Image via Wikipedia

I wonder if Jason Turbow has a bounty out. First it was Dallas Braden going after Alex Rodriguez for inappropriately traversing “his” mound during a game that generated a bump in interest for his book, The Baseball Codes: Beanballs, Sign Stealing, and Bench-Clearing Brawls: The Unwritten Rules of America’s Pastime. Then it was the Florida Marlins throwing at Nyger Morgan for stealing bases during a lopsided game, apparently also contrary to those “unwritten rules.” So every time something like his happens, the media has a go-to guy in Turbow. In this case, he weighs in with SportsGrid.com.

See also:

• Nationals’ Nyjer Morgan enrages baseball by violating The Code
• Belligerent Braden can’t handle heat
• Oakland A’s are selling T-shirts to keep up Dallas Braden-Alex Rodriguez feud

Write a quick comment

Cover via Amazon

I wonder if the writer of this piece about Doug Glanville’s new book, The Game From Where I Stand, was thinking of Leonard Koppett when she titled her article “A thinking man’s guide to a baseball life.” Koppett, wrote one of the earlier and better far-reaching analysis in The Thinking Man’s (later Thinking Fan’s) Guide to Baseball.

Upshot: “True stories like those make Glanville’s book far more personal than the average sports biography. No ghostwriter for him: Instead, his personality rings through every line.”

Write a quick comment

With all the news that’s been rekindled about the PED scandal, what better time to return to those kinder gentler times when the drug of choice was cocaine. The Pittsburgh City Paper ran this review of The Pittsburgh Cocaine Seven by Aaron Skirboll. Older fans can recall Tim Raines, then of the Montreal Expos, refusing to slide because he had a vial in his back pocket.

Upshot: “…Unfortunately, this is a sloppy book, one that gets little details wrong and contains so many dubious “facts” that the entire project is called into question.”

Write a quick comment

To two Hall of Famers.

Bill Mazeroski, whose home run in the 1960 World Series remains one of the game’s most dramatic moments,  turns 74.

• Twin Killing: The Bill Mazeroski Story, by John T. Bird

Napolean Lajoie, born this date in 1874. He published Napoleon Lajoie’s Official Base Ball Guide in 1906. Surprisingly, there seems to be no latter day biography of one of the greatest second basemen of all time.

Write a quick comment

My Life in the Game, by Dustin Pedroia wuth Edward J. Delaney. SSE, 2009.

In past entries, I’ve written about “flavor of the month,” a memoir or autobio written by a player with limited Major League experience who tries to capitalize on a special event or a great season? Born to Play falls into this category.

And don’t get me wrong; this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But think of it this way:How many players are there in the Majors at anyone one time? About 750. Every one of them has some kind of story to tell, but most are pretty much the same. Major ups to them all for making it to The Show. As much as fans complain about the relative worth (and sometimes questionable ancestry) of these athletes, these few, these happy few have done something few others have accomplished. So generally speaking — allowing for those who might have made it but for one reason or anther had to give up the opportunity — the worst major league baseball player is better than the best layperson.

All this is a long way of getting to Pedroia’s story. He collaborated with Delaney, an “award-winning journalist, documentary filmmaker, and fiction writer” according to the book’s credits, to produce this genial little book following his MVP year in 2008. The moral of his story, I suppose, is don’t give up on your dream. While most books of a half-century ago deal with some kind of adversity — poverty, illness, etc. — Pedroia merely overcame the prejudice that comes from expectations of what an athlete should look like (see also, John Kruk’s “I Ain’t an Athlete, Lady…”). Listed at 5’9″, 180 pounds, Pedoria is certainly among the smaller players these days, so it’s a question of “Don’t tell me what I can’t do,” one of my favorite lines from Lost. Yet, the spunky little infielder was a star at every level of play, from Little League to college, to the minors, and now with the Red Sox.

In between chapters are testimonials from Pedroia’s family, friends, teammates, and fans (including Julia Ruth Stevens, Babe Ruth’s granddaughter) attesting to the ballplayer’s grit. It’s a nice little tale of perseverance, but ultimately,  there’s no dirt, only a few curses, and a little lack of color to make Born to Play stand out from the rest of the genre.

