two of America's most popular icons, DiMaggio and Monroe; A SEASON IN THE SUN; MEMORIES OF SUMMER: When Baseball Was an Art, and Writing about It a Game; and PETE ROSE: My Story.

Reviewed by Ron Kaplan on January 22, 2011

The Head Game: Baseball Seen From the Pitcher's Mound by Roger Kahn Publication Date: April 2, 2001 Genres: Nonfiction, Sports Paperback: 336 pages Publisher: Mariner Books ISBN-10: 0156013045 ISBN-13: 9780156013048

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The Kid: The Immortal Life of Ted...

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The Kid: The Immortal Life of Ted Williams

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by Ben Bradlee, Jr.

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At some point, I would guess any thoughtful person thinks about how he or she would like to be remembered. Ted Williams, the legendary outfielder for the Boston Red Sox from 1939-60, never made any secret of it: he wanted to be known as the best hitter who ever played the game (a sentiment similarly expressed by the fictional Roy Hobbs in THE NATURAL). Unfortunately, as Ben Bradlee, Jr. points out in graphic detail in the opening and closing chapters of his massive biography, THE KID: The Immortal Life of Ted Williams, this might not be the case. There’s a strong possibility that even those who don’t follow baseball might be aware of Williams for his grizzly epilogue after he passed away in 2002: He was not buried or cremated (as he had wished), but rather turned into front-page news for being interred in an establishment that deep-freezes clients with the intention of reanimating them in the future. (The “immortal” portion of the title --- intentional or not --- will no doubt remind the book lover of Rebecca Skloot’s similarly titled THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS.) Unfortunately, this coda to an already tumultuous life --- told in gory detail --- might prove distracting in an otherwise thorough discourse of Williams as a Hall of Fame player who had an appreciation for the underdog, since he considered himself one. His childhood --- the product of a broken home, whose mother "Previous books have preferred her work in a played up Williams’s Salvation Army band in San military record; he was Diego rather than tend to the a fighter pilot in both needs of him and his younger World War II and the brother --- goes a long way in explaining his make-up (to the Korean War. But armchair psychologist, if Bradlee digs beyond Williams was playing these the proffered heroics days, I would not be surprised to expose the young if he had been “classified” with man’s true feelings." some sort of attention deficit or even bi-polar disorder). Williams was of Mexican descent, which he found shameful during his baseball career, but

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it may explain his affinity for minority players. He took the opportunity during his Hall of Fame induction speech to politick on behalf of veterans from the Negro Leagues for similar consideration. And as much of a self-promoter as he was as an athlete, he generously gave his time to sick children and charities, although he insisted on keeping such information out of the press, with whom he also had a contentious relationship for his entire career, not being one to suffer fools gladly. Previous books have played up Williams’s military record; he was a fighter pilot in both World War II and the Korean War. But Bradlee digs beyond the proffered heroics to expose the young man’s true feelings. Like many in his situation --- i.e., athletes in the prime of their physical life who were called to serve their country --Williams was caught between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, as the sole provider for his mother, he was qualified for exemption from duty. On the other hand, this was a time when everyone was called upon to make sacrifices, and those who took advantage of such a legitimate loophole were treated with disdain, especially those in the public eye. The government and draft boards were in a similar bind: allow Williams his 3A status, or come across as playing favorite to a celebrity. He was in a similar situation several years later, when he was recalled for active service in Korea. This time was more problematic; Williams was 33 in 1952 when he rejoined the Marines. How many more years could he possibly play, assuming he got through his hitch without being injured or killed? As wonderful as his playing career might be, an athlete spends more time in retirement than in the game. This is often a period of difficult adjustments. Grappling with a life without constant attention and adulation can be a tough transition, as can finding oneself surrounded by a family he doesn’t know, for all the time spent on the road. Many can’t handle it well, and this becomes a difficult side for the reader to witness. A book of this heft carries certain expectations. Its weight is measured not just in pages, which is reportedly the most for a book of this type, but where it fits into the collective genre of baseball biography and Williams hagiography. Bradlee obviously undertook a massive research project in preparation for THE KID, but is bigger necessarily better? Do we really need to know where he lodged during one of his fishing expeditions or what he ate for breakfast (or the shoe size of one of his wives)? That all depends on the readers’ desire for attention to detail. Like the motto of a television news network, “We report. You decide.” Reviewed by Ron Kaplan on December 20, 2013

The Kid: The Immortal Life of Ted Williams by Ben Bradlee, Jr. Publication Date: December 3, 2013 Genres: Baseball, Biography, Nonfiction, Sports Hardcover: 864 pages Publisher: Little, Brown and Company ISBN-10: 0316614351 ISBN-13: 9780316614351

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The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End...

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The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America's Childhood

