Everyone has an opinion about the Yankees. More than an opinion in most cases, but an opinion at the very least.
—From the Introduction

Love them or hate them, the New York Yankees have been an American institution for nearly a century. With their rich history and colorful cast of characters, the Yankees never fail to inspire or provoke. In this exciting compendium, some of today’s most acclaimed writers—including Pete Dexter, Colum McCann, Roy Blount Jr., Dan Barry, Jane Leavy, Charles P. Pierce, J. R. Moehringer, Daniel Okrent, Frank DeFord, Bill James, and many more—step up to the plate to take their cuts. The result is a collection of original essays as idiosyncratic and expansive as the team that has inspired them: ruminations on Babe Ruth’s gravestone, Derek Jeter’s swing, and the upper-deck vantage of the Oldest Living Yankee; dual allegiances; mortal rivalries; and every other subject that spans from the hilarious (the Yankee wife-swap of the ’70s) to the sublime (the grace of Catfish Hunter).

Superbly written, deeply insightful, and full of both passion and humor, Damn Yankees is a completely fresh look at baseball’s most enduring franchise by a Murderers’ Row of writers as stacked as that of the 1927 Yanks.

About Rob Fleder

Rob Fleder was executive editor of Sports Illustrated and the editor of Sports Illustrated Books during his twenty years at Time Inc. He was the editor of Sports Illustrated 50: The Anniversary Book, The Sports Illustrated Baseball Book, and Hate Mail from Cheerleaders, among other New York Times bestsellers. He lives in the Hudson Valley.

Book review: ‘Damn Yankees’ and the passions they stir

The Los Angeles Times Book Review – April 1, 2012 (Excerpt)

A couple of years ago, for Father’s Day, my family bought me the interactive video game MLB 2K9 for the Wii. The great thing about the game, and also its enduring frustration, is its verisimilitude — playing as the 2009 New York Yankees, I had access to all those players, all that talent, although I often couldn’t make them win. Usually, I’d play against the machine but on occasion with my then-11-year-old daughter, Sophie, an avowed Yankees hater and (even worse) a Red Sox fan.

The first time we played together, I warned her, “Don’t take Boston,” explaining that even a virtual Yankees-Red Sox matchup with my own child could bring out the cold-bloodedness in me. Sure enough, that’s exactly what happened. During the game, in a digital Fenway Park, I tried to keep it friendly, throwing her the occasional meatball, letting her score some runs. But in the eighth inning, with the Yankees leading by three, she hit a two-run homer to bring the Red Sox within one. I looked at her as she did a dance of joy; I might have even said, “Now, it’s serious.” Then, I did what any real Yankees fan would do: I went to the bullpen for Mariano Rivera, and I shut my daughter down.

This edge, this need for victory — what Nathaniel Rich, in his essay “The Queens Speech,” calls “Win At All Costs (WAAC)” — is one of the central subtexts in “Damn Yankees: Twenty-Four Major-League Writers on the World’s Most Loved (and Hated) Team,” edited by former Sports Illustrated executive editor Rob Fleder. What gives the book its resonance, however, is how the best work here tends to turn that on its ear, exposing it as the most obvious and least interesting filter for coming to terms with the team. [Read the full article...]

‘Damn Yankees’ Inspire Major League Love And Hate

NPR Book Review – April 9, 2012 (Excerpt)

The New York Yankees may be the most polarizing team in the U.S. In a new collection, Damn Yankees: Twenty-Four Major League Writers on the World’s Most Loved (and Hated) Team, writers share the stories behind their passions.

In many cases, rooting for or against them has little to do with sports. Two contributors to the collection, journalist Charlie Pierce and writer Daniel Okrent, talk with NPR’s Neal Conan about their stories, and why the New York Yankees inspire such strong feelings in so many people, sports fans or not.

Pierce grew up in Red Sox country — Worcester, Mass. But even there, there were patches of Yankees fans. “All the Italian kids that I knew growing up were all Yankees fans because of DiMaggio,” he says. Players like DiMaggio “were your purchase on the country,” says Pierce. “The country defines itself in a lot of ways by the games it watches … [and] the entree for a lot of Italian-Americans of a certain generation of this country was Joe DiMaggio.”

But back then, he qualifies, “the Yankees were so good, and the Red Sox were so terrible that … having a rivalry with the Yankees was like having a rivalry with the rain. I mean, it was completely pointless.” [Read the full article...]

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THE BLEEDING HILLS
A Novel by Wilfried F. Voss

I have fought a good fight,
I have finished my course,
I have kept the faith.
- 2 Timothy iv. 7

The Irish War is officially a part of history, but not for Finnean Whelan, an IRA veteran of almost 40 years. British Intelligence has produced evidence that he is the mastermind behind a conspiracy to assassinate the First Minister of Northern Ireland. For Whelan this is not only a mission of revenge, but marks the beginning of a journey into the past and the return to the one true love: Ireland. [More...]

The Bleeding Hills is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Nobel, and any other good bookstore.

“How would you like to hang out with Yogi Berra and Ron Guidry during spring training? Funny and sweet, Driving Mr. Yogi transports you there.” — Jim Bouton, author of Ball Four 

It happens every spring. Yankees pitching great Ron Guidry arrives at the Tampa airport to pick up Hall of Fame catcher and national treasure Yogi Berra. Guidry drives him to the ballpark. They watch the young players. They talk shop. They eat dinner together and tease each other mercilessly. They trade stories about the greats they have met along the way. And the next day they do the same thing all over again.

As every former ballplayer can appreciate, in that routine, every spring, there emerges a certain magic.

Driving Mr. Yogi is the story of how a unique friendship between a pitcher and catcher is renewed every year. It began in 1999, when Berra was reunited with the Yankees after a long self-exile, the result of being unceremoniously fired by George Steinbrenner fourteen years before. A reconciliation between Berra and the Boss meant that Berra would attend spring training again. Guidry befriended “Mr. Yogi” instantly. After all, Berra had been a mentor in the clubhouse back when Guidry was pitching for the Yankees. Guidry knew the young players would benefit greatly from Mr. Yogi’s encyclopedic knowledge of the game, just as Guidry had during his playing days. So he encouraged him to share his insights. Soon, an offhand batting tip from Mr. Yogi turned Nick Swisher’s season around. Stories about handling a hitter like Ted Williams or catching Don Larsen’s perfect game captured their imaginations. And in Yogi, Guidry found not just an elder companion or source of amusement – he found a best friend.

At turns tender, at turns laugh-out-loud funny, and teeming with unforgettable baseball yarns that span more than fifty years, Driving Mr. Yogi is a universal story about the importance of wisdom being passed from one generation to the next, as well as a reminder that time is what we make of it and compassion never gets old.

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About Harvey Araton

Harvey Araton joined the New York Times as a sports reporter and national basketball columnist in 1991 and became a “Sports of the Times” columnist in 1994. He is the author of numerous books, including most recently, When the Garden Was Eden: Clyde, the Captain, Dollar Bill, and the Glory Days of the Old Knicks. His work has also appeared in the New York Times Magazine, GQ, ESPN The Magazine, Sport, Tennis, and Basketball Weekly. Born in New York City in 1952, he is a 1975 graduate of the City University of New York. Araton lives in Montclair, New Jersey.

Editorial Review

Other than starring in Yankee pinstripes, though not at the same time, Yogi Berra and Ron Guidry wouldn’t seem to have much in common. The Hall of Fame catcher from the Italian ghetto of St. Louis and the pitcher young enough to be his son, from the Cajun swamp country of Louisiana, might not even seem to speak the same language, unless that language was baseball. Yet baseball isn’t the focus of this book about the transgenerational bond forged by the two men, a story that germinated in aNew York Times spring-training column written last year by Araton (When the Garden Was Eden: Clyde, the Captain, Dollar Bill, and the Glory Days of the New York Knicks, 2011, etc.). It’s the story of a younger player and the idol who became his best friend. There is no talk of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs, nor of salaries exponentially inflated since the two played. There is little about games that mattered, since much of the book concerns the spring training rituals that annually reunite the two. It’s also the story of two genuinely likable, admirable athletes, though the nuanced portrait of Berra is pricklier than the cuddly caricature so often depicted. He adheres strictly to routines, from a rigid schedule to his rotation of restaurants and the meals he orders there. Guidry understands Berra well enough to know when to poke fun at him and when to protect him from the attention he most certainly doesn’t crave. Other indelible characters play a part—including George Steinbrenner, whose alienation of Berra and reconciliation with him proved key in the lives of both—but this is mainly the story of two buddies and the sport over which they have bonded. – Kirkus Reviews

‘Driving Mr. Yogi’: A Diamond Of A Friendship

NPR Book Review – March 31, 2012 (Excerpt)

There is often a special bond between pitchers and catchers. They report for work first in spring training and share a secret language of hand signals to work their way through batters.

But the bond between this pitcher and catcher duo, each Yankee legends of different generations, began after their playing days.

When Yogi Berra, a three-time Most Valuable Player, now in his mid-80s, arrives in Tampa for spring training, he’s picked up at the airport by Ron Guidry, the four-time All-Star and Cy Young Award-winning pitcher known as Louisiana Lightnin’.

They watch ballgames, share meals and talk about baseball.

New York Times sports columnist Harvey Araton tells the story of their friendship in his new book,Driving Mr. Yogi: Yogi Berra, Ron Guidry, and Baseball’s Greatest Gift.

But it was Berra and Guidry themselves who showed up at a Florida studio to talk about their friendship with NPR’s Scott Simon. Guidry, of course, did the driving. [Read the full article...]

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THE BLEEDING HILLS
A Novel by Wilfried F. Voss

I have fought a good fight,
I have finished my course,
I have kept the faith.
- 2 Timothy iv. 7

The Irish War is officially a part of history, but not for Finnean Whelan, an IRA veteran of almost 40 years. British Intelligence has produced evidence that he is the mastermind behind a conspiracy to assassinate the First Minister of Northern Ireland. For Whelan this is not only a mission of revenge, but marks the beginning of a journey into the past and the return to the one true love: Ireland. [More...]

The Bleeding Hills is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Nobel, and any other good bookstore.

Click on image to buy from Amazon.Com

Though The Art of Fielding is his fiction debut, Chad Harbach writes with the self-assurance of a seasoned novelist. He exercises a masterful precision over the language and pacing of his narrative, and in some 500 pages, there’s rarely a word that feels out of place. The title is a reference to baseball, but Harbach’s concern with sports is more than just a cheap metaphor. The Art of Fielding explores relationships–between friends, family, and lovers–and the unpredictable forces that complicate them. There’s an unintended affair, a post-graduate plan derailed by rejection letters, a marriage dissolved by honesty, and at the center of the book, the single baseball error that sets all of these events into motion. The Art of Fielding is somehow both confident and intimate, simple yet deeply moving. Harbach has penned one of the year’s finest works of fiction.–Kevin Nguyen, Amazon.Com Review

More Editorial Reviews

“That baseball rewards languid virtuosos and frothing monomaniacs about equally is one of the game’s weird fascinations. That Academe does the same would not be useful information in the hands of a hack. But The Art of Fielding marries the national pastime to the life of the mind, takes off running, and never flags. Chad Harbach’s pen shatters stereotypes like fastballs shatter bats. His sentence-making keeps things fluid and tense as a September pennant race. When the best shortstop alive sounds believably like a Tibetan lama, and when a thrown ball striking a shovel head at dawn leaves your own head ringing with certainty that truth and friendship have triumphed, you know you’re in the hands of a writer you can trust.” (David James Duncan, author of The Brothers K and The River Why )

“Here is that rarest of pleasures, a baseball novel by someone who really knows baseball. The beautiful part is that The Art of Fielding is mere baseball fiction the way Moby Dick is just a fish story. I read this vividly written, powerfully imagined story of a group of young ballplayers and the small-college world they inhabit in a single weekend–read it when I was supposed to be going to the park, making lunch, seeing a movie. Chad Harbach is that kind of writer, so affecting, subtle, funny and true that he gets in the way of your plans and makes everything better.” (Nicholas Dawidoff author of The Catcher Was A Spy and editor of Baseball: A Literary Anthology )

“Chad Harbach’s The Art of Fielding is one of those rare novels–like Michael Chabon’s Mysteries of Pittsburgh or John Irving’s The World According to Garp–that seems to appear out of nowhere and then dazzles and bewitches and inspires until you nearly lose your breath from the enjoyment and satisfaction, as well as the unexpected news-blast that the novel is very much alive and well.” (James Patterson )

Reader Review

This is a great book and definitely worth reading.

In a recent issue of Time Magazine, Jonathan Franzen said (while discussing The Art of Fielding), “It’s left little hole in my life the way a really good book will, after making room in my days for reading it…” (11 July, 2011, p48). I happen to agree with Franzen.

The book is really about the lives of 5 people. The story involves two elements as a background and setting: life on small college campus and baseball (I am a huge baseball fan, which increased my enjoyment of the book). Between these two things, the 5 characters interact in different ways, and both directly and indirectly, all 5 characters greatly affect each other. I do not want to give away too many plot threads, but as the story unfolds, you will want to learn more about each character. This is true even for those characters who were not my favorite–I still wanted to learn about their influences on each other.

What made the story and characters so great is that the author chose NOT to make it “ridiculously post-modern” (that is my own defined genre, and a genre I do not enjoy). In fact, of all the books I have read recently, I think Harbach took the most direct, “classical approach” to story telling. You can tell he had a plan and executed it from start to finish. Within each chapter, the plot moves forward while learning more about a character (or characters), both from the past and present perspective.

Despite my glowing review, there are some issues I had–mostly minor. It is possible these small things stem from this book being Harbach’s first. I do not want to get into too many details (again, they might affect the plot and your enjoyment of the book), but I can certainly elaborate in a future update.

Ultimately, all 5 characters related to the title of the book: The Art of Fielding. Although this is a baseball term, it can be abstracted and applied to each character. The theme is “life” and what we (and the characters in the story) do with it (the title of the book could be: The Art of Fielding…Life). The story, characters, and settings tie together perfectly, and I really did enjoy every page of the book. Life Franzen implied, I will miss some of these characters and I hope Harbach revisits them in the future.  - Herschel Greenberg, Amazon.Com Customer Review

‘Fielding,’ A Winning Take On Life And Baseball

NPR Book Review – August 31, 2011 (Excerpt)

A good baseball coach and a good novelist are a lot alike, according to Chad Harbach’s satisfyingly old-fashioned debut, The Art of Fielding. If you’re a coach, muses Mike Schwartz, catcher for the Westish College Harpooners, you should ask yourself of each player: “What story does this guy wish someone would tell him about himself?” And when you told him that story, Schwartz knows, “You told it with a hint of doom. You included his flaws.” Like a novelist, a coach doesn’t make it easy on the characters in his clubhouse. “A good coach made you suffer,” Schwartz tells us, but “in a way that suited you.”

