The Book Shopper

Baseball Biography to the Rescue

Avail from my book shop https://bit.ly/RickeyH

When compared to the off seasons of professional basketball and football, baseball has the longest period of dormancy with its listless weeks of player transactions and replays of the previous season. Between the World Series and Opening Day, there is little to fuel one’s baseball interest. Another megastar signing with the Dodgers? MLB network’s ad nauseum repeats of baseball movies? It is not enough to relieve me of my blahs.

My personal remedy is to crack open the best lengthy baseball book I can find. In previous years it has been Roger Angell’s book on David Cone, Jimmy Breslin’s book on the 1962 New York Mets, and one year it was David Maraniss’s biography of Jim Thorpe. I know at first the latter seems out of place, but Thorpe in addition to winning the decathlon in the 1912 Stockholm Olympics and being one of the early stars of professional football, also played parts of six seasons with the baseball New York Giants and Cincinnati Reds.

Initially, this year’s offerings looked bleak. I just couldn’t go back to Norman Macht’s three-volume history of Connie Mack the owner of the Philadelphia Athletics, which I started years ago. Macht provides excruciating details on Mack’s life and his teams. Mack holds the major league record with the most wins and losses as a manager (3731-3948) and the lengthiest baseball biography (~2000 pages).

But then I recalled reading a promising review of Howard Bryant’s biography of Rickey: The Life and Legend of an American Original and picked up a copy. I started the book in early December before Henderson died on December 20th at the age of 65. But rather than talk about Rickey’s twenty-five-year career with eight teams, and as a career leader in runs scored (2295), stolen bases (1406) and not surprisingly, caught steaIing (335) I prefer to focus on what makes this biography something that pulled me through the dead zone of the baseball winter.

Historical context

From the very opening chapters, what sets this baseball biography apart from most is Bryant’s diligence in mirroring Henderson’s career with the racial history of America is the 60s, 70s and 80s.

Born in Chicago on Christmas Day, 1958, Rickey’s mother Bobbie Ray soon returned to her mother’s home in Pine Bluff, Arkansas and eventually in 1968 moved to Oakland with Rickey and his siblings seeking a better life.

At the beginning of World War II, workers were such in demand in the shipyards around the Bay Area, that factories opened their doors and hired black workers. Many lived in Oakland, where the black population grew from around 8500 in 1940 to 40,000 by 1945. Eventually, the ship building facilities closed, but the blacks remained, and Oakland became an epicenter of the black community. By the time Rickey reached middle school, Oakland’s black population exceeded 120,000. Far from perfect, Oakland was highly segregated, but it was much better than the violence and the lack of opportunity in the Jim Crow South.

Oakland was home to The Pointer Sisters and the founders of The Black Panther Party Bobby Seale and Huey Newton, but the area also produced some of the greatest athletes in sports history—basketball Hall of Famer Bill Russell and baseball greats Joe Morgan and Frank Robinson. Aficionados of the sport will recognize the second-generation players who had very good careers as major leaguers: Dave Stewart, Lloyd Moseby, Gary Pettis, Bip Roberts, and of course Rickey Henderson. All these players grew up playing sports in Oakland.  

Baseball Stories

But there is no shortage of baseball stories in Rickey.  Not only is Rickey a colorful character, but Bryant takes great care in separating the man and myth and often refers to Henderson by his first name – just as Henderson often referred to himself in the third person. (In one game Henderson tells first baseman J.T. Snow to tell his pitcher to quit throwing over to first: “Rickey tired.  Rickey ain’t running today.”)

Playing football, baseball and basketball in high school, Rickey could barely read until he was tutored by a Double-A teammate, the pitcher Mike Norris (who had a 10-year career in Oakland). In contrast Rickey had excellent math skills (obsessed by numbers) and was known in every clubhouse as a shrewd card player. He wasn't a high stakes gambler, nor did he take drugs, and he lived modestly. However, like many players Pay Equals Respect and being the highest paid player on the team or at your position was paramount.

Since Henderson played for so many teams in his quarter of a century career, you get glimpses into the friendships and rivalries. In Oakland as a rookie, Henderson credits Billy Martin for his early success as a base stealer although Bryant spares no detail on Martin's volatile and racist persona. Jose Canseco was overpaid and immature in Henderson's view. While with the Yankees (1985-89), Henderson had the respect of Don Mattingly but like all Yankee players suffered from indignities from Yankee owner George Steinbrenner (especially Dave Winfield).