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by Jane Leavy

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If she’s not careful, Jane Leavy will earn a reputation as the Boswell of the battered ballplayer. In 2002, she wrote the definitive biography (to this point) of the role model to Jewish boomers everywhere in SANDY KOUFAX: A Lefty's Legacy. In 2010, she published the much-anticipated story of another hero laid low by injury in THE LAST BOY: Mickey Mantle and the End of America's Childhood. Whereas Koufax’s arthritic left arm dramatically shortened an amazing career at 30, how much better might Mantle have been without exacerbating his numerous injuries with his profligate ways? How many more home runs could he have powered over the outfield walls without the booze and the broads? Surely he would have retired with the .300 batting average he decided was the mark of a truly great player. Even the book jacket serves as evidence of Mantle’s degeneration, from a smiling rookie with unlimited potential to a broken down veteran, almost literally on his last legs. “The End of America’s Childhood” came not with Mantle’s death in 1995, but with his retirement almost 30 years earlier (which I suppose is a kind of death). The Yankees --- indeed Boomer America itself --- seemed to fall from innocence with the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Since then, the reverence that would have precluded books such as Jim Bouton’s BALL FOUR and Jose Canseco’s JUICED that take a heroic figure off the pedestal and put him under the microscope have become the norm, and heretofore reverential tomes flew out the window. It was no longer enough to write about hard work and gumption; now every subject had to overcome some traumatic obstacle, whether it was substance or sexual abuse (or, as it turns out in Mantle’s case, both). Leavy, an award-winning former sports and features writer for the Washington Post, admits to being an unabashed Mantle fan since childhood --- and the journalist’s objectivism be damned. In that, she shares his fans’ adoration and disappointment. But in demonstrating her impressive investigative skills, Leavy goes perhaps a bit overboard as she deconstructs a few of Mantle’s tape-measure home runs and provides testimonials for his considerable athletic skills. It is admirable in scope, as she

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discusses bat velocity, angles and meteorological conditions with the scientific community, but does it really matter if the ball went 430 feet or 450 or 480? In a Cold War era where it was important for the American psyche to be the best at everything, this display of power was comforting, but such academic studies might have opened the door for the sabermetrics of today, where every action on the field is measured. The author interviewed hundreds of people when researching the book to turn out this most in-depth look at the Commerce Comet yet published. But like the questionable tape measure home runs, the reader might wonder about the accuracy of memory, or even the downright fabrication for the sake of building up a personal connection to the Mick. Leavy alternates between some of the biggest events in Mantle’s career (for better or worse) and her fateful interview in April 1983, when he was reduced to working as a glad-hander for an Atlantic City casino. Her rose-colored glasses were shattered. Who kidnapped her beloved Mick and replaced him with this boorish drunk with the foul mouth and roaming hands? Still, Leavy managed to retain her composure and professionalism to get the story done…and serve as the impetus for this book. There is little joy in THE LAST BOY. Mantle’s accomplishments were diminished in his eyes then and many baseball fans’ later on when they learned the extent of his boozing and womanizing. That his philosophy stemmed from his “live for today” attitude, based on his belief that he would die young, or came as a result of sexual abuse he suffered as a child (an aspect that doesn’t come until the end of the book, despite the play it got in the media), makes that outcome all the sadder. The description of his last days, when liver problems and cancer ravaged his once-powerful body, defies even the most sangfroid reader from becoming misty-eyed. Reviewed by Ron Kaplan on October 3, 2011

The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America's Childhood by Jane Leavy Publication Date: October 4, 2011 Genres: Biography, Nonfiction Paperback: 512 pages Publisher: Harper Perennial ISBN-10: 0060883537 ISBN-13: 97809780060883539

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The Only Game in Town: Baseball Stars...

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The Only Game in Town: Baseball Stars of the 1930s and 1940s Talk About the Game They Loved

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by Fay Vincent

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Fay Vincent Biography Bibliography

Sports

As former professional athletes move deeper and deeper into senior citizen status, it becomes increasingly interesting, akin to listening to our grandparents discuss what life was like "in the day."

The Victory Season: The End of World War II and the Birth of Baseball's Golden Age by Robert Weintraub - History, Nonfiction, Sports

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The Rivalry Heard 'Round the World: The Dodgers-Giants Feud from Coast to Coast by Baseball has always "enjoyed" a reputation that is almost a necessity, given its relatively slow pace. There is plenty of time to think, to talk. Many teams hire former players whose sole purpose seems to be to put current events into juxtaposition with the way things were when they were on the field. Some fans love it, some hate it.

It's the same with books such as THE ONLY GAME IN TOWN, a

collection of reminiscences of 10 players who played mostly in the

years surrounding World War II. The athletes include Elden Auker, Tommy Henrich, John "Buck" O'Neil, Dom DiMaggio, Johnny Pesky, Warren Spahn, Larry Doby, Ralph Kiner, Bob Feller and Monte Irvin; Spahn and Doby have since passed away.

Spahn, Doby, Kiner, Feller and Irvin have been inducted into the

Baseball Hall of Fame; the others were among the best players of

their generation. The oral history format is a popular --- and seemingly easy--format for writers and editors. After all, how much does it take to plop down a tape recorder and have the subject talk about the most important people and episodes in their lives? They have similar stories to tell, mostly about conditions during their careers. Some of their comments are gossipy; others are, quite frankly, less than scintillating.

Joe Konte - Baseball, History, Nonfiction, Sports

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Arguably the best example of the oral history genre is THE GLORY OF THEIR TIMES, a 1966 collection of interviews by the late Lawrence Ritter. Like the characters in the popular HBO series "Deadwood," one is enthralled by the almost poetic way in which these supposedly under-educated dumb jocks expressed themselves. Ritter's players included the relatively obscure (such as Hans Lobert, Rube Bressler and Willie Kamm) as well as the notable (Hall of Famers Rube Marquard, Sam Crawford and Smokey Joe Wood), most of whom played in the first part of the 20th century. Perhaps because they played a generation before Vincent's roster, their tales are more rustic and romantic.

One also wonders how much play a book like this would have received without Vincent's position as former Commissioner of Baseball (1989-1992).

Another thing the participants of THE ONLY GAME IN TOWN share is that they are each the subject of their own books; all but Spahn and Doby produced autobiographies. Such relatively short snippets might suffice for casual fans. Others --- especially devout fans --- might skip Vincent's volume altogether, opting to get more in-depth information straight from the athletes' pens.