Write a quick comment

Born this date in 1915.

Write a quick comment

Conversations with 17 Former Jewish Major League Baseball players, by Dave Cohen. Havenhurst Books, 2010.

Hot on the heels, but apparently unconnected with the new documentary Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story, we have this new oral history collection conducted by Cohen, described on the publisher’s website as “the familiar radio voice of Georgia State University for the last 27 seasons, covering Panther baseball and basketball on Atlanta radio.”

Seventeen former major leaguers who participated in the project include a few of the more recognizable names such as Al Rosen, Ron Blomberg, Steve Stone, Ken Holtzman, Mike Epstein, Norm Sherry and Elliott Maddox, players who spent several years in the Majors. But there are also several players who had then proverbial “cup of coffee,” enjoying but a brief moment in the big league sunshine, and it’s nice to see them represented here by Larry Yellen, Jim Gaudet, Don Taussig, and Morris Savransky.

Cohen guides them through the standard stuff about the highlights of their careers, but what is of more interest to its target audience is, of course, the Jewish stuff, whether religious or cultural in nature. There are anecdotes of anti-Semitism and amazement on the parts of the athletes, especially those from larger cities, who spent (some uncomfortable) time in the minors in the deep south, witnessing Jim Crow discrimination.

When speaking about their Jewish upbringing or how they felt about being part of a small cadre of major leaguers, several of the younger players reveal that they simply didn’t think about it that often; yiddishkeit was simply not a part of their lives. Nor did they recognize their “importance” on the cultural landscape. As we get further away from the era when many Jews were either immigrants or first generation American, clinging to the ways of the Old Country, I suppose it’s not surprising, with increased assimilation, that this is the prevailing attitude. Perhaps that attitude will be shared by younger readers, who might not see that have a minyan of Jewish players is that big a deal. But for older guys like me (and those even older), it is something in which to take pride, and kudos to Cohen for bringing these stories to print.

Write a quick comment

The top baseball books, according to Amazon.com as of Friday, Sept. 2.

Title	Rank
General
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis	1
The Baseball Codes: Beanballs, Sign Stealing, and Bench-Clearing Brawls: The Unwritten Rules of America’s Pastime by Jason Turbow and Michael Duca	2
The Natural, by Bernard Malamud	3
The Bullpen Gospels: Major League Dreams of a Minor League Veteran, by Dirk Hayhurst	4
Are We Winning?: Fathers and Sons in the New Golden Age of Baseball, by Will Leitch	5
Essays and Writing
Moneyball	1
The Bullpen Gospels	2
The Game from Where I Stand: A Ballplayer’s Inside View, by Doug Glanville	3
The Mental Keys to Hitting: A Handbook of Strategies for Performance Enhancement , by H.A. Dorfman	4
Heads-Up Baseball : Playing the Game One Pitch at a Time, by Ken Ravizza	5
History
Are We Winning?	1
The Philadelphia Phillies: An Extraordinary Tradition, by Scott Gummer	2
Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend, by James S. Hirsch	3
The Pittsburgh Cocaine Seven: How a Ragtag Group of Fans Took the Fall for Major League Baseball, by Aaron Skirboll	4
The Machine: A Hot Team, a Legendary Season, and a Heart-stopping World Series: The Story of the 1975 Cincinnati Reds, by Joe Posnanski	5
Statistics
Watching Baseball Smarter: A Professional Fan’s Guide for Beginners, Semi-experts, and Deeply Serious Geeks, by Zack Hample	1
The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball, by Tom Tango et al	2
Baseball Between the Numbers: Why Everything You Know About the Game Is Wrong, by Baseball Prospectus	3
Diamond Dollars: The Economics of Winning in Baseball, by Vince Genarro	4
Baseball Prospectus 2010	5

(Note: The list includes print editions/baseball titles only, allowing for non-baseball titles and kindle editions that affected the rankings. Also, the rankings change hourly, so the result you get when you visit Amazon.com might not be the same.)