Because Rickey was self-conscious of being inarticulate, he purposely kept the predominantly white New York sportswriters at a distance.  In turn they often characterized him as hotdog for his bat flipping, pulling the jersey during his home run and catching fly balls with his infamous snatch-catch. Henderson was often characterized as lazy because Henderson would take himself out of the lineup especially a day game after a night game. But in his defense, Henderson knew the toll that base stealing took on his body and he wanted to preserve it (and he did, since he played 25 years).   His love of the game was undeniable, playing two years of semi-pro baseball AFTER his last major league game.  

The Legacy

What separates Bryant’s biography from most baseball books is that he addresses the Henderson legacy.  He reminds us that Henderson was a product of this times, which include the early years of player free agency. The fans resented the burgeoning player salaries culminating in the 50 days strike in 1981.  But a player like Henderson growing up in Oakland learned not to back down and play the game the way that he wanted to. (Or course the league now promotes more entertainment -- more bat flips and action on the basepaths.) 

Statistics often speak for themselves and can seem irrefutable, but Bryant goes beyond the numbers to show Henderson's greatness and but is undeterred on revealing Rickey's faults. Bryant allows the reader to judge for him or herself the merits of his personality and his baseball talents. It’s a book that give Henderson’s legacy a cornerstone. One certainly cannot opine about Rickey Henderson without reading this book. And in the bleak days of January and February season, it is my highlight reel of a baseball book.

 

A short but excellent interview with Howard Bryant when the book first came out.

The Field of Dreams Archive

If you're going to watch the Field of Dreams baseball game between two National League bottom feeders tonight (8/11), here's a couple of postings from The Book Shopper archive that you can look at when things get a little slow. To celebrate the game, I'm having corn-on-cob for dinner tonight. 

From May 2009, "Field of Dream Fanatic" is a review of an appearance by an author who wrote a book about Moonlight Graham and other trivia surrounding the movie.

The second offering "Book Burning Iowans in Field of Dreams" comes from the fine essayist Wilfred Sheed who loved baseball, but in his essay, he was less than kind to Iowans.  This May 2013 posting also has a link to a third essay about the Jungian overtones of the movie.

You should time to read all of these. I would bet on it.

 

Baseball Respite

I usually read more baseball books in the off-season than during the summer months. Since the players and the owners are currently at an impasse with no end sight, my needs are even more pronounced. Moreover, baseball books provide me with more relaxed material in contrast to the intense fare that I have been reading lately. Books about climate (the eco-anthology All We Can Save), an explanative history of the rise of nationalism (Age of Anger) and the story of the London cholera epidemic of 1854 (The Ghost Map) have been interesting, but unsettling. None of these books are something you want to read in the evening near bedtime. That’s where a calming book of old-timey baseball stories can be most appreciated. And I miss baseball.

My solution has been Baseball: When the Grass Was Real (1976), by writer-poet Donald Honig who travelled around the country collecting the narratives of the men who played baseball in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s.  Earlier Lawrence Ritter put together a similar book, The Glory of the Times (1966), which gathered oral histories of players who played in the early part of the 20th century. (Honig acknowledges Ritter’s efforts in his Introduction). To those viewers of the Ken Burns' documentary, some of the players have familiar sounding names ( e.g., Lefty Grove, Bob Feller). Honig also includes less familiar but melodic names (Big Johnny Mize, Max Lanier) made famous in Dave Frishberg’s musical paean to baseball players, "Van Lingle Mungo".

Honig allows the players to speak in their own vernacular taking advantage of their storytelling skills. But in addition to the 18 players selected, these players also include their personal anecdotes of being teammates and contemporaries of Hall of Famers, Ted Williams*, Joe DiMaggio, Dizzy Dean and Jackie Robinson to name but a few. Some notable stories include:

Billy Herman was a Hall of Famer who played from 1931- 47 mostly for the Chicago Cubs. He was an eyewitness to Babe Ruth's pointing to the centerfield stands and calling his shot before hitting a home run in the 1932 World Series. But from his position at second base Herman confirms that it is a great story but incorrect, because the Cub pitcher that day was the extremely competitive Charlie Root.  Herman says that Ruth was pointing two fingers at Root (not at centerfield) and that Root only had two strikes on him. “But he didn’t point," says Herman," “Don’t kid yourself. I can tell you just what would have happened if Ruth had tried that—he would have never got a pitch to hit. Root would have had him with his feet up in the air. I told you Charlie Root was a mean man on that mound.”