The title page declares that this book is the first volume in a

series. It will be interesting to see if the author follows the

pattern of previously-written-about ballplayers in future

editions. Reviewed by Ron Kaplan on January 13, 2011

The Only Game in Town: Baseball Stars of the 1930s and 1940s Talk About the Game They Loved by Fay Vincent Publication Date: April 3, 2007 Genres: History, Nonfiction, Sports Paperback: 256 pages Publisher: Simon & Schuster ISBN-10: 0743273184 ISBN-13: 9780743273183

THE TEAMMATES: A Portrait of a Friendship

David Halberstam

Hyperion

Sports

ISBN: 0786888679

Many years ago, before baseball's free agency transformed rooting for teams into rooting for individuals, fans could count on having a corps of familiar faces around for years. On the athletes' side, although conventional wisdom warned against it, strong friendships developed (the conventional wisdom warned that today's pal could be tomorrow's enemy).

Books by

David Halberstam

THE COLDEST WINTER: America and the Korean War THE TEAMMATES: A Portrait of a Friendship

Pulitzer Prize-winner David Halberstam chronicles more than a halfcentury of such friendships between four star ballplayers in THE TEAMMATES. Ted Williams, Bobby Doerr, Johnny Pesky and Dom DiMaggio shared their youth and glory as members of the Boston Red Sox. They "grew up" together, evolving from the relative immaturity inherent in a lifestyle that allows you to play games for a living, to the pangs of old age that sets in when your professional life ends before you're out of your thirties.

They were all products of the West Coast, playing with and against each other in the minor leagues before reuniting on the East Coast with the Red Sox. As members of the World War II generation, they all lost time from their careers in the service of their country. Williams, a decorated fighter pilot in the War, was called upon again to serve in the Korean conflict, a fate that he accepted as a matter of duty, although no one could tell him he had to like it.

In sports, friendships often end when players go their separate ways, through trades to other teams or retirement. Such was not

the case with this quartet.

Read Ron Kaplan's interview with Pulitzer Prize winner, Thomas Oliphant

October 21, 2005 More Baseball Roundups by Ron Kaplan: 2011 SPRING BASEBALL ROUNDUP 2010 SPRING BASEBALL ROUNDUP 2009 NEW YORK BASEBALL ROUNDUP 2009 NEW YORK BASEBALL ROUNDUP 2009 SPRING BASEBALL ROUNDUP 2008 FALL BASEBALL ROUNDUP 2008 SPRING BASEBALL ROUNDUP 2007 FALL BASEBALL ROUNDUP 2007 SPRING BASEBALL ROUNDUP 2006 FALL BASEBALL ROUNDUP 2006 SPRING BASEBALL ROUNDUP 2005 FALL BASEBALL ROUNDUP RED SOX BOOKS, PART DEUX THE YANKEES AND RED SOX: A Rivalry for the Ages REMEMBERING WHAT THE NATIONAL PASTIME IS ALL ABOUT

Halberstam, whose previous books on baseball include SUMMER OF '49 (about the Yankees-Red Sox battle for the pennant) and OCTOBER 1964 (regarding the final year of the Yanks' preSteinbrenner dynasty), recreates the feeling of the game in a longforgotten era, when conditions and lack of today's distractions enabled closer ties between players.

Although the career of each man is given adequate homage in this slim volume, THE TEAMMATES, for the most part, revolves around Williams. He was a grand pal, but that didn't keep him from being a pain at times. Halberstam depicts a fishing trip Doerr made with Williams in which nothing went right. Ted had a well-earned reputation as a perfectionist. In addition to his Hall of Fame career, he was an expert fisherman and had little patience for those who didn't live up to his demanding expectations, no matter how good a friend he was dealing with. But rather than being angry, Doerr, perhaps his closest buddy of the group, felt he had let Williams down with his unlucky day in the boat.

THE TEAMMATES is an undeniably sad tale. It opens with Pesky, DiMaggio and a third party getting ready to make a cross-country drive to see a dying Williams. Doerr, whose wife was in poor health, was unable to join his old friends. "It had come down to this one, final visit," writes Halberstam in the book's final chapter. "They had once felt immortal, so immune to the vagaries of age." But fate had not been kind to Williams in recent years. Once the picture of robust middle-age health, he was now confined to a wheelchair, having suffered from stroke and heart disease, his 6'3" frame withered to 130 pounds.

After driving for three days (in the wake of September 11, none of the men felt comfortable enough to fly), Pesky and DiMaggio --who might have been an even better fielder than his brother Joe -- arrived in Florida and were shocked and saddened by Williams's condition. They spent another three days visiting, reminiscing about the wonderful times they had together and discussing the problems with the current game. After their farewells, DiMaggio called every day to keep Williams abreast of the Red Sox's doings. Sometimes the man who had been known as the Splendid Splinter would fall asleep in the middle of their conversation. One day, he never woke up.

Williams's life was complex. On the one hand, he had the fame and fortune confirmed upon those with superior talent. On the other, and as is so often the case, his personal life was less than ideal, both as the product of an unhappy home life as a youth and through his failed marriages and difficulties with his own children. But through it all, through good times and bad, he could always count on THE TEAMMATES.

FALL CLASSICS MEMORIES OF BASEBALL'S GREATEST THE WORLD SERIES CENTENNIAL

THE WORLD SERIES CENTENNIAL Ah, autumn. The season when green leaves transform to beautiful colors before falling from their lofty perches and the crisp air makes one reach for the heavy sweater. Baseball fans however aren't quite so enthused or ready to give up on summertime. The World Series, aka the Fall Classic, is the last handhold they can enjoy before the bleak days of winter set in.