The characters in The Art of Fielding do suffer. They lose jobs, marriages, ballgames. They see their futures snatched away without explanation, and hurt each other without justification. But Harbach is such an empathetic writer — such a good coach — that Schwartz and his teammates suffer in ways suited to them, and feel as smart and human and real as a reader could hope for.

It’s Schwartz, the sort of undergraduate go-getter who runs his program by sheer force of personality, who first recruits Henry Skrimshander, a phenom shortstop with a cannon for an arm. Henry is a field rat, willing, under Schwartz’s tutelage, to put in the hours in the weight room and the video room and the batting cage, and so by junior year he’s a legitimate pro prospect, and the Harpooners — a traditionally lousy team from a tiny college in Wisconsin — have a chance to win their conference. [Read the full article...]

Whale of a book

The Boston Globe Book Review – September 4, 2011 (Excerpt)

On the Wisconsin campus of Westish College, where most of “The Art of Fielding’’ is set, a statue of Herman Melville peers out over a lake. The college baseball team is nicknamed the Harpooners. The author refers to Mike Schwartz, the team’s most determined (monomaniacal?) player – who has both legs, but bad knees – as “the Ahab of this operation.’’ The college president dreams of owning “a big white whale of a house.’’

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BOILED PEANUTS
A Novel by John Patrick Doyle

A Peeping Tom Goes Nuts Over A Blind Girl

Paul Kirk is a librarian and one of his town’s quirkier residents.  In a childhood home lacking parents (his mother dying of MS and his father an alcoholic) Paul had imagined himself a member of the neighboring family. Now in his late twenties, Paul vicariously participates in the households of his community. His peeping-Tom proclivities express his awkward need for social bonding.

Then Paul meets Bronwyn, a counselor who is lovely, independent and blind. She has inherited her Aunt Phyllis’ house and is newly arrived in town. When Paul first sees Bronwyn at church, he knows he wants to be part of her life. As the mystery of Aunt Phyllis unfolds, Bronwyn and Paul become more deeply involved as they learn about Phyllis’ secrets and how they relate to Bronwyn and her past, but Paul’s peeping ways may ruin it all. [Read more...]

Boiled Peanuts is available through Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and any other good bookstore.

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In Gummer’s humorous if subdued debut, a suburban Little League serves as the nexus for thwarted ambitions, competitive intrigues, marital rifts, and, as an afterthought, kids who might be interested in baseball. Ben Holden, recently returned to his California hometown from New York, becomes a reluctant coach, grappling with his late father’s legacy as a revered high school athletic mentor and the ambivalence that comes with middle-aged parenting and a mature, mostly stable marriage.

He’s appealing and accessible, as are many of Gummer’s cast of family members, friends and neighbors. There’s the deftly rendered list of things Ben’s sister prizes: “their McMansion in the tony, new and also curiously named CascadeForest development of Sacramento, her Lexus hybrid and his Prius, their Pottery Barn furnishings, her Tory Burch Shoes and matching handbags.” But too often, these descriptions substitute for character development and depth, and while the slew of subplots—the most dramatic of which involves low-grade sexual tension between Ben and a sexy ultrasound technician—are entertaining, they can’t mask the fact that the novel fails to really deliver on the promise of its title. – Publishers Weekly

Scott Gummer’s first novel uses a popular sport — baseball — in one of the best ways a novel can: as a backdrop for dark comedy. Here, Ben and Jili, a level-headed pair of suburban parents, find themselves in the middle of the very strange, weirdly competitive world of Little League baseball, where the kids are nervous, the coaches are punishing and the adults’ memories of childhood are surprisingly fresh. In arching a brow at youth sports, Gummer resists the urge to make all of the parents awful (only some of them are awful) or to discount the very real trade-off that sometimes exists between winning as much as possible and having a good experience as a player. As much as it’s a sharp-tongued takedown of win-at-all-costs culture, Parents Behaving Badly is also a teasing, but ultimately affectionate, story about a happy marriage grappling with the approach of middle age and the pressures of parenting kids who are getting older every day. – NPR Book Review

Editorial Reviews

“A devastatingly accurate—and laugh out loud funny—look at the culture of contemporary youth sports, the boys and girls who just want to have fun, and the parents who do more harm than good despite their best intentions.”
—Hannah Storm, ESPN Anchor & Journalist

“Parents Behaving Badly isn’t just a sharp satire about Little League madness; it’s also a shrewd and sympathetic portrait of a mid-life marriage. Scott Gummer writes with equal insight about wayward spouses and conniving coaches.”
—Tom Perrotta, author of Little Children and The Abstinence Teacher

“Scott Gummer does a great job of reminding us why kids play sports, why parents coach and, with tongue in cheek, what happens when parents forget that sports are supposed to be fun. With a great deal of humor, Gummer never loses sight of the life lessons baseball teaches kids and parents alike. Parents Behaving Badly is a thoroughly entertaining story and a must read.”
—Cal Ripken, Jr., member, Baseball Hall of Fame

“Indispensable reading for anyone attempting to navigate the often bizarre snake pit of youth sports. Wickedly hilarious and brilliantly written, Gummer’s novel is filled with keen insights and sharp observations that will stay with you. This book should be required reading for the whole world of youth sports.”
—Leigh Steinberg, sports attorney

Review

Author Scott Gummer does an outstanding job portraying and detailing the everyday life of today’s most common American family, and he does it with a comedic flare! I’m sure I laughed aloud at least a dozen times while reading this book, which is a big reason why I loved it. As a father of a boy who recently completed his little league “career,” as well as being his coach each year, I can relate to nearly 100% of all phases of this novel. The author does a superb job of identifying the variety of characters, and each chapter progressively reveals further details of their true colors. This book touches on so many important and relative topics for parents, and it pulled me in to the point where I truly cared about these characters and how they learned and grew personally threw the grand old pastime of baseball. The storylines and individual behaviors reinforce what a great opportunity baseball – and youth sports in general – provides as an opportunity to develop a child’s confidence and overall self-esteem. Naturally, as the title boasts, parents are also given the opportunity to display their personalities, and the drama of little league baseball provides the perfect, or imperfect, stage in which to do so. I can’t say enough for how well the author recreates real-life experiences similar to what so many of us go through raising kids, in addition to what we learn NOT to do as our kids’ role models. Many times I felt smack dab in the middle of the story, shaking my head at poor parental behavior, or simply grinning at the beautiful ironies that come into focus as a parent and coach. Lastly, this novel hits on the little things, the ever so important little things, that ultimately mean so very much. Two thumbs up! – Dave Dempsey, Amazon.Com Customer Review

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Boiled Peanuts

A Novel by John Patrick Doyle

A Peeping Tom Goes Nuts Over A Blind Girl

Paul Kirk is a librarian and one of his town’s quirkier residents.  In a childhood home lacking parents (his mother dying of MS and his father an alcoholic) Paul had imagined himself a member of the neighboring family. Now in his late twenties, Paul vicariously participates in the households of his community. His peeping-Tom proclivities express his awkward need for social bonding.

Then Paul meets Bronwyn, a counselor who is lovely, independent and blind. She has inherited her Aunt Phyllis’ house and is newly arrived in town. When Paul first sees Bronwyn at church, he knows he wants to be part of her life. As the mystery of Aunt Phyllis unfolds, Bronwyn and Paul become more deeply involved as they learn about Phyllis’ secrets and how they relate to Bronwyn and her past, but Paul’s peeping ways may ruin it all. [Read more...]

Boiled Peanuts is available through Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and any other good bookstore.

Click on image to buy from Amazon.Com

As Americans, we believe there ought to be a level playing field for everyone. Even if we don’t expect to finish first, we do expect a fair start. Only in sports have African Americans actually found that elusive level ground. But at the same time, black players offer an ironic perspective on the athlete-hero, for they represent a group historically held to be without social honor.

In his first new collection of sports essays since Tuxedo Junction (1989), the noted cultural critic Gerald Early investigates these contradictions as they play out in the sports world and in our deeper attitudes toward the athletes we glorify. Early addresses a half-century of heated cultural issues ranging from integration to the use of performance-enhancing drugs. Writing about Jackie Robinson and Curt Flood, he reconstructs pivotal moments in their lives and explains how the culture, politics, and economics of sport turned with them. Taking on the subtexts, racial and otherwise, of the controversy over remarks Rush Limbaugh made about quarterback Donovan McNabb, Early restores the political consequence to an event most commentators at the time approached with predictable bluster.

The essays in this book circle around two perennial questions: What other, invisible contests unfold when we watch a sporting event? What desires and anxieties are encoded in our worship of (or disdain for) high-performance athletes?

These essays are based on the Alain Locke lectures at Harvard University’s Du Bois Institute.

Editorial Reviews

Gerald Early is one of the great cultural critics of our time, and a collection like this one here is long overdue. These essays circle around a common question: what other, invisible contests unfold as we regard a sporting event? And what desires, dreams, anxieties, and insecurities are encoded in our worship of (or disdain for) the high-performance athlete?
–Hua Hsu, Vassar College

When are sports not “just sports”? Always, argues Gerald Early, and this fine collection of essays demonstrates why he, perhaps more than anyone else, can make this point most persuasively and most elegantly. Here, with pieces that range in topic from path breakers such as Jackie Robinson and Curt Flood to modern battles between figures such as Donovan McNabb and Rush Limbaugh, Early further solidifies his place as a founding voice in the cultural analysis of American sports.
–Amy Bass, The College of New Rochelle

Gerald Early is not only the smartest person I know, he is also a constantly surprising thinker. This wonderful series of lectures and essays about the African American experience in sports teaches, challenges, and entertains–with Gerald, that’s a given–but most of all, takes us places we never expected to go. There was a moment on every page when I found myself thinking: “Wow, I never thought about it like that before.”
–Joe Posnanski, Sports Illustrated

Tracing the Color Line on the Playing Field

The New York Times Book Review – July 8, 2011 (Excerpt)

The intersection of race and sports is one of the most dangerous in American culture. Even the crash-proof Rush Limbaugh cracked up on that curve while actually saying something that was essentially true. Al Campanis, the Los Angeles Dodgers executive who declared that African-Americans “may not have some of the necessities” to be baseball managers or general managers, and Jimmy (the Greek) Snyder, the CBS gambler in residence who said that blacks were better athletes than whites because they had been so bred since slavery, crashed and were carted off forever.

Perhaps only a steady, steely academic like Gerald L. Early can take the turn wide open, pencil to the metal, without spinning out. Early has tricky moves and a way of bouncing off the wall of other writers’ theses. As a boxer, he’d be a counter puncher. As a hockey player, he’d be a blind-side hip checker.

But baseball and football are the sports he concentrates on in “A Level Playing Field: African American Athletes and the Republic of Sports,” a provocative and lively collection of lectures and essays. It’s a welcome addition to the elite sports shelf. A professor of English, African and African-American studies and American cultural studies at Washington University in St. Louis, Early is a seasoned cultural commentator and a go-to guy for Ken Burns and other TV storytellers.

Early himself is not so much a story teller as a story-fragmenter, picking the tale apart until it falls to pieces or becomes a dozen more tales. In his hands, Jackie Robinson’s integration of major league baseball in 1947 is also the story of American radicalism, the cold war and the demise of various black institutions. The outfielder Curt Flood’s refusal to be traded in 1969 gives Early a chance to expound not only on the practice of teams exchanging “problem” players but also on a growing perception among some African-Americans that “sports simply replicated their relatively powerless political and social position in the larger society,” and among some whites that blacks were not grateful enough for their places on the field. [Read the full article...]

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The Bleeding Hills

A Novel by Wilfried F. Voss

I have fought a good fight,
I have finished my course,
I have kept the faith.
- 2 Timothy iv. 7

The Irish War is officially a part of history, but not for Finnean Whelan, an IRA veteran of almost 40 years. British Intelligence has produced evidence that he is the mastermind behind a conspiracy to assassinate the First Minister of Northern Ireland. For Whelan this is not only a mission of revenge, but marks the beginning of a journey into the past and the return to the one true love: Ireland. [More...]

The Bleeding Hills is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Nobel, and any other good bookstore.

Click on image to buy from Amazon.Com

Every spring, Little Leaguers across the country mimic his stance and squabble over the right to wear his number, 2, the next number to be retired by the world’s most famous ball team. Derek Jeter is their hero. He walks in the footsteps of Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, and Mantle, and someday his shadow will loom just as large. Yet he has never been the best player in baseball. In fact, he hasn’t always been the best player on his team. But his intangible grace and Jordanesque ability to play big in the biggest of postseason moments make him the face of the modern Yankee dynasty, and of America’s game.

In The Captain, best-selling author Ian O’Connor draws on extensive reporting and unique access to Jeter that has spanned some fifteen years to  reveal how a biracial kid from Michigan became New York’s most beloved sports figure and the enduring symbol of the steroid-free athlete. O’Connor takes us behind the scenes of a legendary baseball life and career, from Jeter’s early struggles in the minor leagues, when homesickness and errors in the field threatened a stillborn career, to his heady days as a Yankee superstar and prince of the city who squired some of the world’s most beautiful women, to his tense battles with former best friend A-Rod. We also witness Jeter struggling to come to terms with his declining skills and the declining favor of the only organization he ever wanted to play for, leading to a contentious contract negotiation with the Yankees that left people wondering if Jeter might end his career in a uniform without pinstripes.

Derek Jeter’s march toward the Hall of Fame has been dignified and certain, but behind that leadership and hero’s grace there are hidden struggles and complexities that have never been explored, until now. As Jeter closes in on 3,000 hits, a number no Yankee has ever touched, The Captain offers an incisive, exhilarating, and revealing new look at one of the game’s greatest players in the gloaming of his career.