Herman also was an eyewitness to boxing match-brawl between Ernest Hemingway and his teammate Hugh Casey when they visited the novelist's mansion in Havana during Spring Training in 1942.

James “Cool Papa” Bell, was a star in the Negro Leagues for nearly two decades but was kept out of the majors because of the color barrier. Bell was a contemporary of Josh Gibson and Satchel Paige and he eventually was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1974. He describes his experiences in the Jim Crow South that sound all too familiar:

"When we played the Birmingham Black Barons in their park, there were always lots of whites in the crowd, but they were separated by a rope. You could be sitting right next to a white man, but that rope was always there. That was the system they had in those days. That’s what they called states’ rights. States’ rights doesn’t mean much to the Negro. You don’t get justice with states’ rights. Which is a bad thing to happen.”

Johnny Mize

Big Johnny Mize, grew up in Demorest, Georgia and played with the St. Louis Cardinals' Gas House Gang in the 1930s. The Cardinals general manager then was the famous Branch Rickey who later signed Jackie Robinson to the Brooklyn Dodgers breaking the color barrier in the majors in 1947. (One of the chapters is on a lesser-known player Clyde Sukeforth, who after his playing days scouted Robinson and literally introduced him to Rickey.)  Mize didn’t think so much of Branch Rickey who low-balled Mize in contract negotiations, which was indicative of the complete control owners had over the players' livelihoods. Mize spent the last five years of his career as a pinch-hitter for the New York Yankees, playing in a string of World Series for the World Champions. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1981.

Honig saves arguably his best for last --  the story of Brooklyn Dodger Pete Reiser, who probably would have been a Hall of Famer had he not been injury prone. At his first Spring training, Reiser’s manager Leo Durocher, was the first to recognize Reiser’s speed once bet $100 with Dodgers General Manager Larry MacPhail that Reiser could be beat the fastest man in the Dodgers organization in a foot race. Says Reiser:

“So here all of a sudden I’m running against the fastest guy in the Dodger organization, and the manager and the general manager are betting $100 on it. And all I’d wanted to do was come down there and work out in a big-league camp and mind my business.

Well, I did beat the guy. Yeah, by 10 yards."

We end this posting with a baseball lullaby, "Van Lingle Mungo" by Dave Frishberg:

 

 

---

P.S. The artwork at the top of the post is on display at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. The mixed media piece "Strike Zone" by Mike Ross was inspired by Ted Williams' book The Science of Hitting. The photograph of Johnny Mize is from the HOF archives. Thanks to my former teammate (college intramural basketball team) Tom Bowen for introducing me to this book.

Baseball Books Blues

With Hot Stove League extended past Memorial Day because of the pandemic, my ability to maintain an interest in baseball has waned. With few exceptions, I have little interest in watching tired-ass games of the past or baseball players video gaming or repeats of baseball movie standards ad nauseum such “Bull Durham”, “A League of Their Own”, and “Sandlot”. Sports section stories about whether professional baseball will resume and what the games will be like under new rules barely gets my attention though I am expecting a partial refund for my MLB Network package when decisions about the season are resolved.

As reported in the past months, I’ve read two lengthy baseball books this off-season, Volume 1 of Norman Macht’s biography of Connie Mack and reread the 1966 classic The Glory of Their Times by Lawrence Ritter, but I goofed recently when picked up Bang the Drum Slowly (1956) by Mark Harris from my stockpile of baseball books.

I turned to my cache of baseball books and selected Mark Harris’s 1956 novel, Bang the Drum Slowly, which is often mentioned in best novels about baseball*. Set in the mid-1950s, a major league pitcher Henry “Author” Wiggin hides the terminal medical condition of his catcher Bruce Pearson, who hails from the small town of Bainbridge, Georgia. Throughout the season, Wiggin protects Pearson whose neither gifted physically or mentally and was often chastised by his New York teammates for being a rube. At first, I was hopeful that Harris would capture the baseball vernacular similar to Ring Lardner’s classic You Know Me Al (1916) or the language and cadences from old timer ballplayers in the Lawrence Ritter book, but Harris's prose  didn’t resonate with me. (An audio version of the Lardner book is available in the public domain.)