Read Ron Kaplan's interview with Pulitzer Prize winner, Thomas Oliphant

Since the inauguration of the "second season" in 1903, there have been countless thrills --- Don Larsen's perfect game; dramatic home runs by Carlton Fisk, Bill Mazeroski, Kirk Gibson and Joe Carter; "Game Six" in 1986 (no other explanation is necessary); and Jack Morris's extra inning, complete game 1-0 shutout to give the Minnesota Twins the championship in 1991. On the other hand, there have also been a fair number of uninspiring performances.

The mix of feast or famine is the gist of Joseph Wallace's WORLD SERIES: An Opinionated Chronicle - 100 Years.

Like his previous works --- THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF BASEBALL and THE BASEBALL ANTHOLOGY --- WORLD SERIES is richly illustrated and thought provoking in its prose. The "opinionated" aspects are ripe for considered discussion as Wallace presents cogent arguments as to why some "goat" labels are deserved while others are not, just as he believes some perennially heralded performances by individuals and teams are overrated.

The glossy format of WORLD SERIES lends itself well to the stature of the event where patriotic bunting hangs from the grandstands and even non-fans take interest. With the hopes of making the games interesting for that demographic, the networks call up their big guns, their most eloquent voices to wax poetic about the grandeur of the Series. Similarly, some of the best sports writing have come out of these games. Bill Littlefield, host of National Public Radio's "Only a Game" and Richard Johnson, author of several baseball books, have collaborated on FALL CLASSICS: The Best Writing About the World Series' First 100 Years, a collection of commentaries, stories and reportage by some of the best in the business. Some of the pieces are spot reporting, while others are excerpted from biographies and histories. Presented in a roughly chronological order, the high and low points are given equal shrift; while you have the elation of Fisk's homer, you also have the shame of the 1919 Black Sox Scandal.

The editors have selected a "Hall of Fame" lineup of writers, including Roger Angell, the dean of the baseball literati; Thomas Boswell, the insightful columnist for the Washington Post; and the astute analyst Peter Gammons.

Past generations are also represented in FALL CLASSICS, including such legends as Ring Lardner, Jim Murray, Jimmy Powers, Damon Runyon, Red Smith and Dick Young.

During the series, it's not unusual for a newspaper to hire a player, hoping to get an insider's perspective. So the editors have included pieces from Satchel Paige, Tris Speaker and Christy Mathewson. With the centennial of the World Series at hand, it's only fitting that the Red Sox are once again in the "hunt for October." Two books take note of the team's unique place in baseball history. AUTUMN GLORY: Baseball's First World Series and WHEN BOSTON WON THE WORLD SERIES: A Chronicle of Boston's Remarkable Victory in the First Modern World Series of 1903 each look at the Series' origins. Relatively more scholarly in approach, these volumes examine not only the games between the Boston Americans (as the Red Sox were formerly called) and Pittsburgh Pirates, but at the tense --- and at times downright nasty --- relationship between the older, established National League and the upstart American League. (The New

York Giants refused to play against Boston in 1904 because their manager viewed the American League as an inferior product. It would mark the only time until the 1994 strike that the Series would not be played.)

Louis Masur, a history professor at City College in New York, intersperses a full narrative of each of the Series' games with the backstory of the Pirates and Red Sox seasons and the history of war and peace between the leagues.

Bob Ryan writes in a more "folksy" manner, delving into the personalities of the players, managers, owners and other parties involved. He includes accounts from the newspapers of the day, gossipy tidbits reporting the comings and goings, and the reluctance of the players to compete without additional recompense (this, long before the advent of the Players' Union). The old-time photos belie the youth of the participants, making them seem much older than their years.

Both books reveal a certain charm at a time when technology was not around to interfere with the enjoyment of the game. As Boston Red Sox fans know only too well, their team hasn't won the World Series since Babe Ruth was sold to the Yankees in 1920. They have been haunted by "the curse of the Bambino" ever since, losing in heartbreaking fashion in 1946, 1967, 1975 and 1986, some under the most bizarre circumstances. Two new titles look at the unique place the Sox have in the baseball firmament.

In THE BOYS OF OCTOBER: How the 1975 Boston Red Sox Embodied Baseball's Ideals - and Restored Our Spirits, Doug Hornig contends that even in defeat the Bostonians provided exciting fare for a country under the crush of Watergate, Vietnam and general social unrest. Fisk's "midnight home run" in the sixth game teased Sox fans into believing they had a chance to finally break the dry spell, but the Cincinnati Reds came back to take the finale, further evidence of "the curse." And while the Sox didn't make it to the Series in 1978, Roger Kahn's OCTOBER MEN: Reggie Jackson, George Steinbrenner, Billy Martin, and the Yankees' Miraculous Finish in 1978 is another reminder that if the team didn't have bad luck, they wouldn't have any luck at all. They were ahead of the Yankees by more than a dozen

games late in the season, only to decline at such a precipitous rate that a face-off between the two teams was necessary to determine the division winner. The Sox were ahead late in that game, only to be beaten by a home run off the bat of the legendary Bucky Dent. This book will be joyful for Yankee fans, painful for Sox fanciers.

Kahn, perhaps more than any author, is credited with the resurgence in interest in popular adult (as opposed to academic) baseball titles. His opus magnus, THE BOYS OF SUMMER, is the standard by which subsequent books have been measured. There's no better way for fans to get into the spirit of this year's World Series than to check out these informative, entertaining and nostalgic books. And while fans wait for next year's spring training, they can take comfort that this collection of Series titles will help keep them warm in the cold months ahead. --- Reviewed by Ron Kaplan (RonKaplanNJ@comcast.net) © Copyright 1996-2014, Bookreporter.com. All rights reserved.