Editorial Reviews

“Jeter is the prince, the good son, the tireless worker. O’Connor uses baseball lore and the tropes and rhythms of folktales to limn Jeter’s family life and early career…essential for Yankees fans.” — Booklist

“O’Connor peppers the bio with enough hidden gems about the notoriously private ballplayer to make this the most thorough and intriguing work on Jeter so far. And O’Connor’s ability to reconcile Jeter the man with Jeter the ballplayer means that even Red Sox fans may enjoy this bio.” – Publishers Weekly

“The most complete account yet of this signal player’s life and career . . . Insightful about Jeter’s minor league days and touching on his personal life, The Captain tantalizes with predictions about possible position changes and the length of Jeter’s career. An excellent selection for those interested in baseball generally and in pinstripes particularly.” — Library Journal

“Long after Derek Jeter is inducted into the Hall of Fame, Ian O’Connor’s work will be viewed as the definitive biography of the captain. Jeter has always managed to keep it simple, but as O’Connor shows, the shortstop is a complicated superstar.” — Buster Olney, author of How Lucky You Can Be and The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty

“Ian O’Connor is an ideal biographer for Derek Jeter. Ian is the same kind of thorough pro.” — Tom Callahan, best-selling author of Johnny U

“Derek Jeter is undoubtedly the most talked about, argued about, cheered, booed and ultimately respected baseball player of his generation. And as public a figure as he has been, he is in many ways the least known. That changes now as Ian O’Connor, one of the best sportswriters anywhere, goes deep and does what no one has quite been able to do: tell us a bit about who Derek Jeter really is.” — Joe Posnanski, author of The Machine

“For years we’ve been telling young ballplayers to play and behave like Derek Jeter. Now we can tell them to read Ian O’Connor’s The Captain. Finally, we have an inside look at the worthy successor to Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio and Mantle.” — Dan Shaughnessy, author of Fenway and Senior Year

Review

Ian O’Connor’s THE CAPTAIN: THE JOURNEY OF DEREK JETER is a breezy and enjoyable biography of the iconic Yankee shortstop. O’Connor paints an overwhelmingly admiring portrait that nonetheless manages to remain objective. Through it all Jeter comes across as a prodigious talent who epitomizes class, grace, wholesomeness, dignity, dedication, and sportsmanship. If he sounds perfect, it’s because he nearly is: as several different interviewees put it, he’s the kind of person one would hope their son to be or their daughter to marry. There is not a more positive role model in all of sports.

Yet Jeter is still only human and O’Connor is perceptive of his subject’s faults. In particular, Jeter is portrayed as being both overly sensitive to criticism and ruthlessly unforgiving towards those he perceives as having wronged him or violated his friendship. The latter trait is especially highlighted in the second-half of the book, which is dominated by the complex relationship between Jeter and Alex Rodriguez. O’Connor, not unfairly, concludes Jeter failed A-Rod in his role as Yankee captain by holding a grudge over passive-aggressive comments Rodriguez had made years earlier and not extending to the third baseman during his early struggles in New York the same public support Jeter had given Chuck Knoblauch and Jason Giambi during their adversities. The chinks-in-the-armor are relatively trifling and stand out only because they contrast, however slightly, with what O’Connor astutely describes as Jeter’s almost unfailing instinct to do “the right thing at the right time.” Ultimately, it’s to Jeter’s credit that he was able to overcome his twin shortcomings by improving both his fielding range and his relationship with Rodriguez, putting the Yankees on the path to their 27th World Series victory in 2009.

It’s been said that Yankee superstars come in two general molds: those of the flamboyant Ruth-Mantle-Jackson lineage, and those of the stately Gehrig-DiMaggio-Mattingly lineage. A-Rod is of the first; Jeter, very much of the second. From their elegant playing styles and dogged work ethics to their guarded public personas and glamourous romantic lives, the similarities between Jeter and DiMaggio are uncanny. Like Jeter, DiMaggio was also known to summarily cut off anyone who transgressed him even once and was fiercely protective of his personal life. Fittingly, when the old Yankee Stadium closed in 2008, it was the sign in the clubhouse tunnel bearing DiMaggio’s famous “I’d like to thank the Good Lord for making me a Yankee” quote that Jeter took home as a souvenir. The Jeter-DiMaggio comparison is a compelling one that’s made several times within the book, including in a quote from Phil Rizzuto, though one significant difference between the Yankee legends is dutifully noted by O’Connor: Jeter is accessible and unfailingly polite, whereas DiMaggio was notoriously rude.

O’Connor’s writing on the whole is smooth, though at times it can be too casual, and he makes one glaring factual error in placing David Justice on the ’99 Yankees (Justice was not acquired from Cleveland until mid-way through 2000). While many of the stories will be familiar to Yankee diehards (particularly those who have read Buster Olney’s The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty New Edition: The Game, the Team, and the Cost of Greatness), there is enough interesting new material and the book is current enough (up through the 2010-11 off-season, including the surprisingly contentious contract negotiations between Jeter and the Yankees) to stand in its own right as a worthwhile read. – Brian Brockmeyer, Amazon.Com Customer Review

Book Reviews: ‘The Captain: The Journey of Derek Jeter’ and ‘Bullpen Diaries: Mariano Rivera, Bronx Dreams, Pinstripe Legends, and the Future of the New York Yankees’

The Chicago Tribune Book Review – June 12, 2011 (Excerpt)

For the New York Yankees, the 2010 offseason was a tale of two superstars, both of whom they wanted to re-sign. On the one hand, there was Derek Jeter, iconic shortstop and face of the franchise, on the verge of becoming the first Yankee to record 3,000 hits in a career. On the other was Mariano Rivera, the best closer in the history of baseball, on track to set the all-time record for saves. Complicating the narrative was the drama of an aging team, bounced out of the playoffs by the younger, hungrier Texas Rangers, with significant expectations and equally significant holes. How would the Yankees balance past and future? Where was the line between loyalty and the need to win?

Such questions exist at the center of Ian O’Connor’s “The Captain: The Journey of Derek Jeter” and Charley Rosen’s “Bullpen Diaries: Mariano Rivera, Bronx Dreams, Pinstripe Legends, and the Future of the New York Yankees,” each of which seeks to deal with the Yankees as they were and as they may be. That neither book is overly successful is to be expected in a sports culture defined by access, in which athletes control their interactions with even the most sympathetic writers, speaking in sound bites and clichés.

O’Connor acknowledges this from the outset, noting that “Jeter decided not to make major contributions to this book.” The Yankees’ captain, he informs us, “did not want fans to think he was basking in his own glory,” but more to the point, I think, is his notorious reticence. “Derek,” explains his old friend R.D. Long, a former Yankees minor leaguer, “is the iciest non-icy person I’ve ever met,” a man who “often lived behind impenetrable walls.” In part, this has to do with his awareness of his legacy in the heritage of great Yankees, but as “The Captain” makes clear, it is also the result of the self-possession that has marked him since childhood, when, as early as fourth grade, he told his friends that he would play shortstop in New York. [Read the full article...]

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Boiled Peanuts

A Novel by John Patrick Doyle

A Peeping Tom Goes Nuts Over A Blind Girl

Paul Kirk is a librarian and one of his town’s quirkier residents.  In a childhood home lacking parents (his mother dying of MS and his father an alcoholic) Paul had imagined himself a member of the neighboring family. Now in his late twenties, Paul vicariously participates in the households of his community. His peeping-Tom proclivities express his awkward need for social bonding.

Then Paul meets Bronwyn, a counselor who is lovely, independent and blind. She has inherited her Aunt Phyllis’ house and is newly arrived in town. When Paul first sees Bronwyn at church, he knows he wants to be part of her life. As the mystery of Aunt Phyllis unfolds, Bronwyn and Paul become more deeply involved as they learn about Phyllis’ secrets and how they relate to Bronwyn and her past, but Paul’s peeping ways may ruin it all. [Read more...]

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A proud and boisterous Negro League team owner, Alex Pompez rose to prominence during Latino baseball’s earliest glory days. As a passionate and steadfast advocate for Latino players, he helped bring baseball into the modern age. But like many in the era of segregated baseball, Pompez also found that the game alone could never make all ends meet, and he delved headlong into the seedier side of the sport—gambling—to help finance his beloved team, the New York Cubans. He built one of the most infamous numbers rackets in Harlem, rubbing shoulders with titans of the underworld such as Dutch Schultz and eventually arousing the ire of the famed prosecutor Thomas Dewey. He also brought the Cubans, with their incredible lineup of international players, to a Negro League World Series Championship in 1947.

Pompez presided over the twilight of the Negro League, holding it together as long as possible in the face of integration even as he helped his players make the transition to the majors. In his later days as a scout, he championed some of the brightest future Latino stars and became one of Latin America’s most vocal advocates for the game.

That today’s rosters are filled with names like Rodriguez, Pujols, Rivera, and Ortiz is a testament to the influence of Pompez and his contemporaries.

About the Author

Adrian Burgos, Jr. teaches at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of Playing America’s Games: Baseball, Latinos and the Color Line. His work has been featured on ESPN’s SportsCenter, NPR, and other media outlets.

Editorial Review

Historian Adrian Burgos, Jr. tracks the fascinating life of Alejandro Pompez from young cigar worker in Key West to Harlem numbers runner to respected baseball executive. Pompez owned a Negro League franchise, the New York Cubans, which was largely staffed by players he recruited from throughout Latin American. It was Pompez who recruited the first Dominican, the first Puerto Rican and the first Panamanian players into the Negro Leagues. All the while his illegal betting business helped finance his baseball operation. That is, until New York prosecutor Thomas Dewey (he of “Dewey Defeats Truman” fame) forced Pompez to squeal on his former boss, the infamous gangster “Dutch” Schultz. Following the integration of baseball, Pompez worked as a Latin America scout for the New York and San Francisco Giants where he signed a string of future stars including Juan Marichal, Orlando Cepeda and Felipe Alou. – NPR Book Review

Burgos draws a wonderfully detailed portrait of Alejandro Pompez. It must have been exhausting for Pompez to juggle the competing identities of being an Afro-Cuban-American who ran an illegal gambling operation alongside a legitimate baseball club. As I read the book, I kept thinking of Gustavo Perez-Firmat’s poem, “The Bilingual Blues” and the line “soy un ajiaco de contradicciones” (“I am a gumbo of contradictions”). The research is impeccable. The context provided is nuanced and rich. But, the writing is uneven and the author, at times, veers awfully close to advocacy. (Burgos sat on the committee that elected Pompez into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.) Still, this book is indispensable for anyone who wants to understand the Latinization of Major League Baseball. - Luis Clemens, Senior Editor

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Vampire Ascending

by Lorelei Bell Sabrina Strong is a Touch Clairvoyant who knows a secret. She knows her mother was turned into a vampire when Sabrina was ten. Now that she is grown up, a powerful magnate in the Chicago business world hires her to reveal the identity of who relentlessly murders vampires in his ultra-modern stronghold of a hotel. [Read More...] – Including an excerpt of the first chapter.

Vampire Ascending is now available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and any other good bookstore.

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Shank debuts promisingly with the dramatic story of two families upended by an accidental police shooting. Denver police officer Ed O’Fallon is wracked with guilt after he guns down a man during a drug raid; Patricia Maestas, meanwhile, is instantly made a widow and single mother. Their narratives are equally engaging: as Ed’s marriage buckles under the weight of his feelings of guilt, Patricia struggles to keep her 12-year-old son, Ray, out of trouble. What keeps Ray off the streets is baseball—the same sport Ed’s sons are devoted to. When an investigation reveals the warrant for the fateful raid had the wrong address, Patricia and her family become a symbol of the wrongs suffered by the Latino community. The novel comes to a full boil after Patricia and Ed discover one another’s identities through their sons’ baseball teams. Though erratically paced and dependent on the hard-to-believe notion that patrol cop Ed would fill in on a SWAT bust, the narrative finds its groove later on and barrels toward a well-handled climax. – Publishers Weekly

Editorial Reviews

“Shank’s first at-bat as a novelist is a hit.” –Kirkus Reviews

“Jenny Shank s debut novel, The Ringer, honors a great American pastime: baseball. Baseball is present to comfort, save, or even in the greatest moments of need convict Shank s characters when religion fails to do so. Ed O Fallon, a middle-aged father of three, has been demoted to coaching his daughter s tee-ball team after parents complain about harsh tirades delivered while coaching his older sons baseball team. He now spends Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays trying to convince the six-year-old Purple Unicorns to spend less time picking dandelions in the outfield and more time running laps and fielding grounders. Meanwhile, Ray Maestas, a twelve-year-old pitching phenomenon, is struggling to make sense of his father s recent murder by Denver police. In an attempt to keep him off the streets and out of trouble, his mother, Patricia, moves him from the local Catholic recreational league to one of the most competitive teams in the city, where the protection that both youth and baseball once afforded him quickly fades. Shank s narrative offers a sophisticated rumination on the meaning of childhood, the persistent heartache of parenting, and the saving graces of young bodies in motion. That was the thing with kids, notes Patricia. They were so much more than merely the qualities of one parent added to those of the other. [They] were relentlessly their own people, capable of surprising [us] on any given day. The Ringer is a quintessential American story that deftly and compassionately examines the nuances of race, culture, and religion in contemporary society and it does so with heart, wit, and playfulness. But Shank shows baseball to be more than a game. In this novel, it is a way of celebrating and at times grieving that awful, inescapable, and ever-surprising feat of being human.” –Image Magazine

“Newbie novelist Jenny Shank knocks it out of the park (pun intended) with her first book, The Ringer. The dramatic story, set against the backdrop of a Little League championship, follows two Denver families from different cultures–opposing teams off the field, but teammates during the game–who are forced to deal with the tragic repercussions of a deadly mistake. Shank has a knack for writing prose that’s both artful and detailed, and is bound to have a rewarding career as a novelist: This book was a semifinalist for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award.” –5280 Magazine

Review

I’m going to avoid the sports analogies, like The Ringer is a homerun, because I’m not a big sports fan. Fortunately, I don’t need to be to enjoy Shank’s novel. She conveys the little league world well and makes you care, especially about Ray, the slain man’s son. But what I love and admire about this novel is that she’s able to handle two points of view, Ed O’Fallon’s and Patricia Maestas, and makes me care about both. Too often with multiple points of view, I have a favorite voice. But both are compelling and, even more important, you need both to experience the event of the accidental death and the ramifications.

I love literary novels, but sometimes they don’t have enough tension and forward momentum. Not the case with Shank. The Ringer is such an engaging, fast-paced read and the conclusion is satisfying and surprising, without being gimmicky.

Shank is a confident writer and trusts her material and characters to create a fascinating experience. I won’t give anything anyway, but I especially love the last chapter. It’s so nice to find a novel that earns its ending and makes the entire journey worthwhile. I look forward to reading more of Shank’s books in the future. This is a great start to a long literary career. – Paula Younger, Amazon.Com Customer Review

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Vampire Ascending

by Lorelei Bell

Sabrina Strong is a Touch Clairvoyant who knows a secret. She knows her mother was turned into a vampire when Sabrina was ten. Now that she is grown up, a powerful magnate in the Chicago business world hires her to reveal the identity of who relentlessly murders vampires in his ultra-modern stronghold of a hotel.

[Read More...] – Including an excerpt of the first chapter.

Vampire Ascending is now available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and any other good bookstore.

Click on image to buy from Amazon.Com

There are very few major personalities in the world of sports who have so much to say about our National Pastime. And even fewer who are as well respected as Bill White.