I even tried watching the 1973 movie version of Bang the Drum Slowly starring a young Robert De Niro as Pearson and Michael Moriarty (who played the prosecutor in the original Law & Order television series) as Wiggin. There are many editing gaffes in the movie and the baseball action is limited because the main story is not about winning the pennant but how the polyester-clad Wiggin befriends his catcher throughout the season. It was interesting to see Vince Gardenia as the team manager and the late Danny Aiello play a slugging first baseman. Little did they know that they would appear together in a much better film – Moonstruck (1987).

Perhaps the biggest indictment of the quality of the movie is that not even appeared dozens of times on the MLB Network.

I usually refrain from writing about books I don’t like so much, but I wanted to share my melancholia of no baseball. It seems how the harder they try to force lesser forms of the sport, the more I miss it. But there is one saving grace of the book and the movie -- hearing “The Streets of Laredo.” The elegiac cowboy tune not only provides the title for the Harris novel, but captures the ambience of our times.

O bang the drum slowly and play the fife slowly,

Play the dead march as they carry me on,

Put branches of roses all over my coffin,

Roses to deaden the clods as they fall.

---

*Upon further review, I found out that Harris’s previous book, The Southpaw which was published in 1953 is considered the better book. Bang the Drum Slowly references The Southpaw as Henry Wiggin is the narrator of both books. Funny thing Michael Moriarty who plays Wiggin in the movie pitches right-handed.

Hot Stove League Intensifies

Usually Major League Baseball’s hot stove league is reserved for a few stories about free agents signings and time to catch up on baseball books to pass the time until Opening Day. This year there is no winter snoozing with the Houston Astros and Boston Red Sox scandals about using technology to steal signs pushing baseball to the front page headlines. Three managers have been terminated, and one general manager Houston's  Jeff Luhnow was also fired.  It makes off my season anxiety concerning the fate of my adopted baseball son, Chicago Cub third baseman Kris Bryant seem trite. (I will always remember Kris' smile just before the final out of the 2016 World Series.)

Coincidently, this scandal mushroomed while I was catching up on my backlog of magazine reading which included baseball. In the July, 2019 issue of Atlantic magazine, Jack Hamilton wrote a review and thought piece on Ben Lindbergh and Travis Sawchik’s book The MVP Machine: How Baseball’s New Nonconformist’s Are Using Data to Build Better Players (2019). The entire piece is available here, but two paragraphs really resonated. One concerns the general atmosphere on the Houston ball club.

I certainly don’t want to be in the position defending millionaire ballplayers, but perhaps the underlying core motivation of stealing signs via technology ( similar to using Performance Enhancing Drugs) is self-preservation --- keeping your job. The sentence about how Luhnow fostered a toxic atmosphere of winning at all costs makes me wonder whether pressure from management factored in the complicity of Houston players using technology to steal signs. In the following paragraph Hamilton suggests that one of the trends in professional baseball is that top players can be created from cheaper average players. That notion doesn’t bode well for the star players.

Another coincidence cropped up while I was reading my annual hot stove baseball book, Volume 1 of  Norman Macht’s biography, Connie Mack and the Early Years of Baseball. As the owner and manager of the Philadelphia Athletics for a half a century, Mack (real name Cornelius McGillicuddy) the man with the most victories (and the most defeats) in baseball history also had visions of developing perfect ball players. In 1901, while Mack was forming the new American League, he had the hopes of prying a young promising pitcher from the National League – future Hall of Famer Christy Matthewson. Macht writes, “Mack saw this new beginning as an opportunity to fulfill his dream of taking young, intelligent athletes and teaching them, molding them into a perfect baseball machine.”

Mack's Exhibit at the Baseball Hall of Fame

 

Baseball's Hall of Fame Grip

Heretofore the closest I have been to the National Baseball Hall of Fame was reading Richard Ford’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel Independence Day (1995).  Ford’s book is the slow-paced story of a divorced writer-turned-real estate agent who takes his estranged son to both the basketball and baseball Halls of Fame over a 4th of a July weekend.