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The Yankee Years

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The Yankee Years

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by Joe Torre and Tom Verducci

Review

Joe Torre Biography Bibliography

Tom Verducci Biography Bibliography

The former manager of the New York Yankees --- and one of its most successful --- teams up with Sports Illustrated’s senior baseball writer for this unique and somewhat baffling presentation. Although Joe Torre gets top billing as the nominative author, the reader will get the impression that Tom Verducci is telling the story, since the narrative is written in the third person. Torre was a former All-Star and Most Valuable Player during his 18-year career. He also managed the New York Mets, Atlanta Braves and St. Louis Cardinals before taking over the reigns of the New York Yankees. For the most part, this is a standard baseball tale of hard work, success and frustration. The last element is especially so when one understands that Torre’s employer, George Steinbrenner, has been one of the most hands-on (or meddlesome, depending on one’s point of view) owners in the long history of the game. He went through mangers like a cold sufferer goes through a box of tissues. Since acquiring the team prior to the 1973 season, he had hired --- and fired --- 13 field generals, including Billy Martin five times and four others at least twice. Torre added a stability to the team that hadn’t been known since Casey Stengel led them to a constant stream of pennants and world championships from 194960. From the very beginning, Torre took control over a mix of veterans and rookies and molded them into a team, as trite as that might sound: The Yankees ran off a string of three consecutive World Series titles and four in five years. Ultimately, THE YANKEE YEARS is a sad tale on the natural order of things in the sports world. Athletes grow older, lose their prowess and are replaced by others who may be better or worse, with different drives and agendas. That was part of Torre’s downfall. In his first few seasons, he was surrounded by the likes of Paul O’Neill, Bernie Williams, Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada and others who meshed so well together, working for that common goal. But the ones who followed seemed less interested in the Yankee tradition and more in individual performances. Some --- like David Wells, Kyle Farnsworth, Carl Pavano and Kevin Brown, to name a few --were a constant source of disappointment. The Yankees kept winning, but the spark and joy were missing.

More to Read True Believers: The Tragic Inner Life of Sports Fans by Joe Queenan - Humor, Nonfiction, Sports

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Working for Steinbrenner and his minions presented its own set of difficulties, constant scrutiny and job security being two of them. Despite 13 consecutive postseason appearances, someone was always looking over Torre’s shoulder, quick to criticize if some bit of strategy backfired or if things weren’t running smoothly. After an initial euphoria, the tone of THE YANKEE YEARS becomes more forlorn with every chapter. Baseball fans know the inevitable outcome --- Torre was not retained following the 2007 season and was named manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers (which he led to the postseason) --- but Verducci hammers the point home with passages such as “It was the 1,294th win with the Yankees for Torre, including postseason play, over 12 seasons. It would be the last,” and “He showered, dressed and left his office and the clubhouse believing this would be the final time he would do so as manager of the New York Yankees. He did not look back.” It is telling that the book jacket features a picture of Torre walking away from the camera. The pre-publication hullabaloo over THE YANKEE YEARS, Joe Torre’s “autobiography/memoirs,” can be summed up with a Shakespeare title: Much Ado About Nothing. Like the trailer of a two-star movie, the media --- many members of which admitted not to have read the book in its entirety as they made their comments --- cherry-picked parts for maximum bang. In particular, they focused on Torre’s remarks about Alex Rodriguez, whom he characterized as high-maintenance, more concerned with how he looked and performed than with his contributions to the team’s success. They failed to mention that Torre also praises Rodriguez: “Nobody has ever worked harder in my memory than this guy,” he writes. Torre also expresses disappointment in his deteriorating relationship with Brian Cashman, the Yankees general manager, whom he accuses of not supporting him when the chips were down. Taken as a whole, THE YANKEE YEARS is a standard bit of baseball memoir, no worse and perhaps better than others that have been published in recent years. Too bad it couldn’t have had a happier ending. Reviewed by Ron Kaplan on January 24, 2011

The Yankee Years by Joe Torre and Tom Verducci Publication Date: February 3, 2009 Genres: Nonfiction, Sports Hardcover: 512 pages Publisher: Doubleday ISBN-10: 0385527403 ISBN-13: 9780385527408

THE YANKEES AND RED SOX A Rivalry for the Ages

Read Ron Kaplan's interview with Pulitzer Prize winner, Thomas Oliphant

The rivalry between New York and Boston leaves fans with more than just breathtaking baseball. Each municipality sees itself as superior: New Yorkers are more aggressive and show an affinity for getting things done, while New Englanders are more cultured and refined. They also have had the sympathy of the baseball community and the larger world for their decades of futility. But no longer can the Red Sox play that role of the poor, pitiful loser. Their 2004 World Championship not only has shucked the "curse of the Bambino" that had kept the fabled franchise without a title for almost 90 years, it also helped create a cottage industry. Publishers, seeking to make hay from the stunning turn of events, have produced more than a dozen books concentrating on the Sox, the Yankees, or a combination of the two.

***** The first and foremost of these is FAITHFUL: Two Diehard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season, by frightmeister Stephen King and novelist Stewart O'Nan, which was released before the glut. The project had been in the planning stages for some time. It was just a stroke of luck that the two picked the 2004 season to monitor.

