♦ Macleans, Canada’s version of Time magazine, ran this review of Harvey Araton’s Driving Mr. Yogi: Yogi Berra, Ron Guidry, and Baseball’s Greatest Gift. Upshot: Well, there isn’t any per se. “After years of steroid scandals and cold-hearted business decisions, Araton has given us an old-fashioned story about the redemptive power of baseball.” The writer also calls Berra ” the ultimate lovable grumpy old man.” Hey, you don’t know him like that to say such a thing, eh? (It’s all right, I’m part-Canadian; I can say that without offending.)

♦ OnMilwaukee.com posted this on Paul Dickson’s Bill Veeck: Baseball’s Greatest Maverick.

♦ In the meantime, Bailey’s Baseball Book Reviews goes old-school, re-examining Veeck’s 50-year-old memoir, Veeck As in Wreck: The Chaotic Career of Baseball’s Incorrigible Maverick, written with Ed Linn.

John Smoltz discusses his new book, Starting and Closing: Perseverance, Faith, and One More Year. It’s kind of funny: Smoltz spent 20 out of his 21- years in the Majors with the Atlanta Braves, yet the headline for the St. Louis TV station refers to him as an ex-Cardinal. Sure, he was with the Cards for about six weeks, so it’s technically true, although it seems somehow disingenuous to “claim” him as such.

R.A. Dickey does the Q&A thing with Time magazine for Wherever I Wind Up: My Quest for Truth, Authenticity and the Perfect Knuckleball.

Dan Ewald, a former sportswriter for the Detroit Free Press, had this interview in the paper, along with these substantial excerpts (one, two, and three) from his memoir, Sparky and Me: My Friendship with Sparky Anderson and the Lessons He Shared About Baseball and Life. Ewald, who collaborated with Anderson on several titles, will be the guest on this week’s podcast, which should go on Sunday.

This one slipped under the cracks: Jim Abbott on NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday to talk about his memoir, Imperfect: An Improbable Life.

Cahd Harbach is maiing the rounds again now that The Art of Fielding: A Novel has been released in paperback. This comes from the Sydney Morning Herald.

This screen cap comes from the trailer for Revolution, a new NBC science fiction program coming this fall. The show is set 15 years into the future, when electrical power has disappeared all over the planet. With the Cubs’ luck, they were probably leading in the ninth inning of the seventh game of the World Series at the time.

Well, it is a sci-fi program, in’t it then?

♦ In its Sunday edition, the Boston Globe published this roundup of sports book reviews, including A People’s History of Baseball by Mitchell Nathanson and Bill Veeck: Baseball’s Greatest Maverick by Paul Dickson. Thumbs up for both books.

♦ The Lemuria Bookstore Blog offers mini-reviews for three baseball novels: The Art of Fielding, The Might Have Been, and Calico Joe. I’ve been hearing good things about The Might Have Been, which, on the surface, seems to carry that “missed opportunities” theme for so many stories about sports (and life). Still, when you think of all the hype TAOF has received, this one is swimming under the surface.

Shyam Das, the arbitrator who voted to overturn MLB’s suspension of Ryan Braun for allegedly violating its drug policy, has been fired.

This was the only instance in which the MLB’s ruling was overturned. They were “outraged” at the time, when Das ruled that there were questions about the “chain of custody” of Braun’s urine sample that left enough doubt for his decision.

Das has been an arbitrator since 1999. Does it strike anyone else odd that he has been dismissed? Of course, we don’t know the whole story, but it seems a bit petulant, like things didn’t go the way MLB wanted and it brought light into the process which made them look bad, so this is their “revenge.”

According to the story by Ken Belson in today’s New York Times

Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association declined to comment, but a person with knowledge of the decision said that the Braun decision was only one of several factors that led to Das’s dismissal.

Several factors? Did these factors all suddenly appear after the ruling? How convenient.

Just wonderin’.

♦ The London Free Press (Ontario) published this piece on Calico Joe. Upshot:

Calico Joe has home run power. The baseball portions, particularly the first 100 pages or so, are more delicious than a Fenway frank.

But Grisham saves his heaviest hitting in the 198-page Calico Joe for the second half, where push comes to shove on the deeper themes of redemption and family relationships.

♦ The Memphis Commercial Appeal gave us this on on Tim Wendel’s Summer of ’68 with a most unusual introduction: “Unlike some who have been born and raised in the Christian faith, I cannot pinpoint the day Jesus came into my life. I can recall the exact day baseball did…”

A few weeks ago I did this story about Got Balz, a feature documentary about a bar mitzva boy’s desire to honor his grandfather by donating sports equipment to the country that gave him shelter during the Holocaust — Cuba –  and the red tape he encountered along the way.