Bill White, who’s now in his mid 70s, was an All-Star first baseman for many years with the New York Giants, St.Louis Cardinals and Philadelphia Phillies before launching a stellar broadcasting career with the New York Yankees for 18 years. He left the broadcast booth to become the President of the National League for five years.

A true pioneer as an African-American athlete, sportscaster, and top baseball executive, White has written his long-awaited autobiography in which he will be candid, open, and as always, most forthcoming about his life in baseball. Along the way, White shares never-before-told stories about his long working relationship with Phil Rizzutto, insights on George Steinbrenner, Barry Bonds, Reggie Jackson, Thurman Munson, Bob Gibson, Bart Giamatti, Fay Vincent, and scores of other top baseball names and Hall of Famers.

Best of all, White built his career on being outspoken, and the years fortunately have not mellowed him. UPPITY is a baseball memoir that baseball fans everywhere will be buzzing about.

Review

If you enjoyed listening to Bill White broadcast Yankee baseball you will want to read this book. If you are a baseball fan (or, for that matter, a follower of any sport) & want to get a better perspective on what life was like trying to break into the “big leagues” in the fifties & deal with the biases he faced… from the fans, other players as well as management you will love this book.

White, respected both as a unbiased broadcaster as well as a man with strong opinions, tells the story of his life & his story parallels many of the major changes in that occurred in American society in the 1950′s & 1960′s. When he left college to play minor league baseball in the south, blacks could not eat in restaurants, ride in the front of a bus nor attend schools with whites. Bill White gives the reader an idea of what life was like for him. It makes you realize that whatever he faced, blacks that lived in the south went through this everyday with little hope for improvement. He talks about how sports helped change our society and he was pleased to be a small part of some of these changes.

His stories on working for the Yankees as a broadcast partner of Phil Rizzuto brings some humor into the book and the reader sees that Bill White does have a great sense of humor to go with his integrity. He discusses his role as National League President and provides some insight into the inner workings of baseball. It is interesting to hear his thoughts and opinions on issues that arose and how his opinions sometimes differed with the majority opinion that we read about in the paper or saw on television.

This book is an easy read because White tells a story that, as Howard Cosell used to say “tells it like it is”. It flows and seems to be written from the heart. He pretty much leaves no stone unturned, yet it is a book that does not try to get back at anyone, but tells of the accomplishments of a very proud and honorable man…and along the way the reader is privy to a lot of interesting inside stories.

He seems to be the kind of person you would enjoy sitting down with and discussing anything and everything with over a nice long dinner. – Thornton Geary, Amazon.Com Customer Review

Blazing Baseball Trails From Field To Executive Suite

NPR Book Review – April 15, 2011 (Excerpt)

When Bill White started playing professional baseball in the 1950s, he was the only black ballplayer in a Southern minor league. He dealt with segregation where he lived and where he ate, and on the ball field he faced the verbal abuse of fans shouting racial epithets from the stands.

White eventually made it to the major leagues, playing first base for the Giants, Cardinals and Phillies from 1956 to 1969. He went on to become a broadcaster, and then president of the National League.

But he says he didn’t have the kind of love for baseball that, as the saying goes, he’d play it free if they didn’t pay him.

“I looked at it as a business,” White tells Robert Siegel on All Things Considered. “It allowed me to at least feel that I could finish college, and of course then broadcasting and administering.” [Read the full article...]

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The Bleeding Hills

A Novel by Wilfried F. Voss

The Irish War is officially a part of history, but not for Finnean Whelan, an IRA veteran of almost 40 years. British Intelligence has produced evidence that he is the mastermind behind a conspiracy to assassinate the First Minister of Northern Ireland. Finn is protected in his exile in the United States after having worked for the CIA. Consequently, British Intelligence has come up with a plan to lure Finn back into their jurisdiction, Northern Ireland, by revealing the identity of the man who is ultimately responsible for the killing of Finn’s wife, Shauna. Here they hope not only to apprehend him, but also lead them to another conspirator, Martin Sheehan, who hides in the Northern provinces. For Whelan this is not only a mission of revenge, but marks the beginning of a journey into the past and the return to the one true love: Ireland. [More...]

Available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and any other good book store.

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Editorial Reviews

“With elegance, wit and precision, John Thorn traces the lineage of baseball, a melting pot of cultures and diversions that became quintessentially American. Baseball in the Garden of Eden is a must read for anyone who claims to know the game.” —Jane Leavy, Author of The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and The End of America’s Childhood and Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy

“Baseball’s creation myth—Abner Doubleday in a Cooperstown pasture in 1839—has the merit of being enchanting but the defect of being false in every particular. Now comes another of John Thorn’s many contributions to our understanding of baseball, proof that the game is even older and more interesting than most fans know.” —George F. Will, Author of Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball

“What a garden of delight! John Thorn takes us through the tangled history of the game’s origins with great good humor and flair. He accepts nothing on face value, but gives all sides their due. A pleasure for fans, but also for anyone with an interest in history and myth.” —Kevin Baker, Author of Strivers Row

“No one knows baseball history as well as John Thorn or writes about it more ably. And there is no one better suited to record—with affection, amusement and sometimes hilarity—the chicanery, misrepresentation and downright lies that have obfuscated the fascinating story of the origins and development of our national game.” —Robert W. Creamer, Author of Babe: The Legend Comes to Life and Stengel: His Life and Times

“No sport clings to its myths like baseball, which means it takes a baseball historian of the first rank like John Thorn to turn those myths upside down and inside out. Baseball in the Garden of Eden offers enlightenment for every fan. It is also a joy to read.” —Michael Shapiro, Author of Bottom of the Ninth and The Last Good Season

“An invaluable, enduring and unique history of the early game and how it swiftly changed, in some ways for the worse, and yet survived and thrived.” —David Nemec, Author of The Great Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Baseball

“The One True Game’s old creation myths are nowhere near as interesting and as much fun as the truths that Thorn digs up about the conspiracies, vices, and raucous behavior of baseball’s earliest innings.” —Robert Lipsyte, author of An Accidental Sportswriter

“No one, absolutely no one, knows more about the history of our national pastime than John Thorn, and this new book ought to settle once and for all many of the questions fans have about baseball’s origins. Superb.” —Ken Burns

“John Thorn’s Baseball in the Garden of Eden reveals a secret history of the early game that is more fantastical (and funny) than any concocted story.” —Jim Bouton, Author of Ball Four

Review

“Baseball in the Garden of Eden: A Secret History of the Early Game” is densely packed with wonderful stories and imagery. It took me quite some time to read because I frequently paused in my reading to consider the information and to visualize what it must have been like in the early days of the game.

The premise of the book is that baseball’s beloved creation myths are all lies.
Goodbye Doubleday and Cartwright. Rather than beginning on the green fields of small town America or with the game of cricket in England, the real origins of baseball were in the Garden of Eden or somewhat nearby in the Nile Valley c. 1460 BCE. There, carved on the wall of a temple at Deir-el-Bahri, is a relief showing the young pharoah Tutmosis III participating in a game with a bat and ball which surely must have been baseball. He and his team are playing to honor the godess Hathor who was perhaps the first female club owner in the game.

From the Nile Valley and over the centuries, baseball with variations, seems to have been played in many parts of the world. We come to England in the 19th century
where cricket was the most popular sport. Then we come to the US, where we have the origins and development of American style baseball as we know it today. In 19th century America it became a glorious game in the sunshine and a game of greed and gambling in its shadows. Every organization seems to have had a team. Many of them used teams to further their goals, honest or nefarious, often being vehicles to promote religious tenets or propaganda. 19th century Theosophist and occultist Madame Blavatsky was associated with the game for a time, as were businesses and fraternal organizations.

The game was very colorful to look at back then. Players often wore uniforms resembling racing silks with a different color for each position. Many of the game’s leading characters were very colorful as well and not the benign beloved heroes they have become in baseball mythology. Albert Goodwill Spaulding was not just the guy whose name (Spaldeen”) resonated as we played stickball in the steets. He had a secret life and an out-of-wedlock child whom he later adopted. This story and many others about baseball’s characters are told in an engaging fashion in this book.

The book contains great photos (I wish there more of them) and an excellent index.
The book could change even a casual fan into a lover of baseball history. I was a fairly knowledgable fan. After I read another work on baseball’s history, David Block’s “Baseball Before We Knew It,” I became a passionate fan of the game and its history. “Baseball in the Garden of Eden” could do the same thing for other fans. – Karen Lee, Amazon.Com Customer Review

The Prehistory of Baseball

The New York Times Book Review – April 8, 2011 (Excerpt)

Among the many books that have educated us about the birth and infancy of baseball, John Thorn’s extraordinarily detailed and well-documented “Baseball in the Garden of Eden” is the advanced seminar, the one that begins by telling you that everything you thought you knew is wrong. Its premise is that when it comes to baseball, what is generally thought to be history is myth, and the two most prominent myths — the one that Abner Doubleday invented the game in Coopers town, N.Y., in 1839, and the other that the responsible party was a New Yorker, Alexander Cartwright, who formalized the game’s rules in 1845 — were promulgated by men with ulterior motives.

Actually, not much of that is news. That there were stick-and-ball games in ancient Egypt and that baseball was not invented but evolved from a variety of games played in England and early America has been understood for some time. But Thorn, who was recently named the official historian of Major League Baseball, has used the myth-debunking framework to paint a more thoroughgoing picture of 19th-century baseball than has been presented before, and to offer plausible theories about why the myths prevailed in the public mind for so long.

Thorn has a vexingly complicated story to tell, and one of the strengths of this book is that he shies from none of the complexities. The development of the game took place off the field as much as it did on, and Thorn scrupulously traces the influence of a variety of social forces on its progress and popularity, among them gambling, the emergence of star players and the rise of theosophy, a spiritualist movement whose adherents included Doubleday and his chief backer as the game’s inventor, Albert G. Spalding. [Read the full article...]

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Queen of Misfortune

A Lady Jane Grey Novel by Peter Carroll

Queen Of Misfortune is the fictional story of Lady Jane Grey as told by her beloved tutor, John Aylmer. At the time of her execution a stranger is recorded to have assisted her when, blind folded, she lost her way upon the scaffold. Was it the same ‘stranger’ who was also recorded to have visited her when she was imprisoned in the Tower? Little is known of this unfortunate girl who was beheaded for treason in the 16^th Century. She was only 16. She is omitted from the list of monarchs but was actually queen for nine days. Author Peter Carroll, in his novel, follows John Aylmer’s close relationship with Jane as her tutor and later, as she grows up, her lover. [More...]

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What happens when three financial industry whiz kids and certified baseball nuts take over an ailing major league franchise and implement the same strategies that fueled their success on Wall Street? In the case of the 2008 Tampa Bay Rays, an American League championship happens—the culmination of one of the greatest turnarounds in baseball history.

In The Extra 2%, financial journalist and sportswriter Jonah Keri chronicles the remarkable story of one team’s Cinderella journey from divisional doormat to World Series contender. When former Goldman Sachs colleagues Stuart Sternberg and Matthew Silverman assumed control of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in 2005, it looked as if they were buying the baseball equivalent of a penny stock. But the incoming regime came armed with a master plan: to leverage their skill at trading, valuation, and management to build a model twenty-first-century franchise that could compete with their bigger, stronger, richer rivals—and prevail.

Together with “boy genius” general manager Andrew Friedman, the new Rays owners jettisoned the old ways of doing things, substituting their own innovative ideas about employee development, marketing and public relations, and personnel management. They exorcized the “devil” from the team’s nickname, developed metrics that let them take advantage of undervalued aspects of the game, like defense, and hired a forward-thinking field manager as dedicated to unconventional strategy as they were. By quantifying the game’s intangibles—that extra 2% that separates a winning organization from a losing one—they were able to deliver to Tampa Bay something that Billy Beane’s “Moneyball” had never brought to Oakland: an American League pennant.

A book about what happens when you apply your business skills to your life’s passion, The Extra 2% is an informative and entertaining case study for any organization that wants to go from worst to first.

Editorial Reviews

“The rise of the Rays over the last half-decade has been so improbable it seems as if it was done by magic. It wasn’t. It took hard work, know-how, luck, and—as the title of this book suggests—those little moves on the margins that make all the difference. THE EXTRA 2% is far from a financial research paper, though—it is a fun, lively, and very smart read that might just make you into a Rays fan.” —Will Leitch, author of Are We Winning?

“Jonah Keri has given us a fascinating look at how the Tampa Bay (Devil) Rays became winners. THE EXTRA 2% is a captivating book if you love baseball, but it’s an even more captivating book if you love success.” —Joe Posnanski, senior writer, Sports Illustrated

“Tampa Bay winning the American League East ahead of the Yankees and the Red Sox twice in three years is one of the most underappreciated sports accomplishments of the last twenty years. Jonah Keri has written a combination business book and wonderful collection of anecdotes that should allow the reader to easily answer the question ‘What was Tampa Bay thinking?’ as well as understand how difficult it will always be for a team in that market to open its competitive window for longer than three years at a time.” —Peter Gammons, three-time National Sportswriter of the Year

“The Tampa Bay Rays—with their ma-and-pa-sized budget—have gone head to head with baseball’s two superpowers, the Yankees and the Red Sox. In the superb THE EXTRA 2%, Jonah Keri explains how and why in a way that will remind readers of Michael Lewis’s Moneyball.”
—Buster Olney, senior writer, ESPN The Magazine, and author of How Lucky You Can Be

“All baseball fans ever ask for is hope: hope not only for a season out of their dreams, but also for leaders smart enough and imaginative enough to figure out how to make those dreams reality. In THE EXTRA 2%, Jonah Keri not only presents this blueprint followed to perfection but does so with a brilliant page-turner of a book that will satisfy fans of both baseball and first-rate writing.” —Mike Vaccaro, columnist, the New York Post

“There are a million ways to build a World Series team, but no one has ever built one quite like the Wall Street escapees in Tampa Bay. After reading Jonah Keri’s brilliant account of the Rays’ rise from laugh track to payback, I found myself thinking, ‘The heck with Moneyball. Give me Equityball.’ ” —Jayson Stark, senior writer, ESPN.com

Review

As a Boston Red Sox fan who was elated when the team almost hired Billy Beane, I was intrigued by the premise offered here by Jonah Keri. The Rays have become a thorn in the side of the Red Sox over the last few years, culminating in an ALCS defeat, although the Red Sox totally would have beat the Phillies.

Having read Moneyball and various sabermetric websites religiously over the past few years, the Rays’ story is not a new one to me. What is new is the background provided here. I’ll admit I had no idea the Giants were so close to moving to Tampa or that the then Devil Rays almost drafted Albert Pujols, (thankfully they did not because Pujols will look nice in a Red Sox uni next year).