Considering that Ford describes Cooperstown, New York as a sleepy little burg that closes after 9 p.m. with no mention of late summer crowds, I did not know what to expect.  I did have an idea of a few of the plaques that I wanted to see, but for the most part I just went with the flow and allowed the museum, the idyllic New York village (with many dining choices now),  and the Ommegang Brewery to take its hold on me.

The Plaques

The first floor atrium of that contains the plaques has a cathedral like quality where you stroll into each alcove to peruse over the immortalized players. (And I am not hyperbolizing when I use the word "cathedral" since when I was there during the opening hours a couple was getting married.) What makes the plaques especially interesting is the tight summary of each career which includes statistics and some sense of how the person played the game.

Edgar Charles (Sam) Rice

Ever since a feature article by Steve Wulf appeared Sports Illustrateds, July 19, 1993 issue, I have been intrigued by this player.  He was born Edgar Charles Rice n 1890 in Morocco, Indiana just a few miles from where I grew up in Iroquois County, Illinois. Rice was married in 1908 and he and his wife had two children and moved to Watseka, Illinois the county seat of Iroquois County.  At age 22, while away at baseball tryout in Galesburg, Edgar’s family visited his parents in Morocco and the entire family died in a killer tornado.

Understandably, Rice drifted for several years before ending up with the Washington Senators as a rookie at age 25. He remarried, but kept his previous life a secret on his way to a Hall of Fame career, which included a famous catch in the 1924 World Series against the Pittsburgh Pirates.  Take the link to the Wulf article for the complete and memorable story.

Lee Smith

Until I heard Lee Smith humble induction speech earlier this summer, I bared some resentment to Smith for giving up Steve Garvey’s home run in the 1984 National League Championship Series which eventually led to the San Diego Padres victory over my team The Chicago Cubs.  Over the years, I had softened especially after the Cubs champsionship in 2016.  Smith makes regular appearances at Wrigley Field and Cub broadcasts and he made a simple compelling argument that his lifetime saves record stood for 13 years before it  was eclipsed and he is still third on the number of saves behind Trevor Hoffman and Mariano Rivera.  I like other Hall of Fame Cubs like Billy Williams, Ryne Sandberg, and Ferguson Jenkins, but now I can add the tall right-hander with the "bat-shattering fastball and darting slider to my list of likeable Cubs.

Connie Mack

I was even able to feed my new baseball player obsession --- Cornelius McGillicuddy (1863 -1956) aka Connie Mack. Mack won more games as a manager than anyone else and LOST more games as a manager than anyone else.  At the Willis Monie bookstore on the Main Street of Cooperstown, I picked up the Volume 3 of  Norman Macht’s biography of the player, manager and owner who had a half of a century career with the Philadelphia Athletics. My only regret is that I didn’t browse the store, but to my defense I had spent many hours power browsing The Hall of Fame. Here I am posing for a picture at the 1939 induction ceremony with Babe Ruth on my right, and Connie Mack on my left.

 

Oddities at Destination Books

Prep work continues for my pop-up booth Destination Books at the Decatur Book Festival’s Georgia Book and Paper Fair this weekend. This curation can become time-consuming when I run into book oddities that generate memories of days past. Here are some examples:

Carma: A Super-Simple Automotive Manual written by David Rosenblum. This was originally purchased in 1975 --  a time in my life when I thought I would try to maintain my own car – a 1961 Buick Electra followed by a 1973 Chevy Malibu. I was terrible at car repairs, but at least I take some solace that I soon realized I would save time and money if I just hired someone else to do the work. Still I have always valued auto maintenance, and stuck inside the book includes repair records and my Sears tire warranty. I will have this yellowing, disintegrating gem with the Courier typeface and homemade drawings of carburetors on display. But can I part with it? Probably won't have to.

Mark Bennett’s TV Sets: Fantasy Blueprints of Classic TV Homes (1996). Bennett has re-imagined and drawn blueprints of famous TV homes of a bygone era: Lucy and Ricky’s New York apartment and Connecticut home, The Clampetts Mansion in Beverly Hills and The Flintstones stone sided suburban ranch house to name but a few.

The Vanishing American Outhouse. Ronald S. Barlow’s 1989 paean to crescent-moon outdoor facilities will be at Destination Books for examination. No white gloves necessary.