With about 50 hours to go (the deadline is 12:01 PM on Wednesday), the project is less than $4,000 short of the $40K needed to proceed, so why not take a look and think about making a pledge? Like PBS, you can get all sorts of goodies depending on the level of your support.

And if they ask where you heard about it, tell Ron Kaplan’s Baseball Bookshelf sent you (I always wanted to say something like that).

“Kid” in this case being authors who have been the subject of recent profiles and Q&A pieces, including:

♦ A Daily Beast piece with Chad Harbach (The Art of Fielding)

♦ A Q&A with Hart Seely, author of The Juju Rules: Or, How to Win Ballgames from Your Couch: A Memoir of a Fan Obsessed in the Buffalo News.

♦ A profile on Aaron Pribble, author of Pitching in the Promised Land: A Story of the First and Only Season in the Israel Baseball League on the San Francisco Chronicle’s website.

♦ The Lewiston/Auburn Sun Journal (ME) reported on a local appearance by Edward Rielly, author of the underreported Baseball: An Encyclopedia of Popular Culture.

♦ MLBReports posted this interview with Paul Dickson, author of Bill Veeck: Baseball’s Greatest Maverick.

♦ The Dallas-FW Star Telegram posted this Q&A with Josh Lewin, (current Mets radio broadcaster and) author of Ballgame!: A Decade Covering the Texas Rangers from the Best Seat in the House

So, back to bidness.

♦ The Hardball Times reviewed Great Hitting Pitchers, published by the Society for American Baseball Research.

♦ Baseball Reflections posted this on Major League Dads: Baseball’s Best Players Reflect on the Fathers Who Inspired Them to Love the Game.

♦ I don’t know if this really counts as a review, but Slate compares Appel’s Pinstripe Empire: The New York Yankees from Before the Babe to After the Boss with Fleder’s Damn Yankees: Twenty-Four Major League Writers on the World’s Most Loved (and Hated) Team. Close enough for government work.

Sorry it’s been a bit slow lately, but I’ve been trying to finish the first round of edits from the publisher for my forthcoming book, 501 Baseball Titles the Literate Fan Must Read with has an “official” release in the spring of 2013.

It’s been very educational, I must say. For example, I was a bit dismayed to find so many typos in the manuscript. As any reader of the Bookshelf knows, that’s not my string suit, but I really thought I was extra careful this time. Just goes to show — and this is important — a word processor’s spellcheck by itself is not enough. You need eyes on the page, preferably someone else’s, since the original writer has probably gone over the work so many times, the little things just don’t register anymore. I have since found out that this will be the stage where the pages get a “line edit.”

Since the manuscript was handed in last fall, I’ve also added a few 2012 titles to make it a bit more up-to-date. Not saying which; it’s a surprise.

Now the project gets into full swing and I can start finding out about foreword, “advance praise” blurbs, and all the little things that go into the making of a book. I have made these inquiries to the publisher and am looking forward to moving ahead.

This used to be me when I was a kid:

I would constantly pester my friends to walk over the the ballpark when steel gray clouds were a portent for the end of e world.

My attitude has changed.

I play in a 50-and-over league now. I used to be on a “regular” team in my town, but I joined them late, after they’d been together for many years. They were an older bunch of fellas and we were regularly beaten — soundly, more often than not — by teams whose members were significantly younger. So I decided to take the plunge.

My current outfit consists of a nice bunch of guys. There’s a lot of the usual good-natured ribbing that goes on in such situations. We don’t hang out together much, but I think part of that is due to the lateness of the games and the distances we have to travel. My memory may be faulty (another product of age), but we won our division championship in either my first or second year with them. As a “reward” we were kicked up three divisions. We’ve come close, always making it into the playoffs, only to be eliminated in the early rounds.

This year is a bit tougher. As of today we’re 2-6, although there’s no grumbling or finger-pointing. We play close and tight, but seem to fall victim to that one bad inning. Me, I’m playing stinko. Although my last two games were pretty good, it’s nowhere near what I used to be, which I attributed more to my very-slow-to-heal ab pull than aging.

It’s the combination of my poor performance, the team’s disappointing performance, and the lateness of the games (it used to be I could leave straight from work; now I go home and have to come out again hours later), and the iffy weather that have me wishing some of these games would be postponed.It’s been rainy for the past few days and the forecast doesn’t look to improve any before the weekend. Given that information, I wish they’d make an early decision and call the game.

Sadly, I have to admit I no longer have that optimism displayed by good old Charlie Brown.

From The Washington Post:

Daniel Rapoport, a Washington journalist, author and publisher who in 1983 founded Farragut Publishing to produce non-blockbuster and out-of-the-ordinary books ranging from pasta salad and cold soup cookbooks to a history of U.S. presidents’ connections with baseball, died April 11 at his home in East Chatham, N.Y. He was 79.