What’s here is not a thorough undressing of the secrets the Rays front office uses, but rather a biographical take which makes the characters involved realistic and likable, something Moneyball failed to do.The chapter on Joe Maddon makes him more than the annoying vitamins commercial guy with stupid glasses, just as the chapter on the Rays owner reveals how much he hates the Red Sox. The feeling is mutual, buddy.

Keri also writes about the Rays baseball operations department, which is shrouded in mystery (he even names the chapter Mystery Men). Josh Kalk, who The Hardball Times readers will remember, now works for the team and his hiring is recounted. There’s also a mention of James Click, who used to write alongside Keri at Baseball Prospectus. Unlike Moneyball, their gameplan is not made public. That may weaken the reading experience for some, but it makes me more apprehensive if the team is that good at keeping important things quiet.

The book features an impressive amount of quotes from folks around baseball and the region, giving it a slightly more diversified feel than other baseball books, which is good because it’s about half-business half-baseball. There are parts that discuss the Rays change from laughingstock to powerhouse that have nothing to do with players or on the field staff, but instead deal with how the team treats its employees and community.

Overall, I enjoyed the book. It’s a quick read, which is a compliment, but I came away feeling like the Rays are even better than everyone has let on, which terrifies me.

Oh, and Mark Cuban wrote the foreword and comes off a little too interested in his own legacy. – Winningham, Amazon.Com Customer Review

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Queen of Misfortune

A Lady Jane Grey Novel by Peter Carroll

Queen Of Misfortune is the fictional story of Lady Jane Grey as told by her beloved tutor, John Aylmer. At the time of her execution a stranger is recorded to have assisted her when, blind folded, she lost her way upon the scaffold. Was it the same ‘stranger’ who was also recorded to have visited her when she was imprisoned in the Tower? Little is known of this unfortunate girl who was beheaded for treason in the 16^th Century. She was only 16. She is omitted from the list of monarchs but was actually queen for nine days. Author Peter Carroll, in his novel, follows John Aylmer’s close relationship with Jane as her tutor and later, as she grows up, her lover. [More...]

Available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and any other good bookstore.

In 1981, Major League players went on strike in a dispute over compensation for free agency. For nearly two months, parks around the country sat empty. The “work stoppage” changed the standard formula for playoff participation in ways that hadn’t been seen for nearly 100 years. For fans of the grand old game the whole season felt, well, weird.

But on a scale of weirdness the strike was nothing in the baseball cosmos compared to a game scheduled on Holy Saturday in run-down old McCoy Stadium in Pawtucket, R.I. The date was April 18 and the Rochester Red Wings, then a Baltimore Orioles farm team, were in town to play the Pawtucket Red Sox, the Triple A affiliate of the Boston Red Sox.

Easter is generally considered a spring holiday, but not in New England — at least not that year. The night was bitter cold with the wind blowing in from the outfield. Hard-hit fly balls died and became easy outs. This was a bad night to be a hitter, an umpire or an outfielder standing around waiting for the ball. Pitchers had a better night of it, but they were still cold. One veteran Rochester hurler started a little enterprise trading old baseballs for firewood, or anything that would burn, in the large garbage can he installed in the visiting team’s bullpen. – The Los Angeles Times Book Review – [Read the full article...]

Editorial Reviews

“What a book — an exquisite exercise in story-telling, democracy and myth-making that has, at its center, a great respect for the symphony of voices that make up America.” (Colum McCann, author of the National Book Award-winning Let the Great World Spin )

Dan Barry has crafted a loving and lyrical tribute to a time and a place when you stayed until the final out…because that’s what we did in America. Bottom of the 33rd is chaw-chewing, sunflower-spitting, pine tar proof that too much baseball is never enough. (Jane Leavy, author of The Last Boy and Sandy Koufax )

“Dan’s Barry’s meticulous reporting and literary talent are both evident in Bottom of the 33rd, a pitch-perfect and seamless meditation on baseball and the human condition.” (Gay Talese, author of The Silent Season of a Hero )

Review

Nominally, Dan Barry’s book is a story of the longest game in professional baseball, held in 1981 between the Rochester Red Wings and the Pawtucket Red Sox. In fact, it’s much larger than that, because Barry dives deep into the individuals who played in the game, managed the game and its stadium, and even attended the game.

He goes far beyond the 33 innings and their play-by-play. (Even with commentary, that wouldn’t amount to a single chapter.) Instead, Barry tells us how each player got to the field and what happened to him afterward. It’s not just the dreams of little boys who want to grow up to play for the Baltimore Orioles or the Boston Red Sox; we’ve all heard plenty of those from the “color announcers” on major league games. The poignancy of this book is that we learn about this game’s players who made it as major league stars, including Wayne Boggs and Cal Ripkin, Jr., and also about those who didn’t. When baseball didn’t work out, some became marketing execs or construction workers or truck drivers. Sometimes they stayed in baseball in other ways. (“Nearly 30 years after this night, Steve Luebber will find himself in a McDonald’s in Frederick, Maryland, 1,100 miles from his home in Joplin, Missouri, wearing another golf shirt with a baseball team’s logo, eating another cheap lunch, and waiting for another night’s minor league game to begin — this time as the pitching coach for the Blue Rocks of Wilmington, Delaware.”)

Barry also describes the time and place and how the setting came to be. That is, we learn a lot about the history of Pawtucket and how the McCoy stadium was built, and what it meant to the community.

Mostly, what I got from Bottom of the 33rd was that — in the words of pitching coach Mike Roarke, “the Triple A is ‘the frustration league,’ where you can waste too much energy muttering to yourself, ‘Why not me?’” It’s the story of men with dreams and hope who are so dedicated that they’ll play 8 hours on a freezing night until 4 in the morning. All while knowing full well that only a few of them will be called up.

The author writes with a quiet voice that brings a scene to life. “[Rochester's Tom Eaton] rises from the ground after receiving the shortstop’s thumping tag, on his injured foot no less, with his uniform dirty and his red helmet off his head, his pride spilled before him in the dirt. He cannot stay; he must leave. He picks up his helmet and trots off, chastened. Bare-headed, he seems naked.”

Still, the quiet writing style drags a little bit. I put down this book a few times, distracted by other books that seemed a little more exciting. But I always picked it up again, and I very much like the book. It’s okay to read a little bit of this at a time; I’m not sure that I’d pick it out as a solitary companion on a long plane trip. – Esther Schindler, Amazon.Com Customer Review

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Queen of Misfortune

A Lady Jane Grey Novel by Peter Carroll

Queen Of Misfortune is the fictional story of Lady Jane Grey as told by her beloved tutor, John Aylmer. At the time of her execution a stranger is recorded to have assisted her when, blind folded, she lost her way upon the scaffold. Was it the same ‘stranger’ who was also recorded to have visited her when she was imprisoned in the Tower? Little is known of this unfortunate girl who was beheaded for treason in the 16^th Century. She was only 16. She is omitted from the list of monarchs but was actually queen for nine days. Author Peter Carroll, in his novel, follows John Aylmer’s close relationship with Jane as her tutor and later, as she grows up, her lover. [More...]

Available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and any other good bookstore.

As the New York Yankees’ star centerfielder from 1936 to 1951, Joe DiMaggio is enshrined in America’s memory as the epitome in sports of grace, dignity, and that ineffable quality called “class.” But his career after retirement, starting with his nine-month marriage to Marilyn Monroe, was far less auspicious. Writers like Gay Talese and Richard Ben Cramer have painted the private DiMaggio as cruel or self-centered. Now, Jerome Charyn restores the image of this American icon, looking at DiMaggio’s life in a more sympathetic light.

DiMaggio was a man of extremes, superbly talented on the field but privately insecure, passive, and dysfunctional. He never understood that for Monroe, on her own complex and tragic journey, marriage was a career move; he remained passionately committed to her throughout his life. He allowed himself to be turned into a sports memorabilia money machine. In the end, unable to define any role for himself other than “Greatest Living Ballplayer,” he became trapped in “a horrible kind of minutia.” But where others have seen little that was human behind that minutia, Charyn in Joe DiMaggio presents the tragedy of one of American sports’ greatest figures.

Editorial Reviews

“Jerome Charyn is one of the most important writers in American literature and one of only three now writing whose work makes me truly happy to be a reader.” — Michael Chabon

“Charyn […] is an American treasure….  Among this book’s virtues are brilliant passages of impassioned writing, […] and Charyn’s mastery of the popular culture in which baseball legends belong and thrive.”—Neil D. Isaacs, author ofThe Great Molinas and  All the Moves

“An intimate and compassionate meditation on DiMaggio which, while elegantly dissecting his genius on the field, does him the equally important honor of placing no more on his shoulders than he can reasonably bear. Charyn reminds us that everything about DiMaggio was extraordinary, including his limitations.”—David Margolick, author, Beyond Glory: Joe Louis vs. Max Schmeling, and a World on the Brink.

“Jerome Charyn”s meditation on Joe DiMaggio elegantly explores what DiMaggio meant to America and the price he paid for making it all look so damn easy.”—Randy Roberts, Distinguished Professor of History, Purdue University

Review

While browsing “Book Soup” on Sunset, I came across “Joe Di Maggio: The Long Vigil” by Jerome Charyn. It’s really interesting. Mainly because it deals with the all-American sports hero not at his career prime nor at the peak of his glory, but his life after the spotlight.

Bios tend to emphasize the drama of their subject’s struggle to fame and its eventual realization but in “Vigil” it was interesting to discover Charyn’s emphasis on the years after, which were just as tumultuous for DiMaggio, internally at least.

Always private in life and ready to end the glare of the camera by retiring with grace, you nevertheless get a feel for how addictive fame can be (Jay-Z’s own lyrics from “Lost One”: Fame is / The worst drug known to man / It’s stronger than, heroin) by the lack Joe felt once the public glare had left him. This was obviously not helped by marrying a woman who (arguably) became and still is the most famous woman in the world: Marilyn Monroe.

Having read pretty much every Marilyn Monroe bio there is, it was cool to read Charyn’s take on the man’s side of the story, as regards to their marriage. Losing overwhelming public adoration, while your hot wife is on the exact opposite swing, rising to icon status, seemed to be more psychologically damaging for poor Joe than dealing with the pressure of being a sports star. And yet, ironically, while getting into fits over how unhealthy all this mass attention on his wife was, he was equally obsessed and besotted with her.

The author goes so far as to describe the ex-Yankee as a regular stalker: Even after MM openly declared her love for Arthur Miller and when they were courting at New York’s Waldorf Hotel, Joe would “wait in the alleys” outside, hoping to see her come out. And after Miller’s and Monroe’s marriage dissolved, who was waiting? Joe. He wanted to re-marry her. And let’s not forget that Joe did the ultimate uber-romantic gesture of sending six roses to her crypt for twenty years after her death. (Actually I think that’s amazing.) But you do get the feeling when you read “Vigil” that one fascination replaced another and MM definitely replaced baseball.

Maybe celebrated personalities, whether sports stars, actresses or singers, are just that. People who can never let go their insane passion for something. And once you give up one passion, it leaves a void for another. As Charyn says, Joe always had “the gallop of someone consuming himself” and when it wasn’t baseball it was love/lust for “an electric light.”

Anyway, “The Long Vigil” is a cool little book and a new take on showing how the “quieter” years of any star are never that quiet. – ThesySurface, Amazon.Com Customer Review

Joe DiMaggio, A Star With The Power of Silence

NPR Book Review – March 26, 2011 (Excerpt)

For a couple of generations, Joe DiMaggio symbolized the word class. He was called the Yankee Clipper because he seemed to glide across the baseball field: stately, graceful and powerful. He set an untouchable baseball record of hits in 56 consecutive games, and he married Marilyn Monroe, who quickly jilted him even as he remained devoted to her through sickness, health and death.

But DiMaggio never appeared to be anxious, troubled or unruffled; he didn’t bare his soul on talk shows and refused millions to write his autobiography. As Paul Simon, who put his name into a song, once said, “Joe DiMaggio understood the power of silence.”

Jerome Charyn tries to find the key to soft-spoken DiMaggio’s inner life in a new book, Joe DiMaggio: The Long Vigil. In the book, Charyn uses the phrase “idiot savant” to describe DiMaggio on more than one occasion: His magic was born on the baseball field, and abandoned him once he left it. [Read the full article...]

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Queen of Misfortune

A Lady Jane Grey Novel by Peter Carroll

Queen Of Misfortune is the fictional story of Lady Jane Grey as told by her beloved tutor, John Aylmer. At the time of her execution a stranger is recorded to have assisted her when, blind folded, she lost her way upon the scaffold. Was it the same ‘stranger’ who was also recorded to have visited her when she was imprisoned in the Tower? Little is known of this unfortunate girl who was beheaded for treason in the 16^th Century. She was only 16. She is omitted from the list of monarchs but was actually queen for nine days. Author Peter Carroll, in his novel, follows John Aylmer’s close relationship with Jane as her tutor and later, as she grows up, her lover. [More...]

Available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and any other good bookstore.

Dodger catching great Roy Campanella was born to an Italian American father and an African American mother in Philadelphia in 1921. The round, affable boy fell in love with baseball and was playing in the Negro Leagues at 15. Lanctot spins out Campy’s story in exhaustive (occasionally exhausting) detail. Nearly every game he played is covered, and his tangled relationship with Jackie Robinson–friends, enemies, wary supporters–is treated with nuance. Campy’s extraordinary abilities as a catcher are not only described but illustrated with anecdotes from specific games and seasons.

Although Lanctot writes with a novelist’s energy, sometimes the narrative veers into sentimentality, and he tends to soften such negatives as Campy’s relations with his wives and neglect of some of his children. On the other hand, the man’s courage in living fully a wheelchair-bound life after the car crash that ended his career makes a compelling tale (Campy’s experience led to much-improved treatment for quadriplegics). Despite the extensive detail, Campy remains a bit elusive, beyond the captivating smile, the chirpy voice, and the great baseball instincts. –GraceAnne A. DeCandido, Booklist

Review

Author Neil Lanctot has thoroughly researched this new book on former Brooklyn Dodgers’ catcher Roy Campanella. Wherever possible the author interviewed former players such as Carl Erskine, Rocky Bridges, Bobby Bragan, Gene Hermanski, Monte Irvin, Andy Pafko, and several others. Teammates such as Clem Labine, Preacher Roe, and Johnny Podres died before he was able to conduct an interview. Other Dodger stalwarts passed on much prior to this time. Writers such as Roger Kahn, Stan Isaacs, and Rachel Robinson (widow of Jackie) were also interviewed. One well-known teammate chose not to be interviewed because he had been misquoted too often in the past while the son of another former Dodger said his father now charges $5,000 an hour to be interviewed.