Baseball Techniques Illustrated the 1951 instructional book by Ethan Allen and Tyler Micoleau.  This classic has all the fundamentals for any baseball player who wants to improve his or her game. The authors spend an entire chapter on situational hitting. Somebody needs to buy this book and send it to the 2019 Chicago Cubs.

Down & Outbound: A Mass Transit Satire. This  quirky book I published myself because I wanted the format to reflect function. The book is designed for the commuter who can read the book with one hand and hold on to the “Oh-shit” straps while riding a bus or train. “In the subterranean world of mass transit there are two separate, yet equally marginalized groups: the riders who use public transportation and the city officials who routinely persecute them.” The video below explains.

 

 

 

 

My Off Season: Hot Stove Baseball Books

These months between the final game of the World Series and Opening Day can be long and cold if you don’t prepare properly. Last November, I taped the entire MLB All-Stars (sans All Star pitchers) vs Japan’s Samurai All-Stars in a six game exhibition series, which was played in Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagoya in front of packed stadiums of chanting Japanese fans. Japan won the series 5 games to 1, which is no surprise since the MLB pitching staff consisted of “household” names of Scott Barlow (KC), Collin McHugh (HOU) and Kirby Yates (SD) not Clayton Kershaw, Max Scherzer and Jacob DeGrom.  Still the series had its moments like Juan Soto’s launching of a ball heading over the fences until it hit the roof of the Tokyo Dome and was caught for an out.

Hot Stove League roster talk cannot sustain an entire winter either, especially since the Manny Machado and Bryce Harper free agency stories quickly grew tiresome, “Harper visits Philadelphia, Machado visits Philadelphia. Washington reps have a nice lunch with Harper in Vegas. Machado tells White Sox to Drop Dead.” Their final destinations will be anti-climatic wherever they land. Hall of Fame talk is fun because it is debatable, but can I respect any organization like the Baseball Writers Association of America that doesn’t give Plácido Polanco more consideration than one vote?  According to one pundit, Polanco deserves better.

Last winter, I read Robert Whiting’s You’ve Got to Have Wah, the 2009 book about the history of baseball in Japan and it included how American baseball players have fared playing for teams like the Nippon Ham Fighters (what a name!) and Seibu Lions. Perhaps I was preparing myself for the MLB All-Star/Samurai Classic and didn’t realize that I established a pattern that the best time to read baseball books is in the off season.

The Minneapolis Review of Baseball

This year I dug out a book I have been  meaning to read for a longtime - Basepaths: The Best of the Minneapolis Review of Baseball Volume 1: 1981-1987 published in 1991. The MRB began as a mom and pop kind of baseball journal founded in 1980 by Steve Lehman, Ken LaZebnik and illustrator Andy Nelson who became the art director. I first heard about the magazine from an article in Sports Illustrated and followed the publication from a distance. In 1990, William C. Brown publishers bought the journal and re-imagined the publication into the now defunct Elysian Fields Quarterly, which I wrote a tongue-in-cheek column about baseball statistics, but EFQ struggled as well before finally ceasing publication in 2008.

The premise of MRB was like the original The Book Shopper book (this blog’s namesake) it was a place where fans, not insiders or “experts could express their passions:

“We quickly found ourselves publishing a community of eccentric correspondents and baseball lovers: construction workers, professional poets, cab drivers, college professors, a retired diplomat and anyone else who writes well and fervently about baseball.” – Introduction to Basepaths

As one might expect (like in any collection) there is some unevenness to such an endeavor, but there more timeless baseball gems than outdated rocks. Here are a few of my favorites:

- Wayne Farr's artistic re-creation of baseball relics by "baseball’s true inventor" Leonardo da Vinci.

- "In Memorium: The Winter of 1995, Remembering Burleigh Grimes, Bill Wambsganss, Roger Maris and Bill Veeck."

- An account of the unlikely baseball record where the smae player broke up a no-hitter twice in a 1955 game between the Minneapolis Millers and the Omaha Cardinals.

- An opinion piece on the lack of left-handed catchers.

- A transcript of Ken LaZebnik’s stage play on Calvin Griffith, the longtime owner of the Minnesota Twins.

The connection between Buddhism and baseball in “The Baseball Player as Bodhisattva: An Inquiry into the National Pastime" by Matthew Goodman with art by Andy Nelson.