*****

More recently, readers have a plethora of angles from which to choose, depending on where their allegiance lies. Mike Vaccaro, a columnist for the New York Post, brings a "big apple" perspective to EMPERORS AND IDIOTS: The Hundred-Year Rivalry Between the Yankees and Red Sox, From the Very Beginning to the End of the Curse. Despite the title, Vaccaro concentrates mainly on the last several seasons, which exhibited increased animosity --- although he does toss in some historical background, particularly about the renewed violent spark in the mid-1970s that produced some heavyweight battles (Munson vs. Fisk; Yankees vs. Bill Lee). From the other side of the "border" we have BLOOD FEUD: The Red Sox, the Yankees and the Struggle of Good versus Evil, by Bill Nowlin and Jim Prime, a pair of New Englanders who have collaborated on several Sox-related titles. They say that winners write the history books. While the Yankees have enjoyed unparalleled success where it counts --- reaching the post-season --Nowlin and Prime try to take the higher road in reveling in this particular accomplishment. The authors include a helpful timeline of the feud, which evidently goes back to 1895 --- the year Babe Ruth was born. Finally, A TALE OF TWO CITIES: The 2004 Yankees-Red Sox Rivalry and the War for the Pennant is a unique joint venture between Boston Herald writer Tony Massarotti and the New York Daily News's John Harper. The authors switch off, examining the season from opposite sides of the fence, reporting on each team's ups and downs during 2004.

The choice of book art for these three is noteworthy. Both EMPERORS AND IDIOTS and BLOOD FEUD incorporate a picture of the notorious Don Zimmer-Pedro Martinez scuffle in the 2003 American League Championship Series; A TALE OF TWO CITIES depicts Alex Rodriguez (who the Red Sox tried to acquire before the Yankees flexed their wallet) to make its point: in one shot, he's about to throw down the Red Sox catcher; in the other he's trying, unsportsmanly, to avoid being tagged out by slapping the ball out of the fielder's hand.

***** A more genteel and literate offering is THE YANKEES VS. RED SOX READER, edited by Mike Robbins, a San Franciscan (I suppose the distance makes him objective). Robbins culled newspapers, magazines, and books to present the evolution of the often-contentious relationship. He divides the READER into three eras: 1903-1950, 1951-1985, and 1985 to the present, and includes the work of such habituĂŠs

of baseball anthologies as Red Smith, Peter Gammons, Thomas Boswell and Roger Angell, to paint a broad landscape.

***** In recent years, newspapers have made use of their archives to produce "quickie" books commemorating the hometown team's World Series success. The Boston Globe continues the tradition. Full of photos, factoids and recycled stories, it's meant more as a keepsake than a serious analysis. The title can be defined in two ways because of the rather confusing layout. It's either FINALLY: Red Sox Are the Champions After 86 Years, or Red Sox Are FINALLY the Champions After 86 Years. Dan Shaughnessy is another reporter/columnist (for the aforementioned Globe) who takes advantage of his access and proximity in REVERSING THE CURSE: Inside the 2004 Boston Red Sox, giving him a chance to take back some of the things he wrote in his 1991 THE CURSE OF THE BAMBINO, as well as his children's book, THE LEGEND OF THE CURSE OF THE BAMBINO. Shaughnessy is one of the better baseball writers, so one can rely on him to employ colorful prose to describe what on a day-to-day retelling over the course of a season can be pretty boring.

***** Peter Golenbock updates an old favorite with RED SOX NATION: An Unexpurgated History of the Boston Red Sox. Golenbock adds several chapters to his oral history, originally released as FENWAY in 1992, offering new contributions from Red Sox players and opponents, coaches, front office personnel, and others discussing the triumphs and failures of the past century-plus. Golenbock is also the co-author of IDIOT: Beating "The Curse" and Enjoying the Game of Life (as opposed to other games such as Monopoly or Chutes and Ladders?). This is an example of the phenomenon of a team's popular player sounding off on his life, the (baseball) universe, and everything, warranted or not, intelligible or not. (Readers will note how many titles employ "Idiot," the Red Sox's selfdeprecating motto.) In this case, it's centerfielder Johnny Damon, whose hirsute and beatific appearance resulted in t-shirts bearing his likeness and the inscription, "WWJDD?" Damon recaps his solid, if not Hall-of-Fame-bound, career. Expect this one to do well in the New England region and among Damon fans, with little interest elsewhere. Another "idiotic" offering is IDIOT-SYNCRASIES: How the Red Sox Were Smart Enough to Win the World Series, by A. Knoefel Longest, a columnist

for The Remy Report, a website by former Sox favorite and current broadcaster Jerry Remy. Longest puts together another behind-the-scenes overview as well as profiles of each Red Sox player.

***** Two new biographies deal with more traditional figures: the Yankees's Lou Gehrig and the Sox's Ted Williams. In LUCKIEST MAN: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig, Wall Street Journal reporter Jonathan Eig portrays Gehrig as a skillful but bland professional, a mama's boy who sat in Babe Ruth's shadow and never really enjoyed life until it was too late. John Underwood collaborated with Williams on several books, including THE SCIENCE OF HITTING and MY TURN AT BAT: The Story of My Life (not to mention FISHING THE BIG THREE: Tarpon, Bonefish, Atlantic Salmon). So there is probably no one writer who could have done a better job in presenting the cantankerous Splendid Splinter in IT'S ONLY ME: The Ted Williams We Hardly Knew, a personal memoir about the man rather than a detailed look at the ballplayer. No one doubts that "Teddy Ballgame" was an incredible persona, a hero on many levels; that makes the bizarre end of his life that much sadder. The bio includes an audio CD of conversations between the author and his subject.