Roy began his professional career with the Washington Elite Giants in 1937 and then continued on with the team when they moved to Baltimore the following year. Campy was blessed to have a wonderful mentor in Biz Mackey who provided him with the encouragement he needed. Later on Roy credited catcher Mike Sandlock, who later went on to play for the Philadelphia Phillies, for teaching him the finer points of catching. Sandlock had a nondescript major league career, but he left his mark on Campanella.

After spending time at both Nashua, New Hampshire, and Montreal in the Dodgers’ minor league system Author Lanctot provides considerable detail regarding Campanella’s career with the Dodgers. Campy won the National League’s MVP award in the alternate years of 1951, 1953, and 1955. After suffering through a tough season in 1954 due to a hand injury he came back with a strong year again in 1955 while many thought Duke Snider should have won the award instead. Campy rejoiced in winning the 1955 MVP award knowing that his hand had healed and he felt more good years were to follow. We can’t help but wonder if Campanella’s presence in the lineup of the third game of the 1951 playoff game with the New York Giants would have had a different outcome had Roy been able to be in the lineup. As it was he was out with a leg injury, and replaced by Rube Walker.

The author enlightens us regarding the frosty relationship between Roy and Jackie Robinson which soured during a barnstorming tour due to unequal distribution of pay for each member. Robinson also wanted Campanella to take a more active part in fighting for equal rights for Negro players in hotels and restaurants which the ball club patronized while Campy expressed a thankful attitude for what he had rather than what he was denied. Their relationship was patched up in later years with Campanella taking a more active part in championing civil rights.

Campanella’s career came to a sudden and violent end in January of 1958 when his rented car skidded on ice and slammed into a telephone pole and left him paralyzed. I remember the headline in The Sporting News which read “Swerve on A Curve: Player and Car Crashed.” If Roy had been driving his own car with snow tires perhaps things may have turned out differently. It was quite an adjustment for this athletic catcher to now depend on others to attend to his basic needs. Author Lanctot states that Roy spent a long day working at his Harlem liquor store, followed by a visit to his mistress prior to going home. Being overly tired or having fallen asleep at the wheel the remainder of Roy’s life changed in an instant. Roy’s marriage to his second wife Ruth had already deteriorated with both individuals to blame. The book and movie version of “It’s Good to be Alive” focus on Ruth’s negative behavior, but Roy had his faults as well. The author explains in quite some detail the difficulties Roy experienced in his post-baseball life bound to his wheelchair.

You will find details regarding Roy’s life not found in other publications regarding the storied Boys of Summer. Author Lanctot did his homework on this book, and it would be a worthy addition to any baseball fan’s library. – C. W. Emblom, Amazon.Com Customer Review

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Queen of Misfortune

A Lady Jane Grey Novel by Peter Carroll

Queen Of Misfortune is the fictional story of Lady Jane Grey as told by her beloved tutor, John Aylmer. At the time of her execution a stranger is recorded to have assisted her when, blind folded, she lost her way upon the scaffold. Was it the same ‘stranger’ who was also recorded to have visited her when she was imprisoned in the Tower? Little is known of this unfortunate girl who was beheaded for treason in the 16^th Century. She was only 16. She is omitted from the list of monarchs but was actually queen for nine days. Author Peter Carroll, in his novel, follows John Aylmer’s close relationship with Jane as her tutor and later, as she grows up, her lover. [More...]

Available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and any other good bookstore.

Branch Rickey grew up poor in Ohio but graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University. Later, he invented baseball’s minor-league farm system and built winning teams in St. Louis, Brooklyn, and Pittsburgh. Yet one accomplishment dwarfs all others: he integrated baseball when he signed Jackie Robinson to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers, breaking baseball’s color line in 1947. The mistreatment of a college teammate fueled his altruism, but Rickey also knew black players would expand baseball’s fan base.

Breslin, the acclaimed newspaper columnist and best-selling author, tells the Rickey-Robinson story in his own inimitable style, pointing out that before Rickey even selected Robinson, he aligned New York’s business and legislative power brokers into a supportive alliance. Much has been written about Rickey’s commitment to Robinson, but Breslin brings out the fact that the experiment might never have worked if Rickey hadn’t been such a shrewd businessman, challenging baseball’s racist ownership and gaining the backing of the game’s commissioner. And, yet, the heart of the story remains Robinson’s strength of character and Rickey’s understanding that it would take a very special person to endure the humiliation that would come with breaking the color line. This is a wonderful book, bringing new life to a much-told story; long a social activist, Breslin is filled with disdain for the small-minded and the haters, while exuding admiration for those who defy them. In a revealing epilogue that connects the dots, Breslin ends on Election Night 2008 in Brooklyn, at a polling place located at the Jackie Robinson School, the night Barack Obama was elected president of the U.S. –Wes Lukowsky, Booklist

Review

The wonderful “Penguin Lives” series has hit another home run with Breslin’s insightful, entertaining and revealing treatment of the man who, as GM of the Brooklyn Dodgers in the late 1940′s, had the courage and foresight to facilitate Jackie Robinson’s extraordinary breaking of the sport’s color bar.

These “Lives” books are not meant to be exhaustive biographies. Generally, there are no indices, source notes. Rather, the author provides a quite selective bibliography for readers wanting fuller treatment. The mission of the “Lives” books, rather, is to sketch the full life, and home in on significant, inspiring acts of the subject that truly made a positive difference in the world. The several I have read, including this one, have the sense of a masterful story-teller chatting knowingly with me across a kitchen table.

Enter Breslin, an icon himself, who for more than 55 years has moved us to tears and laughter and greater understanding. His selection to treat Rickey really is “beautiful.” By story’s end, Penguin’s choice of Rickey as the inaugural sports figure in the series–ahead of Robinson, Ruth, Thorpe–also seems totally appropriate. As Breslin shows, without Rickey doggedly pursuing his vision of integration against many foes, a decade (or more) might have passed unchanged.

What led Rickey to dissent from all 15 other baseball owners (Breslin provides their ridiculously pious and hypocritical “Statement on Race”) and dedicate himself and his team to integration? Breslin reveals Rickey as a dedicated Methodist, a proponent of fairness for all, with an eye for talent (he champions a lanky young freshman named George Sisler; years later, Rickey and super scout Clyde Sukeforth seize on Robinson, but only after subjecting him to a four-hour grilling, “Will you have the guts to turn away?”; the recounting of that meeting is riveting). As do a number of others in the Penguin series, Rickey radiates as a true visionary. Not only was breaking the color bar the right thing to do morally; it also was great business. Rickey’s every act in that direction was purposeful, as Breslin shows us a man who never relied on luck. “Luck,” Rickey said, “is the residue of design.”

So before Robinson could take the field in a Dodgers uniform and triumph over so much hostility, Rickey carefully built a new infrastructure. He steadfastly courted politicians to pass first a fair employment law and then to mobilize their constituencies; he spoke to African-American groups; he courageously ignored the racist sports writers of the time; he reasoned with some of his own racist players. “Proximity” was part of his vision for success–by being proximate to a player of Robinson’s immense talent and focus, the rightness of integration would manifest itself. He was in his late 60′s by then, had a long and successful career in baseball, but was determined to make this happen. And in Robinson he had a great chance.

With his unique style, wry humor and grace, gift for incisive anecdotes and riffs, and flair for embellishing dialogue without taking undue liberties, Breslin succeeds in letting his remarkable subject’s life achievement show and tell itself. In so doing, Breslin’s gem takes a rightful place among Penguin’s other lives who really mattered. – Peter Hillman, Amazon.Com Customer Review

The Man Who Hired Jackie Robinson

The New York Times Book Review – March 25, 2011 (Excerpt)

In the summer of 1937, with the Dodgers holding down their familiar spot near the bottom of the National League, the cartoonist Willard Mullin drew the unforgettable image of the “Brooklyn Bum” — a potbellied, cigar-chomping hobo who combined the cheerful ineptitude of the players and the goofy optimism of their fans. Named for the singular “dodging” skills of pedestrians in a borough crammed with trolley lines, the Dodgers hadn’t captured a pennant since 1920, and had never won a World Series. “Brooklyn?” roared Bill Terry, manager of the hated New York Giants. “Is Brooklyn still in the league?” Dodger fans were largely immune to this abuse. Their addiction had taught them patience and humility — like belonging to a religion whose one flaw was an unreachable promised land. From Bay Ridge to Brownsville, from Flatbush to Coney Island, it was always “Wait till next year.”

Their shrine was Ebbets Field, a crumbling edifice known for its obstructed views and peculiar dimensions. Stretching across right field, a mere 297 feet to the foul pole, was a hand-operated scoreboard with a wire screen above and a wall of advertisements below, the oddest one daring the batter to “Hit Sign, Win Suit” from Abe Stark’s haberdashery. Bleacher cheers were led by the bell-clanging Hilda Chester, whose signature taunt — “Eacha heart out, ya bum” — easily reached both dugouts. Baseball’s premier organist, Gladys Gooding, performed between innings, while the oddball “Dodgers Sym-Phony” entertained in the aisles. Players were introduced by the grammatically challenged Tex Rickards, who reminded customers, “Don’t throw nuthin’ from the stands!” Once, spotting some coats hanging over the bleacher wall, Rickards announced, “Will the fans along the railing in left field please remove their clothes.” [Read the full article...]

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Queen of Misfortune

A Lady Jane Grey Novel by Peter Carroll

Queen Of Misfortune is the fictional story of Lady Jane Grey as told by her beloved tutor, John Aylmer. At the time of her execution a stranger is recorded to have assisted her when, blind folded, she lost her way upon the scaffold. Was it the same ‘stranger’ who was also recorded to have visited her when she was imprisoned in the Tower? Little is known of this unfortunate girl who was beheaded for treason in the 16^th Century. She was only 16. She is omitted from the list of monarchs but was actually queen for nine days. Author Peter Carroll, in his novel, follows John Aylmer’s close relationship with Jane as her tutor and later, as she grows up, her lover. [More...]

Available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and any other good bookstore.

Editorial Reviews

“Rob Ruck pioneered historical research and writing about black and Latin baseball, and Raceball proves that Ruck remains at the top of his game. Incorporating personal interviews with many former players and personalities, such as Harold Tinker, Ted Page, Mal Goode, and August Wilson, who have since passed away, Ruck relies on their voices from the grave and his deep knowledge of black and Latin baseball to make his narrative truly sing.”—Brad Snyder, author of A Well-Paid Slave: Curt Flood’s Fight for Free Agency in Professional Sports and Beyond the Shadow of the Senators: The Untold Story of the Homestead Grays and the Integration of Baseball

“Some are well-versed when it comes to the Negro Leagues. Others are aficionados about the rise of Latinos in baseball. But Rob Ruck is one of the few writers who can be called an expert in both fields. Perceptive and insightful,Raceball is a pleasure to read.”—Tim Wendel, author of The New Face of Baseball and High Heat

“Rob Ruck, one of our greatest historians of sport, has given us a gift for the ages: a history of baseball that captures its multicultural dynamics in original and profoundly illuminating ways. Synthesizing a lifetime of pathbreaking research, Raceball presents a brilliant new account—in black, white, and brown—of what can no longer be regarded as merely the national game.”—Marcus Rediker, author of The Slave Ship

“Rob Ruck is the ultimate authority when it comes to an in-depth look at Latino baseball in America. Raceball is a profound look at why Latinos have replaced African American baseball players, helping the reader understand the game as a business. Definitely a must-read for those who love the game, regardless of origin, race, or ethnicity.”—Juan Marichal, MLB Hall of Famer

“Has a book yet been written that’s a must-read for both baseball fans and those who care about the history of racism and colonialism in the Western Hemisphere? It has now. Rob Ruck serves up a seamless mix of sports and politics that educates and entertains in the way that great political writing—and great sports writing—aspires to do. Raceball is easily one of the best books I’ve read in quite some time.”—Dave Zirin, author Bad Sports: How Owners Are Ruining the Games We Love and A People’s History of Sports in the United States

“Rob Ruck writes with passion and precision about the always conflicting ways of American professional baseball, a spectacle for profit that enriches some players at the expense of the vast majority of those who don’t make it. Ruck still loves it, as I do, which makes for the appealing tension of the story he tells.”—Roberto González Echevarría, author of The Pride of Havana: A History of Cuban Baseball and Cuban Fiestas, Sterling Professor of Hispanic and Comparative Literature, Yale University

“Ruck writes for the fan—of baseball and of the compelling, dramatic rendering of history—in this impressive, lively book. He shows how the lines dividing races and nations shaped what happened on the field, enforcing separation, giving way at times to pressure from those wanting to play ball and to play fair, and producing new reflections of the world’s inequalities even as things changed.” —David Roediger, author of How Race Survived U.S. History,Babcock Professor of History at the University of Illinois

“Strongly recommended, like Burgos, above, for avid baseball readers as well as those studying African American or Latino studies.”–Library Journal

In ‘Raceball’, A Look At Players And Race

NPR Book Reviews – March 13, 2011 (Excerpt)

The Boston Red Sox faced off Sunday in spring training against the Pittsburgh Pirates. Baseball, apple pie, mom: What could be more American? How about the players?

Pedro Alvarez, Ronnie Cedeno and Jose Tabata play for the Pirates. Alvarez is from the Dominican Republic and Cedeno and Tabata from Venezuela.

In fact, more than a quarter of the players in Major League Baseball are from Latin America and the Caribbean — and they are among the league’s best.

But not too long ago, African-Americans played a much bigger role in baseball. In the mid-1970s, a quarter of all players were black Americans. Today, it’s one in 10.

Baseball historian Rob Ruck writes about how that happened in his new book, Raceball: How the Major Leagues Colonized the Black and Latin Game. [Read the full article...]

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Available in all good bookstores and Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and more.

The rich slice of Americana found in minor league baseball presents a contradictory culture. On the one hand, the minors are filled with wholesome, family-friendly entertainment-fluffy mascots, kitschy promotions, and earnest young men signing autographs for wide-eyed Little Leaguers. On the other, they comprise a world of cutthroat competition in which a teammate’s failure or injury can be the cause of quiet celebration and 90 percent of all players never play a single inning in the major leagues. In ‘Knocking on Heaven’s Door’, award-winning sportswriter Marty Dobrow examines this double-edged culture by chronicling the lives of six minor leaguers–Brad Baker, Doug Clark, Manny Delcarmen, Randy Ruiz, Matt Torra, and Charlie Zink–all struggling to make their way to The Show.