Interspersed within these longer pieces are shorter riffs on owner’s greed, the ridiculousness of trying to “speed up the game” and complaints about the designated hitter rule (all still relevant, no?). I especially enjoyed the poetry as well and I am not much of a poetry person. Perhaps why it worked for me is that I didn’t have to “figure out” what these poets were writing about. All things baseball. Here’s an excerpt from one of the offerings -- Red Shuttleworth’s, "A Poem to Tell You Why I Named My Son Luke Appling After the White Sox Hall of Fame Shortstop."

                 When I called Luke

to tell him the boy was born, named

for him, Luke said, “I’m thrilled.”

I told him sheepishly, I was still

teaching English at a junior college,

and he said I am glad somebody’s smart,”

taking the sting out of my

of not being part of the game.

There are four Shuttleworth poems in the collection, including a couple that transform you back the minor league life of the Durham Bulls circa 1980 when Shuttleworth was a bullpen coach. On a whim, I reached out to Red who is still writing and gives high marks to Ron Shelton’s film Bull Durham (What a relief). See the Extra Innings post script for more.

Another poem “Renewal” by Paul Weinman vividly captures that moment between winter and the first spring practice.

Each year we’d come back

and the field would still be there.

Sure, the baselines looked worn

Tired, grass turned grey. Brown.

The batter’s box, sullen.

Mound, slope-shouldered, old.

The baseball off-season is long can seem interminable but books like Basepaths with its “glory of their times” look and feel hones my appreciation of baseball history and lore. So much so that I am in no hurry for Opening Day.

Extra Innings

Appling with Shuttleworth (photo courtesy of Red Shuttleworth)

 Long after baseball, Red Shuttleworth has had a extensive writing career. To learn more about his writing, visit redshuttleworth.com

Besides Basepaths, Nelson, Lehman and LaZebnik collaborated on another favorite baseball book of mine: A is for At Bat, A Baseball Primer (1990) a series of short verse. A great way to introduce baseball to  your future slugger.

 

 

Baseball Bedtime Stories

One of the ways I have managed to keep the baseball flames lit in the off season is by revisiting Neal and Constance McCabe's Baseball's Golden Age: The Photographs of Charles M. Conlon (1993). I took it off my baseball book shelf after a recent visit to the Joe Jackson Baseball Museum in Greenville and placed it on my nightstand.

The Conlon photograph at the top of this posting has some coincidental significance. In this 1912 game, Conlon captures the action of New York Highlander Bert Daniels as  he is being thrown out at the plate by none other than Shoeless Joe Jackson. 

The book makes for excellent bedtime reading because each photograph is accompanied by a brief biographic note of the player shown or how Conlon managed to use a heavy glass-plate camera to capture the essence of baseball from 1904 to 1934. The photos are from a distant world and they can overshadow the tight and often humorous prose of the McCabes.  

One of my favorite anecdotes is the story of Charlie Root, a pitcher for the Chicago Cubs who was known for the being on the
mound when Babe Ruth called his shot in the 1932 World Series. But not so fast! Look at Root's face, then read the story about Root's nickname.

 

 

 

Shoeless Joe Baseball Library

You can cross The Shoeless Joe Jackson Baseball Museum in Greenville, South Carolina off my Let's-Not-Set-the-Bar-Too-High Bucket List. (I think people put a lot of pressure on themselves with exotic Bucket Lists, which can shorten their lives...) Located in Jackson's actual home near the minor league stadium, Fluor Field, the quaint museum is pure bliss for baseball history buffs and those who believe in the magic of the motion picture Field of Dreams --- or not.

The knowledgeable and friendly curators were more than willing to field tough questions concerning Jackson's infamous nickname, his culpability in the Black Sox scandal, and the irony of having a baseball library in a player's home who could neither read or write. I could tell you what they said, but you should go and find out for yourself. Be sure and check ahead because the museum is open for a limited number of hours each week, especially in the off-season.

Shown above is just a sample of all the baseball books they have assembled at the Museum. Our guide said that they had so many book donations they had to turn some away.  It would be interesting to find out if I had some baseball books on my shelf that they didn't have such as:  Flip Flop Fly Ball or Wilfred Sheed's baseball essays, or Confessions from Left Field by Ray Mungo.

That would be a good reason to go back.