***** On a lighter note, Boston (and Mets) rooters probably will be first in line for Jim Gerard's simply-titled YANKEES SUCK!, which brings to mind all those thoughtful purveyors of sports radio and online bulletin boards. This is actually a fun book, full of lists and examples of the Bronx Bombers' megalomania, with telling chapter headings such as "Sure They're Successful, But They Cheat," "The Madness of King George," and "Condemning the House that Ruth Built." Similar in its venomous depiction, but wittier, is Jim Caple's THE DEVIL WEARS PINSTRIPES: George Steinbrenner, the SATANS of Swat, and the SELLING of Baseball's Soul. Caple, a writer for ESPN The Magazine, delivers Letterman-like observations, down to a collection of lists showing how "evil" the Yankees are, as evidenced by their owner.

*****

Two semi-companion books take a gentle and loving look at each club: 101 REASONS TO LOVE THE YANKEES (and 10 Reasons to Hate the Red Sox) and its distaff 101 REASONS TO LOVE THE RED SOX (and 10 Reasons to Hate the Yankees). What makes these particularly intriguing is that the authors are brothers. Ron Green, Jr. wrote the former volume while his sibling, David, handled the latter. Even more ironic is that these natives of North Carolina write so passionately about "Yankees." Since each claims to have followed his particular team since childhood, one can imagine the arguments that must have gone on in that household.

***** Finally, Filip Bondy, a columnist for the New York Daily News, concentrates on "real" Yankee fans in BLEEDING PINSTRIPES: A Season with the Bleacher Creatures at Yankee Stadium. If players often speak of the "family" atmosphere of the clubhouse, this is the view from the other side of the outfield fence. The varied assortment of colorful characters has its own society within the confines of the ballpark. Encamped in Section 39 in the right field section, these men and women bonded as a clan, dripping contempt for the denizens of the box seats, with their cell phones, fancy suits, and sixth-inning departures.

*****

More Baseball Roundups by Ron Kaplan: • 2005 FALL BASEBALL ROUNDUP • REMEMBERING WHAT THE NATIONAL PASTIME IS ALL ABOUT • MEMORIES OF BASEBALL'S GREATEST • THE WORLD SERIES CENTENNIAL • CELEBRATING THE YANKEES CENTENNIAL • FOR BASEBALL FANS, HAPPY DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN • BASEBALL ROUNDUP • A SEASON OPENER Back to top.

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Ty and the Babe: Baseball's Fiercest...

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Ty and the Babe: Baseball's Fiercest Rivals: A Surprising Friendship and the 1941 HasBeens Golf Championship

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by Tom Stanton

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Ty Cobb holds the highest major league batting average at .366. Until Hank Aaron broke his record in 1974, Babe Ruth held the all-time home run mark with 714. But these men prided themselves in taking different roads to the same destination. You say to-mayto, and I say to-mah-to. Even in the early part of the 20th century, Cobb was considered old school when it came to baseball. He believed in the scientific game, which required strategy, speed and daring. Then Ruth came along, swinging a 48-ounce bat. An old Nike ad campaign claimed that "chicks dig the long ball." Actually, just about every fan does, and they can thank Ruth for changing the national pastime forever with brute strength. Cobb could never forgive Ruth for that. But then Cobb was known for his cantankerousness anyway. His is still recalled for sharpening his spike to intimidate fielders as he came storming into bases. Cobb was raised in a genteel southern family, well-bred and educated. Ruth was brought up in a home for incorrigible boys until he was 19, so he did not have the polish of his fellow ballist. Given Cobb's hostile nature, it was not out of character for him to take every opportunity to put down Ruth as a lummox and a dolt, and Ruth gave it back to him in kind. But somewhere along the way, Cobb --- being several years older and already on the tail end of his career --- began to admire Ruth for his heady play and natural talent. And, again, Ruth responded likewise. It was the crafty work of Christy Walsh, Ruth's manager and ghostwriter, that got these two on speaking terms and, in turn, created a sensation for the sporting press. After Cobb retired, he turned to golf for relaxation and recreation. It was on the links when the prospect of a match between him and the Babe was suggested by a PGA official and a wire service writer; Cobb relished the idea of beating Ruth and agreed to challenge his rival.

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There were actually three matches. The first was held at a club in Massachusetts, won by Cobb by two strokes. Ruth won the return game, played in Queens, NY, by a single shot. (Ruth complained throughout that Cobb took too much time and took the game too seriously.) Far be it for me to reveal the outcome. Suffice it to say that Tom Stanton does a marvelous job of painting the portraits of two middle-aged ex-athletes still trying to outdo each other, although with much less animosity than during their heydays. And he manages to get a maximum of detail into a minimum of prose, introducing the characters in the first part of his book, vividly describing the on-field battles, and finishing up with a sweet story of reconciliation. Just the fact that he seeks to counter the commonly accepted notion of Cobb as a curmudgeon makes this worth reading. According to Stanton, Cobb was still enough of a competitor to believe that his public perception would hinge on the outcome of these matches. He was shocked by the lack of spectators during their second game. Indeed, one of the bittersweet themes is how Cobb plays passive-aggressive when comparing latter-day stars like Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio to the players of his generation. He wouldn't ever say anything negative, butâ&#x20AC;Ś. Sometimes in the heat of battle, words intending to hurt are exchanged. But Stanton shows that time heals such wounds, aided, in the case of Ty and the Babe, by swinging a new stick. Reviewed by Ron Kaplan on May 15, 2007

Ty and the Babe: Baseball's Fiercest Rivals: A Surprising Friendship and the 1941 Has-Beens Golf Championship by Tom Stanton Publication Date: May 15, 2007 Genres: Nonfiction, Sports Hardcover: 304 pages Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books ISBN-10: 0312361599 ISBN-13: 9780312361594

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Where Nobody Knows Your Name: Life In...