What links them together, aside from their common goal, is that they are all represented by the same team of agents-Jim and Lisa Masteralexis and their partner Steve McKelvey-whose own aspirations parallel those of the players they represent. The story begins during spring training in 2005 and ends in the fall of 2008, followed by a brief epilogue that updates each player’s fortunes through the 2009 season. Along the way Dobrow offers a revealing, intimate look at life in minor league baseball: the relentless tedium of its itinerant routines and daily rituals; the lure of performance-enhancing drugs as a means of gaining a competitive edge; the role of agents in negotiating each player’s failures as well as his successes; and the influence of wives, girlfriends, and family members who have invested in the dream.

Editorial Reviews

Marty Dobrow is a patient listener and sure-eyed observer as he sketches these portraits of a half-dozen people beguiled by baseball. The result is as lively, intimate, and engrossing a book as Hoop Dreams was a movie. –Alexander Wolff, Senior Writer, ‘Sports Illustrated’ and author of ‘Big Game, Small World: A Basketball Adventure’

The best account of the life of minor league baseball players I have read. The reader feels the despair of each player’s struggles and the joys of their eventual successes, however brief they may be. –Jerome Mileur, former owner of the Harrisburg Senators and author of ‘High-Flying Birds: The 1942 St. Louis Cardinals’

It took an extraordinary writer in Marty Dobrow to dig so far past the box scores and sports cliches and deliver this remarkable story. It’s about the human drama that you’ll never find in the highlight shows. The memorable characters and fast-paced prose make it difficult to put down. –Dan Wetzel, national columnist, ‘Yahoo! Sports,’ and author of ‘Glory Road’

Review

If Marty Dobrow’s “Knocking on Heaven’s Door: Six Minor Leaguers in Search of the Baseball Dream” was just about baseball, it would be just another boring, cliche-ridden book about the sport that appears daily in the columns of our newspapers and in the knee-jerk reactions of the commentators who popularize our websites. Loaded with enough about baseball to please even the most erudite and devoted afficianado, “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” is also an interesting, insightful, thought-provoking comment on the state of contemporary American values. What we believe to be important and where we pin our hopes for the future. It’s also very well written. Literary journalism as it was meant to be, it calls to mind the early, powerful work of writers such as Joan Didion, Tom Wolfe, and Sara Davidson. The kind of effort that presents its metaphors so subtly that we’re not always aware of them until long after we’ve finished reading, and they’re still lingering in our minds’ eyes. Buy it, read it, savor it, and pass it on to others. – Richard Anderson, Amazon Review

Minor leaguers with major aspirations

Boston.com Book Review – November 23, 2010 (Excerpt)

‘You try to rearrange your life for baseball, and it doesn’t give, ever, in the minor leagues.’’

Thus speaks the soon-to-be-ex-wife of Brad Baker not so long after her husband has been tagged a “can’t miss’’ prospect.

Baker is one of the six ballplayers whose careers Marty Dobrow follows as they try to make their way to the big paychecks and glorious perks enjoyed by the small number of men who manage to create careers in the big leagues.

Despite his notices, Baker never became one of the fortunate. Over the course of almost a decade, he bounced around various minor league cities because, according to Dobrow, “baseball [was] still the fuel of his self-esteem.’’ Eventually Baker quit, sort of. In the last glimpse Dobrow gives us of the pitcher whose promise has faded, he is on a high school mound very close to the ballfield where he had wowed the scouts a decade earlier, but on this evening in 2009, Baker is pitching for Teddy Bear Pools and Spas against the best hitters Manny’s Appliances can send to the plate. [Read the full article...]

Jane Leavy, the acclaimed author of the New York Times bestseller Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy, returns with a biography of an American original—number 7, Mickey Mantle. Drawing on more than 500 interviews with friends and family, teammates, and opponents, she delivers the definitive account of Mantle’s life, mining the mythology of The Mick for the true story of a luminous and illustrious talent with an achingly damaged soul.

Meticulously reported and elegantly written, The Last Boy is a baseball tapestry that weaves together episodes from the author’s weekend with The Mick in Atlantic City, where she interviewed her hero in 1983, after he was banned from baseball, with reminiscences from friends and family of the boy from Commerce, Oklahoma, who would lead the Yankees to seven world championships, be voted the American League’s Most Valuable Player three times, win the Triple Crown in 1956, and duel teammate Roger Maris for Babe Ruth’s home run crown in the summer of 1961—the same boy who would never grow up.

As she did so memorably in her biography of Sandy Koufax, Jane Leavy transcends the hyperbole of hero worship to reveal the man behind the coast-to-coast smile, who grappled with a wrenching childhood, crippling injuries, and a genetic predisposition to alcoholism. In The Last Boy she chronicles her search to find out more about the person he was and, given what she discovers, to explain his mystifying hold on a generation of baseball fans, who were seduced by that lopsided, gap-toothed grin. It is an uncommon biography, with literary overtones: not only a portrait of an icon, but an investigation of memory itself. How long was the Tape Measure Home Run? Did Mantle swing the same way right-handed and left-handed? What really happened to his knee in the 1951 World Series? What happened to the red-haired, freckle-faced boy known back home as Mickey Charles?

“I believe in memory, not memorabilia,” Leavy writes in her preface. But in The Last Boy, she discovers that what we remember of our heroes—and even what they remember of themselves—is only where the story begins.

Amazon Q&A: Bill Madden Interviews Jane Leavy

Madden: Your best-selling biography of Sandy Koufax was a tour de force, partly because Koufax was a very private man whose life story had never really been told before. Mickey Mantle’s life is quite the opposite, it’s been in the subject of a spate of different “autobiographies,” some of which he even wrote. Under those circumstances, what made you want to take up another book about him?

Leavy: Originally, I wanted to write about Willie, Mickey and The Duke in New York in the Fifties. The publisher said, “Do The Mick. Everybody loves The Mick.” I was wary because so much had been written about him—he left a paper trail as long as the drive from Commerce, Oklahoma to the Bronx, so I didn’t expect to learn that he’d been raised by a den of Alaskan she-wolves. My challenge was to strip away all the layers of myth that had accumulated and let Mickey breathe. And he, of all people, was my worst source. For example: the knee surgery he said he had after tripping over a drain in the 1951 World Series trying not to run into Joe DiMaggio in centerfield. In fact, he didn’t have surgery until two years later. I only learned that because I went through every day of the New York Times from October 1951 to November 1953 looking for the date the knife fell! That’s why this book took five years and nearly 600 interviews. I wanted to try to understand why after all these years, and all these revelations, Mickey Mantle still means so much to so many people—including me—and the first step was to get the basic facts straight.

Madden: You make the point early on in the book that Mickey was a childhood hero, but you also have a recurring sequence in the book of your first interview with him in Atlantic City in 1983, where—at one point—he drunkenly makes a pass at you. What lingering effect did this have on how you ultimately approached your book?

Leavy: I was plenty nervous when I met him. Mickey was my hero. But, he was also a very particular kind of role model. I was born two months prematurely (in a hospital a mile from Yankee Stadium) and came with some of the flaws that afflict those who don’t incubate as long as we’re supposed to. Mickey taught me how to function with pain and without complaint—his triumphs were mine. I was devastated with how he acted. After I’d taken his hand from my knee, I called the only person I could think of still awake at that hour, a new mother, who basically told me to grow up.

The next morning, over breakfast, I vented my anger and disappointment, railing at him for, among other things, greeting my youthful autograph request with flatulence. He was stunned and remorseful, albeit in a hilariously idiosyncratic manner. He gave me an 8 x 10 glossy that said, “Sorry, I farted, your friend, Mick.” For a moment, I felt I saw behind his crude façade. I decided the only way I could write this book was to acknowledge my lack of dispassion and scrutinize him completely. That’s what happened that weekend in Atlantic City. It forced me to see the world as it was, not how I wanted it to be.

Madden: One of the people I wish I’d been able to interview for my Steinbrenner book was Mantle, if only because I detected a very strained relationship between the two of them. Steinbrenner made a point to deify DiMaggio and had memorial services for Joe, Billy Martin, Roger Maris and Mel Allen, but did nothing for Mickey when he died. In your conversations with Mickey did he ever talk about Steinbrenner and anything that might have led to ill feelings toward each other?

Leavy: When I told Mantle I’d heard the Boss was thinking of turning Monument Park in centerfield into a water park for the disadvantaged youth of the South Bronx, Mantle was completely incredulous. He told me, “It was 480 in centerfield when I played. It’s 420 now and he’s talking about bringing them in farther,” and shook his head. “I was at a banquet one time and I said to him, ‘they ought to let those boys throw the ball up and hit it.’ That pissed him off.”

Mantle was interested in Yankee history—he grilled a friend who saw Babe Ruth lying in state in the rotunda at the Stadium about what it was like to be there that day. But I don’t think he had a whole lot of patience with “Yankeeography.” It was a quick disillusionment. When he signed with the Yankees, reporters asked which Yankee had been his childhood hero. He said, “Stan Musial.” George Weiss, the general manager, immediately “corrected” his memory and from then on Joe D. was his hero. Furthermore, I think he was deeply disappointed with the baseball community’s response—or lack of response—when commissioner Bowie Kuhn banned him in 1983 because of his affiliation with the Claridge Hotel and Casino, a job he had taken to pay for his son Billy’s treatment for non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. He told me, “I feel really kind of bad no one took up for me.” By “no one” I was pretty sure he meant Steinbrenner. The Yankees did little more than observe a moment of silence when Mantle died.

Madden: It would seem that most everybody pertinent to the book cooperated with you, especially the Mantle family. I was grateful for the cooperation I had from George Steinbrenner’s friends and associates when I wroteSteinbrenner, but I had an advantage that you didn’t in that most of them knew me personally and, I suppose, trusted me. As a stranger, did you meet any significant resistance?

Leavy: Danny and David Mantle—Mickey’s sons—and their late mother, Merlyn—were extremely generous with their recollections and insights. Their openness about their lives and their relationship with their father was extraordinary. Like him, they are extremely honest. There’s no put on, as folks in Commerce, Oklahoma like to say. I hope they’ll come away from the book with a deeper understanding of the forces that formed him and contributed to his downfall, but I don’t know how they’ll react.

Madden: This is the definitive “warts and all” biography of Mickey, with heavy emphasis on all of his demons. How do you think Mickey himself would feel about the book?

Leavy: I think it’s an honest book and Mantle was a very honest man. I don’t see this is as a dark book. I hope it’s enlightening in the most literal sense of the word and I hope that critics—and readers at large—will agree. I think the tragedy of Mantle is that he had so little time, at the beginning of his baseball career, and at the beginning of his sober life, to be his best self. He was a decent man who was genetically pre-disposed to alcoholism and enabled his whole life by the trappings of his celebrity. That’s his story. As Billy Crystal told me about his movie, 61*, Mickey wouldn’t have wanted the sugar coat.

His late wife, Merlyn, wrote about the sexual abuse he suffered as a young boy in the family memoir, “A Hero All His Life” and she elaborated on it when we spoke, as did several of his close friends. It turned out that his half sister wasn’t his only abuser and experts tell me that many of the destructive behaviors he manifested are seen in victims of childhood sexual abuse. So, I came away with enormous compassion for him and, I hope, with an answer to the question posed by one of his minor league teammates: “Mickey, what happened?”

Review

How wonderful in an age when we don’t have heroes anymore, we can go back to an earlier age in our lives, when we did. We can then hand a book like this to our children, and perhaps, just perhaps they can come to understand how a different generation from their own, could have revered such a man as Mickey Mantle, who represented everything that we all wanted to be.

For all of us, it was a dream that could not be fulfilled, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t still fantasize about it, and maybe that’s why some pay so much for collectibles. We are able to hold, or touch something that belonged to the hero, and the hero’s journey.

First of all, you must love sports, and sports heroes to thoroughly enjoy this book as I did. Ms. Leavy has captured the real Mickey Mantle, and although she covers the warts and all, this is still very much the story of a hero, a hero of mythic proportions. In ancient Rome there were the Gladiators. In the 20th century, we have our sports heroes, and surely Mickey Mantle captured America’s attention like no other.

He made us forget about Joe DiMaggio who dominated an earlier generation of Yankees in center field. DiMaggio knew it, and made Mantle pay for it emotionally for his entire career. You might want to read Joe DiMaggio: The Hero’s Life by Richard Ben Cramer, a great biography of Mantle’s predecessor in center field.

Ah, and can Ms. Leavy write; she is accomplished, having earlier penned a magnificent biography of Brooklyn Dodger hero Sandy Koufax. When I began to read about Mickey, I at first wondered if she could capture the same spirit she captured in “Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy”. By that I mean could she capture the essence of the man and the time in which Mantle lived. She had done this so well with Koufax, could she do it again.

How do you replicate in words, what it was like to have Mantle in the Bronx, and the Dodgers in Brooklyn? If you are a reader living in Texas, or California, can you do it? The author answered that question and more. This lady is at the top of her game as they say. Through 416 pages she covers it all, Mickey’s extraordinary potential, and his partial realization of it, having been plagued by injuries during his entire playing career. What haunted him at night is laid out, from his belief that he would die at an early age as his father did, to his first years in baseball where DiMaggio would not even speak with him. Do you want to know what it was like for this young magnificent talent to be snubbed by the leader of the team while trying to build his own identity? It’s all here in story after exquisite story. Myths are shattered while new truths are revealed.

The author is clear, and admits she’s biased. Mickey is her guy, just as he was our guy. She loved him, and we all loved him, and now many years after his death, we love him even more, and still feel our loss, a loss for a youth that none of us can ever have again. The title of the book says it all, “The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood”. How appropriate for a title for this man, and at this time.

We were moving from the age of innocence under Eisenhower into the turbulent world of the 60′s with Viet Nam, JFK, Civil Rights, drugs and the counter culture, but through it all, there was the constancy of Mickey Mantle and the Yankees. You either loved him and them, or you hated them. There was nobody on the fence when it came to the Yankees, and it’s probably still a true statement today.

Even in those cities that hate the Yankees, no team in baseball filled the stands in enemy territory like the Yankees, and it’s all based on the myth and mythology which survives for as long as any of us remember this man and his extraordinary exploits. The most exciting hitter in baseball playing drunk, and with extraordinary pain, and injuries. Nobody knew the real Mickey, maybe no could. We know more about him now through this author and others, than we did when he was setting world of sports on fire.

The book is organized into five parts. The unifying theme is the author meeting Mickey in 1983 at the Claridge Hotel, a casino in Atlantic City. In those days, baseball did not pay like it does today. Although Mickey was paid $100,000 per year by the Yankees for years, very few baseball players saved any money, and basically all of them had to find careers after baseball in order to survive. Late in his life they asked Mickey what he would be paid today if he were in the game. He said, “I don’t really know, except I would probably be sitting down with the team owner, and saying, how you doing, PARTNER?”