The writer is referring specifically to Baseball: The Presidents’ Game, by Paul Dickson and William Mead.

Before its closing in 2007, Farragut Publishing had published more than 20 nonfiction books. Baseball: The Presidents’ Game (1993)… explored connections between U.S. presidents and baseball, beginning with George Washington, who as an Army general played catch with troops at Valley Forge.

 

I’m not the most tech-savvy blogger in the world, so you’ll pardon the interruption from the usual routine.

I’ve received some comments that there are too many entries popping up in your mailboxes. I have adjusted the settings (at least I think I have) so rather than getting an email for each individual post, you’ll get one daily notification for all posts for that given day. Since, as I said, I’m a technofool, I would appreciate hearing if this is coming across as advertised.

Thank you in advance.

The Management

Not that I attended the school, mind you, but I did go there a couple of times while visiting Boston.

I wish the guys on my baseball team at Brooklyn College made the long trips this inventive and interesting. But then, that’s why these guys are in Harvard and not BC.

[Note: My spring baseball roundup appears on Bookreporter.com and is reposted here as individual reviews for your convenience.]

Jim Abbott tells an old-fashioned tale of hard work, dedication, and refusing to give up in Imperfect: An Improbable Life, co-written by Tim Brown.

Born without a right hand, Abbott nevertheless gained success as an outstanding athlete. The book uses a familiar back-and-forth concept, alternating between his September 4, 1993 no-hitter against the Cleveland Indians and his recounting of how he arrived at that point.

Abbott excelled at the University of Michigan; he was the first baseball player to win the Sullivan Award as the nation’s outstanding amateur athlete and was selected for the U.S. Olympic team in 1988. The year before he led the American team to its first win over Cuba at the Pan-Am games.

His “inconvenience” (Abbott would probably not appreciate the term “handicap”) did not deter scouts from checking him out. He was drafted by the Toronto Blue Jays in 1985 but chose to attend school instead. Abbott signed with the then-California Angels in 1988, making the team out of spring training the following year without spending even a day in the minors.

This could have been a sideshow attraction, but Abbot truly belonged in the Majors. He was 12-12 in his rookie year; three years later, he won 18 games and finished third for the American League Cy Young Award, emblematic of the league’s best pitcher. After missing the 1997 season, he won each of the five games in which he appeared for the Chicago White Sox. Abbot enjoyed a 10-year career, finishing with a record of 87-108 and a respectable 4.25 earned run average.

Abbott now works mainly as a motivational speaker, which is no doubt a reason he wrote the book.

[Note: My spring baseball roundup appears on Bookreporter.com and is reposted here as individual reviews for your convenience.]

Harvey Araton tells a touching story in Driving Mr. Yogi: Yogi Berra, Ron Guidry, and Baseball’s Greatest Gift.

Reminiscent of David Halberstam’s 2002 The Teammates: A Portrait of a Friendship, Driving Mr. Yogi is a bit more upbeat as it focuses on the relationship between Hall of Fame catcher Yogi Berra — one of the last members of those awesome Yankee teams of the late 1940s through the early1960s — and Ron Guidry, a star pitcher of a subsequent generation.

Each spring training for the past several years (since Berra returned to the Yankee fold after a reconciliation with the late George Steinbrenner, which is covered in great detail by Araton, a sports columnist for The New York Times), Guidry has been meeting the iconic catcher at the Tampa airport, serving as his companion and driver during Spring Training. The affection between the two is genuine and mutual, almost like father and son.

In between the contemporary story, we get a sense of what each man meant to his team, both coming from relatively humble origins — Berra in Missouri, Guidry in Louisiana — to find success in the big city

The book does take on an emotional tone as Berra, who turns 87 this month, becomes a bit more dependent on Guidry for support. The reader wonders how many more trips to Tampa will be made. Still, Driving Mr. Yogi is a sweet tale harkening back to a kinder, gentler society where elders are cherished for their wisdom and accomplishments.

[Note: My spring baseball roundup appears on Bookreporter.com and is reposted here as individual reviews for your convenience.]

Former Sports Illustrated executive editor Rob Fleder assembled his own literary All-Star team for Damn Yankees: Twenty-Four Major League Writers on the World’s Most Loved (and Hated) Team.

The roster includes such “players” as Roy Blount Jr., Dan Barry, Jane Leavy, Charley Pierce, Will Leitch, Colum McCann, Daniel Okrent, Frank DeFord, Bill James and Tom Verducci, among others.