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Where Nobody Knows Your Name: Life In the Minor Leagues of Baseball

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by John Feinstein

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A classic crime series from the “golden age” of television carried the tag line, “There are eight million stories in the Naked City. This has been one of them.” John Feinstein’s latest book, WHERE NOBODY KNOWS YOUR NAME, has a similar vibe. While there obviously aren’t eight million stories, do the math: There are 30 major league ball clubs, each with at least five minor league affiliates, adding up to roughly 150 players per (although that’s a very fluid number when you factor in injuries, trades, free agent signings, etc.). So you’re talking about 4,500 players ranging in age from late teens to early 40s, each with his own story.

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Turn to any decent sports section and you’ll find a page of statistics, schedules and transactions in tiny type --- agate --cramming in as much information as possible. “On almost any given day of the year in baseball, lives change…and those changes are recorded in the agate,” Feinstein writes. Towards the end of WHERE NOBODY KNOWS YOUR NAME, one player offers a realistic assessment: “To some extent, it’s almost as if teams do see you as agate --- just a name being moved around a board somewhere.” Feinstein --- whose previous baseball books include LIVING ON THE BLACK: Two Pitchers, Two Teams, One Season to Remember and PLAY BALL: The Life and Troubled Times of Major League Baseball, along with many other titles on golf, basketball and football --- focuses on a handful players, a couple of managers, and an umpire, who are in different stages of their careers. Some are “organizational players --- guys who have reached a point in their careers where getting to the majors or returning to the majors isn’t impossible but it isn’t likely.” These lifers can spend years in the game they love at the expense of other opportunities, hoping to get that taste. They know there’s little chance of advancing beyond a certain level. Some accept and are resigned to it, while others are bitter, wishing for more playing time to prove their talent. The younger players are full of optimism; the older ones still love the rituals of the locker room. Dontrelle Willis, once a fireballing

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20-game winner for the Florida (now Miami) Marlins and still a relatively young pitcher, expressed it well when he said, “I still loving coming to the yard everyday…. I love the camaraderie of the clubhouse, and I understand it won’t be long before I’m one of those guys sitting around telling war stories…. When the day comes that I don’t believe I can make it back and pitch in the big leagues, I’ll go home. I know it won’t be easy, but that’s what I’ll do.” Success depends on many factors out of the athletes’ control. Promotions often come down to someone on a team at a higher level getting injured, an unfortunate fact of life in sports as many in the book report. Look at Lou Gehrig; if Wally Pipp hadn’t been injured, who knows when or even if the future Hall of Famer would have gotten his opportunity.

"...one of the most insightful looks into the realities of baseball life for most of the athletes..."

It’s certainly a joyous occasion when it does happen, not the least because of the increase in pay, pro-rating the major league minimum of almost $500,000, not to mention the hefty per diem.

But getting to the majors and staying there are two different things. The majority of players in the minors are there to serve as teammates for the high-priced prospects, as evidenced by this exchange between Tommy Lasorda, then a manager in the Los Angeles Dodgers system, and his team concerning a prized prospect who had rubbed his more veteran teammates the wrong way. “First I want you all to go and get [his] signature,” he said. “Because someday it’ll be valuable to you when he’s a star in the majors. Then I want you to thank him. You know why? Because we need the rest of you guys around here so we can field a team for him to play on. If not for him, we wouldn’t need the rest of you.” One of the major themes is that baseball --- all sports --- is a business. “‘We all know that,’ one player says. ‘Some days it’s a great business to be in. Other days aren’t as great.’” Managing a minor league affiliate has its own set of issues. To paraphrase a famous football slogan, for these skippers winning isn’t everything, in fact it doesn’t matter all that much. The minors are a way station for prospects who can be called up at any time by the parent club, turning his now-former minor league team into disarray. Yet most minor league managers will tell you the best part of their job is being able to tell a kid he’s going up to “The Show.” (The other side of the coin, however, is having to release a player, telling someone his services are no longer required and his efforts might be better placed in another profession altogether.) While this is one of the most insightful looks into the realities of baseball life for most of the athletes, it’s not a perfect product. The stories can seem repetitive after a while. In fact, two chapters on the umpire repeat a major plot point and dialogue, as if the author (and editor) forgot they had appeared earlier. Feinstein also has a tendency to end some chapters and sections with portentous lines such as “Of course, that is easier said than done,” and “All he could do was keep playing and, he hoped, keep hitting while waiting for another chance.” The ultimate sin for me, however, was Feinstein finishing up his book by quoting the last line from Jim Bouton’s classic, BALL FOUR --- “[y]ou spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time,” before putting his one coda on it with, “Truer words were never spoken.”

While this may strike some readers as minor points, they add up over the course of almost 350 pages. For the overwhelming majority of ball players, thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s no way to put a positive spin on minor league life. The youngest ones, right out of high school, are away from home for the first time. Some come from foreign countries and have to deal with language and cultural issues. Almost all will struggle, and most will never achieve the ultimate goal. In WHERE NOBODY KNOWS YOUR NAME, Feinstein lifts some of them out of the agate and turns them into relatable human beings, which is worthy of praise and thanks. Reviewed by Ron Kaplan on February 28, 2014

Where Nobody Knows Your Name: Life In the Minor Leagues of Baseball by John Feinstein Publication Date: February 25, 2014 Genres: Nonfiction, Sports Hardcover: 384 pages Publisher: Doubleday ISBN-10: 0385535937 ISBN-13: 9780385535939

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Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend

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