In each of the five parts of the book, the author continues the story of her meeting Mickey at the Claridge Hotel, and then she reverts back into discussing his biography along chronological lines from his first days in baseball, through his last.

Here’s some of the things you will learn in this wonderful book:

* In four quick phrases, you learn the essence of the man. He was so gifted, s flawed, so damaged, so beautiful.

* Admirers were so enamored of Mantle that they were willing to pay anything for memorabilia. Both Billy Crystal the comedian, and David Wells the pitcher got into a bidding war for a damaged glove that Mickey played with. The spirited bidding made Crystal the winner at $239,000. The author has done her homework, and engages the reader in a real and detailed understanding of the collectors’ world and how it influenced Mantle, who could make $50,000 in an afternoon signing his name. His near mint rookie card went for $282,000 in 2006.

* Originally a shortstop, legendary manger Casey Stengel said I will personally make this man into a center fielder. DiMaggio went ballistic. It’s quite a story and its aftermath went on for years. As was explained in the book, Stengel loved Mantle and disliked DiMaggio.

* Other players could not believe Mantle’s abilities. It was said that he was more speed than slugger, and more slugger than any speedster, and nobody had had more of both of them together. Stengel said this kid ain’t logical, and he’s too good. It’s very confusing. When you compared him to others, and the others that came before him, Mantle was unique, and he had the charisma to match. Together it was an unbeatable combination, and then add in a media crazed New York.

* Branch Rickey the general manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates who would make history breaking Jackie Robinson into the majors, once said about Mantle, “I hereby agree to pay any price for the purchase of Mickey Mantle.”

* It was said about Mantle and his teammates that they lived over the speed limit and being with Mantle was like having a get out of jail card free card. Nobody could play ball like Mickey, and nobody could play like Mickey. The stories, the philandering, the booze, the nightlife, it’s all here, and it’s here in abundance.

* Mickey was generous to a fault. If you were his friend, you did not need other friends. He was there for you through thick and thin. Teammate Joe Pepitone got divorced. Mickey told him, I got two rooms at the St. Moritz. You come stay with me. Pepitone stayed two years.

* And then there’s the naiveté. He’s constantly getting conned into putting money into bad deals with bad people. In one deal, his teammates asked him, did you have a lawyer. He responds that he didn’t need one, the other guys already had a lawyer in the room.

We haven’t even touched upon the game of baseball itself and Mantle’s contributions to the game, his impact. Leavy covers it all, and there’s much to cover. The World Series where Sandy Koufax, a pitcher who during a five year period was deemed to be unhittable, strikes out Mantle, and then in the seventh inning, Mantle makes contact with what he felt was the fastest pitch he had ever seen. The ferocious noise of the bat making contact with the ball was painful to those sitting in the dugouts, and then the ball wound up in the upper bleachers, but it wasn’t enough. In the final inning Koufax would strike out Mantle again, and win the World Series. Mickey goes into the dugout and says, “How in the f—, are you supposed to hit that s—.

You will not put the book down. You will re-live your youth. You will be filled with joy at the thrill of one hero and the world of baseball. You will also find much sorrow in the sadness of life after baseball, of cutting ribbons at gas stations for a thousand dollars, doing bar mitzvahs on weekends, and attempting to live on past glories. What an American story, and only in America could it have happened. Thank you for reading this review, and I gladly give this book five stars. – Richard Stoyeck, Amazon Customer Review

Never Grow Old

The New York Times – October 15, 2010 (Excerpt)

An attempt to publish the inventory of Mickey Mantle iconography began in February 2009 and will continue well into next year. From Mickey Mantle vanity license plates to Mickey Mantle postcards to Mickey Mantle bobblehead dolls to Mickey Mantle postcards depicting him holding Mickey Mantle bobblehead dolls, the cataloged, photographed and priced relics will ultimately exceed 2,000, and will have filled 200 pages in the memorabilia industry’s weekly Sports Collectors Digest. Included in the reckoning are at least 30 full-scale Mickey Mantle biographies, half a dozen of which carry the Mantle imprimatur as author, co- author or frontman.

Thus, to wade now into the river of nostalgia, collection and recollection that is Mickey Charles Mantle, 42 years since his last major league at-bat, and 15 years since his death at 63, is like crowding into the last row of the Yankee Stadium bleachers at the start of a World Series game and expecting to get a TV close-up.

Yet as she did in her innovative biography “Sandy Koufax,”Jane Leavy has found a different path through the throng. For her portrait of Koufax, she alternated an inning-by-inning account of that great pitcher’s perfect game in 1965 with deeply researched and fluidly written examinations of the rest of his life and import. “The Last Boy,” a nonlinear biography, takes the form of 20 days in Mantle’s life (something of a conceit; some of the “days” are stretched to cover nearly a season, or an entire childhood). [Read the full article...]

A few years back my wife and I spent a couple of days in Newport, Rhode Island. We stayed at a very nice hotel close to downtown. This was close to the end of the regular baseball season, the time when each game seems to count. My experience is that games prior to the All-Star Game are not taken quite as seriously. After all, “we” are playing 160+ games in a regular season, and any mishap during the first half can be compensated later – or not.

Naturally, with my wife being a wicked Red Sox fan, every night activity, such as going out to one of the many fabulous restaurants, had to be scheduled around game time. As a result, we would have a few drinks at the hotel bar around 7 pm to watch the game, and a few innings later we would resign to watch the rest of the game in our room. Well, sometimes the game starts at 8 pm when ESPN – with their painfully incompetent commentators – takes over.

Quite coincidently it turned out that during these few nights in Rhode Island the Red Sox played the hated New York Yankees at Fenway Park. Also quite coincidental, some hotel guests were from New York. One of the guys felt offended by the crowd’s cheers, for instance, when Derek Jeter swung and missed a ball, or when a Sox player walked to first base after the fourth ball. “They would never do that at Yankee Stadium,” he mumbled repeatedly, shaking his head. I felt inclined to tell him that he had never seen a game at Yankee Stadium, but a buddy of his felt the increasing tension in the room. “Hey,” he told his friend. “Remember, you are in Red Sox territory. Of course, they cheer only for the Red Sox.”

I do understand the passion New Yorkers feel for their team, but I never understood how one can live in New England and, at the same time, be a Yankees fan, unless you live in Connecticut, which I personally do not consider part of New England. Mentally they’re New Yorkers, while New England life has nothing in common with New York City. Nevertheless, my motto is, live and let live. After all, baseball is only a game. I may call them the “hated” Yankees, but I am only adopting Red Sox Nation linguistics. The rivalry between the Red Sox and the Yankees is a much needed spice for an otherwise sober game that, more than once, challenged my ability to stay awake during late night hours.

Unfortunately, the same rivalry can go too far, because some fans, regardless of whether they cheer for the Red Sox or the Yankees, just don’t get it.

On April 14, 2010 the Associated Press reported:

“NASHUA, N.H. – A New Hampshire woman convicted of running down and killing a man  with her car after he was said to have taunted her for being a New York Yankees fan has been sentenced to 20 to 40 years in prison.

Forty-five-year-old Ivonne Hernandez was convicted in December of second-degree murder in the death of 29-year-old Matthew Beaudoin in a Nashua parking lot.

Police say the dispute outside a bar started as an exchange about the Yankees and Red Sox.

Hernandez testified she was terrified because Beaudoin and others pounded on her windows when she made a comment about how many baseball World Series the Yankees had won compared to the Red Sox.”

Yes, I do stand to my statement that Baseball is not a sport. To put it in a nut-shell, Baseball is a game interrupted by sporadic eruptions of athletic interferences, or, as Yogi Berra put it so much more exquisitely, “Baseball is 90% mental; the other half is physical.”

Okay, let me give you the quick run-down. I was born and raised in Germany, a country where soccer is the most popular sports of all. Soccer, in turn, is a sport where twenty-two players are in constant motion for two periods of mostly uninterrupted forty-five minutes (At least that’s how I remember it.). I have heard complaints about it like, “I don’t like soccer, because you never know when the game ends.” Well, think of baseball, football, basketball, or hockey, and tell me at what time exactly the game will end. I believe, soccer is not as popular here in the United States as it is in the rest of the world, because it does require ninety minutes of uninterrupted attention. That leaves no time for a trip to the bathroom or the refrigerator.

Don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy watching baseball while writing posts for my blog (Tonight it’s Tampa Bay at the Boston Red Sox), browsing on the Internet, or reading a magazine. But with 160+ excruciatingly slow games per season it takes a lot to get me excited, especially when it comes to watching the tremendous lack of urgency the players demonstrate during nine long innings. In baseball terms this behavioral pattern is called “patience.” I call it a lack of passion.

Talking about passion… When I came into this country a mere twenty-one years ago I was excited about American football. I still remember watching my first Superbowl in 1989, San Francisco 49ers vs. the Cincinnati Bengals. And I still remember Tim Krumrie of the Bengals, who suffered a broken leg while trying to tackle Roger Craig, and I saw the slow-motion re-play way too many times. The story is, Krumrie stayed in the locker room until the game was finished, refusing to leave his teammates.

You may ask, what has that to do with baseball?

Well, for the last eight years I have been married to an Irish-American red-head, and she is a wicked Red Sox fan. During the brief period of dating, and an insignificantly longer time of being engaged, my wife did follow the Red Sox games, however, without my participation, due to obvious lack of enthusiasm. That changed in the following 2003 season. Trying to please my wife I started watching the games with her, and, naturally, I had a lot of questions. These questions had the potential of creating great stress on our relationship (“Why isn’t there a coach at second base?”). Add to this my wife’s deficiency explaining the game in layman’s terms, especially when she is angry at me.

Such a situation arose during a game when the then-manager of the Boston Red Sox, whose name is not to be uttered in this household, pulled the starting pitcher Derek Lowe, because he had a blister on his thumb. Hey, Tim Krumrie, I wanted to yell into the TV, they just pulled somebody out of a game because he had a blister on his thumb! Okay, I also remember Curt Schilling’s bleeding ankle during the 2004 World Series, and that temporarily shook my view on baseball.

Just for the record, I did follow the entire 2003 season, including that fateful seventh play-off game versus the hated New York Yankees. Like so many others I yelled at the TV in disbelief when the then-manager of the Red Sox (you know, the un-person whose name is not to be uttered in this household) did not pull the pitcher, Pedro Martinez, even though he was very obviously exhausted at that point. Think about it. I had “learned” baseball during the previous six months, and even I knew the manager had just made a fatal mistake.

What it all comes down to is that I experienced the drama that so many Red Sox fans had endured during many previous seasons. As they say, the rest is history. The Red Sox won the World Series the next year. Many fans have waited a lifetime to see the Red Sox win the World Series; too many Red Sox fans lived a life without seeing it. I can say, I saw the drama in my first season, and the Red Sox won the World Series the next year. That’s what I call German efficiency.

Still, I don’t consider myself a baseball specialist. I still have too many questions about the game, and most of them are not polite. How come that Dustin Pedroia never swings at the first pitch? How come that Manny Ramirez can take a piss during the game? How come that players endure injuries while running 90 feet from one base to another? How come they stop games when it rains?

Well, I guess, I will continue watching the Red Sox games, and maybe some day somebody will have answered all my questions. Until then I will enjoy America’s game.

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Today’s headline in the sports section of our local newspaper said, Angels close out Papelbon, Sox. I knew that already. I saw the game. Amazingly enough, I understood the word game. Jonathan Papelbon’s job was to close out the Angels (not vice versa), and he failed miserably. Baseball season is now officially over. No, don’t tell me, there are other games, and two other teams will eventually compete in the World Series. Every citizen of Red Sox nation will agree, baseball season is only over when either the Sox win the World Series, or, as they did yesterday, loose in the play-offs.

Many moons ago, when I arrived here in the Unites States, coming from Germany, I had heard about baseball, but I never considered it a real sport. As Yogi Berra said in his own typical way, “Baseball is 90% mental, the other half is physical.” I never understood the concept of holding a bat and looking at the ball swishing by, waiting either to be walked or struck out. I never understood how you can injure yourself by running a mere 90 feet from the batter’s box to first base. I’ve seen it several times now.

Being a football fan, I vividly remember seeing my first Superbowl – San Francisco 49ers vs. Cincinatti Bengals. One of the players broke his leg during the game, and they showed it in detail and slow motion multiple times on TV. The player refused to be driven to a hospital. He insisted on staying in the locker room and watching the game on TV until it was over. Then he agreed to the trip to the hospital. Compare that to a pitcher who is being replaced because he broke a fingernail. It did happen! So, for many years football was my kinda sport! And by the way, why do they call it World Series…?

No, wait, don’t start yelling at me! This season I watched almost all Red Sox games, and only a few minutes of the New England Patriots. I have to admit I had problems following the games when the Red Sox were on the West Coast. We have a two-year-old, and we’re happy when we go to bed after an East Coast game, which is usually around 10:00 pm.

My Red Sox addiction started after I met my wife, who is a vivid fan. She was the reason that the 2003 season was the first I watched from beginning to end. I experienced the typical Red Sox drama by watching them losing in the seventh game against the New York Yankees. Even I yelled at the TV when the Red Sox manager (whose name is not to be uttered in this household) did not pull Pedro Martinez when it was obvious he didn’t have it anymore. Well, the rest is history, and the Red Sox won the World Series the next year. Many people here in New England and beyond have waited a lifetime to see this happen, while I was privileged to wait only two seasons. Maybe it’s the German efficiency.

So, coming back to yesterday’s game. I saw Papelbon allowing two runs in the eighth inning with two outs, and, in view of Papelbon’s track record so far this season, I expected the worst.

At the beginning of the  ninth inning, with Papelbon still up, I looked at my wife and asked, “Can we load the bases, please?”

My wife looked at me and said, “You know Max’s famous word when he left the wild things?”

She was referring to Where The Wild Things Are, one of my son’s favorite books, and now a movie.

“His famous word,” continued my wife, “was NO!”

“But,” I muttered, “can’t we just load the bases to make things a bit more interesting?”

“NO!”

“We could also allow another three runs.”

“NO!”

Yet again, the rest is history. Papelbon did load the bases eventually, and he did allow three more runs. And I still don’t understand the concept of loading the bases with an intentional walk. For me Torii Hunter was as much of a threat as Vladimir Guererro. In the end, the Angels were the better team.

Last, but not least, while I, as an author, have the liberty of distorting the facts, the conversation with my wife happened as I described it. Now it’s time to focus my attention on the Patriots, even though I have the nasty feeling that Tom Brady’s priorities are currently more with maintaining his status as a star, rather  than his performance as a quarterback.