Not everyone is enamored of the Bronx Bombers, which is refreshing. Some take issue with the team for being too good, or too cocky, or too conservative (they were among the last teams to sign a black player). Blount and Pierce, being “outsiders” (the former was born in Indianapolis but grew up in Georgia, the latter is a staunch New Englander), can be expected to be a bit on the “negative” side, while Leavy, a Mantle fan since childhood, writes about her favorite player’s home run relationship with a Red Sox pitcher. McCann recalls how he indoctrinated his Irish father into the ways of the national pastime via the Yankees. And Nathaniel Rich sticks up for his favorite NY team, the Mets, as he discusses the almost symbiotic relationship between the rivals’ fans and whether the word Schadenfreude is really appropriate.

Some contributors, merely by dint of being writers, have had problems with the team, as players who might be heroes to others have different feelings towards the media. Kudos to all the participants for sharing their personal feelings on the topic.

[Note: My spring baseball roundup appears on Bookreporter.com and is reposted here as individual reviews for your convenience.]

It’s somewhat unusual for an active player to write a book. Such things are often left to the relative safety and reflection of retirement. But no one ever said R. A. Dickey was your run-of-the-mill athlete. You only have to hear him on an NPR interview to get a sense of his intelligence and sensitivity. That’s why Wherever I Wind Up: My Quest for Truth, Authenticity and the Perfect Knuckleball, written with Wayne Coffey, is so stunning for its honesty.

Wherever I Wind Up received the most pre-publication buzz of any baseball title so far this year (with the possible exception of John Grisham’s Calico Joe). When word began to circulate that Dickey would reveal his story of having been sexually abused as a child by a female babysitter and a male cousin, I feared this would turn into a lurid selling point. Such a revelation would be a watershed moment; it was unheard of for an athlete to be that open about such an issue. And indeed Dickey has said this book served as a cathartic device, an opportunity to admit what to him had been a shameful and confusing part of his life — and the first time he had ever spoken of it. It is not in the purview of this article to get into psychological considerations, but listening to those interviews, you get the sense that it has been a cleansing experience

But the abuse is not the sole subject of the book. Dickey had other, more germane, issues that face an athlete, such as spending more than the usual number of years in the minors before finding a permanent spot in the Mets’ pitching rotation. The mental wear-and-tear of worrying the direction in which your career is going is daunting for any player, let alone one with a wife and four kids to consider. But Dickey’s faith — a main point in the book — has helped him survive thus far and, hopefully, will see him through a long and successful career.

[Note: My spring baseball roundup appears on Bookreporter.com and is reposted here as individual reviews for your convenience.]

In Turning Two: My Journey to the Top of the World and Back with the New York Mets, Bud Harrelson, a staple of the pennant-winning Mets of 1969 and 1973, offers a “throw-back” to the days when sports autobiographies/memoirs were above dishing the dirt.

He may not have been a superstar along the lines of a Tom Seaver, or a slugger like Tommy Agee, or a high-average hitter like Cleon Jones, but Harrelson was perhaps the heart and soul of the team, a gutty little player who smoothly handled shortstop and was the glue of a solid defensive infield.

The “highlight” of his career came in the 1973 playoffs when Pete Rose, the rock-solid Cincinnati Red, ran into him at second base trying to break up a double play. Shoves ensued, followed by punches — Harrelson’s great line: “I hit him in the fist with my face.” — and one of the most famous bench-clearing incidents in baseball.

Harrelson was the only Met to be a member of their only World Championship teams: in 1969 as a player, and 1986 as a coach. He also served as manager, compiling a fairly impressive record before the team went into the tank and he was fired.

But there is no bitterness in him. Indeed, he has produced the kind of book many memoirists describe as “something they would like their kids to be able to read,” that is, without scandal, with lots of cheer and upbeat, and few (if any) cussing.

Harrelson is ably assisted in his project by Phil Pepe, the always-busy author and former sportswriter for the New York Daily News.

[Note: My spring  roundup appears on Bookreporter.com and is reposted here as individual reviews for your convenience.]

♦ Bailey’s Baseball Book Reviews posted this one on Grisham’s Calico Joe. Upshot: “We’ve now had baseball tales from two of the literary world’s heavyweights in the past three years. Both have failed to live up to expectations.” [The other one is Stephen King's novella, Blockade Billy.]

♦ Bailey also offers this on Just a Minor Perspective: Through the Eyes of a Minor League Rookie, another in the blossoming line of memoirs written by active pitchers (and I still count Dirk Hayhurst — with which Eyes draws the inevitable comparisons — as falling into that category). This one comes from the mind of Eric Pettis, a former member of the Williamsport Crosscutters, the Phillies’ short-season Single A affiliate. Upshot: “[T]he rookie effort from this rookie minor leaguer provides insight into what every young man who signs a contract faces.”

♦ I guess this qualifies: Rob Neyer offers this for the Hot Corner Book Club on Dickson’s Bill Veeck: Baseball’s Greatest Maverick: “Just finished. Highest recommendation.” No, I didn’t forget the link. That’s the extent of the “review.”