It’s news to me: Welcome back to a classic: the print version of The Natural (not the movie version which changed the entire ending). This is the one of the few fiction titles I’ve seen since I started doing this list. A couple of instructionals return to the list, perhaps in preparation for teenagers’ fall baseball. And in recognition of Roger Clemens’ return to the hallowed halls of Congress, we have The Pittsburgh Cocaine Seven, which harkens back to a “kinder, gentler” form of drugs.

Write a quick comment

Playing a little catch-up here:

Aug. 30

• Hideo Nomo, 42: Nomo: The Tornado Who Took America by Storm, by Edmon Rodman
• Frank Robinson, 75: Robinson has published a couple of his own titles, including My Life Is Baseball (1975), Frank: The First Year (1976), and Extra Innings (1988). Other titles about Robinson include Russ Schneider’s Frank Robinson: The Making of a Manager and Frank Robinson, Born Leader, by Al Hirshberg. As with many African-American superstars, there are a number of books aimed at kids.

Aug. 31

• Ted Williams (1918) has numerous titles devoted to his life on and off the field, including Leigh Montiville’s excellent Ted Williams: The Biography of an American Hero. Other good choices include two coffee-table editions by Bill Nowlin: Ted Williams at War and Ted Williams: The Pursuit of Perfection (there are other Nowlin books on the Boston slugger as well). Then there’s Ted Williams: A Baseball Life by Micheal Seidel; What Do You Think of Ted Williams Now? : A Remembrance by Richard Ben Cramer; by John Underwood (who also worked with Williams on his classic instructional Science of Hitting); Hitter: The Life and Turmoils of Ted Williams by Edward Linn; and Ted Williams Reader by Lawrence Baldassaro, just to name a few. Several of these were published following Williams’ death in 2002.
• Tug McGraw (1944) was the author of the 1974 autobio Screwball (with Joseph Durso) and Ya Gotta Believe: My Roller-Coaster Life As a Screwball Pitcher and Part-Time Father, and My Hope-Filled Fight Against Brain Cancer, released shortly before his death in 2004. He also published Scroogie, a “comic book” in 1976.

Sept. 1

• Olde-Tyme Hall of Famer Jim “Orator” O’Rourke (1850): Orator O’Rourke: The Life of a Baseball Radical and From FarField to Newfield: The Baseball Dream of Orator Jim O’Rourke.

Sept. 2

• Olde-Tyme ballplayer, owner, and innovator(and Hall of Famer) Albert Spalding (1850): A. G. Spalding and the Rise of Baseball: The Promise of American Sport, by Peter Levine and Spalding’s own America’s National Game, first published in 1911.

<

Write a quick comment

In the recent entry on the Jim Bouton interview, I wrote about the book’s inclusion in a list of the New York Public Library’s Books of the Century.

I mistakenly referred to it as a list of the top 100 books. In fact, the total is closer to 175.

Bouton’s contribution to literature is included int he section on “Pop Culture and Mass Entertainment,” along with such notable titles as Dracula, The Hound of the Baskervilles, How to Win Friends and Influence People, Gone with the Wind, Peyton Place, The Cat in the Hat, Stranger in a Strange Land, Catch-22, In Cold Blood, Carrie, and The Bonfire of the Vanities, among others.

The entry from the 1996 edition of The New York Public Library’s Books of the Century reads:

Jim Bouton’s diaristic insider’s account of the 1969 baseball season, during which he was a marginal relief pitcher for the Seattle Pilots and Houston Astros, remains one of the all-time best-selling sports books. Considered frank and irreverent, even scandalous, in 1970, it immediately drew the censure of the baseball establishment.

Ball Four was the first ripple of a tidal wave of “tell-all” books that have become commonplace not only in sports, but also in politics, entertainment, and other realm of contemporary public life.

Of great interest today, in the light of the 1994-95 baseball strike, are the references to the bitterness and rancor that characterize owner-player relations, and to the early efforts of Marvin Miller to organize a players’ union.

Write a quick comment